Word: mekong
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...warned to pack up and join their husbands if they ever want to see them again. The Pathet Lao's reluctance to let its captives go is understandable: of 16 prisoners released from the Vieng Sai re-education camps in 1976, more than half eventually fled across the Mekong River into Thailand...
...rivalry between Cambodia and Viet Nam started centuries ago, fueled by religious differences and by economic competition over the Mekong River basin, and has never ceased. Common cause against the South Viet Nam regime and the U.S. merely dampened mutual hatreds; even in the midst of war, there were incidents between them. In 1973 the Khmer Rouge attacked North Vietnamese who were maintaining a wartime supply line through the Parrot's Beak, where Cambodian territory protrudes into Viet Nam. The Cambodians suspected-justifiably, as it turned out-that the Vietnamese were holding Chinese arms meant for Khmer Rouge fighters...
...Khmer Rouge in the Beak, consisting of about 25,000 troops fighting in small groups, mounted occasional ambushes but were no match for the overpowering Vietnamese. Last week Giap's advance units, bypassing towns, finally halted near Neak Luong on the banks of the Mekong River. Though fighting continued sporadically, Hanoi offered to negotiate and restore diplomatic relations, which Phnom-Penh had broken off as the new year began. Refusing the offer, the Cambodians instead angrily accused Moscow of providing troop commanders and advisers for the Vietnamese invasion. At week's end Phnom-Penh admitted that the Vietnamese...
...harvest of these policies has been widespread disillusion and anger. Some 90,000 Laotians have already fled across the Mekong River to Thailand, and an additional 1,000 leave each month. Thousands of others actively oppose the regime; as a result, nearly half of Laos, including much of the fertile Mekong Plain, is contested by insurgents. TIME Hong Kong Correspondent David DeVoss reports that in the north, some 4,500 fiercely independent Meo hill tribesmen operate out of the former CIA base in Long Cheng. Although they have only 3,000 rifles and a dwindling cache of ammunition, they have...
...sometimes snarled and chaotic. There are bitter interservice rivalries, and undercover agents from different branches seldom pool their information. As a result, intelligence is spotty. Despite all this, Thai troops are performing well, and field officers continue to fight the "other war"-that is, gaining village support. Along the Mekong River, army helicopters rain propaganda leaflets on disaffected villages. The government has devised civic ac- tion programs to rebuild damaged hamlets, and anti-guerrilla patrols are often accompanied by doctors who bring free medical care to the hill people. But there remain deep misunderstandings. One deputy chief of a village...