Menace in the Northeast

It was the 2,001st anniversary of the fabled stupa of Tat Phnom, a gilt-gabled temple wherein reposes one of the Lord Buddha's ribs. The quiet country town of Tat Phnom, set on the banks of the Mekong River, was alive with revelry. Shapely Thai strippers wriggled through their acts while giggling Buddhist monks and greasy-haired village sharpies looked on. A magician sawed a girl in half. Sarong-clad farmers swilled down rice whisky, then took their turns at the local brothel. But the most unusual attraction in Tat Phnom last week was a network of foxholes from which, for a penny a round, villagers could fire at targets with authentic .30-cal. machine guns. The feature was tragically appropriate: war, in the form of Communist guerrillas, is slowly marching down the jungle trails to threaten the peace of Tat Phnom and hundreds of similar hamlets in Thailand's Northeast provinces.

Authentic Dialect. Just 50 miles from Tat Phnom last week, a squad of Thai cops, returning from patrol with two Communist prisoners, was ambushed on an ox trail and forced to dive for cover while the prisoners were permanently silenced by their comrades' bullets. Red terrorists also hit nearby Ubon, where U.S. fighter-bombers operating from that provincial capital mount almost daily strikes against North Viet Nam. In the past six months, Communist assassins have killed some 40 village headmen, teachers and "police informers" in the six Northeast provinces. With steadily growing intensity, armed bands of guerrillas shoot it out openly with Thai authorities. Bangkok officials report that several hundred Communist infiltrators, about a third of them Vietnamese, have slipped across the Mekong into the Northeast from Red bastions in Laos.

A clandestine "Voice of the Thai People" radio station is urging the villagers, in authentic Northeast dialects, to turn against the government.

Thailand's infant but active guerrilla war falls into the familiar pattern of Communist subversion in Southeast Asia, and has disturbing similarities to the beginning of the war in Viet Nam. Red China's Foreign Minister Chen Yi, in fact, pointedly predicted last year that the struggle in Thailand would soon start. For their launching spot, the Communists picked a remote region of Thailand that is not only backward economically (annual income is well below the $100 national average) but harbors people who are ethnically closer to the Laotians than to the Thais. Many village youths, impatient with government promises of progress and eager for what they fancy will be adventure, have been lured into the Phu Pan hills to join Communist-led bands.

Force with Force. Thailand is determined that it will not become another Viet Nam. The tempo of terrorist activities became so great in December that the army was called into the Northeast for the first time. A battalion of 1,500 Royal Thai soldiers, made mobile by helicopters, now sweeps the foothills in search of guerrillas. "We have to meet force with force," says Prime Minister Thanom Kittikachorn. Bangkok has also countered the Communist drive with an impressive program of aid and roadbuilding (TIME, Dec. 24), points out that Thailand has some things going for it that Viet Nam did not have.

Nearly all the peasants in Thailand's Northeast own land, while 80% of the South Vietnamese are landless. Thailand did not have to fight a long, bitter war against a colonial power, as Viet Nam did against the French. Thailand has an efficient civil service, police force and school system that penetrate even to the most remote Northeastern hamlet. And, far from least, King Bhumibol Adulyadej can trace his Chakri dynasty in an unbroken line back to 1782. The King's picture hangs in practically every house and humble hut in Thailand, where he is not only liked and considered a symbol of Thai independence, but revered as a living god.

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