Armed Conflict in Cambodia

As one who has made more than 20 trips to Cambodia since Operation California’s first emergency medical airlift to famine victims in that country, I want to take strong exception to Marvin Ott’s plea (Editorial Pages, March 13) for continuance of an inhumane armed conflict that has caused the Cambodian people much unnecessary suffering.

Recent military actions have resulted in a renewed outflow of 250,000 Cambodian civilians into border refugee camps in Thailand as a three-pronged Cambodian resistance has crumbled in the face of a superior Vietnamese-backed military offensive.

While the majority of these new refugees are innocent civilians caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, many others are cadre of the murderous Pol Pot regime still hopeful of resuming their bloody rule in Phnom Penh. Still others--chiefly the non-Communist resistance forces of Prince Sihanouk and the former Premier Son Sann--have been primarily occupied with running a huge and profitable black market channeling needed consumer goods from Thailand into the heart of Cambodia.

All of these forces have maintained tenuous holds on their small border enclaves with military support from a Chinese government seeking to pin down the 160,000 Vietnamese troops in Cambodia in a protracted guerrilla war; from a U.S. government too timid to try serious diplomacy with a regional power that defeated it in a costly armed conflict; and, from the Southeast Asian members of ASEAN, an organization of non-Communist countries deriving much material benefit from both a U.S. and Chinese security blanket.

Ott’s paean to continued armed conflict enlists him in the ranks of those who would “fight till the last Cambodian” in order to satisfy an ill-defined geopolitical strategy that has already caused millions of deaths in this tragic land.

RICHARD WALDEN

Los Angeles

Walden is executive director of Operation California, Inc.