Lao Issara
Taking advantage of the temporary absence of French authority in the country's main cities, the Lao Issara promptly established an armed defense force to exercise its authority with the support of Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh Hanoi-based government in the Tonkin and the Nationalist Chinese. The Lao Issara "Army" was essentially a lightly-armed militia force, provided with a mixed assortement of small-arms captured from the Japanese, looted from French colonial depots, or sold by the Chinese Nationalist Army troops who occupied northern Laos under the terms of the 1945 Potsdam Conference.