Operation Counterpunch

Operation Counterpunch, waged 26 September 1970 to 7 January 1971, was a military offensive of the Laotian Civil War. Royalist General Vang Pao's guerrilla army regained the vital all-weather forward fighter base at Muang Soui on the Plain of Jars from the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN). The preemptive Counterpunch was credited with delaying an imminent PAVN wet season offensive for a month. The guerrilla army survived, though still heavily outnumbered by the PAVN.

Beginning in 1946, France fought the Viet Minh insurrection in French Indochina, including the Kingdom of Laos. When it lost that war, Laotian neutrality was established in the 1954 Geneva Agreements. When France withdrew most of its military in conformity with the treaty, the United States filled the vacuum with purportedly civilian paramilitary instructors. A North Vietnamese-backed communist invaded during the opium harvest season of 1953. It settled in northeastern Laos adjacent to the border of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

As the Laotian Civil War began, the Central Intelligence Agency established a secret guerrilla army in the Plain of Jars to oppose this insurgency. Hmong military irregulars fought the communists in defense of their traditional territory in Laos.

After the failure and defeat of Operation Pigfat and Operation Raindance in early 1969, the communists had overrun the Plain of Jars the following year to within ten kilometers of the guerrillas' Long Chieng main base in Military Region 2. As a riposte, Hmong General Vang Pao had launched another spoiling offensive against the pressing communists with Kou Kiet. However, the communists fought back with their own Campaign 139, which largely regained lost ground. Vang Pao countered with Operation Off Balance.

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