Overview

In 1979 a new and horrible image of technological barbarism was born. 'Yellow Rain', claimed the US State Department, was devastating the mountain tribes of Laos as the Pathet Lao government battled with the remnants of the 'Secret Army', which the CIA had raised from the Hmong tribe during the Indochinese war. Lethal trichothecene toxins, never before developed for chemical warfare, were identified as the mystery weapon:, the Soviet Union as the culprit. No physical evidence capable of withstanding scientific scrutiny has ever been produced in support of the us allegations. Grant Evans has carefully sifted the US testimony and compared it with the results of his own first-hand research among Hmong refugees in Thailand and in Laos itself. He has examined the quality of the medical and physical evidence used to prove that chemical warfare is occurring. Evans also explores the recent history and culture of the Hmong tribe, a primitive people battered and traumatized by war since the early 1960s. The manipulation of their panic and fear, he argues, lies at the centre of the whole controversy. The analysis is set against the political development of Laos since 1975. Grant Evans allows that the Vietnamese and Laotians may be employing riot-control gases, of the type used extensively and dumped by the USA in Indochina. The 'Yellow Rain' stories are quite another matter. Evans argues that unsupported allegations of toxin warfare-from whatever source and he instances the North Korean allegations in the 1950s-jeopardize international arms control and ultimately contribute to frightening developments in the chemical arms race. The 'Yellow Rain' allegations formed a pretext for the US decision in 1982 to proceed with the manufacture of deadly 'binary' nerve-gas weapons.

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Reviews

According to the US government, the Hmong hill tribe of northern Laos is being exterminated by chemical weapons - the yellow rain publicized by journalist Gordon Seagrave (Yellow Rain, 1981); skeptical of such reports, sociologist Evans (La Trobe Univ., Melbourne), an expert on Southeast Asian affairs, investigated personally - and found the evidence wanting. First, he examines the testimony of Hmong refugees. The Hmong, he notes, are a superstitious people, traumatized by wars (they once fought with the CIA-supplied Secret Army), whose outlook is not particularly rational. Rumors therefore flourish; eyewitness accounts, when crosschecked, conflict in important details; confused old stories - deriving from defoliant spraying, phosphorus bombs, radar chaff, and suchlike - still circulate. Prompted by careless US interviewers, the animist Hmong readily ascribed disease, crop failure, and natural disasters to medicine from the sky or simply gas. The interviewers, Evans shows, were both credulous and sloppy: they assumed that chemical attacks had occurred, didn't dig into backgrounds, and mostly ignored Hmong attitudes. Other key witnesses - ex-soldiers, defectors, etc. - lied or misinterpreted what they'd seen: in sum, reports from Kampuchea (Cambodia) are entirely unsubstantiated. Neither is Evans convinced by the physical evidence. Nerve gas (of which the presumed Russian suppliers have large stockpiles) is more efficient than bulky, slow-acting tricothecene mycotoxins (supposedly the secret of yellow rain); such mycotoxins occur naturally in the region anyway; and four years of effort has failed to produce bodies for autopsy or hardware for analysis. The present Laotian government seems to Evans neither repressive nor genocidal, and made no effort to hinder his enquiries. His conclusion, then: the whole affair is rooted in US willingness to belief any useful anti-communist propaganda. A persuasive brief - and already a news item. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Grant Evans lectures in the School of Sociology at the University of Hong Kong, and is the author of The Yellow Rainmakers and co-author of Red Brotherhood at War: Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos since 1975.

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