Word: lon
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Until the 1970 coup d'etat, in which Marshal Lon Not overthrew the government of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the Cambodian rebel force, then known as the Khmer Rouge, was a ragged band of perhaps 3,000 guerrillas who were affiliated with the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong. Since then, the rebels have grown into a seasoned revolutionary army of at least 45,000 troops, with a solid support cadre of more than 70,000 civilians. Last week, after visiting Phnom-Penh, TIME Correspondent Barry Hillenbrand sent this report on the insurgents...
...official policy of the Lon Nol government is to lump all antigovernment forces together as "the Vietnamese Communists." By contrast, a young Khmer with royal blood and intelligence contacts makes an impassioned case that the K.I. are not really Communists at all, but anti-Lon Nol forces who would quickly settle the war if the marshal were put out to pasture...
...part Sihanoukist. Equally clear is that their military training and direction come from Hanoi. The 1970 coup, the subsequent U.S. and South Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, and the American bombing, served as the rallying point to bring all these factions together. They are united too in their contempt for Lon Nol, who is widely viewed as an American puppet-and an ineffectual and corrupt one at that...
Those who have gone over to the K.I. include entire units of disgruntled soldiers from the Cambodian army, thousands of dissident intellectuals and professionals and at least ten battalions of Cambodian-born Vietnamese-a minority group that was massacred after the coup by Lon Nol's troops, who whipped up traditional anti-Vietnamese enmity to a frenzy. There are also battle-seasoned remnants of the old Khmer Viet Minh who fought against the French and went to North Viet Nam after the 1954 Geneva agreements. Intelligence sources estimate that 1,800 of these men have been put in command...
...real leadership is obscure, so are the insurgents' goals. There is evidence that some elements would be willing to settle for a coalition government if they could only get rid of Lon Nol. On the other hand, it is argued, why should they agree to talk with a government they have all but defeated on the battlefield? Still another view is that any settlement in Cambodia is not in the Communists' interests at this time because it would be overly threatening to the U.S., South Viet Nam and Thailand. Indeed, when the time is ripe...