The headquarters of the Government of Free Vietnam (GFVN) would fit right into the guerilla campaigns of 1930s China or modern-day Colombia. Along the building's walls, reams of photos show Free Vietnam troops training at secret Southeast Asian bases code-named "KC 702." On the top floor, a shortwave radio transmitter broadcasts the GFVN's anti-regime programs into Vietnamese cities and villages.
From this description, you might expect the GFVN, founded in 1995 anddedicated to overthrowing the Vietnamese state, to be located in some hiddenjungle redoubt. It's not. Rather, it sits on a mundane commercial street in theLos Angeles suburb of Garden Grove, down the road from a Costco. But theinnocuous surroundings belie the group's dead-serious intent. Over the past threeyears, GFVN members have been implicated in a half-dozen attacks on Vietnamesegovernment targets around the world. Some of these assaults involved homemadeexplosive devices similar to the bomb deployed by Timothy McVeigh in OklahomaCity.
The GFVN, which claims over 6,000 members (including many former SouthVietnamese soldiers), is only one of several U.S.-based Southeast Asian dissidentgroups that have begun to give Washington officials heartburn. As the war onterrorism widens and the Bush administration demands cooperation from SoutheastAsian governments, it finds its mission complicated by these dissidents, whostraddle a fine line between pressing for change in their homelands and planningillegal, violent, and often counterproductive attacks from American shores.
Another group that has drawn significant attention in both Southeast Asia andWashington is the Cambodian Freedom Fighters (CFF), a Long Beach-based groupfounded in 1998 and registered as a corporation with the state of California. CFFleader Chhun Yasith, a Cambodian-American accountant who describes himself as "aCambodian Moses, who will lead my people out of slavery," has used his contactsinside Cambodia to create a loose alliance of antigovernment forces; Yasithclaims that the CFF has at least 500 active members in the United States andCambodia. Though some Western diplomats once laughed at Yasith's forces, inNovember 2000 his men launched a B-40 rocket attack in Phnom Penh, Cambodia'scapital, which killed at least eight people. After the incident, Yasith returnedto the United States through Thailand; he couldn't keep his tax clients waitingtoo long.
Though the attack failed to dislodge Cambodia's government, Yasith has notgiven up. "We are on a mission from God," he says, "and we have plans drawn upfor another coup attempt in Cambodia in which we will attack the whole countrythis time." Meanwhile, several other Vietnamese and Laotian groups based inAmerica have been accused of involvement in armed conflicts in their homelands.
Though the neutrality act forbids U.S. citizens from supportingmilitary action against foreign nations during peacetime, American officials haduntil last fall tolerated -- and occasionally may have encouraged -- thesegroups. On the wall of its headquarters, the GFVN displays a photo of the group'sleader with President Clinton. Other snapshots picture GFVN members chatting withhigh-ranking American Special Forces officers, while the group's literatureclaims that in the early 1990s, the then-U.S. ambassador frequently visited aschool in Cambodia that trained people for a previous incarnation of the GFVN."We got a lot of sympathy from individual members of the American government,even if they couldn't openly support us," says GFVN spokesman Le Chi Thuc.Questioned about the armed dissident groups from Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, aU.S. State Department official says: "The position of the United States is thatwe don't support efforts to overthrow those governments by force."
To some extent, it's understandable that the United States hastolerated these groups. Many members of dissident organizations like the GFVNfought alongside U.S. troops during the Vietnam War, earning them the enduringsympathy of American veterans, some of whom have developed close ties toSoutheast Asian exile organizations. And the United States openly backed CFFprecursors that fought Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen in the 1980s; Hun Senwas then allied with Vietnam and Hanoi and Washington had not yet re-establishedrelations. Human-rights violations by the ruling governments in Laos and Vietnamgave the United States still more reason to be sympathetic toward the dissidents;Laos's military, for instance, has allegedly killed ethnic minorities in "specialareas" closed to foreign observers. "Compared to the brutal regimes in Hanoi andVientiane [the capital of Laos], groups opposing those governments often are seenas fighting a good fight," says Philip Smith, a lobbyist for nonviolent groupsopposed to Laos's government. And Hun Sen, though now democratically elected(whatever the shortcomings of Cambodia's process), still rules Cambodia. Yet oneU.S. official with extensive knowledge of the region replies: "Though they'rehardly perfect, these Southeast Asian governments are seen as legitimate in a waythat a totalitarian state like Iraq isn't, and Cambodia is a democracy, though aflawed one."
Since September 11, america's relationship with these dissidentshas become more problematic. According to sources familiar with U.S.-SoutheastAsia politics, America's ambassadors to Laos and Vietnam feel that exile groupslike the GFVN make it difficult to improve still-cool diplomatic ties. Indeed,over the past seven months, the Cambodian, Laotian, and Vietnamese governmentsrepeatedly have called America hypocritical and encouraged Washington to crackdown on the armed dissidents. "My government has asked the FBI to investigatethese groups several times," says Vanyuang Tan, a political officer at theCambodian embassy in Washington. "We handed over weapons used by the CFF,documents found in Cambodia naming CFF members in the United States. How canAmerica focus on terrorism and not care about these exile groups?"
Some Asia experts agree. "You can't call for a war on terrorism andthen act like cooperation is a one-way street. The United States has to make astatement that all terrorism is wrong," says Carlyle Thayer, a Southeast Asiaspecialist who previously worked at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies,a Hawaii-based think tank funded in part by the U.S. government. Or as oneAmerican government official with knowledge of U.S.-Cambodia relations puts it:"Washington has to take a stronger line against the CFF. Otherwise we won't beable to get Cambodia's help in fighting terror or to support serious groups thatare trying to create a rule of law in Cambodia."
Indeed, nonviolent organizations pushing for liberalization in Southeast Asiaare concerned that armed dissidents' actions might precipitate a crackdown oncivil society. Some nonviolent organizations have proven effective:Hmong-American groups have successfully pushed Congress to block closer U.S.-Laoseconomic ties. According to one source with extensive experience in Cambodia,armed groups command only limited support inside the country, and many peopleattend CFF recruiting meetings out of desperation or boredom. But aid workers inCambodia say that peaceful groups more popular than the CFF are now in danger ofbeing harassed by Phnom Penh security forces, which have been put on heightenedalert. In response, Yasith says that "using nonviolence in Cambodia is liketalking to a buffalo, since neither ever works."
Though none of these Southeast Asian nations are hotbeds of al-Qaeda activity,the United States still needs their assistance. One source who has attendedmeetings between Laotian and American officials says Vientiane has overhauled itsmoney-laundering laws in the past six months. According to Rohan Gunaratna, aterrorism expert at Scotland's University of St. Andrews, Cambodia in particularhas developed into a weapons bazaar for terrorists; Gunaratna believes the UnitedStates should closely monitor exile groups like the CFF in order to obtain PhnomPenh's cooperation in battling the weapons trade. Some American officials arefollowing Gunaratna's advice. Though the FBI declined to comment, CFF and GFVNmembers say that the bureau has been investigating their organizations. And lastfall, FBI agents arrested Van Duc Vo, a California-based GFVN representativeaccused of planning to bomb the Vietnamese embassy in Bangkok. A U.S. courtcharged Vo with using weapons of mass destruction in a foreign country.
Despite Vo's arrest, the dissident groups don't appear tooconcerned -- and perhaps they shouldn't be. According to Gunaratna, with so muchattention being paid to Islamic groups, American law enforcement is notinvestigating the Southeast Asians very thoroughly. In fact, the United States isconsidering providing political asylum to a group of Thailand-based dissidentswho attacked a Laotian border post in July 2000 and instigated a clash in whichat least six people were killed.
The U.S. war on terrorism doesn't seem to have caused the exile groupsto rethink their activities, though it might have inspired a new semanticcaution. Although GFVN leader Nguyen Huu Chanh once told Time magazine that hehad planned several attacks on Vietnamese targets, Thuc says that GFVNheadquarters provides "strategic thinking" that inspires violence againstVietnamese government facilities, but the organization does not issue orders,oversee assaults, or solicit funds in America for violent activities abroad.According to Thuc, although GFVN supports "attacking any government buildings ormilitary targets inside Vietnam, as long as ordinary citizens are not hurt," italso backs nonviolent protest.
The CFF indulges in slightly more openly militant rhetoric. "We want to stopCambodians from killing each other, but sometimes you need war to make peace,"says CFF Vice President Sokhom So, who is based in Virginia. "The U.S. governmenthas never given us a red light, and we take that as a green light." Yasithagrees. "We will keep going. We don't ship weapons to Cambodia -- we capturearms inside Cambodia, and we don't organize operations from Long Beach," he says."Terrorists are based in Pakistan or somewhere. Terrorists don't live inCalifornia."