Insurgents: A New-Old Battle

War still simmers on in Southeast Asia. It has been more than two years since Communist forces conquered South Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia, but Indochina's new regimes continue to face tenacious internal resistance. Some Indochinese resist by becoming refugees. The harsh economic conditions and political repression in their homelands are so unbearable that they will take extraordinary risks in hopes of finding refuge abroad (see following story).

Others resist more directly by heading for the hills and jungles to mount armed insurgencies. Emulating the tactics of the Pathet Lao, Khmer Rouge or the Viet Cong, supporters of the old regimes are carrying on a guerrilla war that the new Communist police states have so far been unable to bring under control.

In southern Viet Nam, the U Minh Forest, the Central Highlands and the area bordering Cambodia's Parrot's Beak, are proving as inhospitable to Hanoi's troops as they were to America's. Tattered groups of militant Hoa Hao Buddhists, disgruntled peasants and bitter former soldiers of the fallen Thieu regime in Saigon have established strongholds in these areas. Around Dalat, for instance, up to 2,000 veterans sporadically battle the forces of the new rulers. The fighting has been serious enough for circumspect Hanoi newspapers to admit that "veterans do not hesitate to open fire on security forces."

Hanoi has been unable to devote its full attention to these pockets of armed resistance because much of its army is tied down battling a onetime ally: Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, who are trying to annex Vietnamese districts contiguous to Cambodia in order to regain control over the tens of thousands of Cambodians who fled the new Phnom-Penh regime. Viet Nam's Quang Due province has been repeatedly attacked by the Khmer Rouge, while Hanoi's forces have made counterthrusts into Cambodia's Svay Rieng. Neither government seems to have clear control of Chau Doc province.

The most difficult situation for the Communists is in Laos. Most Laotians originally welcomed the Pathet Lao regime that replaced the monarchy in 1975, assuming that their new rulers would be as typically languid as the old ones. But the gray-uniformed Pathet Lao--backed by 15,000 Vietnamese troops and 500 Soviet advisers--immediately began building the country according to a socialist blueprint.

The easygoing Laotians were shocked by the imposition of a six-day work week, capped by mandatory political indoctrination on Sundays. Small family farm plots were merged into large communes. Peasants, who never before had paid taxes, suddenly found themselves forced to turn over 8% to 30% of their rice crop to state warehouses. A census was taken of barnyard stocks, and peasants were warned that they could not eat any chicken--even those dying of natural causes--without permission from a local Communist cadre.

The harvest of these policies has been widespread disillusion and anger. Some 90,000 Laotians have already fled across the Mekong River to Thailand, and an additional 1,000 leave each month. Thousands of others actively oppose the regime; as a result, nearly half of Laos, including much of the fertile Mekong Plain, is contested by insurgents. TIME Hong Kong Correspondent David DeVoss reports that in the north, some 4,500 fiercely independent Meo hill tribesmen operate out of the former CIA base in Long Cheng. Although they have only 3,000 rifles and a dwindling cache of ammunition, they have made most of the mountainous area uninhabitable for Communist troops. Blia Ya Moi, a former leader of the anti-Communist forces, explained to DeVoss that "we have to make every bullet useful; one bullet for one life." Blia closely watches events in Laos from the Nong Khai refugee camp in Thailand.

Hiding Rice. Pressure by the Meo insurgents has closed Highway 4 from Paksane to Xieng Khouang and Highway 7 across the Plain of Jars. Highway 13 between Vang Vieng to Luang Prabang is so unsafe that government traffic can move only in armed convoys. South of Vientiane, Pathet Lao patrols, supported by the air force's nine T-28 fighter-bombers, manage to keep Highway 13 and Route 8 open during the day, but the Meo have full control after dark. In the south, at least 1,500 Royal Laotian army veterans and disgruntled peasants are carrying on another guerrilla war. "Our rural population is almost completely behind the rebels," one Vientiane resident told DeVoss. "People hide rice from the government and offer it to the rebels. Villagers celebrate when one of their young heads for the hills to fight."

The morale of the Pathet Lao forces has been hurt by the failing Laotian economy. Some government troops are so desperately poor that they have sold their uniforms for money to buy food. In an implicit confession of weakness, the Pathet Lao leaders have sought outside help from what is grandly called the "International Liberation Army." The number of Soviet advisers in Laos has risen to 1,200 (Moscow is eager to maintain an influence in Laos to prevent it from falling into Peking's orbit) and Viet Nam's forces increased to about 40,000 troops. In early June, five battalions of Vietnamese regulars took up positions along the road from Vientiane to Thakhek. But as Hanoi's presence grows, so does the traditional Laotian hostility to the Vietnamese. In early spring, Vietnamese troops killed 20 Pathet Lao soldiers who had tried to inspect a convoy of wood heading for Viet Nam. Observes a Western diplomat in Bangkok: "Now even the Communists in Laos are grumbling about the Big Brother Vietnamese."

Diplomats and military experts agree that the scattered insurgencies have almost no chance of succeeding, in the long run. Without Western military supplies or even moral encouragement (and there is absolutely no evidence of either), even the aggressive rebels of Laos will eventually succumb to superior forces. Still, the Communists are discovering, as French colonialists and U.S. administrators learned to their sorrow, that it is a lot easier to proclaim a government in Indochina than to operate one successfully.

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