Word: khmer
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Nearly a decade of bloodshed and upheaval has left the country in ruins, its population decimated, its economy shattered. The countryside is still ravaged by a war between invading Vietnamese troops who support Hanoi's puppet regime of Heng Samrin in Phnom-Penh and diehard Khmer Rouge guerrillas loyal to ousted Premier...
...launched the secret B-52 raids in 1969. Those raids drove many Hanoi troops out of the border areas and into central Cambodia, where they inevitably tangled with the ill-equipped Cambodian army. As the fighting progressed, the Vietnamese forces inside Cambodia were steadily supplanted by the indigenous Khmer Rouge guerrillas...
During those five years of fighting, a once fertile and peaceful nation became a wasteland. The capital, Phnom-Penh, swelled from 600,000 to more than 2 million, as refugees from the countryside sought first to escape the intensive U.S. bombing and later the increasing terrorism of the Khmer Rouge. Where rice had formerly been exported, starvation became commonplace. Inflation soared. Yet through all the suffering, Shawcross notes, Washington continued to support the "bankrupt" and "corrupt" regime of Lon Nol because he was willing, if far from able, to go on fighting the Communists...
Then came Viet Nam's lightning conquest of Cambodia. Within a month of its full-scale invasion on Christmas Day, pro-Hanoi insurgents backed by Vietnamese regulars routed the barbarous China-supported Khmer Rouge regime of Pol Pot. Few international tears were shed as Pol Pot and the straggling remnants of his army were driven into western jungle pockets. From these redoubts, the Khmer Rouge has carried on vigorous resistance against the new regime, a pro-Vietnamese government headed by a former Khmer Rouge defector, Heng Samrin, and propped up by an estimated 130,000 Vietnamese troops. For China...
China is helping keep that resistance alive, Teng revealed during his visit, by resupplying the Khmer Rouge insurgents through Thailand. Kriangsak last week skirted questions about the Chinese action as "speculation." Thailand, however, probably could not stop the resupply effort even if it wanted to. U.S. intelligence believes that Chinese boats are landing supplies on Thailand's southeastern coast for easy transshipment across a sliver of Thai territory to Cambodia...