Remembering Saisith

by William Sommers

In this “remembrance” the author recalls a close friendship and how it was tested forty-three years ago. He recommended that his good friend, Saisith be appointed District Officer in a poor province of Northeast Thailand then under attack by Viet Cong-supported insurgents. The author knew that Saisith was the perfect choice, but Saisith did not want to go. Some twelve years later the two friends met again in Thailand. Saisith told his friend that he had done “a terrible thing” in recommending him but would try to forgive him. This is a beautifully told but sobering account of a friendship in a distant land.  -Contributing Editor, Books

 A few weeks ago, rummaging through a broken box of browned archives, I came upon a book, written in Thai by Saisith Pornkaew, one of the best of a group of young Thai field officers with whom I had worked in the 1960s during a Thailand assignment.  The book, Fighting The Communist Insurgency With Village Cooperation, covered his difficult assignment in reorganizing a district in the northeast province of Ubol and the defeat of a growing insurgency fomented by Laotian and Vietnamese provocateurs.  I opened the cover to read Saisith’s hand-written dedication in English: “To the only man who knows Thailand and its people—William A. Sommers… Saisith, May 14, 1969.” An impossible exaggeration by a true friend!  But like Proust’s tea- dunked Madeline in Remembrance Of Things Past, it conjured a detailed, if not totally involuntary, memory of a time I had all but forgotten. The book—happily—forced me to reconstruct the Saisith I remembered.

He was a young officer, with field experience but now working in the Thai Department of Local Administration in Bangkok and assigned as a contact person to help me better understand the critical operation of the amphur (district) in the context of strengthening Thai local government. My good luck! Saisith was born in Srisaket province in Northeastern Thailand, attended a Buddhist Wat School there and spent his formative years at the two best Thai Universities—Thammasat and Chulalongkorn. Upon graduation, he was hired by the Department and immediately assigned in rapid succession to three rather remote districts in his home province of Srisaket. He had been transferred to Bangkok not long before I was assigned as an advisor.  He was short, slim with a strong face, thick lips and piercing, unflickering eyes in singular contrast to the somewhat more polite, eye turn-away of the usual Thai officer. He smoked a lot but was not a social drinker, in contrast to me and to many of my counterparts.

I realized early-on that he was devotedly focused on improving governmental service at the point of people’s needs and that he critically avoided the smooth-over posture of so much of the government’s statements of bureaucratic power. I recall that when we went in the field to visit districts and local villages, I could always find him, after dinner, crouching in the Thai manner in the near-darkness with local people, smoking banana-cigars and listening to their complaints.  He had an almost mystic sense of their need and what must be done… and a clear frustration that more wasn’t achieved. I concluded that he was a “Thai tiger” ready for action to do the right thing—as he saw it—even in the face of the bureaucracy of which he was a part.

At the same time, he had an indirect, slightly cynical sense of humor. He, and his good friend, Montri, another rising young officer, also well versed in the English language, had fixed me with a touching, oft-repeated, cutting remark, when I met them in the hall. I always greeted them first in Thai—Sawat Dee Kaap—the hello greeting—followed in English with “how is everything?” To which together—or individually—they would invariably answer “So far—no good!” I knew then that another difficult workday had begun!

My relations with Saisith soon reached a forceful climax. In the first week of June 1966, the Director General of Local Administration asked me to accompany him, along with a group of ranking departmental officials, on an inspection trip to Ubol, one of the largest Northeastern provinces, which bordered Laos where the connection with Vietnam was very close. The trip’s focus was Loeng Nok Tha District in the northern part of Ubol, which had taken frequent forays of insurgents, infiltrated from Laos with Viet Cong support.   These raids were beginning to raise havoc with the local government and its people. The insurgents played on the long-term unrest of many of the northeastern people—the Isaan —who have, in one way or another, always felt disaffected from Thailand’s growing economic development where Bangkok and surrounding areas, they believed, had reaped most of the benefits. I had accompanied the Director General on a number of trips to Northeast Thailand, covering the provinces of Nakorn Panom and Sakorn Nakorn that were also having difficulties with insurgency. This was, however, the first time I had been with him to this particular district.

On our arrival we went, with the Governor and the Deputy Governor, to visit the Nai Ampur (District Officer). He had been seriously wounded in an attack—two days before—and was both fearful of taking immediate action and ashamed at his inability to protect his District. It was clear that he had to be transferred to Bangkok and a replacement appointed as soon as possible.

At dinner that night, the Director General, his staff and Ubol administrative officials, including the Governor, discussed the problem of how to reconstruct the district and put it in a more offensive mode.

Toward the end of the discussion, the Director General turned to me and asked: “Bill, you work with a lot of our young officers. Who would you recommend to come up here and take charge of Loeng Nak Tha?”

I had been thinking about this when we visited the District and again during dinner. There was no doubt in my mind about the person who could do the job.

“Sir, if you pardon my intrusion, there is no question that Saisith Pornkaew is the only Thai officer that I know who has the strength, determination, experience and focus to face this problem. He should be appointed district officer immediately and be given full support by the Province and the Department in providing whatever he needs in order to salvage and re-build the district.”

This induced much conversation and the heat of it defied my understanding, even though my translator tried hard to follow the exchanges. I could tell, however, that the discussions would be better served if I excused myself.

As I was about to switch to my near nothing pajamas in the small non-air-conditioned hotel room with the heavy heat of a Northeastern night beginning to take command, the Director General sent for me. I went to his room where he told me that after some rather heated discussion, the group agreed with me; his staff was already working on the orders to send Saisith to Loeng Nak Tha. He thanked me and asked that I visit the district often to support Saisith, as his good friend for, as the Director General noted with a winking smile, “Don’t forget, Bill, that he will hold you responsible for your recommendation…. oh, and be sure and get a good sleep tonight!”

As I walked down the hall back to my room, I could hear Saisith saying to me, over and over again: so far, no good, so far, no good… so far… no-good… no good.

The trip concluded on Saturday with an overnight train ride from Ubol to Bangkok, including a wonderful dining car where we all sat and drank the prevalent, if not long matured, Mekong Whiskey flushed with soda water while eating plate after plate of a highly spiced beef salad, a glorious concoction called yum nua. For me it was a necessary immersion to be ready for Monday morning at the Department of Local Government and the undoubted onslaught of one Saisith Pornkaew.

With the outside sun beating into my one-windowed office, I sat waiting. Promptly at 8:30 AM, two very loud knocks preceded a swift opening and the near shattering of the glass door. There was Saisith, his district officer’s uniform pressed and correct in all details while he held his official hat in his right hand with a rigidity I thought might crush the piece in one strong movement.

“You, you, Bill Sommers, you who were once my friend. Now you have sent me to exile, to a place where no one wants to go… recommended by the great American advisor…and now, by order of the Director General. And so–because of you–I must go!”

His always-unflinching eyes were like powerful x- rays focused on burning a hole in my heart and his darkened visage had manufactured a deep redness that seemed to turn his whole face into a large, menacing red tomato that was ready to burst.

But I was ready for Saisith. Without a word I got out from behind my desk, grabbed him by the arm, pulled him into the hallway and down two flights of stairs to the lower level coffee shop where I ordered song cafe (two coffees) and dragged him to the farthest table. By then we were both so out of breath we couldn’t speak.

When the strong Thai coffee came, we quickly emptied our cups.

“Sai, I know you’re angry. And maybe you have a right to be.  But you are the guy. You are the only officer I have ever seen squatting with the farmers and the puyibans (village chiefs), smoking those goddamn banana cigars and listening to their problems. You give them hope. This is serious stuff and you can do it. Look, I promised the DG that I would visit you and I will work my ass off to get you the things you need. You can be angry with me. OK. But you can’t turn your back on this country, bad as it is, corrupted as it is, you are one of the guys that can save it… what the hell!”  Or something like that.

By now he had calmed down—and so had I. We took the morning off and had a big lunch. When I ordered Mekong, this time Saisith did not protest. The next day, he stuck his head in my office to say goodbye, reminding me of my promise to come and see him next month.

And I did. It was a terrible place. The district buildings were dilapidated, some falling apart.  His residence was on one hand an armory and on the other hand a storehouse for local farmers with seed, fertilizer and what else I don’t know. The district suffered from a long dry spell with dust and more dust wherever we went. We traveled by jeep with an armory of weapons and guard trucks. He stopped at one village, then another cultivating a straight-on validation with the farmers. He gave them his promise and he gave them hope. At this he was a master and it provided a strong basis for his success.

I always got his list of needs before I left the district and they were not small. But I struggled with USAID and the Department about the things he absolutely needed and, occasionally, forged a signature or two…but I did get him, by and large, what he needed. His wife, a beautiful woman, also from Srisaket, wove a whole pattern of interaction with the women of the villages. She was, I thought, his alter-ego and had even planted zinnias in front of the house, posting a frail hope against the forces of dust, lack of water and the waxing insurgency.

The battle never slackened until, at some unknown point, he had put things together, raising his district as an example of what could—and should—be done. He began to give talks about the technique and the procedures he used. A series of these talks given to the District Officers Academy were eventually published in the book, Fighting The Communist Insurgency With Village Cooperation. Sincerity distinguished Sai’s personality from all others—at least in my view. He always followed what he had written, namely that “I believe and am confident that we will win only with the cooperation of the villagers to fight… the soldiers, police and local officials should be here to assist and act in supporting roles.”

Saisith was eventually promoted to be Deputy Governor of Ubol charged to coordinate overall efforts to fight the insurgency and insure that the village people had their say in what they wanted and what they needed. Through his book and his talks to government officials, he articulated a plan that proved successful.

After my last visit, I wrote a poem about him that I now realize he probably never saw. I’ve attached it here:

TO A DISTRICT OFFICER