IMPERIALIST
POSITIONS
DISINTEGRATE
VIETNAM By PIERRE ROUSSET On January 11 the American government sent to the countries that had signed the Paris accords on Vietnam a note violently denouncing "North Vietnamese" military intervention in the South and threatening reprisals against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). Four days earlier, for the first time since January 27, 1973, a provincial capital, Phuoc Binh, had been liberated by the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG). Indochina returned to page one of the international press. But Washington refrained from detailing what reprisals it might decide to take. In fact, that choice is delicate to say the least. In Indoching the Ford administration is not confronted primarily with a localized retreat (the loss of all puppet positions in an entire province, Phuoc Long) or with a particular problem (the so-called "North Vietnamese infiltration"'), but rather with an overall evolution of the situation in the region. And this is occurring in an international and national context that prevents any direct and major U.S. re-engagement in the Indochinese conflict. INPRECOR No. 10 (October 17, 1974) analyzed the new military and political situation that had been created in the cities and countryside of South Vietnam last summer and autumn. With the beginning of the winter dry season, the shifts in the relationship of forces that began during the monsoon season are continuing. Better, we are witnessing not only the progressive deterioration of counterrevolutionary positions in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, but also the exposure more vigorously than before of the internal dialectic of the Indochinese revolution that exists among the three countries and the modes of struggle
Lessons of the latest battles The regional offensives recently waged by the PRG have an essentially political meaning and do not inaugurate a sudden turn to a general offensive aimed at finishing off the puppet regime. But it is no less the case that the offensives underline the evolution that has occurred in the military relationship of forces in South Vietnam. Three changes can be noted in the nature of the fighting of last summer: 1. There has been a shift of the battle theater to very populous regions (the Mekong Delta and the central coastal plains). 2. There has been a multiplication of NLF counterattacks leading to the liberation of new territories, especially district capitals (in Quang Nam). 3. There has been a notable improvement in the arms used by the revolutionary forces in the Delta (battle of Ben Cat and Lai Khe). What has been strikingly demonstrated during the conflicts of these past months has been the lack of any capacity for initiative on the part of the puppet regime. According to the January 8 edition of the Paris daily Le Figaro (whose views are right-wing), Thieu had set himself three priorities in the third military region: *Defense of the Vierge Noire valley near the city of Tay Ninh (about 56 miles northwest of Saigon), in which a very important radar station covering the Delta, the Saigon region, and Cambodia had been set up; *Defense of the capital, Phuoc Binh (85 miles north of Saigon), whose fall represented a heavy blow
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VIETNAM
Snoul 4 HAMECON Loe Mim, Phic Buc Phong ° Bo Duc (ancian) Mimat o O D An Loc Bo Duc(nouvnau) Penh C AM B Don Luan Ye Phnam
Tay Ninh Chon Thanh Dau Tieng
Riengi Go Dau Ha Trang Bang (Lai Khe Tành Linh
CANARE *Bien Hoa * Cu Chi
Moc Hoa • an Son Nhut
PLAINE SAIGON DES PHOOL 3 JONCS Cal Lay 'R.Nº4
TONG My The
Vinh Long ®Ben Tre KIEN HOA psychologically; *Retaking of the capital of Tanh Linh district (82 miles northeast of Saigon) in order to avoid the complete "decay" of Binh Tuy province. Phuoc Binh was liberated on January 7; the Vierge Noire valley fell the same day and the radar station was destroyed; not only was Tanh Linh not retaken, another district capital of the province, Hoai Duc, was subjected to strong pressure. The paralysis of the puppet forces appears more sharply if we study how the fighting unfolded. Again according to Le Figaro, which cannot be suspected of procommunist sympathies, regular North Vietnamese divisions based in the South have conducted little activity during these past months. The fifth division is said to be engaged in the northwest of the Plain of Joncs (Delta). The liberation of the district capitals in Phuoc Long province was carried out by the regional troops of the NLF. And only about half of the seventh division, supported by an autonomous regiment, is reported to have participated in taking the provincial capital of Phuoc Binh. The eleven other North Vietnamese divisions said to be stationed in the South did not intervene. While leaving the responsibility for the details (number, placement, and activity of the divisions) to Le Figaro, we can get the general picture. For its part, Saigon was able to send only 250 paratroops to Phuoc Binh as reinforcements. The argument that this was supposedly due to bad weather is not convincing. The fact is that the "elite" of the Saigon army is held in the northern provinces by the offensives that were waged last summer and 4 autumn by the PRG and by the fear of seeing a big push in the Quang Tri region. This "elite" is composed of paratroops, marines, and the first and second infantry divisions. The Thieu regime no longer has "strategic reserves" capable of being sent to new fronts, while the revolutionary forces possess important reserves. The situation in the Mekong Delta is quite significant in this regard. This region is particularly important because of its economic wealth (rice), its high population density, and its strategic position: Close to Saigon, it is crossed by many arms of the Mekong River and borders on Cambodia. At the beginning of September the Saigon general staff announced that 800 posts in the Delta were being abandoned, about a fourth of the total. In December the loss of 600 new posts was acknowledged. This occurred without any coordinated military offensive by the NLF. The puppet forces retreated before a kind of combination of a semispontaneous uprising among the population with guerrilla actions. It was the collapse of "pacification, " one of the pillars of American policy in Vietnam. That is what is illustrated by the statements of one Captain Phac of the Saigon army to the correspondent of the International Herald Tribune (January 28-29): They were forced, he explained, "to withdraw without authorization" from many 10- to 30-man posts. The "zones of Vietcong taxation" are extending, for example, in the provinces of Vinh Long and Vinh Binh, which nevertheless "are areas which had been considered among the most pacified." In fact, while the PRG has not recovered military control of all the areas in the Delta that the Saigon army had nibbled at after the Paris accords were signed (as in the Plain of Joncs), the current push has allowed the PRG to liberate new areas in many places. Already in October it was noted in Saigon that things were "going badly" in the two provinces of the Plain of Joncs, Kien Phong and Kien Thuong, in the west of the provinces of Ben Tre and Can Tho, in the east of Vinh Long province, in the entire southwest of Vinh Binh province, the south of Ba Xuyen province, in Bac Lieu and Rach Gia, and throughout most of Chuong Tien province. The province of Ca Man was a "Vietcong fief"! (Le Figaro, October 18, 1974) Since then the situation has gotten worse still. The general offensives of the PRG obviously have their military reasons. The structure of the Saigon command follows the administrative structure of the regime, and the district capitals are often also military subsectors. It is important to dismantle them
in order to wreck "pacification" and put a stop to "encroachments. " But that is not sufficient to explain the frequency of the operations mounted against the district capitals or the liberation of the provincial capital of Phuoc Binh. It is very clearly a question of a political gesture. Otherwise the PRG would have preferred to leave a few puppet enclaves in the middle of the territories that it controls, as in the case of An Loc. The liberation of Phuoc Binh represented first of all a decision to take a step forward in the policy of riposte initiated beginning October 15, 1973, (the date of a declaration of the Peoples Armed Liberation Forces that warned the Saigon regime that they would push their counterattacks to the rear areas. The results of this turn in the military policy of the PRG appear in the balance sheet for the year 1974, which has just been published. A total of 13 district capitals were taken, as well as 1, 600 hamlets and 170 towns including a total of 1,200, 000 inhabitants. Some 225,000 members of the Saigon army were reported put out of action (the command of the puppet army acknowledges the loss of 85,000 men); 4,000 trucks, 510 cannon, and 516 planes of various kinds were said to have been destroyed. But this decision to liberate Phuoc Binh and to push the regional offensives has a second political dimension. It is not only a matter of acting on Washington (or "warning" Washington) and its man for all seasons. It is also a matter of putting more pressure on the crisis that is racking the cities of South Vietnam. Saigon's political crisis has forced Thieu to thin out his political and military general staff. Some 377 middle-grade officers have been fired for corruption. Many generals, among them three of the four commanders of military zones, have been displaced. All of which can only accentuate the disorganization of the puppet command and the demoralization of the puppet troops. In turn, the new military defeats are going to rebound on the urban political crisis by forcing the opposition currents to define themselves more precisely. Thieu regime without Thieu? Thieu has sought, apparently without great success, to unleash a campaign of anticommunist mobilization on the occasion of his recent military reverses. Above all, he issued an appeal and a warning to a part of the urban opposition: You are playing sorcerer's apprentice and you do not have a large enough spoon to risk sitting down to dinner with the devil! INPRECOR No.10 analyzed how the regime's crisis, because of its very breadth, had by enlarging itself rendered the bloc of those opposing the puppet president more heterogeneous politically and socially.
From the beginning of the new demonstrations that accompanied the publication of the Act of Accusation No. 1 (a major statement of the urban opposition), the PRG and the DRV had warned the population against American attempts to deflect the objectives of the urban movement. It was not long before things got clarified and cleavages began to appear. The urban oppositions converge, of course, around some common themes of struggle: a certain number of democratic rights, the release of the political prisoners, the departure of Thieu. The latter objective, like the others, challenges the equilibrium of the regime. In spite of what it costs them, the American services have decided to keep Thieu as long as it is possible, because there is no alternative that would not open a dangerous period of government instability. While the converging pressure of the oppositions weighs on the weak points of the Saigon neocolonial edifice, the oppositions part company on strategy, motives, and the social circles they defend. The process of recomposition of the urban mass movement has only just begun. That is why a part of the South Vietnamese right wing is trying to take the lead. That is the case with the Reverend Tran Hou Thanh, the most visible leader in the international press of the "Movement Against Corruption. " He explained his strategy during an interview published in the November 8, 1974, Far Eastern Economic Review: "The strategic difference at the moment is that we want Thieu to go while keeping the regime intact. We want (Vice-President) Hung or (Senate Chairman) Lam to replace him pending the elections, preserving at the same time the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies - all the organism. All the organism is now very weak, but can be re-formed and re-employed to sove the continuity of the regime, whereas the others want to sweep away the regime. " His motivations are those that could have been expected from a man who spent a long fime instructing the officers of the puppet army in the principles of pro-American psychological action (and he retains a good deal of sympathy in that milieu). "I always seck to define a realistic anticommunism, " he told Le Figaro (October 21, 1974.) "But to be able to succeed in anticommunism we must eliminate corruption." The fundamental divergence that opposes such spokesmen for the Vietnamese upper classes to those of the popular opposition movements has already been crystallized around a concrete perspective. On November 17, 1974, Tran Huu Thanh called for the formation of a "government council" com-
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VIETNAM posed of leading personalities and charged with aiding the government. In his weekly press conference, the PRG's spokesman in Saigon accused him of being manipulated by the United States in order to channel agitation "in the direction of their choice, " meaning to try to demonstrate that the Thieu regime "could be reformed without being overthrown. " (Le Figaro, November 19, 1974.) South Vietnam in Struggle, the central organ of the NLF, in its turn denounced this "professor of anticommunism" and appealed to the masses of Catholics against him. (No. 277, December 2, 1974.) The Buddhists of the Forces of. National Reconciliation also refused to approve this proposal of Father Tran Huu Thanh. The "government council" was shelved, but the incident indicated the contradictions at work among the urban oppositions. The taking of Phuoc Binh by the PRG again brought these cleavages running through the urban opposition to the surface. Tran Huu Thanh in effect answered the warnings raised against him by Thieu ("irresponsible speculations" about his fall) by accusing Thieu of treason in the face of the communists. Thieu would be "solely responsible for the loss of (the province of) Phuoc Long, " which would be "the greatest loss to the nation since 1954. Moreover, he affirmed during a meeting held in the Saigon suburbs that "President Thieu shamelessly gave in to the enemy by signing the Paris accords in 1973. " (Le Figaro, January 10, 1975.) This at the moment when most of the other opposition movements were calling for the application of these same accords. For its part, the PRG has just reaffirmed in a note sent January 14 to the countries that signed the accords that it is "the sole representative of the South Vietnamese population, * not being content to recall that these accords set the two administrations on an equal basis. (Le Monde, January 1ó, 1975.) But the fact that the leaders of the urban opposition who are most widely known (at least in the international press) are pufting out many declarations of anticommunist faith should not give rise to any illusions about the reality of the process now under way -Crisis of the regime i In the Saigon regions, there is still room for differentiated political currents that reflect on the one hand the process of progressive but deep radicalization now going on and on the other hand the open political explosion of the monolithism of the regime. But the breadth of the economic and social crisis -taking account of the unfavorable relationship of forces from Washington's point of view - prevents the recomposition of a bourgeois force capable of guaranteeing American interests through the applica6 tion of a real "peace policy. " That is what makes the "solution" recommended by Tran Huu Thanh a palliative without great credibility. The bases of this economic and social crisis as well as its amplitude and place have been described in INPRECOR Nos.0 and 10. Nevertheless, we must return to this point inasmuch as it is a key factor in understanding the possibilities open to the revolutionary forces and the nature of the dynamic of the permanent revolution at work today in Indochina. Inflation, falling standard of living, unemployment, and even hunger are threatening not only the working class and the refugees. Some civil servants and soldiers have also been hit. It is the same for the The pupatien some yerom petty bourgeoisie. The puppet government, in search of financial resources, has taken some financial measures. And with a heavy hand. The Vietnam Courier (No.29, October 1974) described the measures that have been adopted; among them are a 10 percent increase in the sales fax since mid-1973; a further increase of 20 percent in the land tax; a six- or tenfold increase in the tax on profits; a 50-100 percent increase in the tax for setting up stalls in the marketplace, etc. In the general atmosphere of crisis prevailing, that was the coup de grâce for a significant part of the urban population. And because of the existence of a situation of dual power on a national scale, it will be very difficult for the bourgeois "opposition" forces to avoid the petty bourgeoisie's increasingly turning its glance toward the revolutionary forces. This is all the more true in that the urban economy of the zones under puppet control is now plunged deeply into recession. It is not only a question of the absence of new investments and the direct conterblow of the U.S. withdrawal. Again according to the Vietnam Courier of October 1974, some 50 percent of all companies have closed down. The rest are functioning at 30-80 percent capacity. This is what explains the extent of unemployment, which according to Nguyen Tho Khanh, a member of the Central Committee of the Federation of Vietnamese Trade Unions, stands at 50% in Danang, 60% in Quang Ngai and Quang Tri, 40% in Quy Nhon, etc. The situation in Vietnam is characterized by a very particular form of dual power. On a national scale liberated zones are counterposed to zones under puppet control; "resistance economy" supported by a deep agrarian reform and the existence of the North Vietnamese workers state versus a neocolonial parasite economy strictly dependent on the Saigon zone; revolutionary administration and army against puppet regime and army. But this dual power has not been reproduced in the cities of the South, except in a subterranean fashion; there, clandestine revolutionary committees exist, but the only armed
force and police is that of Thieu. And this apparatus of bourgeois repression is considerable, directly backed up by American imperialism. It is this profound delay in revolutionary developments in the cities as compared to the countryside and mountains of Vietnam that must be made up in the framework born after the signing of the Paris accords. Because of the means still being made available to the puppets by U.S. imperialism, because of the extent of the repression, and because it is a question of reorganizing not only political forces, but also social movements in recomposition, this process can only be the result of a prolonged struggle. Today, the urban opposition movements whose policy converges with that of the PRG do not seem as yet capable of taking initiatives that would be decisive in bringing down the regime. But their development is carried along by the weight of the national military and political situation, the influence of the PRG, the action of the Vietnamese Communist party, and the aggravation of the economic and social crisis. The same is not true for the various components of the Saigon regime. The most recent ministerial episode demonstrates this. Strengthened by the support he still has from the Americans (temporarily?) and confronted with the explosion of demonstrations in September and October, Thieu decided to wave the carrot and the stick. A number of ministers were withdrawn from the govemment, among them the most detested, Hoang Due Nha, ex-minister of Information and Rallying(!). The laws on the political parties were formally eased (but only formally). The puppet president violently attacked corruption and many officers were consequently sentenced. Simultaneously, other measures were decided: discrete arrests of militants, police harassment of the main leaders of the popular oppositions, repression of the press, an imposing police occupation of the center of Saigon in order to prevent any demonstration there. Thieu hoped in this way to divide the bloc of oppositions. And, at first, Father Tran Huo Thanh demanded precisely the "Flexible" measures decreed by Thieu - particularly the departure of Nha. He did not want the resignafion of Thieu at that time. But the pressure exerted by the mass movement that had been set in motion prevented him from engaging in maneuvers. Nobody will consider Thieu's retreats as "sufficient" to risk endorsing -hem. Since then, Thieu has been unable to prevent the opposition from continuing to organize. In spite of police pressure, the Popular Movement for the Application of the Paris Accords held its first congress on November 10, 1974, with about 100 delegates. It adopted a political declaration defining itself as an integral part of the "third force" (which is not the case for the Movement Against Corruption, the Catholic organization led by Tran Huu Thanh). Religiously nonsectarian, its policy is axised around the struggle for the application of the accords. It elected as its president Father Chan Tin (leader of the committee for the reform of the prisons) and elected an executive committee of seventeen members, among them Me Tran Ngoc Lieng, the deputy Ho Ngoc Nhuan, Mme. Ngo Ba Thanh, and the Venerable Hien Phap. It is working with a second group, which held its congress on November 17, 1974: the Committee for the Defense of the Interests of the Workers, whose president is a worker-priest, the Reverend Father Khac Tu; most of the delegates represented companies of "four seasons" merchant groups. The aim of the conference was to "call on the confederations, the uniors, and all the workers to unite in the struggle against layoffs." (Vietnam Information, No. 29, December 1974) According to the Vietnam Courier, the Popular Movement for the Application of the Paris Accords and the Forces of National Reconciliation (Buddhist) now have a real national base. The Buddhist movement of the An Quang pagoda, apart from the divisiors that partially paralyze it, has not offered effective support to Tran Huu Thanh's Movement Against Corruption. And the powerful Dai religious sect seems more and more to consider the PRG as the possible "winner. Moreover, the Thieu regime has decided on two occasions to postpone the trial of four journalists accused of having defamed the puppet president. The four are Chinh Luan (TrueCommentary, so-called independent), Tia Sang (Ray of Light, financial daily), Dieu Tin (Telegraph, opposition, linked to General Minh), and Dong Phuong (Orient, so-called opposition). Their trial is supposed to take place on February 20 along with that of two other press organs that had published the Act of Accusation (see INPRECOR No. 10): the Song Than (Divine Wave) and the Dai Dan Doc (Great People). Liberated zones The link that exists between the regional military offensives of the PRG and the urban situation is illustrated in an especially clear way in the cose of Tay Ninh, an important provincial capital 56 miles northwest of Saigon. The NLF's taking of the Vierge Noire mountain, which dominates the site of the city from a height of nearly 3,000 feet, along with the fall of Phuoc Binh, sharply changed the atmosphere there. The city is now effectively within the range of the artillery of the revolutionary forces. A police officer interviewed by the International Herald Tribune recently declared (January 11-12) that "even during the 1968 Tet offensive Tay Ninh was fairly quiet, and now they're shelling every day." The shelling is effective: it has struck the general headquarters and the helicopter landing field. "Only government functionaries remain in
VIETNAM Tay Ninh, " reads a headline in the January 17 Le Figaro. There has been an exodus; but in diametrically opposed directions. The rich have gone to Saigon, but the poor are joining the liberated zones that cover the greater part of the province. According to François Nivolon, the new arrivals receive from the PRG "two cows, a dozen pieces of sheet iron, construction wood, and some sacks of rice. " With this they can feed themselves, build houses, and work. And this is very important. The dialectic in play in Vietnam is not reducible to the interaction between the military struggle developed in the countryside and the political struggle opened in the cities, Social revolution and national liberation have always been intermeshed in the history of the Vietnamese revolution, even if their respective weight has not always been controlled by the CP. Agrarian reform and anticolonialism or anti-imperialism. But for a long time the liberated zones have remained subjected to terror bombings and raiding operations. They have now been partially relieved of this military pressure. And today it seems the liberated zones are beginning to play the role of a pole of attraction, even beyond the countryside. While the crisis is ceaselessly deepening in the Saigon-controlled zones, life is being reorganized "on the other side. " According to a PRG communiqué, the area cultivated in the zones under its administration exceeds 2.5 million hectares (6.25 million acres), which means a 64 percent increase in one year. In a study published in Le Monde December 19 and 20 Alexandre Caselle described the transformation of the northern province of Quang Tri. The destruction there had been terrible. Of the 70, 000 buffalo the province had in the 1960s, only about 2,000 remain. The population had been gathered up and displaced by the puppet army. The land is sown with hundreds of thousands of mines and unexploded shells. Demining a hectare of land requires 100 working days. And the risk of accident is grave. The cities have been razed and the villages devastated. The province had lost more than two-thirds of its inhabitants. But in the past two years it has been reconstructed. The agrarian reform hos given the land to the peasants. Of course, this is not a socialist reform of agriculture. -The land is not collectivized; "that would be premature, " explained a cadre of the PRG. But the class of landed proprietors has disappeared. And the class of peasant capitalists has no favorable conditions for its formation. Moreover, an important amount of land is communal property and is shared out annually among the peasants of the village. Finally, the PRG is encouraging "mutual aid groups" that facilitate exploitation of the 8 land by collectivizing labor. Two markets have been created, one state, one free. Certain products are sold only on the state market (cotton), others are sold 1.5-2 times more cheaply in state stores and are rationed so as to guarantee their division among all the inhabitants. There is no industry properly so called. For industry, Quang Tri, like all the liberated zones, relies on support from the DRV. But crafts are being encouraged. And social activities have been started up anew (schools, theaters, etc.). Life in the liberated zones remains extremely austere. But the exploitation of the peasants has been broken. And rice costs much less than it does in the Saigon zones. What is true for the province of Quang Tri is also true for the Mekong Delta. The puppet forces there have lost the "rice war. " A food surplus has even appeared in the liberated zones (which include, it is true, only a minority of the population). The inhabitants of the zones under Saigon's military control come to the liberated zones for supplies. Not only in rice, but also in cloth and even gasoline, thanks to the pipeline that comes down from the DRV to the Delta. Others come to sell water pumps to the peasants. Some families of the urban petty bourgeoisie are moving to the liberated zones. But it is still not a large number. The whole family has to leave Saigon simultaneously, otherwise those who remain die in prison. But these moves are significant, even if they sometimes pose problems. In fact, the PRC has to feed these people, whereas they cannot produce. Often, only the man is able to work. And the family, marked by "urban" habits, sometimes regrets the absence of servants. The revolutionary transformations of the Vietnamese countryside tend to exert a new weight on the national situation at a time when the social crisis is mobilizing the working class, merchants, refugees, intellectuals, and civil servants of the cities. And at a time when the puppet army is shaken. This is also one of the bases of the dynamic of the permanent revolution in Indochina. Laos and Cambodia It is a dynamic of permanent revolution throughout Indochina, because the evolution of the situation is not limited to Vietnam. The fighting has taken on a new scope in Cambodia with the end of the monsoon season. The GRUNK has just met with a diplomatic reverse. But were its hopes of entering the UN demolished? Washington's action and the weight of the dollar counted for
much in obtaining the majority of two votes in favor of the pro-Lon Nol resolution. The Soviet Union gave only lip service to the GRUNK and did not seek to counter American pressure. But the FUNK committed a political error. It believed too much in the support of the so-called nonaligned countries. The PLO had just been acclaimed at the UN. And the GRUNK had been so acclaimed during the Algiers conference. It refrained from launching military offensives before the vote. And several "friendly" countries were absent during the vote (like Egypt) or abstained (like Bangladesh, despite its recognition of the GRUNK). Washington would have been embarrassed by the expulsion of Lon Nol from the international organization. But that is not the essential thing. In several weeks the FUNK seems to have recovered the land it had ceded around Phnom Penh during the rainy season. More important, an offensive was launched along the Mekong, the principal route of supply for the Cambodian capital. Only three posifions in this zone are still held by the puppet forces, according to the GRUNK. And fighting is going on in the main one of these: Neak Luong, an important river port between Phnom Penh and the Vietnamese border. For two weeks not a single convoy has been able to get through. The United States has had to set up a real air bridge to avert the suffocation of the capital. And the airport is being bombarded by the liberation forces. It is the most important military offensive the FUNK has waged in a long time, even if it is difficult to determine its exact short-term objectives. But it is in Laos that struggles that are significant for their newness have emerged. Of the three countries of Indochina, Laos is the one in which the "internal" conditions of the revolution were the least mature when the war broke out. (See INPRECOR, No. 3, July 4, 1974.) This was also the only country in which accords were signed that led to the formation of a coalition government. More than Vietnam or Cambodia, it was in Laos that a freezing of the class struggle could have been feared, even though the relationship of forces in the country and in the Indochinese context did not indicate that this should be predicted. The relationship of forces between Vientiane and the Pathet Lao was symbolically illustrated last autumn when Prince Souvanna Phouma, the prime minister and principal historic leader of the right, had to retire to France for three months for reasons of health. It was the Pathet Lao leader Phoumi Vongvichit who took the reigns of government during that time, even though Souphanouvong, another Pathet Lao leader, continued to lead the national council. In spite of that, the policy of the Neo Lao Haksat (the Pathet Lao) remained very cautious: The Laotian delegation refrained from voting on the Cambodian question in the UN. But on December 24, 1974, two companies of special forces formerly paid by the CIA mutinied against the right in Ban Houel Sai, an enclave of liberated territory in the northwest of Laos, in the "golden triangle" of opium. Even though they took the governor, a half-brother of the king, as a hostage, it could have simply been an incident without great implications. Nevertheless, it soon turned out that it was a movement of the whole population, including soldiers, students, city workers, and many minority tribes of the region. The slogans concerned the strict application of the programs presented by the Pathet Lao to the national council and to the government and adopted by these organizations: the dissolution of the puppet national assembly; free circulation between the zones; replacement of the commander and his deputy; "neutralization" of Ban Houei Sai (that is, the entry of Pathet Lao troops). These were demands that converged with the objectives of the revolutionary forces and that in some respects went beyond the Vientiane accords. A mixed delegation was sent from Vientiane to negotiate, and the population won most of its demands. It was the first time that such an event occurred in this country, which lacks traditions of urban struggle. On January 6 an analogous movement developed in Thakhek, a city in southern Laos. At the call of twenty-one organizations, demonstrators marched under nearly identical objectives. But Thakhek is located in a rightist fief. The army encircled hundreds of demonstrators. At the announcement of this news, the surrounding population assembled to break the military vice. The army opened fire, killing one of those who had come and wounding eleven others. In protest against this bloody repression, unprecedented since the signing of the accords, students demonstrated in Vientiane. A new test of strength is developing in Laos. But this time it is beginning from urban mobilizations. That is the important new fact. As in Vietnam and Cambodia, the economic crisis in the zones under rightist military control exerts decisive weight on the situation. In December the Kip (the Laotian currency) was sharply devalued, by 67 percent (dropping from 640 kips to the dollar to 1,400). Prices have increased by 100 percent in one year in Vientiane. Departures of Chinese and Vietnamese merchants - and bourgeois Laotians - run into the hundreds. It costs the equivalent of about US$18 to buy 220 pounds of rice in the zone
VIETNAM controlled by Vientione. But in the liberated zones the same quantity of rice costs the equivalent of US$2. 65 (at least in the Pakse region, where a correspondent of Le Monde was able to make a comparative inquiry (see Le Monde, December 1-2, 1974). In this context strikes have broken out in Laos -a phenomenon virtually unknown in the past. An example occurred last July 14, when more than 1,000 workers and white-collar workers in various American aid services entered into struggle for better wages and social benefits. Or the actions waged from August 10 to 21 by the employees of the U.S. company Air Continental, and, in the same month, by the employees of the city of Vientiane. The woodworkers/ also went on strike. And the civil service employees in many departments went on strike to demand the removal of directors considered too corrupt or too hard. Finally, on August 23, some 500 policemen "responsible to the Vientiane side " demonstrated to demand pay increases and the transfer of their commander - completely unprecedented in Laos. The Neo Lao Haksat generally officially denies any direct participation in all these mobilizations. But it remarks that "the simple presence of troops of the patriotic front and the mixed police in Vientiane assures the strikers of security and moral support. " (Le Figaro, October 25, 1974.) In the meantime, it has obtained the signing of economic accords with Hanoi, which will furnish rice, cement, and pharmaceutical products, while communications between Laos and Vietnam will be strengthened to permit Laotian use of the ports of the DRV. These measures have indispensable effects in breaking the dependence of Laos, a landlocked country, on Thailand, through which the totality of its trade previously passed. Impasse for the U.S. It is thus a general deterioration of its positions in Indochina that American imperialism has to deal with. And it cannot blame this on the principal workers states. China has just made it known that it believes the maintenance of American troops in 10
Thailand, an important base of aggression against the Indochinese revolution, is necessary and desirable to block Soviet aims in the region! The failure of the Kissinger plan is now apparent. But what policy will replace it? The internal situation in the United States, like the change in world priorities on the part of American imperialism, prevents Washington from launching a new escalation in Indochina. So Ford is taking many partial measures. Stocks of munitions in Thailand are being sent to South Vietnam on an emergency basis. Loc Ninh (the "administrative capital" of the PRG) and Phuoc Binh have been massively bombed by the Saigon air force. The American Congress has been asked for a financial extension of $300 million for South Vietnam, and another will be requested for Cambodia. Phnom Penh is supplied through an air bridge. Measures of intimidation have been taken; pilotless spy planes are overflying the DRV; U.S. forces on Okinawa have been placed on alert; the Seventh Fleet is undergoing maneuvers; Air Force General David Jones has been sent to Saigon. And the U.S. embassy in Phnom Penh has made it known that American planes could participate in the supply of the Cambodian capital if need be. But all the measures of intimidation do not conceal the fact that Washington is uncertain about the means of response at its command. And the battle in the American Congress for new credits promises to go badly. Senator Mansfield, head of the Democratic party majority, opposed Ford's request in these terms: "Supplementary aid means more fighting and more dead. It has to stop some day. It is up to these people to settle their differences in their own way. (Le Figaro, January 14, 1975.) The American government will use all the means at its disposal to quantitatively increase aid to the Indochinese puppet regimes. But there is little chance that it will be able to change the nature of its intervention: financial aid, military supplies, operational training, political "advisers, " military information, discrete support. This will prolong the war and the sufferings of the Indochinese peoples. But it will not enable Washington to turn the basic situation to its advantage.
IRAN The Iranian working class, and especially the worker youth, a product of the "white revolution, " is today confronted with a social situation that is ever more laden with tension. Response to superexploitation Although the majority of the Iranian population lives in the countryside, the number of those moving to the cities looking for jobs is growing ceaselessly. We are now witnessing the rapid development of a working class, concentrated in the large cities like Teheran, Tabriz, Isfahan, Racht, Abadan, and Mahshad. People now working in the various industrial sectors constitute nearly 32 percent of the active population; that figure was 22.6 percent in 1966. And this has occurred despite the very strong development of unemployment: 10 percent of the active population, according to official statistics. (1) The workers have no right of association and assembly; that is, they cannot form trade unions to defend their class interests. Of course, there are vertical unions that collaborate with the employers and the SAVAK (the political police). These "unions" have no standing in the eyes of the masses; they are empty structures modeled on corporatist fascist unions. The regime cannot provide them with a mass base. Wages have gone up during the past few years, but the real buying power of the workers has fallen relatively (there is no index) and the wages of the majority of workers are not sufficient to provide for minimum needs. The increases in the prices of basic commodities is such that the workers do not manage to satisfy their most immediate needs. This situation
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