Syrian Hmong

[Dill]

(10-07-2019, 07:36 PM)Bengalzona Wrote: Might want to explain who the Hmong are and their history with us, there being a few young folks in the crowd and all.

Non-Viet Hill tribe who fought on the US side during the Vietnam War, thereby making themselves "enemies of the state" and without allies and homeland once Saigon fell.  Very useful to the U.S.--till we moved on.


https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/17/world/asia/17laos.html

VIENTIANE PROVINCE, Laos — They call themselves America’s forgotten soldiers.

Four decades after the Central Intelligence Agency hired thousands of jungle warriors to fight Communists on the western fringes of the Vietnam War, men who say they are veterans of that covert operation are isolated, hungry and periodically hunted by a Laotian Communist government still mistrustful of the men who sided with America.

“If I surrender, I will be punished,” said Xang Yang, a wiry 58-year-old still capable of crawling nimbly through thick bamboo underbrush. “They will never forgive me. I cannot live outside the jungle because I am a former American soldier.”

In a small hillside clearing about nine miles east of the Mekong River, Mr. Yang and four other veterans scratch out a primitive existence with their wives and 50 children and grandchildren.