Activists meet in the Nam Can forest, wearing masks to hide their identities from one another in case of capture and interrogation. From here in the mangrove swamps of the Mekong Delta, forwarding images to the North was difficult. “Sometimes the photos were lost or confiscated on the way,” said the photographer. 1972. (Photo by Vo Anh Khanh).
The history of the Vietnam War is one that has been complicated by politics, and it is a history that is still being written and rewritten.
The war involved a fratricidal conflict between the communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and the non-communist Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), and extended to neighboring Laos and Cambodia; however, it was also a proxy war in a Cold War contest between the communist bloc and the western bloc.
North Vietnam had massed support of the Soviet Union and China and their satellite states while South Vietnam had the backing of the United States and its allies. The echoes of the war extended well beyond Vietnam and the countries that participated in the conflict.
