From: mdo@socrates.umd.edu ("Mike T. Do")
Subject: [NEWS] LOST CORPS STILL FIGHTS
Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese
Date: 5 Oct 92 06:18:19 GMT

Post without permission.  (by James Pringle, Washington Times 10/02/92)

STUNG TRENG, Cambodia

The United Nations is mounting a top-level operation to protect and rescue
a lost army of anti-communist Christian guerrillas who still are fighting the
Vietnam War from bases in Cambodia 17 years after the conflict formally
ended.

Senior U.N. officers are worried that the newly discovered guerrillas may
be attacked by the Vietnamese or by troops of the Vietnam installed
Phnom Penh government.

They have sent eight U.N. military observers, including an American major,
from this remote provincial capital to the guerrillas' jungle headquarters in
hopes that their presence will discourage an attack until the guerillas can
be evacuated.

The army of 407 fighters, their family and children, are the last survivors
of the United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races, known by the
French acronym of FULRO.  It is made up of Montagnards, a minority
people from Vietnam's central highlands, who seek autonomy for their
region around Pleiku  and Ban Me Thuot.

Many Montagards, or hill tribesmen, fought alongside the U.S. Special
Forces-the Green Berets-during the Vietnam War.

Sources say many of the fighters and their families, remnants of an army
that once numbered 10,000, suffer from malaria and various other
illness because of years in the inhospitable jungle.

The discovery of the remnants of an unknown army along the Cambodian-
Vietnamese border raises intriguing questions about the possibility that
Americans missing from the Vietnam War may still be living with the
Montagnards in inaccessible areas.

Intelligence sources said the Phnom Penh government believes at least
once such American is still alive in a remote and inaccessible are of
Cambodia's Ratanakiri province east of here.

While FULRO staged small-scale attacks inside Vietnam for years after
the war ended in 1975, the discovery of an actual army was made only
in August when a few fighters in threadbare uniform contacted
Uruguayan peacekeeping troops who opened a monitor post on the border.

The FULRO men told the incredulous Uruguayans they had walked for
days through thick jungle from their base in Mondolkiri Province in
northeastern Cambodia.  They said they wanted to send a letter to U
Thant, who they still believes to be U.N. secretary-general, asking for
help.  U Thant has been dead for years.

Diplomats in Phnom Penh were taken aback by the discovery of the
forgotten army, which complicates the U.N. mission here.  Under the
terms of Paris peace accords, the United Nations must disarm all armed
factions in Cambodia.

U.N forces thought there were only the four Cambodians factions to deal
with.  But "suddenly a whole new army appeared," said a Phnom Penh-
based envoy.  "You can imagine how surprised everyone is."

An American officer serving with U.N forces was flown by helicopter
into the FULRO base with five Uruguayans two weeks ago.

They discovered that the guerrillas maintain Protestant and Catholic
church in five villages under a triple canopy forest defaced by old B-52
bomb craters.

In informal conversations in Stung Treng, Uruguayan troops said they had
been amazed and deeply moved to see the FULRO members singing
from anciend battered hymn books and celebrating Mass in the thick
jungle of the old Ho Chi Minh trail.

"Tears came to my eyes", one said.

The FULRO commander, Col. Y Peng Ayun, told the Uruguayan officers
of the U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) that he wants
military supplies so he can keep up the struggle against the Vietnamese
communists, who, he said, "suppressed our Christian religion."

While the Uruguayans were vague on many details, they believed the
American officer had served with Montagnard troops in the Vietnam War
and was sent to persuade them to give up their fight against Vietnam.

Two more U.N. military observers-Maj. Joe Kamah of Ghana, a veteran
of the Gulf war, and a Malaysian captain - flew into FULRO's jungle
headquarters this week.

They were accompanied by the top official of the U.N. High
Commisioner for  the Refugees in Cambodia and a representative of
the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The delegation also included a former member of FULRO from the
United States whose aim was to persuade the group to lay down its
arms - such as they are after all these years - and ask for asylum in the
United States.

"The Americans have a big moral responsibility to help these people,"
said an African U.N. officer.  "They are partly to blame for getting them
in the mess they're now."

Some of the military observers said UNTAC fears that FULRO could
be attacked either by Vietnamese regular troops or by the Phnom
Penh army,  though the former is morelikely.

"Disclosures of the existence of such an army still fighting Vietnam is
humiliating for Hanoi,"  a Phnom Penh-based diplomat said.

A U.N. officer added:  "These people are in a very vulnerable situation,
and we fear for their safety and security."

Sergio Viera de Mello, head of the UNHCR in Cambodia, said he would
rather not talk about the situation of the FULRO forces because of the
delicacy of the matter.

Symeon Antoulas, the ICRC delegate, will be looking after the immediate
humanitarian needs of the FULRO, including medical care.  For the past
few weeks, Uruguayan medics have been flying twice a week into the
remote villages to provide rudimentary medical attention.