Foreign News: LAOS: THE UNLOADED PISTOL

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SCARCELY any country on earth is less fitted to serve as a pivotal point in the struggle against Communism than Laos, a land of blue mountains, green jungles and affably unambitious people. Roughly the size of Oregon, Laos is shaped like a pistol with the butt pressing against Red China and the barrel aimed at Cambodia. Statistics are foreign to the Laotian mind, and the population can only be guessed at; estimates range from 1,000,-ooo to 4,000,000. Though it possesses two capital cities—Luangprabang for the royal family. Vientiane for the civil government—Laos has no railroad. Except for jungle paths, navigable rivers like the 1,200-mile Mekong, and barely 500 miles of all-weather road, all travel is by plane from rutted airstrips surrounded by tree-clad hills and swamps.

Though their relaxed attitude toward sex shocks some Westerners,* most visitors agree that the pleasantest thing in Laos is the Laotian people. Laotian girls have oval faces, high cheekbones, blue-black hair, shyly flirtatious eyes, and the world's smallest waists. The men are short-statured, sturdy-legged, even-tempered and given to such amiably negative remarks as "There isn't any," "It doesn't work'' and "It can't be helped." In most years Laotians catch enough fish, grow enough rice and yams and brew enough wine to allow ample time for their festivals. The Bang Fai festival just before the monsoon features the shooting off of giant rockets and noisy fertility processions during which huge phalli are brandished at giggling female spectators.

Totally without industry, Laos has only two legal exports of any importance: 1) benzoin and 2) stick-lac, an insect product that is used as an ingredient in lacquer and varnish. But the country's main crop is opium (one-third of world production") grown on the mountaintops by Meo tribesmen who also profess to be werewolves. Laos' biggest import is U.S. dollars—for the past five years U.S. aid has run from $43 million to $54 million a year.

Out of the Pumpkin. Laotians believe their race sprang from a supernatural pumpkin that an envoy of the King of Heaven split open with a red-hot poker. The first people to tumble out were the aboriginal Kha. a little darkened by the searing heat. After them came the cooler and lighter-skinned Laotians. Anthropologists take a duller view, and say that the Laotians are simply a branch of the great Tibeto-Burman race that swept into southeast Asia over six centuries ago and conquered the local Malay tribes.

But half the population of Laos is thought to be made up of non-Laotian tribesmen—the Meo, Kha. Lu, P'hunoi and a dozen others like the Black Thai, White Thai and Red Thai, who take their names from the color of their clothing. Few of the tribesmen have much love for the Laotians who rule in Vientiane; some do not even know that the Kingdom of Laos exists.

Elephants & Parasol. Historically, Laos was never a strong power. When not invaded by their neighbors, the Laotians wrangled among themselves, divided and subdivided their country into tiny principalities. A great hero, Fa Ngoum, united Laos in the 14th century under the name of the Land of the Million Elephants and the White Parasol. But when France made it a protectorate in 1893, Laos was again a patchwork of small states.