The below clip is taken from a 1986 Australian two-part documentary on Cambodia in the 1960s and 70s; the first part called The Prince and the Prophecy, the second is called simply Cambodia/Kampuchea. It is from this second instalment that Nayan Chanda and Alan Dawson briefly talk about the run up to and execution of the December 1978 Vietnamese invasion, which saw the DK leadership scarpering back into the maquis. They would, after becoming one significant ingredient in a highly volatile political and military melange, with their former enemies (united in their chauvinism), later stalk the Vietnamese from their Chinese-equipped, American-funded jungle eyries.
With feeling a bit unsure about using the title of this post, given my admitted ignorance of military matters, what Alan Dawson refers to is the foolish decision to place over 30,000 of the best troops DK had to offer, in a stationery defensive line along Kampuchea’s eastern border. When Vietnamese heavy artillery and aerial bombing softened up this line, tanks and other armoured vehicles had no trouble in smashing through and heading onward into the interior. The invasion began firstly with armoured columns deceptively entering from the northeast of Kampuchea in acting out a feint, near southern Laos, but the roads Dawson talks about were, I think, really two: Highways 1 and 7, giving speedy access to Phnom Penh.
Of course, we have Sihanouk near the end, talking bollocks. The Vietnamese also talked about fascism with regard to the DK regime, but given the context, the label is meaningless. After claiming that “The Worst is Over” they turned that political prison (a present day ghoulish tourist attraction) into a museum for the purpose of public relations, to help legitimise the PRK, with its defected lower-echelon DK cadres and older generation “Khmer Hanoi” Communists holding government portfolios. Those who legged it back to Vietnam, when after returning to Cambodia in order join and perhaps influence the direction of the late 1960s Khmer Rouge insurgency, were placed under a cloud of suspicion. For a fair few, that meant being subject to a quiet campaign of murder. But as for conflicting national interests after 1975, some among the Vietnamese wouldn’t have cared a fig for what went on in that place, as long as the Khmer Communists didn’t disrupt their attempts at post-war reconstruction. While the Revolutionary Army of Kampuchea was pounding the New Economic Zones with Chinese artillery guns, or launching barbaric raids from the Parrot’s Beak, Sihanouk in contrast to his fellow countrymen and women was sat in his gilded cage, complaining about not having enough brandy for his truffles. The twat.
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Sihanouk’s ability to spout bollocks is practically unmatched in political history, but I particularly like his ‘explanation’ for the fact that the KR had so many supporters, which completely ignores the large number of peasant KR conscripts who (up until 1975, anyway) thought they were fighting for Sihanouk’s reinstatement.
As for the comprehensive Vietnamese trouncing of the RAK, I’d hazard a guess (despite being equally ignorant of most military matters) that the fact that the Vietnamese had what were generally regarded as the finest ground troops on Earth at the time – experienced, disciplined, well-equipped etc etc – had a lot to do with it. I know that Son Sen and the other heads of the RAK also had a reputation for being dogmatically conventional commanders, which might explain the odd, inflexible tactic of just placing the best DK troops in the way of the Vietnamese guns.
One of the things I found most interesting about the PRK process of legitimisation is the way in which ‘good’ (i.e. dead) Khmer Rouge, like Hu Nim and Hou Yuon, were publicised as heroic socilaist dissidents. I think Hu Nim’s cell is still marked separately in the aforementioned ghoulish tourist attraction, unless I’ve got that confused with Koy Thuon.
Hou Youn wasn’t vilified by DK anyways wasn’t he? Circumstances of his death are murky, it could be an incident. His buddy Khieu Samphan doesn’t say anything in his book or comments anything on how he ended his life. There’s a slight undertone in episode when Hou Youn wanted to get out off the peasant hut they were hiding in and started to pack his staff. Khieu Samphan asked him to wait till Ta Mok come for a check up. And Ta Mok was convincing..
Khmer rouge got their support from the poorest 20% of the peasantry. In my forthcoming post in Russian of course I write as horrible Dey Krahom slums were and shitter was located right in the hut. When the flood came all shit was flown around the houses. It was disgusting. It was enough for me to visit such a wretched place to completely change my values.
Sihanouk is not only slippery, but has liked to put himself at the centre of attention, so what he’s said with regard to important events should be treated with caution. The repression during his time in power pales in comparison to the widespread terror of DK. Although saying that, as an example, along with the rightists in his government he found increasingly difficult to control, the brutal handling of the peasant rebellion in Samlaut during 1967-68 saw the offering of money rewards to troops who collected the heads of “Khmer Rouge” rebels. Of course, the Lon Nol soldiers were less than discriminate when it came to identifying Khmer Rouge rebels for beheading.
The Vietnamese were much much better than the KR (they were ragtag in comparison), but the latter still had often young and fanatical troops, noted for their bravery, and near-suicidal battlefield acrobatics. When the North Vietnamese and their allies in the South won the war, they were able to seize American weaponry and equipment not withdrawn or destroyed when the US military left, so they were even more well-equipped. Most devastation of the RAK during the 1978 Vietnamese invasion occurred where Ta Mok and Son Sen’s forces were located, and put up stiff resistance. I believe that the Chinese had advised the DK government not to opt for creating a defensive line to repel a future Vietnamese attack, and instead adopt mobile guerilla tactics. This may have had something to do with the Chinese taking a dim view of the ability of the RAK, with being frustrated by the quality of the troops their own military advisers were helping to train. Aside from their willingness to fight, they were, as usual for the Pol Potists, recruited and promoted because of their background rather than aptitude. Coming from poor peasant backgrounds, a fair few simply lacked even basic education (literacy etc) or skills to operate more modern, sophisticated weaponry brought in from China. Tanks and the like. There is an incident, not sure if it is true or not, where an aggravated Pol Pot said to Chinese advisers the Khmer people had no need for “iron water buffaloes.” As well as this though, the Cambodian Civil War had been, much more than the Vietnamese conflict, a conventional war with clearly marked fronts from which both sides battled. However, in that conflict the KR were up against the hopeless FANK.
Another thing to consider is the centralisation drive of the Communist Party and the weaknesses of the military (warlordism, rivalry etc) still evident after the various zonal forces were unified, officially at least, into one single army in July 1975. One of the Pol Pot group’s successes in their bid for total leadership was having control of the military’s political committee. This meant control of the political-military schools, from where the fanatical teenage war orphans with an unquestioned obedience to “Angkar” were trained, and then sent to replace the marked cadres in the various zones later purified by the Party. These schools were located in the Central and Southwest zones, I think, which was the powerbase of the Pol Pot group and where their allies, the likes of Ta Mok and Ke Pok, were situated.
Hou Youn, I think, was never talked of as an enemy or traitor by the DK regime, although he was shot dead in mysterious circumstances. It is plausible it was a tragic accident. He was, though, seen as a loud-mouth, independently-minded and opinionated. So he might not have lasted for long anyway. For example, he opposed the quick transfer of people from the towns to the forced cooperative system in the countryside, seeing it as potentially disastrous. He also opposed the abolition of money, although the CPK leadership had at one time intended to establish their own banking system before their 1975 victory. During the war, the Khmer Republic currency was withdrawn from the liberated areas, and as early as 1972 or 1973 it was decided that a new currency would be introduced when they won control of the whole country. New notes were printed in China and distributed in (I’m not sure it was one or two) trial areas before their withdrawal in 1976, when it was decided to do away with money all together inside the country. I guess it was seen as unnecessary, for the “war communism” established during the conflict had seen little need for it, except for outside trade, for goods which the cooperatives couldn’t produce. Production within them was striclty for feeding and clothing the KR fighters. Carried on into peace time, this model was used for different objectives, mainly the building of infrastructure, for laying foundations to industrialise the country.
Hu Nim was from a poor peasant background, but due to being naturally gifted and very bright had been fortunate enough to leave his circumstances and receive a good education. He was one of the three National Assembly deputies (along with Khieu Samphan and Hou Youn) who were, among the left-leaning educational milieu in the capital, attracted by the idea of “mass democracy ” coming from the Cultural Revolution in China. The CR had little real influence on the Cambodian Revolution, however, and his peasant background didn’t save him. He was a popular and admired activist before leaving for the maquis, having genuine concern for his poor constituents. It is still a matter of debate, admittedly out of my depth of understanding, as to just how things mutated during those years into something so extreme and toxic, manifesting itself in the DK regime. There are beardy academics for that kind of thing.
This is an interesting topic. A choice between embracing secrecy and autarky or allowing development and progress. “Iron buffaloes” this is from Short’s Anatomy, he doesn’t provide source of information. If it’s not true could Pol Pot say these words? Probably yes. I’m interested in everything that smells with autarky and self-mastery, unfortunately there’s not much information. We know where and how Pol Pot got influenced, but not at all about his full intentions, and what he envisaged a new human in Kampuchea to be.
The “buffaloes” quote I got from the very good book Revolution in Kampuchea and its Aftermath: Eight Essays, although I can’t remember exactly right now which paper it is taken from.
It is interesting, the subject of influences and to what extent these had on shaping the CPK’s political outlook, as difficult as it is, piecing the jigsaw puzzle together. The secrecy of the Khmer Communists, it could be said, was partly due to a pattern of behaviour developed out of necessity for survival in a country that had a government (Sihanouk’s) which tolerated no decent opposition, whether from the left or right, the real political change under these circumstances occurring in the shifting balance of an inter-related elite. Also, that bete noire of the Khmer Communists: The Vietnamese and their competing objectives. After all the Communist Party which the Pol Potists later tried to thoroughly dominate evolved from the Khmer People’s Revolutionary Party, which was founded with Vietnamese guidance during the First Indochina War, in 1951, along with the legal organisation the People’s Group or Pracheachon in 1955. They would later try to retrospectively cleanse the history of the Cambodian movement of any Vietnamese involvement, reshaping it as a pure Khmer creation. Other than chauvinist sentiments which can be present among people no matter the politics involved, and aside from intellectuals feeling resentful at being treated as inferiors or, at worst, children by their condescending “brothers,” there was a sense of Vietnamese treachery, leaving the Khmers exposed to repression and worse inside their own country. In earlier times following less than favourable terms agreed at the Geneva talks in 1954. And later, when the Khmer Rouge insurgency began in the late 1960s against Sihanouk’s faltering Sangkum. The Vietnamese were at first reluctant to offer military aid to the rebels, as for one thing Sihanouk had been most helpful with regard to their own war objectives in the South, especially with large-scale American involvement to contend with. Into the 1970s, and after the Christmas Bombings over North Vietnam, the Paris Agreements which followed released US airstrike power for use over Cambodia, then by 1973 at war with itself. The Vietnamese temporarily cut off supplies to the Khmer Rouge, down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. An act to help persuade (or rather force) the Khmers to come to the negotiating table too. Difficulty in keeping their guns oiled and loaded, while yet more bombs were laying waste to the countryside didn’t help relations between the two groups of Communists.
The Burgler book you commented on in another post of mine has some interesting information on how the Khmers and Vietnamese not only fought side by side, but against one another during the civil war. Ad hoc agreements that saw Khmer Rouge and Lon Nol soldiers collude in the killing of Vietnamese, whether they be from South Vietnam, to support the Lon Nol government, or the Communists aiding to a great extent the Khmer Rouge with their superior skills. Joining their enemies and turning their guns on their foreign allies seemingly shows that shared ethnicity or some sense of patriotism to their respective countries was more important than the politics of others they were fighting over. And which many didn’t really understand themselves. Such things as the above are generalisations, though, from a layperson like me.
Ah yes, Geneva was where much of this started. Even if at the time there were no more than a few murmurs that the Vietnamese communists had sold their UIF colleagues down the Mekong, the later Khmer Rouge historiography – for internal consumption anyway – portrayed it very much as if they had. It also seems likely that the French may have had a hand, behind the scenes, in promoting less-than-fraternal relations between the emerging Khmer communists and the Vietnamese (and indeed amongst the various pro-independence factions – Kiernan certainly argues this). This all fed into the unfortunate course of events twenty years later, as well as more traditional rivalries.
I think you’re correct in laying the blame for some of the ‘transformation’ in the Party during this period at Sihanouk’s feet. The Sangkum was, after all, prominently styled as ’socialist’, even if there was objectively little or no socialism in it, and Sihanouk freely borrowed from policies suggested by Hou Yuon and Khieu Samphan as and when it suited him, not to mention his post-63 flirtation with China and North Vietnam. This could only have pushed those in the maquis towards something rather more radical. If Sihanouk had dealt honestly with those willing to work with him – Hou Yuon and Hu Nim, and perhaps Samphan as well in that period,as well as the few remaining urban leftists – things might have developed differently. But he was never going to deal honourably with men that he knew would ultimately desire his removal.
Until 1970, at least, when he had nothing left to lose.
Yes, Sihanouk’s political balancing act when in power was careful only for so long, and internal repression made it impossible for any meaningful participation in mainstream politics, so it ensured a flow of leftist town-dwellers into the countryside by the 1960s, wanting to overthrow rather than compromise with the Sangkum. Following Geneva, Sihanouk’s favourable position as ruler of an independent country saw no negotiated area for the Communists to go to, unlike the North/South divide of Vietnam. I believe there was a place near Laos, but this was ignored at the talks. The Khmer Viet Minh and other assorted Issarak veterans either went to the jungle out of reach of the Phnom Penh government, tried to find some protection with the Pracheachon, or a number of them went to Hanoi. The North Vietnamese were most concerned with a US military presence in Cambodia from the 1950s onwards, and as Sihanouk’s friendly foreign policy toward Communists in the region developed, saw him as a useful ally. Unfortunately for the Khmer Communists, encouraged by the Vietnamese to work with him, as well as continue clandestine activity, which became a necessity. Cambodian Communism was left high and dry, and the younger generation weren’t wanting that to happen again when their time came. An impasse had to be overcome for these sensitive souls; and they chose a path to be as independent as was possible from the Vietnamese, and be more attractively nationalist to potential supporters than Sihanouk’s Sangkum which, as you said, had stolen “socialist” clothing to cover over the reality of business as usual (extraction of surplus for personal enrichment and luxury consumption).
If anyone is interested, there is an English translation of a Chinese diplomat’s account of the Vietnamese invasion of DK, and the government’s fleeing from Phnom Penh. Available here.
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[...] 10, 2009 Pineapple has some video footage from a 1968 1986 Australian documentary on Cambodia. The clip details the 1978 invasion by Vietnam. Of course, we have Sihanouk near the end, talking bollocks … While the Revolutionary Army of [...]
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