New Year's Prognosis: More Bloodshed

Though peace is the traditional hope of the New Year, prospects for 1975 are not encouraging. Across four continents there are battlefields on which blood is being shed because of rebel movements, border disputes, terrorist action and full-scale national conflicts. The new year is likely to be bloodier than the old. Among the most serious trouble spots:

> The Middle East is "a time bomb that unless defused, would explode," recently warned Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. That explosion could take the form of a war of attrition or burst into a full-scale conflict. Fearful of the Arabs' growing military strength, the Israelis might decide to launch a pre-emptive strike. Or the Arabs might attack if they become frustrated by the failures of diplomacy to get Israel to relinquish territory occupied in 1967 and grant some of the Palestinian demands. The most critical time will be late spring, when the weather is right for military operations, and the mandates expire for the U.N. buffer forces now stationed in the Sinai and on the Golan Heights. Short of war, both the Israelis and the Palestine Liberation Organization are expected to continue their cross-border terrorist and commando raids.

Major trouble could also erupt on Iraq's unstable northeast frontier. The 13-year-old civil war between Baghdad's Baathist regime and the dissident Kurds might lead to a far more serious clash between Iran and Iraq because of Iranian backing for the Kurds.

On Cyprus, only a fragile cease-fire separates angry Greek and Turkish Cypriots. Though the situation is considerably defused, Greece and Turkey are deeply suspicious of each other's intentions on the island. Both countries maintain large military forces along their common border.

> Asia will continue to be ravaged by fighting, even though more than a year has passed since U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and North Viet Nam's Le Due Tho won a Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating what was supposed to have been a cease-fire for Indochina.* In 1974, fighting in South Viet Nam took 75,000 lives on both sides, making it one of the bloodiest years in the war's long history; 1975 will probably be worse. Although a general offensive is not expected, Saigon fears that because the Communist forces are stronger than ever, they will continue their "choking strategy" aimed at Hue and Danang in the North, the Central Highlands city of Kontum, Tay Ninh near the Cambodian border, the area around Saigon, and the heavily populated and agriculturally rich Mekong Delta. Saigon's troops, short of weapons and ammunition, will find themselves stretched thin and on the defensive throughout their country.

Cambodia is in no better shape. With the arrival of the dry season in late January, the Khmer insurgents are expected to resume their attacks against Phnom-Penh and the few other major cities still controlled by the Lon Nol government. Neither side appears strong enough to deliver a knockout blow, and many more statistics will certainly be added to the already ghastly five-year toll: 600,000 Cambodians killed or wounded and one-half of the 7 million population made into homeless refugees.

Burma is expected to come under increasing pressure from Communist guerrillas exploiting the economic and political troubles of the Ne Win regime. The 10,000 insurgents, active in the opium-rich area bordering China, Laos and Thailand, are capable of launching a major campaign against Rangoon's forces.

The Philippine government is likely to step up its fight against Moslem rebels (supplied in part by arms from Libya) on the Sulu Islands and Mindanao. The Moslems of these regions demand greater autonomy, but Manila's answer is to send in more troops. Fatalities in the past year have been running as high as 200 per month.

> Africa, after years of bloody anticolonial and civil wars, is quiet, but only relatively. The new military regime in Ethiopia is trying, without much success, to crush the twelve-year-old secessionist movement in the strategically important northern province of Eritrea. Last week, in the Red Sea port of Assab and the Eritrean capital of Asmara, fighting flared between the government and units of the 6,000-man-strong Eritrean Liberation Front, and rebel bombs and grenades exploded in crowded Asmara restaurants. With the government vowing to "beat back the bandits" (as it calls the rebels), fighting in northern Ethiopia will intensify.

Mali and Upper Volta, two of Africa's most impoverished nations, are threatening to go to war. The reason: a claim by Mali to a 100-mile stretch of land in the sub-Sahara now belonging to neighboring Upper Volta. In addition to invaluable water supplies, the disputed land may contain rich deposits of oil, natural gas, manganese and titanium. Although black African leaders have tried to mediate the dispute, troops of the two belligerents have been sniping at one another for the past month, and chances of a full-scale conflict are high.

> Europe in general is peaceful, except for Northern Ireland. In its sixth year of troubles, with 1,141 already dead, there is still little prospect of reaching a lasting peace. The mood of Ulster has become so mean and suspicious that it is difficult for the opposing sides even to begin talking. Thus while a kind of unilateral cease-fire by the radical Provisional wing of the Irish Republican Army is possible (perhaps as an extension of the holiday truce), it is more probable that violence will increase. Most observers feel that the Proves could still launch a "final offensive" to improve their bargaining position for negotiations. This could mean that terrorism would spread into neighboring Eire and intensify in England.

> Latin America is mainly free from the guerrilla activity that plagued many of its nations for 15 years. Only in Argentina is it expected that terrorists might effectively disrupt the government in 1975. No end is in sight for the wave of kidnapings and killings by feuding rightists and leftists that have taken more than one life each day since President Juan Peron died last July.

Chile and Peru, however, could find themselves at war with each other. Both nations have been frantically modernizing their armed forces in the past year and have exchanged vitriolic verbal attacks over a border area in dispute since 1881. A Peruvian armored unit has been reported garrisoned just north of the Chilean border. All this may be nothing more than empty posturing, but observers warn that the rhetoric could create a momentum of its own, ending in hostilities.

In addition to all the obvious trouble spots, others could emerge as unexpectedly as Cyprus did last summer. Yet not all is doom for 1975. Many of the flash points of the Cold War are now relatively calm, such as Berlin and the heavily guarded border area in Central Europe separating East and West. The two Koreas, though still hostile, are experiencing a slight thaw in relations. More important--and encouraging: no military units of the great powers are warring against any country.

* "Kissinger accepted the award, but Le Due Tho refused it, declaring that "peace has not yet really been established."

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