With the Meo Tribesmen in Thailand
ABRAMS, ARNOLD
THE EYE OF A STORM With the Meo Tribesmen in Thailand BY ARNOLD ABRAMS Chiang Kham Chiang Kham at first appears to be a peaceful, prosperous district seat of some 80,000 inhabitants, located in...
...And if the promises are not kept...
...Written in Thai, this information appears on the government-issue identification card he automatically presses upon all inquiring visitors????As if establishing a legitimate identity might somehow alleviate his trying circumstances...
...Their food came from subsistence crops farmed in the traditional slash-and-burn technique...
...There is not much we can do about it...
...still others, he admitted, are considering such a move...
...At this, the listeners exploded into laughter, startling Laoting, who became terribly embarrassed...
...This includes the allocation of land for resettlement and the promised provision of housing materials, basic foods, medical care, and educational facilities????All funded by a $100,000 grant from Bangkok...
...some even talk uneasily about having to close up and move to more secure areas...
...Could he have permission to relocate his villagers in Ban Mai Rom Yen...
...The two villages, approximately a mile apart, are resettlement areas ????dismal and dirty as such places always are????inhabited by hundreds of hill tribesmen trying to reshape their lives and find a place in Thai society...
...We do not have enough water or rice...
...The district officer nodded without comment...
...Guerrilla leaders have publicly proclaimed their intention of raiding the resettlement villages...
...According to reliable sources in Bangkok, rebel forces have boosted their capabilities in the past year through effective recruiting and the acquisition of large quantities of small arms, including Chinese ak-47 automatic rifles...
...Until recently, the Thais handled the situation well...
...What he does not mention is the question of attitude...
...This last drew titters from the porch audience...
...Nevertheless, the increased scope of terrorist activities has carried the conflict's side effects to Chiang Kham...
...Residents of both villages lack sufficient rice and water, creating hardship that compounds the uncertainty of life in unfamiliar surroundings amid an alien culture...
...But the visitor soon finds that it is actually at the eye of a storm threatening to erupt and create still another front in the unending Indochina war...
...They also resent Bangkok's apparently sudden concern for the lowly tribesmen, believing that their own more important needs are being overlooked...
...A reservoir and irrigation system are needed, and Thai authorities, recognizing this, have planned for their construction...
...The district officer, equivalent to a county executive, was lounging with several town officials and city hall-type cronies when La-oting Saelao came slouching up the front walk...
...Although some Meos in Ban Rong San have completed new homes, many remain confined in cramped and airless communal long houses...
...His name is Laoting Saelao, and he is 38 years old...
...The Thai attitude toward tribesmen was underlined by a recent encounter I observed at Major Prawat's spacious home in Chiang Kham...
...Adjustment is especially difficult for the Meos, a proud and independent people who led a seminomadic life high in the mountains and earned good money growing opium...
...I believe him," Laoting told me afterward, this time speaking Mandarin, an indication of the Meos' Chinese heritage...
...But even more distressing than the bodily deterioration is the decay of the Meos' spirit...
...But no one can say for certain when the project will be completed????or for that matter, when it will be started...
...For if these clearly faltering resettlement efforts fail, the chances of stopping Thai insurgency will be slimmer than ever...
...THE EYE OF A STORM With the Meo Tribesmen in Thailand BY ARNOLD ABRAMS Chiang Kham Chiang Kham at first appears to be a peaceful, prosperous district seat of some 80,000 inhabitants, located in the upper reaches of Chiang Rai, Thailand's northernmost province...
...Will you go back to the mountains...
...Increases in the guerrillas' arms and actions could unleash a storm of terrorism, upsetting the precarious balance that has so far kept the rebellion from getting out of hand...
...The volunteers live and work among the people they are supposed to protect...
...Because, Laoting replied, a bitter feud was developing among rival sects of tribesmen, between White Meos????his group????And Blue Meos...
...We try to be patient, but it is hard, very hard...
...Speaking Thai in a barely audible voice, he told of his people's problems: lack of water, insufficient housing, sickness, uncertainty...
...Bolstered by more than $420 million in U. S. economic and military aid since 1965, they managed to quell eruptions in the arid northeast and contain them in the mountainous north...
...They have acquired the meek, submissive manner of the humbled that comes from placing one's life in the hands of strangers for whom there is little liking and less trust...
...And it would not take much, actually, to alter the village's conditions...
...And Prawat, who had kept a reasonably straight face so far, now smiled sardonically and rolled his eyes slightly in my direction in a you-see-what-it-is-with-these-people expression...
...While Laoting tactfully professed ignorance of the matter, it is almost certain that the returnees would come under guerrilla control...
...Despite pious pronouncements from Bangkok leaders and King Bhumibol himself, most Thais still regard hill tribesmen as something akin to savages, and this accounts for much of the slowness in civic action efforts...
...Plagued by lack of experience, low pay and limited supplies, their performances have been spotty...
...There are increasing indications, however, that Thai defenses are springing leaks...
...Indeed, dissident tribesmen here are not fighting for Communism...
...Peking has merely capitalized on discontent created by those issues...
...The terrain is bad, supplies are short, and resettlement progress has been painfully slow...
...Chiang Kham's sleepy, sunbaked streets, previously the almost exclusive domain of oxcart and motorbike, now rumble with Army jeeps, machinegun-mounted personnel carriers, and heavy trucks transporting troops...
...All semblance of their inner strength and independence seems to have withered during the wait for fate to take a better turn...
...Frowning, the Thai official asked why...
...It is bad here," says Ban Rong San's headman, a skeleton with a hollow chest and haunted eyes...
...The two villages are vulnerable," concedes one high-ranking police official...
...Bangkok's decision to furnish "volunteers" and materiel for the fighting in Cambodia, it is feared, may prompt the Chinese to put more pressure on Thailand, which has been on Chairman Mao's liberation list since the mid-1960s...
...When driven from the heights early in 1968, government forces made a virtue out of necessity by adopting tactics of attrition through encirclement: About 3,000 Army troops, along with an equal number of border police and militiamen, have ringed the northern highlands for two years in an effort to stop insurgency from seeping into the surrounding countryside...
...Not having anticipated an audience of the officer's friends, let alone an American correspondent, Laoting was hushed and hesitant at first...
...Then the headman broached a request...
...Less than 10 miles away are the 3-5,000-foot-high mountains that mark the Laotian border and shelter an estimated 500 guerrillas...
...The Yaos had been doing better, but were hit in March by hard luck: A flash fire, fanned by a strong wind and fed by thatch roofs and bamboo walls, destroyed 34 dwellings in Ban Mai Rom Yen and damaged many others...
...and deep water wells, which government teams just started digging the month before last, even though people have been living here without water for nearly half a year...
...He had come without an appointment for an urgent talk with Prawat, who received him on the top step of the porch...
...We are hungry...
...they are rebelling against highhanded, extortion-minded officials who have always treated them as second-class citizens...
...Moreover, the guerrillas have shown increased willingness to move out from mountain retreats and engage government units in the lowlands...
...Gaunt and sickly, many suffer a continuing state of semiwithdrawal, resulting from the shortage of opium to feed a life-long habit...
...Now everything is different...
...It is slow going...
...Opium is out????banned?and entirely new methods must be learned for lowland cultivation of rice and vegetables...
...Ban Mai Rom Yen, a Yao village, has been up over a year...
...Their plight and Chiang Kham's problems help to illustrate what Thailand's insurgency struggle is about...
...There is, then, general unhap-piness on all sides in Chiang Kham, and it will be exacerbated if the security situation continues to deteriorate in the surrounding area...
...There had been fistfights, he added...
...He noted, though, that about 50 of the 200 tribesmen in his group had already done just that...
...There had been some disputes over property rights, he explained, but the worst trouble involved women...
...Town merchants, once contented and concerned solely with sales, sit in their storefronts watching these vehicles with increasing apprehension...
...This growing boldness has led Thai officials to declare that the Arnold Abrams is Southeast Asia correspondent of the Seattle Times...
...Many fled the nearby mountains after being harassed by terrorists or having their homes destroyed by government troops...
...In recent years, the situation has been aggravated by Thai attempts to halt the opium trade and curb the tribesmen's traditional agricultural practices...
...Eleven of these units now operate in northern Thailand, patterned after South Vietnam's Popular Self-Defense Forces...
...Rebel bands prowl the countryside, and several deadly ambushes have been sprung almost within sight of town...
...But Laoting, unaware of his listeners' amusement, went on to say that Blue Meos had been making advances toward White Meo wives...
...The refugees must rely upon a Border Security Volunteer Team, a paramilitary unit of 30 hill tribesmen led by a four-man police group...
...Even if the district officer holds to his words, serious problems will remain, particularly in the area of security...
...To be sure, the town is as yet physically unscarred by warfare, but its once carefree atmosphere has been tainted by fear and uncertainty...
...Close to 200 tribesmen were again made homeless...
...One or both of them probably will be hit someday...
...We don't have enough money, enough equipment or enough trained personnel...
...The presence of an Army battalion and a company of border police is not likely to prevent an attack, since the government forces are stationed in Chiang Kham to protect the Thai townspeople...
...Then the tribesman blurted out the clincher: "They're threatening to kill us and use us for fertilizer...
...I asked...
...The most striking changes, though, can be seen several miles outside of town, on two sandy and formerly unoccupied tracts of dried-out soil where the villages of Ban Mai Rom Yen and Ban Rong San have sprung up...
...Time, it will take time," admits the district officer, Major Prawat Tonsangin...
...Unfortunately, the gap between supposedly good intentions and implementation is rather large, Harsh circumstances prevail in the refugee villages...
...Only a few basics are required: things like home-building materials, which have merely trickled in...
...Maybe we will have to move away from here," he shrugged, "but I don't know where...
...I think we will be able to move, and we will get more help too...
...Most of them are Meo hill tribesmen, reportedly led by Peking-trained cadre, supplied through Chinese Communist channels, and supported by 5,000 or more sympathizers...
...I don't think so," answered the headman...
...the Yao village...
...He also declared that things would get better soon, and promised more help...
...More chuckles...
...Well water, however, will not suffice for crop cultivation on Ban Rong San's barren soil...
...Perhaps more important, the fate of Ban Mai Rom Yen and Ban Rong San may have great ramifications in far-off Bangkok...
...The expansion of the Vietnam war into Cambodia, together with Peking's subsequent ascendancy as spiritual guide and major supplier for all "liberation" forces in Southeast Asia, have heightened the concern about insurgency problems here...
...We are worried...
...Two Thais chuckled loudly...
...Travel in the area, once commonplace, is no longer a casual venture...
...rebels are switching from guerrilla tactics to conventional warfare????A somewhat exaggerated claim...
...Aside from posing a threat to the villagers, this prospect troubles Chiang Kham's residents, who feel the refugees* presence endangers the entire town...
...Beyond the town's placid environs is guerrilla country, a primitive area with rugged mountains and dense jungle, tailor-made for terrorist activity...
...The physical and psychological strain have taken a heavy toll on Ban Rong San's Meos...
...Both are products of a belated government effort to combine civic action with military measures in counterinsur-gency operations...
...Then Prawat dug into a cabinet standing nearby and produced two tins of fish...
...When the laughter on the porch subsided, the district officer said, yes, Laoting could move his people...
...An estimated 1,000 well-armed rebels are now fomenting trouble throughout the north...
...handing them to the tribesman, he sent him on his way...
...Ban Rong San, settled by Meos, was started in February...
...Barefoot, wearing battered clothes, hat in hand, the Meo headman looked lost...
Vol. 53 • July 1970 • No. 14
