Operation Snake Eyes

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Operation Snake Eyes
Part of Laotian Civil War
Operational scope Strategic offensive
Planned December 1969
Planned by G. McMurtrie Godley
Commanded by Xieng Manh Noy Sirisouk
Objective Capture and block the extension of Route 46
Outcome Aborted

Operation Snake Eyes was a proposed military operation of the Laotian Civil War. Planned in mid-December 1969 by the U.S. Ambassador to Laos, the planned interdiction of the newly constructed Chinese Road, Route 46, was aimed at halting the road's progress toward the border with Thailand. The offensive by guerrilla raiders was delayed six months for operational reasons. When it was finally ready to be launched, it was pre-empted by the furor caused by the Cambodian Incursion. Fearful that Operation Snake Eyes would arouse even greater publicity, the Central Intelligence Agency handlers of the guerrillas canceled the operation on orders of the White House. Attempts to limit Chinese expansion toward the south would be left to future operations, such as Operation Phalat and Operation Sourisak Montry.

Laotian Civil War 1963-1975 civil war in Laos

The Laotian Civil War (1959–75) was fought between the Communist Pathet Lao and the Royal Lao Government, with both sides receiving heavy external support in a proxy war between the global Cold War superpowers. It is called the Secret War among the CIA Special Activities Division and Hmong veterans of the conflict.

Interdiction is a military term for the act of delaying, disrupting, or destroying enemy forces or supplies en route to the battle area. A distinction is often made between strategic and tactical interdiction. The former refers to operations whose effects are broad and long-term; tactical operations are designed to affect events rapidly and in a localized area.

The Chinese Road were a series of highways built as a foreign aid project by the People's Republic of China (PRC) in northern Laos, beginning in 1962. The first new road was built from Mengla, Yunnan Province, PRC to Phongsali, Laos; it was completed on 25 May 1963. The next major road built was Route 46, begun in the 1966 dry season and stretching from the southern tip of Yunnan Province southward toward the border of the Kingdom of Thailand. As 25,000 Chinese troops and 400 antiaircraft guns came to be posted to defend Route 46, and Thai support of American war efforts in both the Laotian Civil War and the Vietnam War became widely known, there was uneasiness among both Thai and American intelligence communities concerning Communist China's intents in constructing the all-weather highway. American interest in the new road extended up to the White House.

Contents

Overview

The Kingdom of Laos was freed by the French at the end of the First Indochina War. From its inception, Laos was troubled by a communist insurrection. The United States stepped in to provide foreign aid to Laos, to aid in quelling the uprising. [1]

Kingdom of Laos former country

The Kingdom of Laos was a constitutional monarchy that ruled Laos beginning with its independence on 9 November 1953. The monarchy survived until December 1975, when its last king, Savang Vatthana, surrendered the throne to the Pathet Lao, who abolished the monarchy in favor of a Marxist state called the Lao People's Democratic Republic, which has controlled Laos since.

First Indochina War 1946-1954 war between France and Ho Chi Minhs forces

The First Indochina War began in French Indochina on December 19, 1946, and lasted until July 20, 1954. Fighting between French forces and their Việt Minh opponents in the south dated from September 1945. The conflict pitted a range of forces, including the French Union's French Far East Expeditionary Corps, led by France and supported by Bảo Đại's Vietnamese National Army against the Việt Minh, led by Ho Chi Minh and the People's Army of Vietnam led by Võ Nguyên Giáp. Most of the fighting took place in Tonkin in northern Vietnam, although the conflict engulfed the entire country and also extended into the neighboring French Indochina protectorates of Laos and Cambodia.

In March 1961, the Geneva Conference of 1954 reconvened with wider participation to reconsider the neutralization of the Kingdom of Laos. Since the 1954 Agreement was signed, a Pathet Lao insurgency had burgeoned, threatening the national sovereignty. This would eventually result in an attempt to settle the Laotian Civil War, the International Agreement on the Neutrality of Laos signed on 23 July 1962. [2]

Pathet Lao communist political movement and organization in Laos

The Pathet Lao was a communist political movement and organization in Laos, formed in the mid-20th century. The group was ultimately successful in assuming political power in 1975, after the Laotian Civil War. The Pathet Lao were always closely associated with Vietnamese communists. During the civil war, it was effectively organized, equipped and even led by the People's Army of Vietnam. They fought against the anti-communist forces in the Vietnam War. Eventually, the term became the generic name for Laotian communists.

The International Agreement on the Neutrality of Laos is an international agreement signed in Geneva on July 23, 1962 between 14 states including Laos. It was a result of the International Conference on the Settlement of the Laotian Question which lasted from May 16, 1961 to July 23, 1962.

Prime Minister Souvanna Phouma curried favor with the People's Republic of China by striking a road construction deal with them in January 1962. The Chinese government committed to building a network of roads connecting Yunnan Province with northern Laos despite the developing Laotian Civil War. [3] [4] At the time the agreement was announced, the Battle of Luang Namtha was being fought on the Lao/Chinese border to spark the Laotian Civil War. [5]

Souvanna Phouma Prime Minister of Laos

Prince Souvanna Phouma was the leader of the neutralist faction and Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Laos several times.

The Battle of Luang Namtha, fought between January 1962 and May 1962, was an important engagement of the Laotian Civil War. It came about as a result of the turmoil following Laotian independence as a result of the First Indochina War with France. The Kingdom of Laos had foreign soldiers upon its soil, and a political struggle in progress concerning those outside troops. Following a coup and counter-coup that left General Phoumi Nosavan in charge, the general decided on military action to settle the political issue of interlopers in Laos.

Background

The Chinese originally built a road across northern Phongsali Province in 1962 and 1963 as a foreign aid project. [3] They then began an entirely new road construction project in early 1966, extending south from Yunnan Province past Luang Namtha, down the Pakbeng Valley. As Route 46, the new road gathered ever more attention the further south it progressed. The Royal Thai Government worried it might be extended across trackless northwestern Laos to the Thai border. The presence of 25,000 Chinese troops and 400 antiaircraft guns along the new road raised anxiety not only in the Thai and Lao governments, but also in Washington. [6] The American government had a vested interest in Thailand; the Kingdom was a major American supporter in the ongoing Vietnam War. [7]

Vietnam War 1955–1975 conflict in Vietnam

The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, and in Vietnam as the Resistance War Against America or simply the American War, was an undeclared war in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union, China, and other communist allies; South Vietnam was supported by the United States, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, Thailand and other anti-communist allies. The war is considered a Cold War-era proxy war from some US perspectives. It lasted some 19 years with direct U.S. involvement ending in 1973 following the Paris Peace Accords, and included the Laotian Civil War and the Cambodian Civil War, resulting in all three countries becoming communist states in 1975.

Operation

In mid-December 1969, U.S. Ambassador G. McMurtrie Godley had suggested that the Central Intelligence Agency's guerrilla forces might block Route 46. Three guerrillas platoons from Nam Yu were infiltrated 50 kilometers south of Luang Namtha to spy on the road construction; they were dubbed Teams 37A, 37B, and 37C. Even though Godley was in charge of all U.S. military and paramilitary activity in the Secret War, his aggressive suggestion was rejected in Washington. He countered with a plan to scale the suggested Operation Snake Eyes back to a passive road watch program spying on Chinese activities. His argument for the operation was that if the U.S. did not take action to support its allies in the war, they might act unilaterally. In January 1970, as the road watch proposal was being bruited about in Washington, two Thai mercenary pilots of the Royal Lao Air Force bombed a Chinese convoy on Route 46, destroying 15 trucks. [8]

George McMurtrie Godley (1917–1999) was an American diplomat who served as United States Ambassador to Laos 1969-1973, at the height of the Vietnam War. President Richard Nixon nominated Godley as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs in 1973, but his nomination was rejected by the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

Central Intelligence Agency National intelligence agency of the United States

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, tasked with gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information from around the world, primarily through the use of human intelligence (HUMINT). As one of the principal members of the United States Intelligence Community (IC), the CIA reports to the Director of National Intelligence and is primarily focused on providing intelligence for the President and Cabinet of the United States.

Paramilitary Militarised force or other organization

A paramilitary is a semi-militarized force whose organizational structure, tactics, training, subculture, and (often) function are similar to those of a professional military, but which is formally not part of a government's armed forces.

A week later, in response to the Thai bombing, the original Snake Eyes proposal to block Route 46 was approved, but with one proviso: Laotian Prime Minister Souvanna Phouma would have to cease waffling and publicly oppose the road construction to give justification for the attack. [9]

As events turned out, Operation Snake Eyes was put on hold for six months so that it would begin in the rainy season against a skeleton crew of Chinese workers. It would be supported by the Royal Thai Air Force. CIA-sponsored hill tribes road watch teams augmented by Chinese Nationalists from nearby Burma would spy on the builders in the meantime. In the meantime, a company of Commando Raiders was recruited in Luang Prabang and trained to monitor the road. They took up road watch duties in June 1970. [10]

When the time rolled around to stage Operation Snake Eyes, two separate guerrilla units were poised for a pincer movement. The Nam Yu contingent already had the three teams in place, and would push southeast to join them. A second unit would move west from the direction of Luang Prabang, under the command of Captain Xieng Manh Noy Sirisouk. When Operation Snake Eyes was again scheduled, the Cambodian Incursion intervened. There was such public furor over that invasion that the White House decided not to risk further publicity by staging Snake Eyes. [8]

After all this hesitation, Sirisouk was primed for combat. He was disgusted with the latest postponement order, angry at his CIA advisor, and refused to return the unit's weapons to the adviser. He marched his troops on the royal capital of Luang Prabang, then veered off short to cross the Mekong River and encamp them on an obscure mountaintop. Operation Snake Eyes ended when Captain Sirisouk quit the Laotian Civil War because of the White House order. [11]

Aftermath

The failure to launch Operation Snake Eyes to check Route 46's extension south led to the later necessity for operations to defend the Thai border, such as Operation Phalat and Operation Sourisak Montry. [12]

Notes

  1. ↑ Castle, pp. 9–13.
  2. ↑ Stuart-Fox, pp. 118–120.
  3. 1 2 Stuart-Fox, p. 56.
  4. ↑ Conboy, Morrison, p. 313.
  5. ↑ Conboy, Morrison, pp. 67–73.
  6. ↑ Conboy, Morrison, pp. 313, 315, 320.
  7. ↑ Kislenko, Arne, Summer 2004. "A Not So Silent Partner. Thailand's Role in Covert Operations, Counter-Insurgencey, and the Wars in Indochina", The Journal of Conflict Studies, Volume XXIV No. 1, pp. 1–25.
  8. 1 2 Conboy, Morrison, pp. 315–316.
  9. ↑ Conboy, Morrison, p. 315.
  10. ↑ Conboy, Morrison, pp. 314–315.
  11. ↑ Conboy, Morrison, p. 316.
  12. ↑ Conboy, Morrison, pp. 318–319.

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References

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