Word: khmer
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Silence finally fell across Cambodia's battlefields last week after five years of fratricidal fighting that claimed as many as 1 million casualties, leveled once graceful Cambodian cities and scorched the tranquil countryside. Admitting the futility of further resistance, the remaining leaders of the Khmer Republic drove to a prearranged meeting place-Kilometer 6 on Route 5-and there surrendered to officers of the Communist-dominated Khmer Rouge insurgents. Not since Seoul was overrun by North Korean attackers nearly a quarter-century ago had a national capital fallen in combat to Communist troops...
There were, to be sure, some ominous notes. When the Khmer Rouge seized the government radio station, a rebel spokesman said menacingly in a broadcast: "We did not come here to talk. The Lon Nol clique [a reference to the President, who fled about a month ago] and some of its officers should all be hanged." Fearing reprisals from the Communists, a number of government officials and military officers, plus an estimated 2,000 other Cambodians, took refuge in the Hotel Le Phnom, which the International Red Cross had declared a neutral zone...
...Ministry of Information, meanwhile, the Khmer Rouge commander in Phnom-Penh broadcast an appeal to all "ministers and generals who have not run away" to meet with him to "help formulate measures to restore order." At week's end, although almost all communication with Phnom-Penh was closed, there were unconfirmed reports that the Khmer Rouge had beheaded some members of the former government. There was no word as to the fate of Premier Long Boret, who was said to have been arrested while attempting to escape by helicopter...
...ended a bloody chapter that began in March 1970, after a bloodless coup ousted Prince Norodom Sihanouk as chief of state. The new regime, headed by General Lon Nol, almost immediately launched a campaign to drive Hanoi's troops from their base camps inside Cambodia and quash the Khmer Rouge, a ragtag band of 3,000 to 5,000 leftist guerrillas. After initial hesitations, Washington backed the new regime. The U.S. invasion of Cambodia in 1970, directed against North Vietnamese sanctuaries, was partly designed to help Lon Nol. Also helpful were $1.8 billion in aid and thousands of bombing...
Swelling Ranks. For the first two years of the war, highly professional North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers fought beside the Khmer Rouge; as volunteers and conscripted peasants swelled their ranks, the rebels fought alone. By the time the U.S. bombing ceased, the Communists claimed 90% of Cambodia's territory and were on the outskirts of the capital. Only the stubborn and unexpected resistance of the government's poorly paid troops kept Phnom-Penh from falling in 1973 or 1974. This year, when the insurgents blockaded the Mekong River and cut off all land access to the capital...