http://www.humansecuritygateway.com/showRecord.php?RecordId=732 Record Details Thu, 13 Oct 2005 00:00:00 -0700 http://www.humansecuritygateway.com/showRecord.php?RecordId=732 http://www.humansecuritygateway.com/showRecord.php?RecordId=732 The name "Pathet Lao" (Land of Laos) refers to the communist movement that occurred in Laos beginning in the 1950s and was the Laotian equivalent of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge and Vietnam's Viet Cong. The movement was formed by Prince Souphanouvong in North Vietnam during the first Indochine war between France and Vietnamese communists. The Pathet Lao was committed to the communist struggle against colonialism. In 1953, the Pathet Lao guerrillas accompanied a Viet Minh invasion of Laos from Vietnam and established a government at Samneua in northern Laos. Soon after Laos was granted full sovereignty from France. Civil war followed soon after however, as the Pathet Lao made several attacks on central Laos and making considerable gains. An agreement between the Pathet Lao and royal forces was reached in 1957, but only two years later the coalition government collapsed and fighting resumed. Soon a three-way civil war was upon the country, between the Pathet Lao, the right-wing government who controlled the Royal Laotian Army (this was the force recognized by the United States and other western countries), and the Soviet-recognized neutralist forces of Souvanna Phouma, who had fled to Cambodia. Globalsecurity.org