Word: valleys
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Neither side would budge. One Red battalion was encamped in a small valley called Xieng Ngeun, twelve miles from the ancient capital city of Luang Prabang, and the only exit from the valley was guarded by two Royal Laotian battalions and a detachment of paratroopers. The other was stationed on the wide Plaine des Jarres in north Laos, surrounded by four heavily armed loyal battalions. The Royal Laos handed ultimatums to the Reds, giving them the choice of surrendering their arms and being integrated, or being wiped out; food supplies were cut off. At Xieng Ngeun, his hungry...
...Indus basin is that its six rivers (the Indus, Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Sutlej, Beas) have their upper waters in India, yet flow through Pakistan to empty into the Arabian Sea. For 5,000 years-until partition-the river and canal network was developed as a single unit, creating a valley civilization that stretched back three millenniums before Christ. When the British took over in the 18th century, they added hydraulic engineering to the big and small canals leading off from the fingers of the river system. Some of the canals carry as much water as the Thames, and the system...
...Half the country is burned by the sun, and the other half drowned by the river, while the whole is waterlogged with debt." This description of the Indus valley, made long ago by a British official, holds true today. But the wet and dry Indus valley has a further melancholy distinction: as much as anything else except Kashmir, it serves to keep India and Pakistan at swords' points...
...when India and Pakistan separated amid bloodshed that was exceeded in the 20th century only by the two World Wars, a border line was drawn through the Indus valley, and the water squabble began. Prime Minister Nehru protested that Pakistan demanded practically all the canal flow, while vast areas of India were "simply thirsting and panting for water." Pakistan cried that India's huge irrigation and water-development schemes would turn millions of Pakistani acres into a dust bowl. When India abruptly cut off the waters of one canal system for a month, a Pakistani leader threatened invasion, shouted...
...David Lilienthal, onetime chief of the U.S. Tennessee Valley Authority, visited the subcontinent and concluded that while the two nations quarreled over how much water each got, fully 80% of the Indus flow swept unused to the sea. The question was "pure dynamite," Lilienthal noted, and he urged that an extended canal system be "designed, built and operated as a unit," jointly financed by India, Pakistan and the World Bank...