vHJiag~ers, with a hostile go•vernment emtbassy wanted·the Lao cvn •. TP.-r·nmPnr resources locating the bodies of US 1 shot down during the war. This kind of myopic racism characterized much of the US contact with Laos after 1975. JrlP·n~T1-tnPnt around biological or chemical was being the Lao PDR against minorities. The "Yellow Rain" eDis:ooe was a typical CIA fake sur>poseo victims on the CIA announcing hundreds of deaths by mist. Years chemists, biologists, anthropologists and aid workers confrrm that the is harmless bee feces dropped regularly by bee swarms in tropical mountain forests. The bees leave their hives as a swarm when they are overheating, and dump out the heat stored in their waste. Settled upland villagers knew the insects were responsible for the phenomenon, but no one from the mainstream World press ever interviewed them. Native agents who helped the CIA with the Yellow Rain story were largely the same individuals who helped them during the war in counterinsurgency and in delivering opium from the Golden Triangle, a region at the intersection of Laos, Burma and Thailand. A new Hollywood movie, "Air America", recognizes for the flrst time in mainstream popular culture the US involvement in the Indochinese opium trade. The opium shipments were directed by the same US covert operations group that later ran the Iran-contra operation, where they and their allies similarly reaped quick profits from the Latin American cocaine trade. During the war, these US proxies were created without regard to the communities they tore apart. The proxies were then used against the civilian population. Now, the same group, with apparent US blessing, is using opium money to fight the Lao PDR. An odd situation: the US is flghting Laos at the same time it maintains good relations with the country. This does not seem contradictory to the people making policy - it is a common strategy for increasing a country's dependence. The strategy is simple: loan a country money to fight against proxy forces, and the government will be pushed further into western debt. This favors politicians inside the target country who are unconcerned about subsequent Western exploitation. The most recent US attack on village self-reliance comes in the guise of a congressional appropriation to flght opium traffic Above: A US made "bombie". Each year many children are killed when they find and play with these. Below: A young H'mong woman just after her husband was killed by an old, hidden bombie. He hit it with a hoe while farming.
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