Land Grabbing in Laos: The Legacies of Conflict on Contemporary Decision-Making by Shannon Greisman

Abstract

Large-scale land concessions, otherwise known as land grabbing, occur largely in developing countries. This phenomenon is a prevalent issue in the small Southeast Asian nation of Laos. This paper argues that land grabbing in Laos stems largely from complex historical causes rather than more proximate ones and explores the ways in which historical conflicts within Laos have shaped government land-distribution and concession policy. The historico-political perspective offered demonstrates the key linkages that exist between past and present situations in Laos. Laos’s involvement in the First and Second Indochina Wars is found to contribute to its current context through Baird and Le Billon’s framework of political memories and political landscapes. This framework is then tied to the country’s experience during the Lao Communist revolution, especially the division between the communists and the Pathet Lao. This leads into discussion of Laos as a theatre of the Cold War and the impact of discrimination against the Hmong, one of Laos’s ethnic minority groups, on contemporary land concessions. The paper concludes that, although rising occurrences of land concessions in Laos have various underlying causes, they can primarily be attributed to deeply-rooted historical factors.

Résumé

Les concessions de terres à grande échelle, aussi appelées “land grabbing”, se produisent en grande partie dans les pays en développement. Ce phénomène est très répandu au Laos, une petite nation d’Asie du Sud-Est. Cet article soutient que l’accaparement des terres au Laos découle en grande partie de causes historiques complexes plutôt que de causes plus proches et explore la manière dont les conflits historiques au Laos ont façonné la politique gouvernementale de distribution et de concession des terres. La perspective historico-politique proposée démontre les liens clés qui existent entre les situations passées et présentes au Laos. L’implication du Laos dans les première et deuxième guerres d’Indochine est considérée comme contribuant à son contexte actuel à travers le cadre des mémoires politiques et des paysages politiques de Baird et Le Billon. Ce cadre est ensuite lié à l’expérience du pays pendant la révolution communiste laotienne, en particulier la division entre les communistes et le Pathet Lao. Cela conduit à une discussion sur le Laos en tant que théâtre de la guerre froide et sur l’impact de la discrimination contre les Hmong, l’une des minorités ethniques du Laos, sur les concessions foncières contemporaines. L’article conclut que, bien que la multiplication des concessions de terres au Laos ait des causes sous-jacentes diverses, elle peut être principalement attribuée à des facteurs historiques profondément enracinés.

Introduction

One of the smallest and poorest nations in Southeast Asia, Laos is oftentimes referred to as the region’s ‘forgotten country’. It is Southeast Asia’s only landlocked country and one of the few remaining communist states in the world. Laos became a French protectorate in 1893 and remained mainly under French control until, in 1954, it gained independence as a constitutional monarchy. It achieved independence after a civil war erupted between the royalists and the Pathet Lao, a local communist group. Communist forces overthrew the monarchy in 1975, and on December 2, 1975 the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP) officially established the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (LPDR). The ‘new global land grab’ appeared on the international stage in 2008 after GRAINS’s 2008 report entitled “Seized: The 2008 Land Grab for Food and Financial Security.”1 Land deals or concessions are often referred to in the media as land grabs and have been occurring on a large scale across the developing world. While land grabbing is not a new phenomenon, it gained momentum as a result of the spike in global food prices that took place in 2007-20082. Laos is one of the countries in which “more than one percent of the land has been controversially allocated to large-scale agricultural concessions.”3 Rising occurrences of land concessions in Laos have various underlying causes; however, this paper seeks to demonstrate that they can primarily be attributed to deeply-rooted historical factors. In order to understand the phenomenon of land concessions in Laos, it is imperative to acknowledge that the country is still in a post-war transition period. The motivations behind the Lao government’s decisions regarding land concessions can be found by analyzing the country’s involvement in the First and Second Indochina Wars, the Lao Communist revolution, and Laos as a theatre of the Cold War, all of which are interrelated.

Laos’s French Colonial History

The present situation in Laos is deeply related to its history as a French colony and more importantly its involvement in the Indochina Wars and the Cold War. Since 1975, Laos has been an authoritarian one-party state governed by the LPRP, which has complete control over the media and suppresses criticism, as well as any calls for multi-party democracy4. The First (1947-1954) and Second (1953-1973) Indochina Wars had significant effects on the Lao population and “greatly disrupted life throughout the country.”5 Conflict, in the form of anti-government insurgency, continued after the Pathet Lao took over in 1975, well into the 1980s. In some central and northern areas, conflict lasted further, into the 1990s and 2000s. In 1988, Thai Prime Minister, Chatichai Choonhavan, famously called to “turn ‘battlefields into marketplaces’.”6 This infamous quote illustrates the environment of violence that encompassed the region throughout the 1970s and 1980s, despite the end of the ‘Vietnam’ war having officially occurred over a decade prior. Due to the closed nature of Lao politics, these ongoing struggles have remained mostly unseen and unheard of by foreigners; however, these post-conflict dynamics are essential to understanding how land concessions have played out and continue to do so today. Land concessions have made their way to Laos as a result of the country’s significant reforms, which began with the 1986 ‘New Economic Mechanism’ created in hopes of liberalizing the economy and encouraging greater foreign investment.7

Indochina Wars and Political Memories

One way in which the Indochina Wars are relevant to land concessions is through political memories that influence decision-making for both the government of Laos and international actors. This phenomenon was illustrated by Baird and Le Billon in 2012 through their use of the framework of political memories and political landscapes. The framework was used to show that memories of past wartime or military affiliations of local communities can be influential in many ways on the decision-making processes regarding large-scale land concessions. An important example is the political memories of alliances between the Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese forces. As a result of perceived Vietnamese sacrifices made during these conflicts, proposals by Vietnamese companies have consistently been “vetted in a preferential way”8. The history of conflict within Laos is the basis for the political memories discussed above, which are themselves the basis for establishing political capital. The combination of political capital and the weight of these political memories has combined to deeply influence negotiations on land concessions. Acknowledging the role of political memories in this process “can help us to see how people think about and remember what they see as illegitimate processes related to … legalized land and resource grabbing, or the destruction of resources and associated livelihoods, through government issued concessions for mining, hydropower, dams and industrial plantations”9. This framework is useful for analyzing Laos throughout its history, from the Indochina Wars, through the Cold War and up to the present day.

Laos as a Theatre of the Cold War

Further exploration of the history of the Lao communist revolution and Laos as an international theatre for the Cold War reveals deep American involvement in the country. The impact that American involvement has in Laos is often underrecognized in comparison to the war in Vietnam and conflict in Cambodia that both took place over the same time period. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the Americans waged a ‘secret war’ in Laos that has left lasting impacts on the country and has significant impacts on today’s land concessions. These past geopolitics can be looked at through the contemporary policy of ‘turning land into capital’ (TLIC) described as “a strategy for generating revenue and economic value from ‘state land’.”10 The legacy of Physiocrats’ ideas, a group of eighteenth-century French philosophers, is evident in Laos today through the policy of TLIC. Historically, this policy can be traced to a generation of French colonialists inspired by the Physiocrats, who perpetuated an image of Laos as a “resource-rich landscape to be exploited by industrious outsiders”11. These ideas can clearly be seen in the government’s TLIC policy and the contemporary image of Laos as a ‘last frontier’12. Dwyer lays out a comprehensive history of conflict in Laos and remarks that several of the population management techniques used by the government date back to the 1980s, when security and development were two separate but concurrent goals of the LPRP13. This leads directly into the proxy war that the United States of America carried out in Laos throughout the 1960s and 70s.

The Laotian Crisis and the ‘Tribal Program’

The so-called Laotian Crisis occurred in mid-1960, when the American-backed Prime Minister was temporarily ousted by a military coup. At this time, the Americans began to fear losing Laos to communism, as so famously vocalized by then-President Eisenhower when he stated “If Laos is lost to the free world, in the long run we will lose all of Southeast Asia”14 . The shift from Eisenhower’s Cold War to Kennedy’s brought numerous impactful changes to Laos, most notably the American ‘tribal program’15. Therefore, Americans launched Operation Momentum in Laos, which essentially merged “earlier French efforts [that began] in the 1950s to channel ‘minority grievances’ into anti-Viet Minh resistance and American efforts, [that began] around the same time, to defend Thailand against a possible Chinese invasion”16. The Americans used upland minorities, specifically the Hmong, to form a CIA intelligence network and militia within the country. This strategy gave them the plausible deniability they required to continue carrying out operations in Laos after the Geneva Accords officially ‘neutralized’ the country. These ethnic tactics, used for the purposes of anti-government counterinsurgency, have had lasting effects on the Lao population and political dynamics. These effects can be seen in the way that the Hmong are widely thought by the government of Laos to represent a security problem and have been subject to different population management techniques than other segments of the population. It is worth noting that Laos has four broad ethno-linguistic families, which can be broken down into 49 ethnic groups and 160 subgroups17. The historically dominant Ethnic Lao make up just over half the population and primarily live in the country’s lowlands, while the uplands are home to the various ethnic minorities or hill tribes. The Hmong counterinsurgents were funded by the CIA and continued to fight against the communists after they took power in 197518. This has resulted in the continuous resettlement of and active discrimination against the Hmong by the government of Laos, which demonstrates the clear effects of American intervention on the contemporary socio-political reality of life in Laos19 . The population management techniques used by the Lao government to control the Hmong are another example of how political capital and political memories have influenced contemporary government-decision making in the country.

Conclusion

The rising occurrences of large-scale land concessions, or land grabbing, in Laos has a variety of complex causes, many of which are deeply rooted in the country’s history of conflict. Laos was involved in the First and Second Indochina Wars and was an international theatre for the Cold War, while experiencing its own communist revolution. This post-war transition context is important as it allows for the analysis of contemporary land concession negotiations from a historical and political perspective. As demonstrated by Baird and Le Billon, political memories and political capital associated with the various conflicts Laos was engaged in are important to land concession processes today, specifically the degree to which parties involved are linked to the communists and the Pathet Lao, which has evolved into the current LPRP government. Furthermore, the secret American war or proxy war carried out in Laos throughout the 1960s and 1970s involved several upland ethnic minorities, notably the Hmong, who were trained and funded by the CIA. The Hmong continued carrying out anti-government counterinsurgency activities after the Pathet Lao claimed power in 1975, into the 1980s, 90s and even the 2000s. Today, the Hmong are discriminated against by the government and subject to different population management techniques due to their military history as counterinsurgents and the wide perception of them as a security threat within Laos. While there are clearly some proximate factors at play given that large-scale land concessions are a relatively ‘new’ phenomenon, the politics behind land concession negotiations and decisions in Laos can largely be attributed to deeply rooted historical factors centering on the nation’s history of violent conflict.

Works Cited

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Baird, Ian G., and Philippe Le Billon. “Landscapes of Political Memories: War Legacies and Lang Negotiations in Laos.” Political Geography 31, no. 5 (2012): 290-300. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2012.04.005.

Chandler, David, et al. The Emergence of Modern Southeast Asia: A New History, edited by Norman G. Owen. University of Hawai’i Press (2005).

Dwyer, Michael Benjamin. “Territorial Affairs: Turning Battlefields into Marketplaces in Postwar Laos.” UC Berkeley (2011): 1-170. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/67m1169x.

GRAIN. “The Global Farmland Grab in 2016: How Big, How Bad?” Grain. (2016). https://grain.org/article/entries/5492-the-global-farmland-grab-in-2016-how-big-how-bad

“Laos: Minorities and Indigenous Peoples.” Minority Rights Groups International, July 2018, https://minorityrights.org/country/laos.

Lestrelin, Guillaume, et al. “The Context of REDD+ in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic: Drivers, Agents, Institutions.” Center for International Forestry Research, (2013): 1-52. https://academia.edu/20733952/The_context_of_REDD_in_the_Lao_Peoples_Democratic_Republic_Drivers_agants_and_institutions.

Pathammavong, Bounnhong, et al. “Financing the 450 Year Road: Land Expropriation and Politics ‘All the Way Down’ in Vientiane, Laos.” Development and Change 48, no. 6 (2017): 1417-1438. https://doi-org.proxy3.library. mcgill.ca/10.1111/dech.12339.

The Transnational Institute. “The Global Land Grab: A Primer.” TNI. (2012): 1-35. https://www.tni.org/en/publication/the-global-land-grab.