Word: viets
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Viet Nam and Cambodia clash in a far from fraternal border conflict
Fighting raged once again in Indochina last week, and troops surged into Cambodia's Parrot's Beak region, where American forces in 1970 had made their highly controversial incursion. This time, however, the foes were two Communist nations that had survived and triumphed over U.S. might. Viet Nam and Cambodia (which now calls itself Democratic Kampuchea) challenged each other not only with deadly gunfire but with blasts of bitter propaganda, while their sponsoring powers, the Soviet Union and China, watched uneasily from the sidelines...
...propaganda war was just as intense. Phnom-Penh accused its neighbors in Viet Nam of destroying Cambodian rubber plantations, burning forests, seizing cattle and poultry, even "raping and killing our women in crueler manner than the Thieu-Ky and South Korean mercenary troops of the past." Hanoi charged that Cambodia's Khmer Rouge guerrillas had made incursions into Viet Nam and had looted and sacked its pagodas, schools and hospitals. Far worse, it accused the guerrillas of "raping, tearing fetuses from mothers' wombs, disemboweling adults and burning children alive." Were it not for the fact that thousands...
...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...
...extreme that embarrasses Big Brother China, started a reign of terror at home and abroad. Cambodians were driven from Phnom-Penh to the countryside; thousands, including Communists, were purged and killed, and thousands more fled the country. Obsessed with their long hatred of a powerful neighbor, the Cambodians forced Viet Nam to withdraw from the Parrot's Beak. The Khmer Rouge, meanwhile, also occupied several disputed islands in the Gulf of Siam, forcing Vietnamese to leave. After that, relations between the two neighbors disintegrated into a series of border raids punctuated by ineffectual attempts to negotiate their differences...