Word: pols
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...years since Phnom-Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge, more than a third of the population of Cambodia, once estimated at 8 million, has perished from war, disease and the genocidal policies of the murderous Pol Pot regime. Last week, as the Vietnamese prepared for a final onslaught on sanctuaries near the Thai border used by the Pol Pot forces, Cambodia faced yet another horror: a famine. At least 2 million people are believed to be on the verge of death by starvation or disease. Many have been reduced to eating the leaves off trees, peeling the bark and boiling...
Famine is only the latest in a series of wrenching tragedies that have befallen Cambodia since it first became engulfed by the Indochina war in 1970. Following the Communist takeover by China-backed Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge in 1975, between 2 million and 3 million Cambodians were systematically murdered or otherwise eliminated under a genocidal "purification" policy. It was aimed at destroying the educated class and creating a peasant society. Some journalists who have visited the country have seen mass graves and torture camps reminiscent of Dachau and Auschwitz...
...December 1978, Viet Nam invaded Cambodia, swiftly managed to depose Pol Pot and installed Samrin as President. In fierce fighting against the surviving Khmer Rouge cadres, food became a military weapon on both sides. Explained a Western military analyst in Bangkok last week: "If you can't grow food, you can't eat, and if you can't eat, you can't fight." Rice crops have been destroyed and planting new fields has become dangerous. Pol Pot's forces harass farmers in areas controlled by Viet Nam, while the Vietnamese do their best to prevent...
Shaplen emphasizes the United States' failures in any number of Asian revolutions, offering candid assessments of people and policies that contributed to our mistakes. His chapters on the Indochinese nations, particularly Vietnam and Cambodia, are especially effective. He reminisces colorfully on Saigon under siege and the atrocities of Pol Pot's regime but does not limit himself to narrative. In the section entitled, "Why the Americans Failed," he writes...
...There are 50 doctors in the whole of Cambodia, there are 350 in Paris alone. The government has eight cars and there are four locomotives in the whole country. Pol Pot just destroyed the human society's ability to survive. The end result of all the wars is a society going towards extinction," Howard said...