Word: kampuchea
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...decades, Kampuchea has been torn by one of the 20th century's goriest conflicts. During its 3 1/2-year reign, the sternly Communist Khmer Rouge killed anywhere from 1 million to 2 million Kampucheans in a genocidal resettlement program. Up to another million fled, swarming into refugee camps across the border in Thailand. In 1979 invading Vietnamese troops overthrew the murderous Pol Pot. Since then, the Hanoi-backed government in Phnom Penh has been at war with a coalition of three rebel factions that includes as many as 35,000 fighters of the ousted Khmer Rouge...
...keep Hanoi from overrunning the region, want to oust the invaders, even if that means risking a return of the Khmer Rouge killers. Suddenly, however, a rare convergence of interests among all parties has made the prospect appear bright that a political settlement may finally end the fighting in Kampuchea. The new optimism has been triggered by a "peace blitz" in Asian capitals. Kampuchean President Heng Samrin began raising hopes earlier this month when he said Hanoi might be willing to withdraw its estimated 50,000 remaining troops by September...
...global boom in peacemaking that brightened 1988 is continuing into the new year -- and into the new American Administration. The cease-fire in the Iran-Iraq war is holding, and there is progress toward an end to the Vietnamese occupation of Kampuchea. But in the background of all the promising jaw-jaw going on at conference tables around the world is the muted but discordant sound of the superpowers bickering over which one deserves more credit for peace breaking...
Since June, Khmer Rouge fighters have forcibly relocated some 12,000 of the refugees to makeshift camps just across the border inside Kampuchea, to serve as porters for the guerrillas. These refugees are sitting ducks for Vietnamese artillery fire. In recent weeks hundreds have been killed by shelling and booby traps...
...Khmer Rouge seems to be using the refugees as pawns to seize land in Kampuchea as Vietnamese troops carry out their phased withdrawal from the country, due to be complete by 1990. Last week, responding to international pressure, Thailand promised to boost security around the permanent Khmer Rouge camps to halt the forced relocations and general thuggery...