Word: khmer
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...Ruthless Khmer Rouge guerrillas impose a harsh life on 60,000 Kampucheans warehoused in four refugee camps in eastern Thailand. The practice of Buddhism is banned, marriages are permitted only with the consent of the Khmer Rouge cadres, and education is restricted to recitation of Communist tracts. But those who are stuck in the Thailand camps are the lucky ones...
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...
...current military strength of the Khmer Rouge, largest of the three guerrilla groups (the others are Sihanouk's Nationalist Army and former Premier Son Sann's Khmer People's National Liberation Front), is in dispute. Soviet and Vietnamese military advisers insist that the Kampuchean armed forces can contain the threat, but Western analysts have their doubts. Kampuchea's 30,000-man regular army and the 100,000 irregulars assigned to defend their country are largely untested. Many Kampucheans fear that once the Vietnamese draw down their forces, the Khmer Rouge may succeed in grabbing power once more...
Even now, the Khmer Rouge, with an estimated 30,000 to 35,000 guerrillas in the field, are strong enough to carry out effective military operations in many parts of the country. Soviet officials, who number in the hundreds, are not allowed, for fear of ambush, to travel by car in the countryside or to use the open, bicycle-driven pedicabs that provide most of the transportation in Phnom Penh...
...less than pleased with their country's commitment to the Heng Samrin government, which they estimate costs $58 million a year. Nonetheless, Kampuchea's vital signs are strengthening. An illegal import trade thrives, especially in motorbikes smuggled from Thailand. Phnom Penh, almost empty during the years of Khmer Rouge rule, is coming back to life: its population, which had never reached half a million, is now 650,000 to 800,000. City officials believe that more than half are refugees who have settled in empty villas and apartment houses. Says a construction official: "They are making the capital their...