PPL leadership is semisecret. No outsiders except North Vietnamese have had continuous intimate association with the elite. This analysis presents biographical information on 12 "founding fathers" who are probably among the leading policymakers, and discusses their characteristics.
Leadership continuity is remarkable, having lasted through 20 years of intermittent war and coalition with no evidence of major purges or defections.
Group openly supplied, trained and militarily supported the Pathet Lao. The typical strategy during this era was for North Vietnamese regulars to attack first but then send in the Pathet Lao at the end of the battle to claim "victory". In the s, more attempts at neutrality agreements and coalition government were attempted but as North Vietnam had no intention of withdrawing from Laos, these agreements all failed.
By the middle s, the country had fallen into proxy warfare between pro-US and pro-Vietnamese irregular military groups. In , the Army of North Vietnam launched a multi-division invasion of Laos. The Pathet Lao were pushed to the side in the conflict and reduced to the role of an auxiliary force to the North Vietnamese army. Unable to match the heavy Soviet and Chinese weapons in addition to the numerical strength of the Vietnamese forces, the Royal Lao Army took itself out of the conflict after heavy losses.
The communist forces battled the Royal Lao Army, U. The government itself was effectively powerless. The coalition government envisaged by the treaty did not long outlast it. In , the Pathet Lao with the direct assistance of the North Vietnamese Army began attacking government strongholds. With the fall of the South Vietnamese government in April in their minds, the non-communist elements of the national government decided that allowing the Pathet Lao to enter power would be better than to have them take it by force.
Shortly thereafter, the Pathet Lao signed an agreement with Vietnam that allowed Vietnam to station its army in the country and to send political and economic advisors into the country.
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