Insurgency in Laos

The insurgency in Laos is a low-intensity conflict between the Lao People's Democratic Republic on one side and former members of the Secret Army, Laotian royalists, Hmong fighters, and other highland Laotian ethnic minorities on the other. These groups have faced reprisals from the Lao People's Army and Vietnam People's Army for their support of the United States-led, anti-communist military campaigns in Laos during the Laotian Civil War, which the insurgency is an extension of itself. The North Vietnamese invaded Laos in 1958 and supported the communist Pathet Lao. The Vietnamese communists continued to support the Pathet Lao after the end of the Laotian Civil War and the establishment of the Lao People's Democratic Republic. At least 100,000 Hmong civilians were killed as the result of Laotian governmental policies, in what has sometimes been referred to as the Hmong genocide.

While severely depleted, the remnants of an early 1980s-era, and 1990s-era, royalist insurgency has been kept alive by an occasionally active guerrilla force of several thousand or so successors to that force. In June 2007, Vang Pao was arrested in the United States for an alleged plot to overthrow the Laotian communist government. His arrest led to an end of various attempts to overthrow the Laotian government by the Hmong people, the royalists, and right-wing rebellions.