A Tale of Two Thai Villages
ABRAMS, ARNOLD
BAN DON AND KEK NOI ATale of Two Thai BY ARNOLD ABRAMS Bangkok Ban Don and Kek Noi are two obscure villages noted only on the minutely detailed maps of Thai security officials and tax...
...Architecturally, the edifice is less than awe-inspiring...
...It is a crude, tin-roofed, open-sided wooden shed that any semiskilled work crew could have thrown up in a week...
...For despite the recent furor about Washington's secret commitments here and the planned pullout of 6,000 U. S. servicemen by July 1970, this nation promises to remain a major American defense bastion in Southeast Asia...
...They were good people," he said of the rebel tribesmen, speaking in tones normally reserved for the recently deceased...
...I thought Americans here were seeing Communists behind every tree...
...This did not stop Father Harry from going ahead with a final, futile gesture of defiance on the 22nd of the month...
...I even had a child call me a 'white devil,' something that had never happened before...
...Besides, I thought I knew them...
...For the Meos returned with new rifles, money and combat training-all provided by guerrillas who had converted a nearby cluster of abandoned huts into a staging area...
...I saw no sign of anything wrong...
...Broadcast in Meo by Communist stations in Laos, the news sent waves of unrest through the community...
...It was Kek Noi's last-and nobody attended...
...Kek Noi's story was poignantly told to me by an American, Father Harold J. Thiel, a 39-year-old Roman Catholic priest who has lived in Thailand the last 11 years...
...Heading the drive will be General Praphas Charusathien, Interior Minister and strongman of Premier Thanom Kittikachorn's military regime...
...Moreover, with no foreign power to vilify, insurgents lack a nationalist cause around which to rally support...
...If we had thought the guerrillas could win," one of the resettled refugees recently confessed, "we would have joined them...
...The rest, turned terrorist, now roam the mountains, battling Bangkok's forces...
...The region's impoverished, discontented populace, constituting one-third of Thailand's 33 mllion population, had traditionally been ignored by Bangkok...
...weapons to fight for it quickened their ardor...
...All this gives a decidedly menacing air to the government's latest scheme...
...The thought of them killing government soldiers is hard to believe?and to bear...
...Ban Don's new-found loyalty can be linked to two other recently completed development projects...
...But when the insurrection came, 70 of his Catholic converts were among the 250-odd villagers who turned terrorist and drove him out...
...Once again, though, the truth was being hidden from him...
...Inklings of impending trouble first reached Kek Noi in the summer of 1968, when the inhabitants began receiving radio reports of attacks by Meo bands farther north, and of government retaliation with napalm and artillery...
...It is this sort of loyalty that ultimately decides the outcome of guerrilla warfare...
...The program had been turned over to military authorities for implementation, which is like entrusting state troopers with Negro rehabilitation programs in Mississippi...
...They explained they were going hunting," Father Harry said, "but they never came back with anything...
...If there are any doubts, police are called...
...The northeast is Thailand's impoverished Tobacco Road region, economically backward and socially estranged...
...Intelligence reports, they said, indicated that North Vietnam-trained cadres were filtering down into the region around Kek Noi...
...It has no population...
...The reasons for their choice brought him small comfort: They did not believe the outnumbered, underequipped insurgents could beat government forces...
...Like hundreds of other villages in the region, Ban Don is drought-plagued and dust-filled during the dry season, a morass of mud in the rainy season, and oppressively hot all the time...
...Seminomadic hill tribesmen, with no cultural or religious ties to the rest of this predominantly Buddhist nation, they have developed no positive contact with its society, allegiance to its king, or respect for its government...
...These special circumstances militating against insurgency in the northeast do not exist in Meo country...
...And for the unconvinced, another prospect was raised: grave retribution for nonjoiners...
...Before fleeing Kek Noi, the handful in the village who refused to join told Father Harry about the forest sessions...
...Father Harry, as he is known, is a brawny man with earthy speech and freewheeling ways, more Paul Bunyan than Paul VI...
...About one-third have resettled in the lowlands, trying to reshape shattered lives...
...He revels in roughing it and thrives on hard work...
...With the exception of about 12 others that had fled earlier, the rest of the village had taken to the forest for full-time indoctrination and combat training...
...Now located in the lowland town of Loei, he is busy resettling Meo refugees-and mourns those still in the mountains...
...They began to avoid me, and no longer invited me into their homes...
...Although costly, often slow moving, in some instances wasteful and mishandled, their cumulative effect has been good...
...Thai authorities had indeed banned opium, and were cracking down on Meo fanning methods, ostensibly for land conservation purposes...
...But unknown to him, two guerrillas had already infiltrated the village and started to stir antigovernment sentiment...
...Efforts will be made, it is said, to teach the Meos Thai history, culture and customs, as well as loyalty, citizenship and "suitable occupations...
...Governmental flaws, apparently, have not been extensive enough to fracture the country's unity-built around the king, who is genuinely revered by all Thais, and Buddhism, virtually the national religion...
...It abuts a rectangular clearing the size of three football fields, where glutinous rice is cultivated for food and trade...
...Not that U. S. aid and government policy are by themselves entirely responsible for these successes...
...BAN DON AND KEK NOI ATale of Two Thai BY ARNOLD ABRAMS Bangkok Ban Don and Kek Noi are two obscure villages noted only on the minutely detailed maps of Thai security officials and tax collectors...
...The troops moved out several days later, burning the village to the ground as they left...
...increased enmity, not education, was the result...
...Today, however, the area is relatively secure, and its population friendly...
...The verdict might not have stuck in a Western court of law, but the incident's significance lies not so much in its demonstration of Thai justice as in Ban Don's cooperation with security authorities...
...While the Meos, who speak little and show scant emotion, accepted the clergyman's presence, they did not confide in him...
...Their poverty stems from environmental conditions, not government oppression or a feudal system...
...Government police, meanwhile, were applying the squeeze: After making token efforts to quash the banned opium trade, they would demand a sizable hunk of the profits for allowing its continuance...
...Its absence, in fact, was one of the major sources of discontent in the area...
...A police post-the symbol of security and official concern-Is the second improvement...
...Father Harry, however, felt his villagers were not overly upset...
...To support such contentions, they cite their success in the northeast...
...Unlike the plateau dwellers to the east, the strong and spirited Meos are fierce fighters, heading a rebellion that has driven government troops from the mountains and posed a serious problem...
...The first, a somnolent hamlet of some 60 huts squatting on low stilts, is located 300 miles from Bangkok, on this nation's arid northeast plateau...
...The tribesmen own no land, have no loyalty to Bangkok, and are spurred by a supremely nationalistic cause: independence...
...Some Meos undoubtedly responded more out of fear than conviction, but most seemed willing to forsake Christian teaching for Communist guns...
...Moreover, the Meos who occupied the highlands almost a century ago have yet to be accorded Thai citizenship...
...By December, only 20 families remained in Kek Noi...
...But other authorities, more aware of the crucial differences between the regions, are less optimistic...
...This was followed by a widespread series of guerrilla attacks that caught government forces unprepared, despite advance warning...
...In the last two years, the bulk of $95 million in U. S. economic aid has been invested in the northeast, spawning a vast network of training, educational, security, and road-building programs...
...These people worked on it for two years, and it has become a source of pride and a symbol of self-help...
...As the rebels gained a stranglehold on Kek Noi, the priest became more and more an unwelcome outsider...
...Government forces entering Kek Noi on December 31 found the place empty and the surrounding woods filled with snipers...
...Unlike the Meos, who will not accept Bangkok's authority, northeastern Thais covet government attention...
...The histories of these two villages illustrate Bangkok's successes and failures in the continuing effort to combat Communist-inspired insurgencies feeding on genuine grievances...
...Capitalizing on the situation, North Vietnam-trained cadres infiltrated from neighboring Laos in the early 1960s and offered the usual remedies-arms and money -as well as promises of agricultural programs to be established once the Thai regime was overthrown...
...Until last year, it was considered a critical insurgency zone, for roving bands of Communist-backed rebels made an unarmed, unescorted journey into places like Ban Don a risky venture...
...Force, not persuasion, was used...
...The villagers stopped talking to me," he said...
...some even doubt the government will ever secure the mountains...
...Rebellion in northeast Thailand has probably been blunted as much by key indigenous circumstances as by counterinsurgency efforts...
...After considerable prodding by Washington, the government finally initiated counterinsurgency programs, with generous American support...
...We will not forget what the government did for us," Ban Don's headman told me...
...The Meos have led an isolated, alienated existence...
...Police were promptly notified...
...According to one provincial official, two years ago Ban Don, out in the boondocks and lacking security, was a prime insurgency target...
...A ghost town, burned to the ground by government troops early this year, its location is marked by the few fire-scarred huts still standing...
...the suspect was apprehended and subsequently identified as a Communist terrorist...
...they are viewed with hostility or contempt-and unspoken fear-by most Thais...
...The rebels also appeared to have reminded the villagers of the consequences of Bangkok's decision two years ago to resettle all hill tribes and teach them how to grow legal crops properly...
...My God," he groaned "they probably were laughing at me...
...At the same time that life ebbed from Kek Noi, ,a sense of purpose was evident in Ban Don...
...As outlined, though, it amounts to a rehashing of the old plan, with allegedly more emphasis on persuasion than force...
...Nevertheless, their actions are not hard to understand...
...Ban Don had helped in another way a month earlier, when an armed stranger was seen in the vicinity...
...And that effort is especially significant in light of Thailand's role as a staging area for American air operations over Laos and Vietnam...
...More than 350 Meo tribesmen once lived peacefully in Kek Noi...
...They were uneasy but not really angry," he recalled...
...Matters finally came to a head last November, when a government outpost was overrun in a deadly nighttime assault...
...The Thai village's otherwise drab existence had been enlivened by a major community undertaking, construction of a central meeting hall, that was now complete...
...Thai military officials have adopted a policy of encirclement and attrition against the dissident Meos and predict that government forces will have the mountain region under control in less than two years...
...Ban Don's rice is today sold faster and more easily than ever before...
...As insurgency swept the area, strangers began appearing among Kek Noi's huts at night, and groups of villagers-led by the two infiltrators-Started . trekking mysteriously into the woods...
...The priest could fight no more...
...He packed his bags and pulled out, urging the remaining families to join him...
...He reflected on that a moment, and then winced...
...Kek Noi, the second village, hovers on a mountain ridge about 200 miles west of Ban Don in the north-central highlands...
...The vision stirred the villagers' imaginations...
...A thoughtful civic action team behind the project had wisely limited its own role to supplying $300 worth of lumber, roofing and nails...
...They warned me to get out," the priest admitted, "but I didn't believe them...
...To cap their presentation, the guerillas raised the prospect of an independent Meo kingdom in the mountains...
...Nothing further happened until the fall, when Father Harry received startling information from Americans involved in Thai counterinsurgency operations...
...celebration of a special pre-Christmas Mass...
...The latest move to pacify the highlands came this past October 20, when it was announced that a "new" program had been designed to win the loyalty of the hill tribes...
...Yet whatever its immediate results, Bangkok's national control is certain to remain firm...
...Ban Don's case is fairly representative of the northeast...
...In the first place, most peasants own the land they work...
...Arnold Abrams is Southeast Asia correspondent of the Seattle Times...
...Anyone who labels them savages is wrong...
...Teams of U. S. civilian and military personnel began flowing into the country to furnish advice and training...
...Coupled with judicious use of military force, they have helped draw village after village back into the government fold...
...Thais, for the most part, see them as savages who speak an unintelligible tongue, mutilate the land (through slash-and-burn farming), disregard the law (through opium trade), and practice alien religious rituals...
...The first is a road nearby, a dirt highway engineered from oxcart tracks, which has made a great difference in the villagers' lives by providing direct access to the markets of Udorn, roughly seven miles away...
...And while the prospects of absolute peace in Thailand in the near future are dim, the Meo's mountain rebellion-much like the Communist-backed insurgency around the Thai-Malaysian border in the south -remains relatively isolated...
...I told them about that warning later on, and they laughed as hard as I did...
...While most probably exaggerating Bangkok's evil intent, the rebel charges had some substance...
...Its 400 or more inhabitants are listless, lackluster souls whose soft bodies and sluggish ways attest to a debilitating environment and deficient diet...
...The villagers also brought back a newly aroused resentment against the government, having been lectured on how Thai officials obstruct Meos by outlawing opium, seizing land and banning traditional agricultural practices...
...At his instructions, all 90 of the village's eligible voters backed government-party candidates in the February 1969 national elections, Thailand's first in more than a decade...
...They couldn't imagine such things happening...
...It is not surprising, therefore, that although the tribesmen account for only one-third of the country's 200,000 northern hill dwellers, they form the majority of the armed terrorists who launched an open rebellion late last year...
...In any case, I wouldn't think of running out on my people...
...He had been based in the Meos' village since 1965, living in their huts and leading them in prayer...
...Several did, but most stayed...
...Now, he says, "an outsider can't show his face without questions being asked...
Vol. 52 • November 1969 • No. 22
