GUERRILLA WAR CONTINUES IN ERITREA
During March the Eritrean Liberation Army engaged in several clashes with forces of Haile Selassiets government, In the Gash region eight Ethiopian soldiers were killed and others wounded,
Captain Abdulkadir Mohammed Ali, a police officer at Tesenie, narrowly escaped. death when a hand grenade exploded near him, Two of his companions were seriously. injured; he received minor wounds. Although he is an Eritrean, the captain is notorious for his loyalty to the Ethiopian authorities,
A patrol of the Eritrean Liberation Army under the leadership of Ato Gabre Hawai and Osman’ Hussein attacked a police post in the Marab Malash region. Two police were killed. A chief in that region, loyal to the Ethiopian authorities, was also killed.
In retaliation, Ethiopian forces attacked the peaceful village of Pamim'in the Gash region, They. looted shops and violated women. They accused villagers of conoperating with the revolutionists.
When Humad Mohammed Ismael, the chief of the.village, tried to. dissuade them, they replied by. whipping him until he fainted.
Fighting is continuing in the mountains: of ‘Eritrea,
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U.S. HEADS FOR. DISASTER IN SOUTH VIET NAM
By Juan de la Cruz
[The following article is taken from Laging Una, a Filipino newspaper published in the United States. A subscription to this lively monthly can be had by sending $2,50 to the editor, Martires M. Monosco, 5003 Future Place, Los Angeles 65, California U.S.A.]
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President Macapagal of the Philippines told a visiting American newsman in Manila March 25 that withdrawal of U.S. forces. from South Viet Nam "could lead to disaster" -- meaning, that without American military backing the Saigon puppet dictatorship would collapse, That is patently true. What Macapagal does not understand is that the Washington policy-makers will suffer a much greater disaster if they continue trying to impose a reactionary regime on South Viet Nam's 14 million people.
The United States is intervening in what, essentially, is a civil war, a struggle of social classes, In flagrant violation of the principle of self-determination, Washington seeks by brutal force to subject the mass of the population to a government of the propertied elements, The dictator in Saigon was not elected by the people, He was selected by the U.S. to do its bidding. Hated by the vast majority, the Saigon regime would not last a month without massive American support.
Waging Undeclared War
Americats war against the people of Viet Nam is of necessity an undeclared war, The consent of Congress was neither asked nor received, In decisions involving war and peace, the legislature is always bypassed, Roosevelt took steps assuring U.S. involvement in World War II long before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, | Truman plunged-the. nation into the Korean "police action" and the obliging Congress gave its rubber-stamp approval, Kennedy and Eisenhower prepared the disgraceful Bay of Pigs adventure against Cuba and Kennedy gave the signal that launched it, without consulting Congress. Nor did Kennedy ask the consent of Congress for the "confrontation" over Soviet missiles in Cuba, although this could have triggered a world war. That's.U.S. democracy in action, That's how much control the American people have over governmental policy.
“Two influential - senators m- Je William Fulbright of Arkansas, who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Wayne Morse of Oregon -- areurging that U.S. military forces be withdrawn from South Viet Nam. Morse has referred contemptuously to the current puppet-dictator: in Saigon, Gen, Nguyen Khanh, as a “tin-horn soldier tyrant" who occupies his present position solely by virtue of U.S. backing.. There can hardly be any doubt that Morse and -
Fulbright reflect a sizeable body of public sentiment. Opposition to U.S. participation in the “dirty war" in Viet Nam is widespread,
Threat of Escalation
- + Defying this. growing sentiment, Defense Secretary McNamara, the Detroit whizz kid of Edsel car fame, has announced that the U.S, will continue to back the Saigon regime “for as long as it takes" to beat back the tide of revolution. He sees the road. ahead as "long, difficult and frustrating" ~~ which is in sharp contrast to his Pollyanna statements of just a few months ago,
Other spokesmen of the administration speak darkly of "“escalating" the war by attacking North Viet Nam and McNamara says that such enlargement is not-.excluded,. They delude themselves with a . fiction of their own creation -+ namely that the revolutionary Viet Cong fighters receive arms and other supplies from North Viet Nam and that without this aid their movement would collapse.
The proven fact, of course, is that the modern weapons used by the Viet Cong are made.in the good old U.S.A. Some are taken from soldiers of the Viet Nam army, or militiamen, who are captured or killed, Others are obtained from Viet: Nam army.defectors who go over to the side of the revolution, sometimes in small groups or singly, often by the score, occasionally by the hundreds. As for food and other supplies, these too-are obtained within the country. The guerrillas are part of the general population and closely integrated with it, for they are the fighting arm of the peasants and rural workers, When not engaged in combat, they work in production, helping. supply food and other necessities both for themselves and Obherss
Like every reactionary ruling class trying to hola back the tide of revolution, . the American imperialists stubbornly refuse to admit, to themselves or others, the fact that the Viet Cong guerrillas are closely integrated with the population of South Viet Nam. They pre~fer, because it suits their purpose better, to represent the Viet Cong as agents of an alién Communist conspiracy that can be defeated if only enough money and: ‘weapons are poured into the fight.
They feed endlessly on-such illusions. When college students turned out with American flags in Saigon, Ambassador Lodge and the. myopic McNamara took that as a sign that the "people" support the puppet military regime and its American backers, But. these were the sons and daughters of the rich and well-to-do, a tiny minority of the population, The countryside of innumerable villages and settlements is held by forces loyal to the Viet:-Cong, better known in South’ Viet Nam as the National Liberation Front.
The NLF, politically, is a coalition of three parties and gome twenty professional, social and religious organizations and representatives of minority ethnic groups, In 1960 it adopted a program
and a flag In February, 1961, it held its first national congress, attended by over 100 elected delegates.
Controls Most of Country
Today the NLF exercises effective political control over three-~ fourths of the country. It operates through local elected organs which collect taxes, maintain order, build schools and hospitals, establish simple industries. It carries out a program of land reform and defends the "liberated areas" with locally recruited peoplets armies.
-. . In the strategic Mekong River delta area south of Saigon, an estimated 95 per cent of the people pay taxes to the NLF.. The armed forces of the NLF here consist of 4,000 full-time fighters and 12,000 guerrillas and militiamen, They are in practical control of the 697 “Ustrategic hamlets" built by the government to "protect" the population from the NLF, ~
To those not wilfully blind, the NLF is not a small, isolated rebel movement but a popular uprising, The U.S. military presence can prolong the struggle, Americans and their puppet forces can kill and wreak havoc, . But victory will continue to elude them, A spokesman for the NLF has been quotéd as” saying to a correspondent: "What makes you.think the Americans aré’supefior to the French? We'll drive the Americans out, too, ‘even if it takes ten years. 7
Following his recent visit to the scene of action, McNamara has announced that more millions of dollars of the U.S. taxpayers! money will be piped to the Saigon puppets -- in addition to the $1.5 million a day that is already being spent. What remains after Gen, Khanh and his associates have siphoned off some of the money to fatten their Swiss bank accounts will be used to increase the “seourity forces" by 50,000 men, all armed by the United States, .
More and More Destruction
In addition, the Viet Nam air force will get more modern planés with which to bomb and destroy Viet Nam villages. The “over-extended" strategic hamlet program will be overhauled, A civil administrative corps will be built to "bring better public services to the people." .
But many long-time observers in Saigon, writes Los Angeles Times correspondent Ed Meagher, believe that. it is “too late, that the Communistst hold on the population and territory is already such as to be close to a fait accompli." And he adds: "It is unsafe to drive practically anywhere in Viet Nam outside of the principal cities because of probable interception by the Viet Cong."
In historic retrospect, King Ganute of.old is considered stupid for trying to sweep back the tide with a broom, What can we think of the broom wielders in the Pentagon and the White House?