Double Trouble

In the two years since its emergence as a major battleground of the Indochina war, Cambodia has teetered precariously between two kinds of trouble --military and political. Last week the once placid nation of 7,000,000 found itself deeply distressed by both.

Militarily, Cambodia has become a doormat for Indochina's warring forces. In its eastern provinces, 10,000 ARVN troops were cautiously probing the sanctuaries where elements of three North Vietnamese divisions are believed to be waiting for the signal to open their long-awaited dry-season offensive in South Viet Nam. Meanwhile, Communist units deeper inside Cambodia opened their own offensive. In midweek, a force of Communist artillerymen, perhaps no more than 200 strong, struck the capital with a devastating, 90-minute rocket and mortar barrage.

Nothing Left. By the Cambodian government's count, no fewer than 115 rocket and mortar rounds fell on the city and nearby Pochentong Airport, which had been the target of another well-planned attack 15 months ago.

The hardest-hit section of Phnom-Penh was a teeming slum that houses war refugees and soldiers' families. During the barrage, 27 rockets pounded into the area, which is roughly the size of three football fields. At least 47 were killed and 56 injured, either in the blasts or in the fires that leveled every shack and lean-to in the area. By late morning, cabled TIME Correspondent Stanley Cloud, "nothing was left but a smoldering, stinking layer of ashes littered with the charred corpses of chickens, pigs and people. I learned that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the petrified, ashen remains of a pig from those of a human being, particularly if the human being was a child whose lower limbs were blown off in the explosions. In a little hollow, one worker was sifting through the ashes with one hand, while, in the other hand, he held a roasted human foot. As he worked, a few small boys, their faces somehow old with fear, moved among the silent onlookers begging for money."

Over the next three days, the Communists followed up with sapper attacks that crippled two freighters moored near Phnom-Penh's docks and severely damaged an important bridge. But there was no sign that they wanted to take the city, or even to increase the considerable swath of Cambodian territory under their control. What was the point of it all? According to some speculation, the attacks were a counterpoint to the festivities surrounding the second anniversary of the overthrow of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, under whose rule North Vietnamese troops had free use of Cambodia's ports and jungle sanctuaries near South Viet Nam.

It was not a happy anniversary in any case. Cambodians are less and less enamored of the mystical and sometimes maddeningly extemporaneous Marshal Lon Nol, who seems bent on re-establishing a Sihanouk-style autocracy. When the rockets hit, Lon Nol was deep in a political crisis that was very largely of his own making. Three weeks ago, he threw the country's campuses into turmoil by declaring himself chief of state and abolishing a constituent assembly that was about to promulgate a long-awaited new constitution establishing presidential government. Lon Nol did not care for some of the constitution's features, among them a provision allowing the legislature to cashier the executive branch of the government at will.

At first unwilling to take their wrath out on Lon Nol, the student demonstrators went after his able, aristocratic No. 2 man Sisowath Sirik Matak, whom they accused of "arroganice" and of sheltering corrupt officials. Last week Sirik Matak resigned, along with the entire government. Lon Nol declared himself President as well as chief of state. On the day of the rocket attack, he announced the formation of a new government under Son Ngoc Thanh, an ardent nationalist who for years had fought Sihanouk, reportedly with CIA backing, from exile in Saigon and Bangkok. Lon Nol, however, will preside over the Cabinet, in which Son will serve as Foreign Minister and "First Minister," a sort of primus inter pares. Meantime, the political shuffling has clearly enhanced the backstage strength of Lon Nol's younger brother Lon Non, a shrewd manipulator who is widely thought to have backed the student demonstrations that brought down Sirik Matak. But, as Lon Non told Correspondent Cloud last week: "It is very difficult for foreigners to understand developments in Cambodia. I would only advise that no one worry too much."

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