Word: cambodians
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Prince Sihanouk, was suddenly imperiled by the Viet Nam conflict. At the time, Cambodia was an overwhelmingly agricultural country that exported rice. Though it could hardly have been termed prosperous?per capita income was only $110 a year?its people lived relatively well by Asian standards. Unfortunately, the Cambodian army was weak and poorly equipped; Sihanouk was unable to prevent the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese from using parts of the country as sanctuaries and resupply routes for their forces in South Viet Nam. The existence of these sanctuaries led the U.S. to launch what would become highly controversial...
Systematic pillaging by Vietnamese troops has compounded the country's plight. Cambodian shops, homes and Buddhist temples have been stripped by Hanoi's invaders. Machines, household appliances, furniture and Buddha heads have been loaded aboard planes and trucks and shipped to Viet Nam. There are even reports that the Vietnamese are loading rice intended for refugees aboard carriers headed for Hanoi...
...help arm the Thais against a Vietnamese incursion, but Washington seems virtually helpless to influence the apparently inexorable course of events that is engulfing the Cambodian people. One reason is that the war being waged inside the country is ultimately a reflection of the deep-rooted Sino-Soviet conflict. Another is that Hanoi perceives all humanitarian efforts by the world to feed the starving Cambodians as "interference" in the affairs of the Phnom-Penh government. In spite of growing Western pressure, many diplomatic observers believe that Phnom-Penh, under Hanoi's direction, will continue to obstruct any large-scale relief...
...that chilling assessment is correct, what does the future hold for Cambodians who may survive the present famine? No viable alternative to Vietnamese rule exists at present. Some Cambodian emigres have placed their hopes in the Khmer Serei, or Free Khmers. These survivors of the Lon Nol forces are bitter enemies of both the Vietnamese and the Khmer Rouge. But with only 3,000 able-bodied soldiers, concentrated in western Battambang province, the Khmer Serei are a very remote threat to Hanoi. TIME's Clark visited a camp on the Cambodian-Thai border north of Aranyaprathet where there are Khmer...
...regime when the former Chief of State had boldly returned to Cambodia at the height of the Khmer Rouge terror. He re-emerged just as Phnom-Penh fell to the Vietnamese invaders last January. He appeared at the U.N. to make an impassioned speech in favor of Cambodian independence in which he compared Viet Nam to a "starving boa constrictor leaping on an innocent animal...