ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the Thai experience with communist insurgency using the elements of the Manwaring paradigm for low-intensity conflict: organization, military and other support to a targeted government, intelligence, discipline and capabilities of the armed forces, reduction of outside aid to the insurgents, and legitimacy. In 1928, Vietnamese communist leader Ho Chi Minh began organizing Vietnamese communities in Thailand to support his revolutionary movement in French Indochina. Armed insurgents in northern Thailand numbered approximately 2,800 in 1976 and were located primarily in the provinces of Chiang Rai, Nan, Uttaradit, and Phitsanulok, along the Thai-Lao border. The chapter focuses on the role Thai political, religious, and social culture played in the ultimate failure of communist insurgency in Thailand. Few Communist Party of Thailand in 1952.5 cadres or, for that matter, communist sympathizers among Thai academics and intellectuals have relished the thought of life in the jungles or rice paddies of rural Thailand.
