Indochina: More and More Fighters

FOR years, it was the place where fighting was off-limits, a sort of combat-free Camelot with mangoes. The Communists, secure in their sanctuaries near the South Vietnamese border, were happy to limit themselves to resting and resupplying there. The allies, fearful of violating its avowed neutrality, kept out almost entirely. But Indochina's Camelot has now become a free-fire zone, and almost everyone with a stake in the outcome of the war seems to be sending troops or advisers into Cambodia.

Ancestral Home. President Nixon, to be sure, maintained last week that the five-week-old allied drive into the Communist sanctuaries has been "the most successful operation of this long and difficult war." On the home front, he partly succeeded in reassuring his audience and lowering the decibels of protest against the Cambodian foray. Nevertheless, throughout Cambodia the fighting was intensifying and the list of fighters was still growing.

The anti-Communist regime of Premier Lon Nol announced that it had invited Thailand to send several thousand troops to help defend it against attack from the increasingly wide-ranging Communist troops. South Viet Nam, besides moving ARVN regulars into Cambodia to clean out the sanctuaries, has ordered all available troops from its own Khmer minority to take up the defense of their ancestral home, and about 2,000 are in Cambodia now.

North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops, retreating westward from their occupied sanctuaries, struck targets over a wide area of Cambodia. One force blew up a bridge and entered the city of Kompong Thorn, capital of the province just north of the capital province of Kandal. Another overran the river town of Setbo, a mere ten miles from Phnom-Penh, and held it for two days before being driven back by two hastily summoned and ill-equipped battalions of Cambodian soldiers. The Vietnamese Communist forces in Cambodia were reinforced by relatively small numbers of Cambodian Communist troops (the Khmer Rouge) and reportedly by some units of Pathet Lao, a native Communist force in Laos. There were even rumors, discounted by most Western experts, that some Chinese Communist soldiers had joined the fray.

By far the most dramatic turn in the fighting occurred in the northern provincial capital of Siem Reap, only 21 miles from the fabled temple ruins at Angkor. At midweek, following reports of Communist movement in the area, the hastily fortified Siem Reap airport was shut down. Only twelve hours after the last planeload of tourists had lifted off, the Communists attacked the airport, the most modern in Cambodia, and then the city.

With the help of emergency reinforcements, the Cambodian army repelled both attacks. At week's end the Communists were reported withdrawing toward the centuries-old ruins. Fearful of battle damage to the remains of the storied Khmer empire, one of the world's most treasured antiquities, the Cambodian government ruled out either a defense of the monuments or an attack if they were taken. One rumor had it that the deposed chief of state, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, might try to move his exile government to Siem Reap. Most observers figured, however, that the Communists picked the temple area as a target to embarrass Lon Nol's government and would not try to hold it.

In addition to their random attacks, the Communists have succeeded in the vital strategic step of establishing a water-borne infiltration route into territory adjacent to South Viet Nam. Now it runs along the Se Kong in southern Laos (called the Tonle Kong when it enters Cambodia), continues via the Mekong to the town of Kratie in east-central Cambodia, and leads into the northern provinces of III Corps in South Viet Nam. Allied military analysts remain convinced, however, that the new route could not possibly support all the Communist troops in Cambodia and South Viet Nam. Nonetheless, their method of milling around has thrown Cambodia into near desperation.

Secret Visits. It was obviously in the hope of obtaining some relief that the Lon Nol regime issued its plea to Thailand. Bangkok agreed to supply up to 20,000 troops plus a naval flotilla and aerial reconnaissance planes. The troops, described as volunteers, will all be members of Thailand's 300,000-member Khmer ethnic minority, presumably to avoid rekindling the deep historical animosities between Thais and Cambodians. There is speculation that the Thai troops, who will probably not arrive for several weeks, will be deployed principally around population centers and along the western border.

Cambodia's other new-found ally, South Viet Nam, has moved more quickly--some diplomats fear too quickly --to bolster Cambodia's anti-Communist regime. Last week, after a series of secret visits to Phnom-Penh to coordinate military planning, Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky paid the first official visit by a South Vietnamese government leader to the capital since the two nations broke relations in 1963. Dressed with his usual flamboyance in an olive-green Nehru suit, Ky and his striking wife Mai emerged smiling from a special DC-6 airliner at the capital's Pochentong airport.

Major Beachhead. Ky was seeking guarantees of safety for the 400,000 or so Vietnamese civilians who remain in Cambodia; 70,000 have already fled from a wave of ethnic persecution, and Saigon is worried that it cannot continue to absorb so many refugees. Ky was also anxious to put the finishing touches on a pending bilateral military pact, which will probably allow the South Vietnamese to maintain a major beachhead at Cambodia's vital Neak Luong ferry crossing on the Mekong River, beyond the June 30 deadline for U.S. departure. Also under discussion is a plan that would allow the Vietnamese to strike inside a 30-mile "corridor of operations" in Cambodia without notifying the Phnom-Penh government.

The ultimate plans of Cambodia's two larger neighbors are still far from clear, and history is anything but an encouraging guide. Says one diplomat: "Before the French came to Cambodia, her neighbors were devouring her--Viet Nam on the east, Thailand on the west. There is no reason to believe that the historical processes that the French interrupted in 1863 will not be permitted to continue." North Viet Nam, after all, already has all but planted its flag in the northeast.

First Drill. No one's plans--including some of Washington's--were made much clearer by President Nixon's "interim report" over television last week on the border ventures. While the President promised that air support would end with the withdrawal of U.S. troops, he said that American "air missions to interdict the movement of enemy troops" would continue "where I find that is necessary." That hedge leaves considerable room for prolonging U.S. involvement in Cambodia. He also declined to be specific about South Viet Nam's withdrawal schedule. Saigon's operations in Cambodia, he said, "will be determined by the level of enemy activity."

Communist attacks on points increasingly close to the capital forced Phnom-Penh to institute a series of wartime austerity measures. Residents of the capital last week held their first civil defense drill amid the wail of sirens and the roar of low-flying aircraft. The government has instituted martial law, decreeing execution for anyone who advocates defection and life imprisonment for deserters. Moreover, the army has been expanded to about 150,000 men --a fourfold increase since March. Its quality is something else. By putting so many untrained, poorly armed men in uniform, said a diplomat sympathetic to the regime, "the Cambodians are only adding on more rooms to a condemned house." Plainly, Phnom-Penh is going to be leaning on its newfound friends for some time to come.

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