The Lao People's Democratic Republic

The People’s Democratic Republic of Laos (Lao PDR) is one of the last remaining communist countries. The current government began to take control during the time that the United States was involved in the Vietnam War and the secret war in Laos.
Before that time, Laos was a colony of the French, who had come to Laos to establish control of regional trade. The French acquired Laos whilst maintaining the current established government of the Luang Prabang kingdom, who had ruled the region (called the Lane Xang Kingdom, or ‘Kingdom of a Million Elephants’) since the thirteenth century.
During the various wars and rebellions within French Indochina during the early to mid 20th century, the Pathet Lao, or ‘Lao National’ army grew in strength and influence to overthrow the western-backed and decadent ruling elite in Laos.
Below is part of a document written by Noam Chomsky, who visited Laos during the 1970s, regarding the work of the CIA in Laos:

From :The New York Review of Books
Volume 15, Number 2 · July 23, 1970
"…The recent history of Laos contributes to the atmosphere of suspicion. The first Government of National Union of 1958 was overthrown by American subversion. As Ambassador Graham Parsons candidly remarked in Congressional Hearings of 1959, "I struggled for sixteen months to prevent a coalition." An American military mission was operating at the time, headed by a US Army general in civilian guise. In the 1958 elections, of twenty-one seats contested for the National Assembly, nine were won by the Neo Lao Hak Sat (NLHS) and four by the candidates of the Committee for Peace and Neutrality of Quinim Pholsena, a "left-leaning neutralist" allied with the NLHS. Five right-wing and three non-party delegates were elected. The NLHS had put up only thirteen candidates. Its leader, Souphanouvong, got the largest vote and was elected chairman of the National Assembly. The United States withheld funds, thus impelling the Lao elite to introduce a new government headed by "pro-Western neutralist" Phoui Sananikone. Shortly after, Phoui declared his intention to disband the NLHS as being subversive, thus scrapping the earlier successful agreements that had established the coalition. US aid soon resumed and Phoui pledged "to coexist with the Free World only."
In December, 1959, he was overthrown by the CIA favorite, Phoumi Nosavan, a Lao equivalent to the military dictator of Thailand (his cousin, as it happens), who was also receiving substantial US support. Although the coup government did not last, Phoumi retained his powerful position as Minister of National Defense, thus controlling most of the budget; and the extreme right won the ridiculous 1960 elections which were so crudely rigged by the CIA and its favorites that even conservative pro-US observers were appalled."
What occurred in Laos after the writing of this essay was even more devastating for the people of Laos. After the signing of the Geneva Accords, which proclaimed Laos a neutral state in the Vietnam War (and therefor the war could not be carried out within its borders), the CIA began a secret bombing campaign which lasted until 1975, during which more bombs were dropped on Laos than on all of Germany and Japan combined during World War II.
Nearly everyone we have contact with here lost a close family member or friend during this bombing campaign. Whole villages were obliterated during this time and for seven years, large areas of the country could not be farmed, as villagers hid in caves and in the forest, foraging food. In all, it is estimated that nearly 400,000 of Laos’ 4 million people died during this period.
In 1975, following the exposure of America’s Secret War to the American Congress and the American people, the Pathet Lao declared freedom for the people of Laos and established control in Vientiane. What followed was a period of harsh reprisal and oppressive control on the part of the Lao government.
It was not until 1991, at the fall of the Soviet Union, that Laos began to open up to some degree. Today, free elections are still not held, and media are tightly controlled.
While on the surface, the government claims to ensure religious freedom, the reality is very different. Christians are regularly persecuted through imprisonment, confiscation of property, and even military action in Hmong regions. We ourselves have contact with many believers who live in fear because of their beliefs. In Vientiane, things are much more relaxed in this regard, though the three churches which are permitted to function must have all plans, all speakers and all activities approved one year in advance by the central government. Last year, in our village, the few Christians were not allowed to observe Christmas (smacks of the White Witch of Narnia if you ask me).
But Laos is a wonderful country. Ethnically, there are many groups within Laos. Over the centuries, Laos has been something of a corridor along the Indochinese region. Early on, the area may have been largely inhabited by the Kh’hmu people, who themselves were migrants from Cambodia. After that time, the Thai groups came in from the north- from China, and spread down the region, occupying Laos and Thailand. Today, this group, called Lowland Lao, make up the majority of population and economic power within the country, occupying the good farmland along the Mekong River. Still another major wave of immigration took place, the Hmong moved in from China. While there are many groups in Laos, dozens perhaps, these three major peoples make up the largest share.
The Lao language is tonal, having anywhere from five to seven tones depending on who you talk to. For those of you who don’t know what a tone is, it means that I can say the same word- ‘mai’ for instance, and it can have several meanings depending on how I inflect my voice. If said with a high tone, it would mean ‘mile;’ if a low tone, ‘burn;’ if a middle tone, ‘new;’ if a tone which starts high and then falls, ‘tree, or wood;’ if a tone which starts low and then rises, then ‘silk.’
Most words are either one syllable or a compound word of two or more syllables. As with many languages used in more ‘traditional’ societies, there is a great diversity of words to describe various types of plants, or weather, or baskets, or traps, etc., but technical vocabulary is limited, being formed more like scientific German or Orwell’s ‘newspeak’ but conglomerating several words of simple meaning to arrive at a specific term.
Laos, it seems to us, is still very much a hunter-gatherer society. While a monetary system has been established for quite some time, the majority of the population barely subsists on rice cultivation, supplementing this continuously with leaves and roots and animals gathered from the forest. This diversity of foraged food in the diet impacts local cuisine. While the foods traditionally thought of as Lao foods include papaya salad (a dish made from unripe papaya, cut into thin strips, with chillies, lime juice, and fermented fish sauce), laap (usually a variation on ground meat, mint leaves, banana blossoms, lime juice and chillies), and sticky rice, the majority of the time our neighbours eat small birds from the forest, insects, wild leaves, and sauce made from chilli peppers.
Education, medicine, and technology is very rudimentary. This is compounded by a lack of knowledge of outside languages by the local population, making access to outside resources even more difficult. The vast majority of the population is rural and in low densities, generally engaged in shifting agriculture, and generally animist or Buddhist.

There are few good sources of information on Laos. There is a fellow named Grant Evans who has written some books about it. Information can also be obtained from US sources, either governmental or Hmong, but rather biased in either case, for different reasons. I hope that as time goes on we will be able to give more information along the way. This posting seems to have grown rather too long already.