Slap Against the Reds

Like neighboring Viet Nam, Thailand has been waging a long, lacerating war against Communist guerrillas. To combat some 1,800 terrorists operating in the country's 15 Northeastern provinces, Premier Thanom Kittikachorn's government has sent 15,000 troops and civilian volunteers into the area. But last week it was the Thai security police who struck at the very power center of the insurgency. In a predawn roundup, they arrested 33 of the country's top Communist leaders, including twelve Central Committee members of the outlawed Communist Party of Thailand.

The prize catch was 45-year-old Thong Jamsri, a Peking-trained Vietnamese who was chief organizer of the guerrilla movement. Among the others: the guerrillas' chief quartermaster and contact man who kept them supplied with food, money and other necessities, the head of the execution squad that picked village elders or other local leaders for assassination, a Defense Ministry official who moonlighted as a Communist intelligence agent and indoctrinator, and two renegade policemen.

Along with tons of Communist propaganda, the police also turned up plans for a Red Guard-style youth movement. "It's not only that we've picked up a lot of the top brains," said Police General Chamras Mandukananda. "We've got people who were responsible for supplying funds, coordinating couriers and keeping the whole Northeast movement going. They're exceptionally difficult to replace."

Protection Money. The raid was not a death blow for the guerrillas, but it was a painful slap. Under the government's counterinsurgency program--financed partly by the U.S.--the guerrillas are feeling ever-increasing pressure, and the government is trying hard to win and hold peasant loyalty.

Since they are a gentler people than the Vietnamese and have no colonial history to rebel against, the Thais are largely unresponsive to Communist canards about "imperialism." They do not readily respond to promises of new tractors, loans and a better life. The Reds are often forced to try such blackmail tactics as getting up a shopping list of a village's needs, getting the people to sign it, then a week later claiming that the list has fallen into government hands. The whole village, the Reds say, will go to prison unless it accepts Communist "protection." Sometimes, the guerrillas even try to claim credit for the new schools and roads that the government is building in the Northeast. "You would never get them without us," one terrorist told a crowd. "They show the government is afraid of us."

Even the threat of assassination is not always a weapon against the Thais. Last June, when 70 terrorists invaded tiny Ban Khaw Noi and called everyone out for a propaganda session, Local Teacher Khun Thit holed up in his hut with a pistol. He pumped his only two bullets into two terrorists who came after him. Then he grabbed a submachine gun from one of his victims, rolled himself up in a mattress and began blasting away when the rest of the band tried to take him. Two hours, 400 rounds and several grenades later, when the noise finally brought nearby police to the rescue, Thit and the terrorists were still shooting it out. The schoolteacher is now a national hero.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.