Those Do-It- Yourself Spontaneous Riots

First come the sign painters, serious little men with paintpots and newly issued brushes, their lips moving soundlessly with the memorized slogans: "Yankee go Home" or "Down with the Neocolonialists and Imperialists" or sometimes, when Britain is involved along with the U.S., "Bugger off, Brit!" Proficient only in the local language, be it Egyptian or Swahili, Russian or Malay, the painters are under considerable pressure. After all, if the epithet they must letter neatly on the embassy wall comes out in misspelled English, it will look bad for their country's image in the news photos published abroad.

Next come the marchers, swinging along with mob gaiety and waving their xenophobic standards at the white faces in the embassy window. Then up roars the jeerleader--often a government in formation ministry man in a sound truck. The next arrival is apt to be a riot truck, probably provided--though for different purposes--by U.S. AID funds, its sides marked with the agency's symbol of clasped hands. Out come the carefully collected stores of cobble stones, brick halves and rocks. And then the fun begins: curses and shattered glass, bonfires and blazing auto mobiles, looted snack bars, shredded books, perhaps even an American woman to kick.

Letting Off Steam. The name of this activity is "demo"-- standing not for democracy but for demonstration.

That, at least, is what it is called by the U.S. embassy personnel who are its most frequent victims. It is played in "nonaligned" and Communist capitals whenever the U.S. or its allies take a tough stand anywhere in the world. Supposedly a "spontaneous" expression of outrage on the part of freedom-loving or newly emerged peoples, the demo is actually a carefully prepared propaganda device, and sometimes a safety valve through which shaky potentates can let off the steam of an uneasy citizenry. As Cambodia's Prince Norodom Sihanouk said after a mob of students and agitators tore up the U.S. and British embassies in Phnompenh last spring: "The riots were inexcusable but comprehensible. They translated the legitimate exasperation of Cambodian youth before the repeated humiliations inflicted on their country by the Anglo-Saxon powers." Of course the riots were comprehensible. Sihanouk had organized them.

Last week demo was the sport in Indonesia, where for the second time in as many weeks a fun-loving mob--egged on by the nation's powerful Communist Party--ravaged a United States Information Service library, ostensibly in protest against the joint U.S.-Belgian rescue mission in the Congo. In Surabaya more than 1,000 jolly Javanese burst into the U.S. Cultural Center, tore down the American flag, smashed furniture, ripped up many of the library's expensive technical and scientific books, and burned it all in a roaring, heartwarming bonfire. Three days earlier, another carefully organized mob had looted the USIS library in Djakarta, destroying a quarter of the books on hand and shredding the American flag. Smashing up an embassy brings a higher score, but USIS installations are easier to get at: unlike embassies, they are in downtown areas, unprotected by Marines, and usually have large, rock-inviting windows.

Less Lambent Flame. In the past month, similar rioting has been visited on U.S., Belgian and British embassies in Egypt, Kenya, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Russia. Like any international sport, the anti-embassy demo has a fixed corpus of ground rules. In non-aligned countries receiving U.S. aid, demonstrators (usually members of the local Communist Youth League) must be assembled some distance from the target to make it harder for Central Intelligence agents to photograph the leaders. Mob leaders should be persons who have been given U.S. State Department "leader grants" to visit the U.S., because the embassy may be too embarrassed to identify them later.

Some mob leaders like to play a special subgame within the demo itself, called "spot the CIA man." This is not too difficult, since Central Intelligence agents are usually conspicuous through their very inconspicuousness. They wheel up quietly in black station wagons, speak softly into their walkie-talkies, and tail the mob at a discreet distance. On the whole, CIA men may not be roughed up, since that might draw too strong a response from Washington. The U.S. can only hope that there are also many agents who are not identified.

In any game as diffuse as demo, absurdities are bound to occur. In Tanganyika, a recent anti-U.S. parade was led by a brass band that, having been trained by U.S. missionaries, could play only one tune: The Stars and Stripes Forever. A prime target in any demo is the ambassador's car. In some riot-prone countries, U.S. ambassadors often ask for Checker limousines, since they are steel-lined throughout and the low-octane fuel they use burns with a less lambent flame.

Also Beer Bottles. Missiles employed in the demo vary. When hundreds of Kenyans demonstrated last month in Nairobi against the Congo rescue mission, they concocted their Molotov cocktails in empty Tusker beer bottles. In Eastern Europe, where cobblestones are plentiful, ammunition is usually available in the street outside the embassy under attack. Inkwells are also readily available to students of most demo-prone nations--particularly where the ballpoint pen has not yet taken over. Often the ink comes in varied colors, producing interesting red, blue and green abstract murals--and in Communist countries, where else can modern art be seen?

For arson, there is usually an ample supply of gasoline available from government sources. When the British embassy in Djakarta was destroyed last year, trucks pulled up with 2 1/2gallon tins that were passed out to the students, many of whom had coolies along to tote the tins for them. The rioters also carried printed schedules that listed the addresses of all embassy personnel, and they systematically ransacked the houses as well.

Killing Reason. In the not too distant past, any one of these incidents might have drawn U.S. Marines or British gunboats. But in today's world, the Western powers simply pick up the pieces and protest verbally. The tab for damages is often picked up later by the governments that incited the riots--both the Russians and the Indonesians last week agreed to pay. And even after Cairo mobs set fire to a USIS library, the Egyptian government was still blithely asking for more American food to feed its people--and may very well get it.

If the whole thing often has the aspect of a sport it is really a lot more serious than that. The destruction of U.S.-provided libraries--in places where scientific and technical books are in extremely short supply--is a calculated act of educational self-mutilation on the part of the governments involved. As U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk said angrily last week: "Resort to riot and violence against foreign missions strikes at the heart of the system of diplomatic intercourse. Book burning is a direct affront to knowledge and a denial of the long, slow progress of mankind."

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