Kouprasith Abhay
The Abhays were an aristocratic family of Chinese-Lao heritage from Khong Island, which is sited on the Mekong River near the Cambodian border in extreme southern Laos.[13] Kouprasith followed Colonel Phoumi Nosavan and his aide de camp Lieutenant colonel Siho Lamphouthacoul to France, where they attended staff courses at the School of Advanced Military Studies (French: Centre des hautes études militaires) in Paris, followed by a posting as the Royal Lao Government's first military attaché to France.[14] When Captain Kong Le seized power in his August 1960 coup, Kouprasith made a weak offer of support to the new satrap.Although MR 5 did not saw much fighting, under his command he had a regiment of regulars, Mobile Group 17 (French: Groupement Mobile 17 – GM 17), four volunteer battalions (French: Batallions de Voluntaires), the Directorate of National Coordination (DNC) paramilitary Security Agency and its GMS airborne-qualified regiment, and nine ADC militia companies.His foster brother, Lieutenant colonel Siho Lamphouthacoul, commanded the DNC/GMS special battalions, which was rated as the best military unit in Laos.Commanded by Kouprasith, it was a three-pronged offensive against an isolated Pathet Lao garrison at the vital road intersection of Routes 7 and 13.The Government task-force were a mixture of Royal Lao Army regulars, neutralist paratroopers, and hill tribes guerrillas, working in conjunction with a close air support effort.[25] In January 1965, the Laotian Prime-Minister Prince Souvanna Phouma convened a meeting of the RLA generals in Luang Prabang, where it made clear that he backed Kouprasith and Ouane Rattikone rather than Siho and Phoumi.On 27 January, Phoumi convinced the Military Region 2 commander that the RLA units stationed in Vientiane were about to stage a coup d'état, and therefore a rescue mission was launched from MR 2.In a pre-emptive move, Kouprasith besieged the Directorate of National Coordination's Border Police (formerly known as the GMS) headquarters in Vientiane with RLA infantry units backed by armored cars, light tanks and artillery.[26] However, one pro-Phoumi officer was too necessary to the war effort to be purged: Major general Vang Pao, the leader of the CIA-sponsored Hmong Special Guerrilla Units (SGUs) operating in northeastern Laos.A Hmong SGU guerrilla fighter killed a Royalist regular soldier in a fit of rage and then sought refuge at Vang Pao's villa in Vientiane.[27] Brigadier general Thao Ma, the commander of the Royal Lao Air Force (RLAF), was another Phoumi loyalist bereft of his support.Major general Ouane Rattikone floated a scheme to split the C-47 transports and the T-28D fighter-bombers into separate contingents, allowing the RLAF commander to concentrate upon the latter.Ambassador William H. Sullivan, claiming that the other generals wanted to seize control of the C-47 transports for their personal clandestine gold- and opium-smuggling operations, and for paid passenger services.[28] On 2 April 1966, during a strategy meeting of the American Embassy staff and the Royal Lao Army's General Staff, Kouprasith and Ouane protested against Operation Barrel Roll's schedule of air strikes that allotted a large percentage of the U.S. Air Force bombing raids to the Ho Chi Minh Trail in southern Laos.[32] At about the same time, the March 1970 change of government in Cambodia led to increased communist activity in the vicinity of Kouprasith's native Khong Island.