Word: border
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...dead and their land in ruins. But at long last the shell-shocked country had something to cheer. Cambodians crowded the streets last week to hail the withdrawal of the last of the 200,000 Vietnamese troops who had occupied their country for nearly eleven years. Across the eastern border in Viet Nam, there was also celebration. Senior officials embraced the leaders of the returning units, and parents rushed to greet their returning sons...
Even as the occupiers marched off, Cambodians attacked one another along the western border shared with Thailand. At dawn on Saturday, 5,000 fighters from the non-Communist resistance group linked to former Prime Minister Son Sann launched an offensive that thrust as deep as 30 miles into northwestern Cambodia, claiming to capture several towns along Route 69 in a test of strength against the army of Phnom Penh. As for Viet Nam's soldiers, they left behind more than 50,000 dead and returned home to a nation demoralized by poverty, unemployment, food shortages, corruption and continuing status...
...perhaps 150,000 in all, which Hun Sen hopes will do better at defending their homes. As yet, both the army and the rural militias are largely untested. But last week the regulars were still resisting a Khmer Rouge offensive on Pailin, a ruby-rich district near the Thai border that is critical to the rebels' infiltration route...
...declared aim of their offensive was to test the strength of the government and force resumption of political talks. The Khmer Rouge are a different matter. Inside Cambodia the common wisdom is that Khmer Rouge strength and ability are overrated. But the view from the border, where most of the troops are based, is far less sanguine. "The Khmer Rouge are in this fight to the end," says a guerrilla- warfare expert in Thailand. Observes an international relief worker: "They are known as a clean and disciplined movement, not corrupt like the others...
...Again in 1984, Rather narrated a segment claiming to depict 4,000 Afghans fleeing their villages near Kabul out of fear of Soviet attacks. Etabari told the Post that the film was shot miles away at the Afghan-Pakistani border...