Thailand: Holder of the Kingdom, Strength of the Land

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promises of a constitution, elections and a return to civilian rule. Members of the Constituent Assembly have been at work on a constitution for seven years, and may go on with the job indefinitely. No one is rushing them. The fact is, the easygoing Thais simply do not care very much one way or another. Nor does class and status trouble anyone very much, even though titled aristocracy, thanks to Bhumibol's prolific forebears, abounds. Among the 22 Royal Highnesses and 132 Serene Highnesses are some very active types, in the tradition of Thai women, who like to go into business and to gamble. Princess Chumbhot of Nagar Svarga is vice president of a bank, benefactor of a Bangkok hospital, curator of her own palace-museum, patron of Thai artists, and inventor of the sport of tubing—going over rapids in an inner tube.

Insect Sauce. Collegium and King together preside over a land that, for all its advantages, is not without problems. By far the most troublesome region is the northeast, along the porous Mekong River frontier with Laos. There, nearly a third of the kingdom's subjects live in a swirl of powdery red dust. Ethnically and linguistically more closely related to the Lao than the central Thai, the northeasterners scratch out a subsistence living from the cracked earth, supplementing their diets of rice and rotten fish with such regional delicacies as eels, ant eggs, fried cicadas and fresh cucumbers served in a dark red insect sauce. Long a center of discontent, the northeast has lately erupted in infant guerrilla war, just as Peking Foreign Minister Chen Yi blatantly predicted last year.

Soon thereafter, the Communists, who had been content with persuasion and threats in their efforts to enlist members, switched tactics and began killing schoolteachers and village leaders who refused to cooperate. In the past three months, more than 30 incidents of terrorism have hit the northeast, as many as occurred in all the last half of last year.

Gouged Eyes. The Red-carrot approach consisted of offering new recruits to the Peasants Liberation Party a salary of 500 baht per month and the promise of a new tractor for the village. Now the ante is far higher. In Nakhon Phanom province, the Red Chinese are offering a 50,000-baht reward for the murder of Provincial Education Officer Thavil Chanlawong, one of the northeast's most effective anti-Communist workers. In one Nakhon Phanom district, the terrorists have killed 16 villagers in the past year, kidnaped six more, and early this month shot the village doctor. The eyes and heart of an assassinated teacher were gouged out and stuck on sticks beside his corpse to intimidate other teachers.

With probably no more than 1,000 hard-core Communists in all the northeast, mostly based in the Phu Pan Mountains, Bangkok at first insisted it was no more than a police problem. But early this year, it moved the army into the northeast, set up joint civilian-military police command posts in each of the six most sensitive border provinces. Since then the Thais have killed 50 terrorists and captured 300, moderating the Red thrust.

Old Soldiers. Adding to the internal threat in the northeast is a community of some 40,000 to 60,000 Vietnamese who are refugees from the French Indo-China war and almost totally loyal to Ho Chi Minh. With their own cadres, schools and tight internal organizations, and their