Monday, Jul. 07, 1980

A Show of Military Muscle

By Marguerite Johnson

Viet Nam's brief incursion threatened Thailand's security

Non Mak Mun is a peaceful little Thai town about a mile from the Cambodian border. Early one morning last week the villagers were awakened by the sound of gunfire. Then, over a loudspeaker came an unfamiliar voice: "We won't kill any Thais. All we will take is some food." Similar sounds awakened Cambodian refugees at two camps straddling the nearby border between Thailand and Cambodia. All too soon they recognized the fatigue-clad intruders who had stolen into their midst under cover of darkness as Vietnamese soldiers. As back-up mortar and artillery fire echoed in the distance, the Vietnamese began digging foxholes at the camps, sending the frightened refugees fleeing into nearby paddyfields.

The Vietnamese incursion into Thailand was mercifully brief. Nonetheless it raised international alarms that Hanoi was threatening to pursue into Thailand its war against Cambodian Khmer Rouge guerrillas still loyal to the ousted Pol Pot regime. Many of the estimated 600,000 Cambodians who have fled to Thailand or border camps over the past two years have been sympathetic to either the Khmer Rouge or non-Communist groups known collectively as the Khmer Serei. All oppose the Hanoi-installed regime of Heng Samrin in Phnom-Penh. By midweek virtually all of the Vietnamese had withdrawn. But the action appeared to have slowed, if not halted, a United Nations program to repatriate to Cambodia any refugees volunteering to go. Moreover, with some 10,000 of their troops still poised along the border area, the Vietnamese remained an ominous threat to Thailand's security.

The incursion was carried out by elements of Viet Nam's crack 75th Division. It had no discernible military target. There were small probes along a section of the eastern border of Thailand stretching from Surin province in the north to Trat province in the south.

The main thrust occurred at the two border camps just north of Aranyaprathet. The camps, at Non Mak Mun and Nong Chan, had long been a source of annoyance to the Vietnamese. Non Mak Mun was the headquarters of a Khmer Serei group known as the National Liberation Front of Cambodia. Nong Chan was the main dispersal point for the "land bridge" program, operated by international relief agencies, that distributed rice, seed and other supplies inside Cambodia. The camps were also the sites of huge jungle black markets, where smugglers bought sarongs, watches, cigarettes and other consumer goods for resale in Cambodia.

Hanoi apparently acted also to show its anger over the U.N. repatriation effort. Viet Nam has charged that the program was a plot to strengthen the Khmer Rouge resistance. In the single week that it had been in operation, 8,700 Khmers had returned to Cambodia. Pol Pot's rebel forces somehow managed to survive Cambodia's dry season against overwhelming Vietnamese armor and airpower. Now that the monsoon rains have arrived, the Khmer Rouge's clandestine radio has announced plans to step up the guerrilla war against the 200,000-man Vietnamese army occupying the country.

At the same time, Hanoi undoubtedly wanted to give Thailand a demonstration of its military muscle. Viet Nam has long accused Thailand of providing military support to the Khmer Rouge and Khmer Serei guerrillas. Most observers say that the charge is accurate. Khmer soldiers, with Thai acquiescence, habitually seek refuge in the border camps, replenish their food supplies and then return to Cambodia to fight. Thailand, like the U.N., the U.S., China and several other Asian states, has refused to recognize the Hanoi-sponsored Heng Samrin government, even though it succeeded the vicious, genocidal reign of Pol Pot.

Thai forces reacted swiftly to the Vietnamese assault. Ground units swept the invaded area with automatic weapons fire, while helicopter gunships strafed Vietnamese sighted in scrub land outside the camps. After the Vietnamese shot down a Thai chopper and observation plane, the Thais moved in heavy reinforcements of tanks and armored cars to the front. TIME Hong Kong Bureau Chief Marsh Clark visited the scene while the fighting was still going on. "Thousands of refugees were fleeing down the road," he reported, "and many others squatted in the water of the overflowing rice paddies, the picture of abject misery. 'Well, we're on the move again,' said one Khmer. Herders, many of them carrying shotguns, drove bunches of cattle down the roads and across the fields, spurred by the whooshing sounds of Thai howitzer shells passing overhead.

"At a dirt crossroads about a mile from the Non Mak Mun camp was a Thai pickup truck. The front windshield was blasted completely away, and a helmet lay on the blood-covered floor. A few hours later, Thai soldiers dragged the body of the driver, one of their men, from the paddy. In another paddyfield, seven dead Vietnamese soldiers were fished out. Suddenly someone yelled 'Incoming!' and we leaped out of the car. Mortar rounds, fired by Vietnamese down the road, were landing very close. After five near hit rounds, we sprinted for a nearby culvert where we cowered, along with some villagers, until the barrage was over."

Thai military officials later said that their artillery had struck a Vietnamese fire base about four miles inside Cambodia. Military casualties were relatively light; the Thais claimed to have recovered 72 Vietnamese dead and lost 22 of their own men. But hundreds of refugees were reported killed, many by a Thai artillery barrage that was lobbed into one of the camps. Others were caught in the crossfire. Two International Red Cross officials and two American photographers were apparently captured by Vietnamese soldiers while they were inspecting the refugee encampment at Nong Chan.

International condemnation of the Vietnamese action was swift. China, which invaded Viet Nam early last year "to teach Hanoi a lesson," warned of the "grave danger" of such military adventures. "In dealing with wolves, it will have merely limited effect to raise a hue and cry," editorialized Hong Kong's pro-Communist daily Ta Kung Pao. "Only with the use of a big stick or of guns can the wolves be driven away or beaten to death."

U.S. Secretary of State Edmund Muskie, on his way to Kuala Lumpur for a foreign ministers' meeting of the ASEAN group (Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines), also condemned the attack as a Soviet-backed act of aggression that threatened Thailand's security. On arrival, Muskie immediately huddled with Thailand's Foreign Minister and promised a rapid speedup of U.S. arms deliveries to Thai land. In Bangkok, U.S. Ambassador Mor ton Abramowitz delivered a message from Muskie to Hanoi's Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach, who was making an unofficial stopover there on his way home from a visit to Indonesia. Thach denied that any Vietnamese troops had entered Thailand.

Throughout the week, Washington remained in close consultation with the Bangkok government over the military threat. The Thais decided not to invoke the 1954 Manila Pact, which obligates the U.S. to help meet Thailand's security needs in the event of armed attack. But Bangkok did ask for increased military and security assistance. Washington responded by announcing an immediate air lift of artillery, ammunition, machine guns and other automatic weapons, and quick delivery of at least some of the 35 M48 A5 tanks that Thailand was slated to receive this year.

--By Marguerite Johnson

Reported by Marsh Clark/Hong Kong

With reporting by Marsh Clark

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