REAPING WHAT THEY SOW: The problems of the Yugoslav bureaucracy A RARE COMBINATION Bangkok has had a rare combination of guests in the past few months, Sir Robert Thompson. Britain's very own contribution to counter: insurgency, was hired for four weeks to provide advice on how to check the advance of the Thai people's war. His chief suggestion seems to have been to operate small-scale, long-term operations at the village level, not huge sweep and destroy -operations.
A much less notorious guest was Dr. Victor Ionescu. South East Asia already swarms with investors from the USA, Japan, the UK and other metropolitan countries. Now it seems likely that Rumania is to join them. Thailand and Rumania have been trading partners for a number of years, exchanging silk, kenaf, tapioca chips, kapok, rubber and gunny bags for textile products, chemicals and machinery. At the end of a recent visit by a Rumanian trade delegation led by lonescu, it was revealed that their government will submit to the Thais a multi-million baht joint-venture plan for the establishment of a petro-chemical plant. They also wish to invest in a new lorry-making factory. Furthermore, Rumanian experts in North Fast Thailand (with the South the chief centre of guerilla activity) say that there are sufficient supplies of rock salt there to warrant setting up a factory. The Rumanians are prepared to do this, if necessary as a joint venture with Thai businessmen!
North & South No-one could accuse the Thai press of in-depth reporting In spite of this some insight into the Thai insurgency can be gathered by piecing together the published fragments. Extensions of the highway system continue to be a chief objective in ambushes. The new roads are seen as bringing in soldiers to control the liberated areas and officials to tax them. An occasional attack which blows up equipment, kills military defenders and contracting personnel soon turns the road into a cul-de-sac. An example is the Mae-Sod -Umphang strategic highway where attacks ended construction for one year. Two Work promptly stopped. Almost weekly a police station in the rural area is burned down.
In at least one recent cas: four policemen were and then released unharmed. The authorities saw this as a particularly insidious form of warfare.
The response of the leadership of the Yugoslav League of Communists (LOC) to the massive student strikes in Zagreb-over 40,000 students took part —has been a major shake-up in the LOC leadership in Croatia. Four politicial leaders were removed and scores of students arrested.
In spite of the fact that almost the entire student body participated in these strikes, and that some measure of worker-student unity was achieved, they were of a generally reactionary character, the direct result of measures taken by the bureaucracy itself.
NATIONALISMS Ever since the setting up of the Yugoslav state at the end of the first World War, there have been two nationalist elements present in Yugoslav life-a Yugoslav nationalism and a republican nationalism (Yugoslavia has 6 constituent republics). The Yugoslav CP's support came from the first, both before and during the war and the country's existence depends on it, because of the great disparity between regions involves the The American presence at airbases like Korat, Uborn, Udorn and Sattahip is felt in curious incidents. A Sattahip bar girl is slashed to death and a Gl goes on trial. A US Army truck overturns in Korat and scatters live bombs in front of the provincial hospital. (It wasn't even Christmast) Again at Korat VD is so widespread that the provincial Governor threatens to drive all the brothels out of town. Close them down? Ah! now that would be too severe! Ambushes and government operations have been particularly frequent in the past few months along the Thai-Malay border. It is reported that the Malayan Communist Party under the legendary Chin Peng are successfully recruiting from Thai-Chinese working on the rubber plantations and in the tin mines. In a recent interview with Reuters, LieutenantColonel Othman Harun, commanding the 15th Battalion of the Royal Malay Regiment, made some useful comments. He described how one Communist can effectively tie up a platoon of camp while clearly visible but out of killing range. Bangkok made into the permanent base. Not Malaysian troops by firing a shot at a border *We even hit one once but he managed to get across the border where he waved back at us" the Colonel related. But the Communists rarely leave their dead-at least not in recognisable condition, Col. Othman added. "You seldom find blood trails-they are very clever-they carry gunny sacks to wrap up their dead". To make pursuit more difficult the Malayan Communists fight an afternoon war here, launching attacks only after 2 p.m. so that they can escape in darkness.
According to intelligence reports from across the border a guerrilla war party will distribute its wounded among Thai villages, never taking them into towns for medical treatment.
From time to time the courage and gallantry of the Thai army in South Vietnam is reported. Recently it was let slip that those who return are used to lead the counter-insurgency platoons and battalions against their own countrymen, particularly in the North and North East. Chiang Rai, the most northerly of the Thai provinces, is reported to be 'a sea of insurgency".
At times the Thai Army exhibits more enterprise than one thought possible. At Khao Soon there are said to be rich deposits of wolfram for which Siamerican Mining Enterprise Company have prospecting rights. Villagers there digging for wolfram were recently expelled by police and army bosses who promptly set their own men to work the soil. Meanwhile back in Bangkok the bar-owners and the Chinese who run the big hotels are delighted to hear that in transfer of resources on a large scale from the rich republics to the poor republics. In the early post war years this was occurring with little evidence of resentment from the population of the Republics.
DECENTRALISATION However, after the break with Stalin. the Yugoslav leadership found itself in a dilemma.
Stalinist bureaucratic methods were discredited, but full workers" control of the economy would have largely replaced the bureaucracy itself.
The result was an increasing turn to the market and to economic decentralisation so that by the late 50's the gap between the rich and poor republics began to grow again.
The social consequences of this extensive decentralisation via the market has been a resurgence of the second variety of nationalism at the expense of the first, so that the Federal bureaucracy, as the students correctly identify it. has come to play a balancing act, trying to regulate the demands from the poor republics for assistance in economic development and the the period October 1971-January 1972, Hong-Kong, Sidney, Taipei and Honolulu are due to close as Rest and Recreation centres leaving only one city open to the GI's-Bangkok. The United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) continues its good work in trying to set up the whole area to be plundered by the US-British-French-Japanese oil companies. Since 1949 ECAFE S official centre has always been Shanghai, which for obvious reasons they vacated in a hurry in that very year. Bangkok has been the temporary seat until Chiang Kai-shek regained the mainland. That was until last year when Shanghai was regretfully abandoned and a year too soon. But ECAFE, like the Thai ruling class, shows certain flexibility. Already projects on Taiwan are being shelved, until further notice.
The Struggle Extends A turning point in the civil war in Thailand may have been reached, according to reports from the North of the country (Far Eastern Economic Review, September 18). So far the popular forces have been conducting their struggle in the mountainous borders of Thailand in areas largely inhabited by hill tribesmen. This meant not only that coordination was difficult but that they were excluded from the plains where most of the Thai people themselves live. This has allowed the government to play up race, religion and loyalty to the throne in an attempt to isolate the struggle from the bulk of the people.
Hence the significance of reports of guerrilla activity in Chon Daen, a town only 175 miles north of Bangkok. On the edge of the plain, Chon Daen offers the possibility of Links with established guerrilla bases in both the North and the North East, while itself providing a bridgehead for extending the struggle into the heart of Thailand, The reported nature of the guerrillas activities confirm that this is indeed no isolated sortie but the possible beginnings of a new base area. The emphasis appears to have been on agitation and propaganda among the 50,000 people of the area, ammunition.
disillusionment of young people are being expressed in a religious revival.
This is the setting of the strikes, which have demanded reductions in the amount of money taken away from Croatia by the Federal bureaucracy. They are thus fundamentally reactionary in character, but are the inevitable result of the policies of the LOC leadership. They reveal a very grave situation in the country (which is.
analysed in greater detail in International No.
7 Jan-Feb 1972). Probably the personal predemands from the wealthier republics to retain 'their own' resources.
BACKGROUND TO PRESENT CRISIS The Croations have a powerful and reactionary local nationalist tradition compounded by great hostility to 'great Serbian chauvinism'.
It expressed itself in the Ustashe fascist movement during the Second Wrold War. This nationalism has been linked to reactionary catholicism, and has re-emerged once more as a result of the economic reforms", so that pro-fascist slogans.
once more have appeared in Zagreb and the The renewed bambing of North Vietnam by the Nixon regime gives us ar indication of what is in store for the Thai masses as the struggle escalates. The possibility exists that Nixon will propose a deal to Peking whereby American troops could withdraw from Vietnam, but stay in Thailand. This new Yalta must be bitterly resisted by the Left in Europe and N. America in solidarity with the Thai struggle. Local businessmen when questioned about these developments admitted quite freely that it was the little people, the ones who are poor and unhappy and haven't got much to lose anyway -they're the weak spots in the system -Thai or not!" It is these last three words that have Bangkok worried. Hence official attempts to deny that there has been any guerrilla activity in Chon Daen, and to silence any local people tempted to talk to journalists about it.
The Coup What factors brought about the November coup and the abrogation of the constitution? Why did the military so abruptly smash the country's democratic facade?
The strengthening of the guerrilla movement in the North, North East and South. The extension of the front. The beginnings of urban labour agitation and trade union organising. Th brutal increase in rape, robbery and murder in the capital. The scandals revealed by interna fights within the Government's 'United Thai People's Party'. The admission of Chine to the UN. The catastrophic military situation for the Prime Minister For the immediate future we can look forward to a protracted struggle, an increase in politica organising by the Thai People's Liberation Arm amongst the peasantry in the great rice-growing areas, and increasing polarisation in the towns.
Time is on the side of revolution.
-Frank Pais stige of Tito (himself a Croat) has played a big part in enabling the bureaucracy to control th outbreak. The political bankruptcy of the LO leadership has certainly created the condition which could replace the bureaucracy with a system of democratically centralised planning based on workers' councils. But it has also unleashed forces which could destroy the Yugos revolution. There is no doubt that among the Croation student strikers there were many lef as well as right-wing elements. It is also clear that the repression will be used to suppress th developing revolutionary left movement, mor viciously than the right. The linking of these groups with their counterparts in the other te ublics on the basis of developing the program advanced by the Belgrade students in 1968 is urgent necessity. In this way the worker-stude unity emerging for the first time in the Croat strikes could be turned in a positive direction -R. Davis
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weeks after it had been resumed a survey air- craft was hit by ground fire from the Meo guerrillas and two security personnel were killed.
captured, given political instruction for one day in the objects and methods of the revolution.
An extension of the struggle
mainly poor and middle peasants. Military action has been restricted so far to sabotaging the police training program and gathering
right in Cambodia. A pretty unhealthy list for strong-man Prapass Charusathiara, the Deputy