Land Concessions and Postwar Conflict in Laos

Abstract

Although it is commonly thought that the war in Laos ended in 1975 when the communist Pathet Lao took over the country, in fact the takeover stirred up considerable military and political opposition, leading to civil war. For a variety of reasons, the conflict diminished in the 1990s and 2000s. The improved security situation allowed the government to adopt a new policy allocating large-scale land concessions for use in developing commercial plantations. These concessions inflicted social and environmental violence on the people who lost their land. These two types of violence in Laos, war and dispossession, are linked more closely than is generally recognized.