Pinching the Arteries

It is hardly a siege, and certainly nothing like Corregidor or Leningrad. Still, over the past two months Communist troops have managed to threaten Phnom-Penh with isolation by severing some of its main links with the outside world. The Cambodian capital's plight is an acute embarrassment to the Lon Nol regime, whose eager but not always effective 160,000-man army has been unable to reopen the vital arteries without outside help. Last week, in what has become a familiar pattern since much of the Indochina war shifted to Cambodia last spring, Phnom-Penh put out an SOS, and it was answered by a prodigious amount of South Vietnamese and U.S. firepower.

Men of Doctrine. The rescue operation involved 8,000 Cambodian infantry and 5,300 South Vietnamese troops, backed by artillery and no fewer than 200 tanks. One force, predominantly Cambodian, drove south from Phnom-Penh along Route 4, the key, 125-mile link with Kompong Som, Cambodia's one deepwater port and site of its only oil refinery. Another force, combining Cambodian infantry and South Vietnamese armor, pushed north from Kompong Som. The pincers closed on the rugged, heavily jungled Elephant Mountains, where 1,000 North Vietnamese regulars from the crack 101st Regiment had been blocking a 25-mile stretch of Route 4 since last November. Repeatedly, U.S. Phantoms and South Vietnamese A-37s pounded the mountain passes from which the dug-in North Vietnamese commanded Route 4, otherwise known as the Cambodian-American Friendship Highway.*

The advancing troops met sharp resistance, particularly at Stung Chhay Pass. But true to Communist guerrilla doctrine, which counsels a fast fadeout in the face of a superior force, at week's end the enemy seemed to be withdrawing deep into the blue hills. There, also true to doctrine, they would be able to regroup to hit Route 4 once again.

Rejected Plan. The Route 4 rescue followed a one-day visit to Phnom-Penh by Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. Moorer concluded that the situation was deteriorating, though not really critical. Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, who was in Viet Nam for a three-day visit, rejected a proposal to send U.S. transport helicopters to the Elephant Mountains, but he did not rule out such missions in the future.

Nor do officials dismiss the possibility of a Berlin-style airlift for the Cambodian capital. The Communists have not committed the troops needed to pinch off all of its road links at once, but they have hit each often enough to make highway travel risky at best. Northwest of Phnom-Penh on Route 5, rice-laden trucks bound for the city are waylaid fairly frequently. The closing of Route 4 spelled an end to the petroleum supplies that had come by truck from Kompong Som. Some fuel comes up the Mekong by tanker, but not enough to prevent shortages.

Ladies of the Day. The Communists do not seem to be interested in taking Phnom-Penh; there are no enemy troops at the gates. Rather, they seem intent on using as few troops as possible to pin down as much of Cambodia's FANK (for Forces Armees Nationales Khmeres) as possible. Only one-fourth of the 40,000 Communist troops in Cambodia are toying with the capital's supply routes; the rest are trying to carve out staging areas in northeast Cambodia and reconstruct supply routes into South Viet Nam's III and IV Corps areas.

Thus Phnom-Penh is not exactly on the ropes. Gasoline prices have risen, rice is up 50%, domestic sugar has disappeared from store shelves, and the supply of Cambodian beer has dried up, because the only brewery is situated in Kompong Som. Still, champignons a la Grecque, cote de boeuf and a respectable Beaujolais can still be had in the city's good French restaurants. Because of a curfew--and power shutdowns to save generator fuel--Phnom-Penh's bars now close by 8 or 9 p.m. As a result, the capital's numerous ladies of the night now ply their trade mainly by day.

*A misnomer. Intended as a "showpiece" of U.S. know-how, the shoddily built $34 million highway began breaking up almost as soon as it was finished in 1959. Prince Norodom Sihanouk was so appalled at the craters in the road when he tried to drive down it one day that he turned back to Phnom-Penh and took a helicopter instead. Washington promptly chipped in another $15 million to set things straight.

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