¹ For the official account see, for example, United States Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Hearings Before the Subcommittee on United States Security Agreements and Commitments Abroad, Kingdom of Thailand, November 1969; and The Communist Threat to Thailand, a ‘white paper’ dated August 1967, produced by the South-East Asia Treaty Organization in cooperation with the Thai government.Google Scholar For a scholarly treatment of the international context of the violence in the North see Lovelace, Daniel D., China and ‘People's War’ in Thailand, 1964–1969, China Research Monographs No. 8, University of California Center for Chinese Studies, Berkeley.Google Scholar

² White, Morton G., Foundations of Historical Knowledge (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965), chap. 4.Google Scholar

³ Thus the CPT claims public credit for leadership of the political and military struggle; see Lovelace, op. cit., p. 56, citing statements in Peking Review 10: 7 (10 February 1967), pp. 26–7, and New China News Agency, 16 September 1967.Google Scholar

⁴ Estimates for hill-tribe populations vary widely, since tribal peoples have not been included in the decennial Thai census. The figure of 250,000 is cited in the US Army Area Handbook for Thailand (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1968), p. 63.Google Scholar Peter Kunstadter rightly points out the ambiguity in using the term hill tribe in Thailand, where one can find groups who violate ideal ‘tribal’ norms of language, literacy, economy or ecology;Google Scholar Peter, Kunstadter, editor, Southeast Asian Tribes, Minorities and Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), p. 369.Google Scholar

⁵ An ethnocentric viewpoint to be sure. To some extent, the less than optimal hygienic practices of the tribal peoples are a consequence of the shortage of water in some upland areas. One of the hill tribes which will figure prominently in this account, the Meo, has had a long and at times glorious history, stretching back some fifty centuries at least. See Department of the Army Ethnographic Studies Series, Minority Groups in Thailand (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1970), pp. 584–6.Google Scholar

⁶ This has long been the conventional wisdom on swidden agriculture. However, a number of investigators have concluded that swidden methods, if properly carried out, and with a sufficiently long rotation period, do not damage the watershed and are the most productive practice for forested upland areas.Google Scholar

⁷ One official estimate in 1964 placed the annual tribal income from opiumgrowing at 60,000,000 baht, or US $3,000,000 at the official exchange rate. A Report on the Hill Tribe Welfare Programs, compiled by the Border Patrol Police and delivered at a conference in the Spring of 1964, draft translation by Military Research and Development Center (Bangkok: mimeograph, 1967), p. 55.Google Scholar

⁸ Darling, Frank C., Thailand and the United States (Washington: Public Affairs Press, 1965), p. 168. Some observers suggest that one element of the army-police competition is the control of the opium trade, discussed below.Google Scholar

⁹ The information in this and succeeding paragraphs is extracted from The Hill-Tribe Program of the Border Patrol Police (Bangkok: mimeograph, 1965), prepared by BPP advisory personnel for the conference on Southeast Asian tribes and minorities held at Princeton University in May of 1965.Google Scholar

¹⁰ BPP Area V consists of the four northernmost border provinces of Nan, Chieng Mai, Chiang Rai, and Mae Hong Son, as well as the non-border provinces of Phrae, Lampang and Lamphun.Google Scholar

¹¹ Details cited here are taken from the periodic contractor reports to the United States Operations Mission, Thailand, by the Bangkok office of Development Consultants International, Inc., the contractor firm which provided advisory assistance to the Border Patrol Police under funding through USOM. These are available in the United States Operations Mission library in Bangkok.Google Scholar

¹² The Communist Suppression Operations Command (CSOC), representing army sources; the BPP, representing upland police sources; and the Police Special Branch, responsible for the general surveillance of anti-government activities in Thailand.Google Scholar

¹³ Chaowarit Sae Yang, a Meo from Kang Haw village in Nan province. Chaowarit is one of the best-educated Meo in Thailand, having received five years of formal schooling. In 1964 he was recruited into the BPP training program described in the previous section, serving until 1968. The information cited here was based on his conversations with fellow Meo who had taken part in these Pathet Lao activities in Laos, as recounted to the author in personal interviews during August 1970.Google Scholar

¹⁴ The communist leadership early made the decision to focus initial organizational activities on the Meo tribe, because of the long history of martial activities by this tribal group. The Thai government in turn has made a parallel decision, and so much of the discussion following will deal with the Meo tribe. The first written references to the Meo record their presence in China in the 40th century B.C. During most of the period from the 27th century B.C. until recent times there has been fighting between the Meo and the Chinese within China. In the seventh century A.D. the Chinese destroyed a strong Meo kingdom which had been established in the fifth century A.D., and it is apparently from this period that the legends of the return of the Meo king originated. (Minority Groups in Thailand, pp. 584–6.) There are approximately 50,000 Meo in Thailand, the largest single tribal group. However, the vast majority of Meo still live in southern China, numbering between two and four million according to different estimates. There are also some 223,000 Meo in northern Vietnam, 50,000 in Laos, and a small number in Burma. (Ibid., 575.) On Meo character, one source writes ‘Although Meo history has been characterized by centuries of oppression and disruption (first in China, later in Vietnam and Laos), the Meo have maintained a strong feeling of independence and a fierce resistance to their oppressors. They have often demonstrated that no matter how difficult their plight as refugees may be, they are able to overcome these disadvantages. Generally speaking, the Meo have unusual initiative [and] adaptability, and an ability to organize themselves.’ (James T. Ward, ‘US Aid to Hill Tribe Refugees in Laos’, in Peter Kunstadter, op. cit., p. 298.) Another source, speaking principally of the Meo, adds a different perspective: ‘In general, the hill tribes do not exhibit any aggressive or warlike tendencies; it seems that their prevailing attitude tends to be rather to live peacefully and independently. If they feel annoyed, their first reaction is seemingly to retreat into the deeper parts of the jungle. In emergencies, to be sure, they would fight back as they have done throughout their history.Google Scholar Such an emergency could be occasioned by, for instance, a belief that their basic means of existence are seriously threatened.’ (Report on the Socio-Economic Survey of Hill Tribes in Northern Thailand [Bangkok: Department of Public Welfare, 1966], pp. 36–7.)Google Scholar

¹⁵ The exact date of the shift is uncertain. There are reports that the Central Committee authorized the change in 1960, and this may have been responsible for the 1960 appeal by the Central Committee, relayed by New China News Agency, to the Thai people to form a ‘broad patriotic front’ against the Thai and American governments. According to a captured document, ‘Theory of Revolution in Thailand’, the CPT called a national meeting in February 1961, to decide on a new policy, and this meeting decided (I) to set up a ‘patriotic and democratic front’ and (2) to prepare the conditions for a policy of armed struggle.Google Scholar Cited by Sungpriwon, Colonel Wichien, in Countering the Seizure of State Power by the CPT (in Thai), a thesis submitted to the Thai Army War College, 02 1970. If the practice of the CPT follows that of neighboring parties (and in view of the close relations between them there is no reason to suppose otherwise) then this national meeting was probably a convocation simply to approve of what the Central Committee had already decided in 1960.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Phin Bua-on, a long-time Party member who had studied at the Marx-Lenin Institute in Peking; cited in Wichien Sungpriwon, op. cit.Google Scholar

¹⁷ The tri-province area, consisting of Phitsanulok, Phetchabun and Loei, gains its name from the intersection of the three province boundaries near the northern edge of the Phetchabun range in Thailand.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Police reports cited throughout this study were consulted by the author at the BPP Area V headquarters in Chieng Mai and the Area VI headquarters in Tak.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Located at QB022995 according to the grid system employed on US military maps.Google Scholar

²⁰ Although this report read ‘Chinese’, the apparent meaning was Sino-Thai, the ethnic origin of many anti-government cadres in the North. At no point in the research did any Thai governmental source confirm the presence of any operatives in the North who were not native to Thailand, with the problematical exception of the Meo, who move back and forth across mountain borders in disregard of abstract international boundaries.Google Scholar

²¹ A Mon-Khmer tribal group with between 12,000 and 35,000 people in northern Thailand, principally in Nan province. Lebar, Frank M., Hickey, Gerald C. and Musgrave, John K., Ethnic Groups of Mainland Southeast Asia (New Haven: HRAF Press, 1964), p. 128.Google Scholar

²² QB057439.Google Scholar

²³ Huai and Doi mean stream and mountain respectively.Google Scholar

²⁴ PB7954.Google Scholar

²⁵ PB741516.Google Scholar

²⁶ The information in the following paragraphs was provided to the author by the Police Special Branch officer who spent several months interrogating Serm.Google Scholar

²⁷ Officially founded on 1 January 1965, in Peking.Google Scholar

²⁸ In a briefing given by General Saiyud Kerdphol of CSOC, reported in the Bangkok World on 4 March 1968, the number was estimated at 130.Google Scholar

²⁹ PB385632.Google Scholar

³⁰ The reader should note that there are actually two villages named Huai Chom Poo. One, a Thai village, is located in the western foothills of the ridgeline running along the eastern side of the Thoeng-Chieng Khong road. The second village, inhabited by Meo tribesmen, was on the eastern side of the ridgeline, up in the hills. There are several such pairs of villages, one Thai and one tribal, with the same name. Because of the exhaustion of the land tribal villages must move from time to time. Thus it is unlikely for any but the most recent maps to give an accurate idea of the location of tribal village locations in the upland areas of northern Thailand.Google Scholar

³¹ NB9495.Google Scholar

³² NL3831.Google Scholar

³³ A series of interviews with General Tuan were published in The New York Times on 8, 9 and 10 September 1966. Further information on the KMT, in connection with opium smuggling, was published in The Times on 11 August 1971. See also McCoy, Alfred W., The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (New York: Harper & Row, 1972).Google Scholar

³⁴ The names of two other generals, Ma Ching-ko and Pu Then Yen, appear from time to time.Google Scholar

³⁵ The Northerner News (in Thai), Chieng Mai, 4 August 1969, reproduced in English in the Northern Thai Press Summary, American Consulate, Chieng Mai. Some observers have speculated that there may be reasons of a more personal nature inducing senior Thai leaders to permit the KMT to remain in Thailand.Google Scholar

³⁶ The information reported here is collated from the official Thai police reports and from data supplied by Dr Robert W. Kickert, an anthropologist working with the Akha in Chiang Rai province at the time of the Opium War.Google Scholar

³⁷ Some sources note that Khun Sa's decision was forced by a confiscatory increase in the ‘tax’ demanded by his fellow generals.Google Scholar

³⁸ One joy equals 1.6 kilograms.Google Scholar

³⁹ The police reports indicate that the Thai-based KMT suffered 70 killed, 80 wounded, and 50 missing; Khun Sa reportedly suffered 80 killed, 20 wounded, and 20 missing, plus all of the opium. Some 80 Shan chiefs and merchants, co-owners with Khun Sa of the 16 tons of opium, were conveniently machine-gunned to death in a lumber mill on the banks of the Mekong.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Several incidents of this indiscriminate bombing and napalming are described in a series of articles in the Far Eastern Economic Review issues of 7 March, 11 April and 25 April 1968. The bombing of villages was reported frequently in the Bangkok papers until news of operations in the North was banned in late 1969.Google Scholar

⁴¹ For example the Bangkok World reported on 18 April 1968, that ‘The Government has issued orders to the hill tribes to come down to live in the settlements. Those who refuse to do so will be regarded with “suspicion” and suppression operations will be taken against them’.Google Scholar

⁴² According to figures provided by CSOC there were 19 violent clashes in the North in 1967, 108 in 1968, and 112 in 1969.Google Scholar

⁴³ See, for example, the article ‘RTAF Bombs Meos as Army Moves’, Bangkok Post, 11 December 1968.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Development Consultants International, Inc., report.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Area VI comprises the provinces of Loei, Phetchabun, Phitsanulok, Uttaradit, Tak, Kampangphet, Uthai Thani, Nakhon Sawan, Phichit and Sukhothai.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Also called Tap Berg, at QU263720.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Information in these paragraphs was provided to the author by Richard Virden in an interview in August 1969. At the time of the incidents Virden was employed by the United States Information Service in nearby Phitsanulok.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Owing to continuing immigration from Laos this area increased considerably in population from the 1960 period.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ One report indicated that in the first six weeks of the deployment, army forces suffered 75 killed and 200 wounded. Time carried a story on 20 January 1969, placing total forces at 1,000 and casualties at 10 per cent. The Bangkok Post of 5 January 1969 reported the use of napalm in the tri-province area. The article, reporting an interview with Deputy Defense Minister Dawee Chullasap, noted that ‘High-ranking military officials agreed to the new measure because the use of rockets and artillery were not effective, since the terrain there was forested and inaccessible’.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ According to a UPI dispatch from Bangkok reported on 7 January 1969 in The New York Times: General Saiyudh Kerdphol asked the nation's newsmen Monday to suppress news of Communist attacks in the northern provinces. The General, chief of staff of the rebel-suppression command, said news of the attacks could lead the people to believe that the Government could not provide security.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Development Consultants International, Inc., reports. Since tribal peoples are not included in the decennial Thai census there are no confirmed tribal population figures by province. However, some idea of the magnitude of the refugee population compared to tribal population may be gained from the following tribal population estimates: Chiang Rai, 40,000; Nan, 28,000; tri-province area, 8,000.Google Scholar

⁵² CSOC order-of-battle information in Bangkok carried only 820 for the North.Google Scholar

⁵³ With the exception of the Mae Sot area, in which no Thai or Sino-Thai cadres were reported.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ In his article on the Thai bombing of Meo Maw in the 25 April 1969 issue of the Far Eastern Economic Review, John Thomson records that the guerrilla band told the residents of Meo Maw when they arrived that in a few days the Thai would bomb the village. Thai officials, receiving reports of the presence of the guerrillas in Meo Maw, then in fact proceeded to bomb it.Google Scholar