Word: regionals
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Sandino tried to rekindle the spirit of unity in this fragmented region and to add to it a consciousness of the pressing need for a social revolution to accompany the expulsion of foreign powers from the area. He accurately pinpointed the existence of a small Nicaraguan upper class, based on the glaring inequalities of land and wealth, as a critical barrier to any meaningful independence for the Nicaraguan people. Sandino's failure inaugurated the Somoza dictatorship, now challenged by the guerilla leader's spiritual successors 40 years later. Sandinista literature is illustrated with photographs and silhouettes of the original chief...
...government's losses thus far dramatically convey the totality of the military collapse. In the five northernmost provinces constituting Military Region I, the government a month ago had 152,000 troops. By last week 100,000 of them had been put out of service by the Communists. Most simply fled, joining the rush of civilian refugees that streamed desperately southward. In Military Region II, the twelve provinces of central South Viet Nam, the losses were equally staggering. One of the best infantry divisions, the 23rd, was completely annihilated in the battle for Ban Me Thuot, with no more than...
...defend what remains of its territory. True, the government has the equivalent of seven divisions within a 50-mile radius of Saigon, including the 4,000 men of the airborne division that moved down from Danang two weeks ago; there are also some 175,000 popular-force and regional-force soldiers, but Saigon's combat-ready troops are outnumbered by the North Vietnamese forces that have been massing in the capital military region over the past several weeks. Small Viet Cong units have begun infiltrating the capital's suburbs. Moreover, because they are attacking fixed defensive positions, the Communists have...
...rampage when their evacuation ships arrived from Danang. They took over cars and Jeeps at gunpoint, robbing fellow refugees at random. Soldiers even fired on American helicopters and chartered aircraft seeking to land in Cam Ranh. The situation was so bad that field commanders in the military region around Saigon were ordered to execute rioting troops on the spot; one commander in Binh Tuy province east of Saigon ordered some troops shot for indiscipline...
...city that until last week had remained virtually untouched by the war. Long a balmy retreat for G.I.s and Vietnamese alike, the city of 200,000 was on Route 1, the principal north-south road in South Viet Nam, and the recently established headquarters for all of Military Region II. By last week it had fallen victim to the evils that had already become all too familiar since the Communist offensive began...