[FearMonkey]

Thousands on the Run

Boon Thang Van, a veteran of the C.I.A. operation who is an adviser to a United States-based Hmong activist group, the Fact Finding Commission, says 5,060 people — veterans and their families — are still in the jungles, most of them in northern Laos.

The group keeps track of them through 12 satellite phones it has distributed. It has compiled a list of clashes with government troops and has video showing the bodies of five Hmong children after what it says was an attack by government troops in May 2004.

Many Hmong have left the jungles in recent years and fled to Thailand, including 7,800 refugees now in a camp in Phetchabun Province. Of those, 181 have battlefield-type injuries, according to Doctors Without Borders, the international aid group.

“It’s clear that the wounds are recent and caused by guns,” said Gilles Isard, chief of the group’s mission in Thailand. Mr. Isard said many of the people in the camp who claimed to be former C.I.A. fighters had photographs of themselves as young soldiers and documents from the 1960s and 1970s that they say confirm their service.

But their renowned fighting spirit has all but disappeared. Nou Chue Xiong, 68, another of the veterans here, seemed resigned to die in the jungle.

“I guess you will leave here and try to help us,” Mr. Xiong told his visitor. “But if you can’t, don’t be sad."