Word: warlords
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Surprising Turndown. Last week the government responded to a reform long urged by the U.S. by finally doing something about the blatant corruption that has traditionally attached to the powerful and tempting "warlord" posts of the corps commanders. It appointed as IV Corps (the Delta) commander General Nguyen Due Thang, the country's onetime pacification chief, who is generally regarded as one of the ablest, brightest and most honest officers in the Vietnamese army. He replaces General Nguyen Van Manh, a portly, indecisive officer who has presided over the steady disintegration of the government's Delta position...
...Modern Warlord. The squabble is not concerned with the growing or gathering of opium; that job belongs for the most part to such primitive tribesmen as the Meo, Ekaw, Bolong, Wa and Yao, who slit the poppy-seed pods for their resin, boil it into sticky raw opium, and roll it into loaves of one to five pounds. The fight grows out of a jurisdictional dispute between tribute-collecting soldiers and smugglers who deliver the stuff into the hands of the two Chinese syndicates that control the opium export from Laos...
...recoilless rifles, as well as rifles and machine guns. But lately they have been bugged by increasing independence on the part of smugglers, such as Chan Chi-foo, a slender half-Chinese, half-Shan tribesman in his 30s who speaks softly but carries the big stick of a modern warlord, commanding the services of perhaps 2,000 well-armed...
...Well aware of the South Vietnamese army's inadequacies, the Vietnamese joint general staff is at work on plans to reorganize its forces "from top to bottom," as Ky puts it. One proposal would disband the four corps commands and the ten divisions, with their tempting opportunities for warlord graft and corruption, and create more flexible units that would specialize in pacification efforts, counterguerrilla action, and search-and-destroy missions. With U.S. help, General Vien has launched several new training programs designed to help soldiers learn everything from setting guerrilla-style ambushes to assisting villagers in building pigpens...
...Chinese communists are the classic practitioners of successful guerrilla warfare. China was a country mired in social and economical injustice, with an impotent and corrupt government. Nevertheless, the Red Army was on the verge of destruction when the Japanese invasion in 1937 drove the Nationalist and warlord forces away and thus allowed the guerrillas to enter the villages not only as reformers but also as effective champions of nationalism in opposition to a foreign invader. Mao Tse-tung rode to victory on these two waves of support. It was foreign occupation of China and not some magic Maoist technique which...