Pol Pot

by Philip Short

  Khmer Rouge peasant cadres, like the Issaraks before them, used kun krak, or ‘smoke-children’, as magic talismans. They extracted prisoners’ gallbladders for medicine. They ate the livers of those they killed. Denise Alfonso, a Franco-Vietnamese woman who lived in a co-operative near Battambang, saw a young man die in this way. In a housewifely touch, she noted that ‘the human liver, cooking on the stove, made little jerks like frying pancakes’.

  The leadership in Phnom Penh knew of such practices. They were mentioned in telegrams to Son Sen from officials in the provinces. There is no reason to think that Pol and other Standing Committee members approved. But nor did they do anything to stop them. The ‘seething class hatred’ of the peasants, however hideous the forms it might take, had to be assumed and embraced. It was the same attitude that had led Pol to glory in the bloodshed of the war — a perverted machismo which, behind his gentle smile, took pride in ruthlessness. S-21 was viewed in the same way. Neither Pol himself nor Nuon Chea ever went there. But to each it was an essential instrument of the revolutionary state. Pol himself decided on the most important arrests, sometimes in consultation with Khieu Samphân. Ieng Sary’s Foreign Ministry served as an antechamber to the prison, where provincial cadres would be brought, ostensibly to be ‘trained as ambassadors’ before being taken off to their deaths.

  The generalisation of violence, the intensification of ideological pressures and the development of a psychological climate in which virtually the entire population lived in constant fear, meant that, by 1977, the regime’s natural supporters were growing disillusioned. Not only had the Khmers Rouges failed to win over the ‘new people’, they had lost the goodwill of the old. In many areas, even the poorest peasants, in whose name the revolution had been launched, felt they had been cheated. Instead of the three meals a day they had been promised, there was watery rice soup. Police reports quoted hostile slogans: ‘Serve the socialist revolution and eat rice mixed with morning glory. Serve the communist regime and eat morning glory alone!’ Despite the risks, the numbers attempting to flee to Thailand and Vietnam steadily increased.

  By the spring of 1977, the Vietnamese leaders realised they had a problem on their hands.

  The year had begun with renewed border clashes, the first for many months. In February, Hanoi sent a Vice-Foreign Minister, Hoang Van Loi, on a secret visit to Phnom Penh. He offered co-operation in repatriating Cambodian refugees fleeing the Khmer Rouge regime — a singularly cynical move when the Vietnamese were well aware that anyone sent back would immediately be killed — and invited the Cambodian leaders to attend an Indochinese summit with Vietnam and Laos. The proposal was immediately rejected. Pol concluded that his tough stance was paying off. The Standing Committee agreed that henceforward national defence rather than the economy should be the Party’s first priority.

  In March and April, clashes continued, provoking an angry exchange of diplomatic notes. By this time Hanoi had belatedly realised that the Cambodians were undertaking a sweeping anti-Vietnamese purge. Then, on April 30, the second anniversary of the liberation of Saigon, Cambodian units, backed by artillery, crossed into Vietnam in force, slaughtering hundreds of local inhabitants and razing their villages. In the words of the official Vietnamese record: ‘Most barbarous crimes were committed. Women were raped, then disembowelled, [and] children cut in two. Pagodas and schools were burnt down.’

  There is no reason to doubt the truth of this account. There had been similar atrocities earlier in the year on the frontier with Thailand, where sporadic fighting had resumed after a coup the previous October had brought a right-wing military government to power. If the Khmers Rouges butchered Cambodian women and children they would hardly treat their ancient enemies, the Vietnamese and the Thais, any better. But it was not quite the unprovoked carnage that Vietnamese propaganda reported. Internal CPK military telegrams, believable to the extent that they were never intended to be made public, listed fifteen clashes allegedly provoked by the Vietnamese from April 1 to 29 on the southern part of the border. That month, in a speech marking the anniversary of the fall of Phnom Penh, Pol denounced ‘the land-swallowing Y[uon] and their running dogs’, using the traditional pejorative epithet to describe the Vietnamese. Not long afterwards he told the Thai communist leader, Khamtan, that Vietnamese expansionism was ‘totally different from that in Eastern Europe. There the Soviet Union dominates everyone. But at least the subject peoples still exist.’

  Ill-founded or not, Cambodian fears were real. After two years in which both sides had tried to avoid a collision — the Cambodians because they wanted time to make their regime stronger, the Vietnamese because they expected to achieve their ends by political means — all their ancient hatreds abruptly reignited. For centuries, Cambodians had equated powerlessness with periods of Vietnamese control, and empowerment or ‘independence-mastery’, as the Khmer Rouge termed it, with times when Vietnamese were slaughtered. Now that once again conciliation had failed, the only choice, in Pol’s view, was what one long-time American Vietnam-watcher aptly called ‘the bristly dog gambit’:

  Cambodia’s hostile, if not aggressive, behaviour towards Vietnam and Thailand is not entirely irrational. Cambodia has tried various means [over the centuries] to fend off its enemies. Nothing has worked well. What is left is . . . seemingly irrational behaviour . . . The rule, as it is for a small dog surrounded by bigger, stronger dogs, is to bristle, assuming an aggressive posture and appearing so fearfully troublesome, so indifferent to consequences, as to convince others to leave well alone. [The gambit] may not work, but it holds as much promise to the Cambodians as any other.

  Hanoi’s response came in stages. First, the Vietnamese air force carried out bombing raids on Cambodian border positions. Then, on May 12, it proclaimed a 200-mile exclusive economic zone along the Vietnamese coast. Since the Cambodians had refused to make concessions over the sea border, the Vietnamese presented them with a fait accompli. Finally, four weeks later, the Vietnamese Party Central Committee wrote to its Cambodian counterpart, calling for high-level talks to end these ‘bloody incidents’. The Cambodians proposed instead a cooling-off period and mutual troop withdrawals. There the political negotiations stalled. But cross-border shelling continued from both sides, and tens of thousands of civilians were evacuated from the frontier areas in anticipation of worse troubles to come.

  At this point, other interests began to come into play.

  Cambodia’s situation was straightforward: it relied on China, which saw it as a barrier to the spread of Vietnamese power.

  Vietnam’s position was more complicated. Its economy was a shambles and it needed all the aid it could get. The Russians were already giving generously and were willing to give more, although the quality of what they offered was not always satisfactory. The possibility of American assistance — which Nixon had proposed after the 1973 peace accords — was blocked because Vietnam insisted that aid must come first, diplomatic relations second. That left China. Despite the fiasco of Le Duan’s meeting with Mao in 1975, the Vietnamese had not entirely given up hope of further Chinese assistance. In the early summer, Vietnam’s Premier Pham Van Dong travelled to Moscow, where extensive new military and economic aid was agreed, and then to Beijing. There he was received by Vice-Premier Li Xiannian, the economics specialist in the Chinese leadership. If he expected a softening of China’s attitude, he was disappointed. Li’s statement was a monologue for the prosecution. Vietnam, he said, had slandered China, hurt the friendship between the two countries, provoked armed clashes along their common border, sabotaged the rail link between them, created disputes over the ownership of islands in the South China Sea and the demarcation of the maritime border, and had compelled Overseas Chinese citizens to adopt Vietnamese nationality. He concluded, unsurprisingly: ‘We are in no position to provide new aid to the Vietnamese comrades . . . so I am not dealing with this question.’

  Pham Van Dong’s visits to Moscow and Beijing in May and June 1977 fundamentally altered th
e international context in which the Cambodia-Vietnam conflict was played out. Over the next nine months, there would be moments of vacillation, as both sides tried to escape the consequences of the choices they had made. But the die had been cast. Vietnam had chosen the Soviet camp. China found itself with no alternative but to support its awkward Cambodian ally.

  In July the Vietnamese sent their entire top leadership to the Laotian capital, Vientiane, to sign a Friendship Treaty formalising the ‘special relationship’ between the two countries. It pledged enhanced mutual assistance in national defence, confirmed Vietnam’s right to station troops on Laotian territory and opposed ‘all schemes and acts of sabotage . . . by foreign reactionary forces’, the new epithet for the Chinese. To Beijing it was a warning to stay out of Vietnam’s sphere of influence. To Pol, it was proof of what Vietnam was planning for Cambodia if the Khmers let down their guard.

  The same week the CPK Eastern Zone Committee passed a resolution asserting that the conflict with Vietnam could ‘never be resolved politically’ and that preparations should be made to send troops deep into Vietnamese territory to ‘annihilate them on their own ground’. After that, it declared, ‘they will no longer dare invade our country.’ Two new military commands were created in the areas bordering Vietnam: the Highway I Front, in the south, headed by Son Sen; and the Highway 7 Front, stretching from Kompong Cham to Ratanakiri, under So Phim, with Ke Pauk as his deputy. Cambodian commanders began telling their men that their ultimate goal was to recover ‘Khmer Krom’, the former Cochin-China, ancient Cambodian lands which they claimed Vietnam was occupying illegally. This was not official CPK policy, but it helped motivate the troops.

  On the other side of the border, Vietnam’s Defence Minister, Vo Nguyen Giap, ordered his forces to intensify their counter-attacks.

  Of the three countries most directly involved, China appeared least happy at the turn events were taking. Foreign Minister Huang Hua told a closed Party conference in Beijing that the conflict between Hanoi and Phnom Penh was ‘trouble for them and trouble for us . . . If our handling of it is not right, we will find ourselves in a dilemma.’ Beijing informed all three Indochinese governments that it wished to see Cambodia and Vietnam stop fighting and return to the conference table. It promised not to take sides in the dispute and said it was ready to use its good offices if the parties so desired. However, it went on, it would oppose any attempt by ‘revisionist social-imperialism’ to infringe Cambodian sovereignty or invade its territory.

  There matters remained until September 1977.

  On the 24th of that month, a Saturday, when many of Vietnam’s senior officers at the border had left to spend the weekend in Ho Chi Minh City, as Saigon was now called, elements of two Cambodian Eastern Zone divisions crossed into Tay Ninh province. They penetrated about four miles, leaving behind them the usual trail of horror. A journalist who visited the area three days later found ‘in house after house, bloated, rotting bodies of men, women and children . . . Some were beheaded, some had their bellies ripped open, some were missing limbs, others eyes.’ Altogether, according to Vietnamese officials, nearly a thousand people were killed or suffered serious injuries.

  Three days later, on the 27th, Pol Pot addressed a rally at the Olympic Stadium in Phnom Penh, where he made the long-awaited announcement that Angkar was in fact the Communist Party of Kampuchea. The speech, which lasted five hours, was not broadcast until the 29th, by which time Pol was in Beijing at the start of his first, and last, official visit abroad.

  The Vietnamese Politburo ordered a total blackout on the Cambodian attack and retaliation was put on hold. The VWP Central Committee congratulated the CPK on its public emergence, expressed ‘deep gratitude . . . for [its] valuable support and assistance’ to Vietnam and pledged to defend the ‘special relationship’ between the two parties and peoples. Then, on Friday the 30th, Le Duan chaired an emergency meeting of the Politburo in Ho Chi Minh City. It decided to take up the Chinese offer of good offices and to seek a meeting with the Cambodians while they were in Beijing. At the same time General Vo Nguyen Giap was instructed to make plans for a reprisal, should the mediation effort fail.

  Pol had meanwhile been explaining to Chairman Hua his own idiosyncratic view of the conflict and how it might eventually be resolved:

  The nature of the Vietnamese army has changed. They’re no longer willing to bear hardships and to surfer as they did before. Now they rely more on arms — artillery, tanks, aircraft. Their infantry isn’t strong. Their soldiers and officers are degenerate, they don’t want to fight any more. Most of those who’ve come from the North have found themselves a new wife in the South, sometimes two wives. Like that, how are they going to fight? . . . We are not afraid of doing battle with them. The problem is that they constitute a permanent threat. The Vietnamese have an expansionist policy towards South-East Asia. We tried to negotiate with them, but it was useless . . . From a strategic point of view, only the development of the revolutionary movement in South-East Asia will really solve this problem. Otherwise, the difficulties between Cambodia and Vietnam will go on for who knows how many centuries . . . We have united with the Burmese, Indonesian, Thai and Malaysian [communists] . . . and in the North we have China to support us . . . This is our strategic beacon.

  Next day, when Hua replied, he tried to indicate tactfully how far-fetched China found this approach. Ignoring Pol’s remarks about the South-East Asian communist parties — whose role the Chinese were beginning to play down — he proposed that Cambodia should instead strengthen relations with South-East Asian governments, which alone, he suggested, could offer real support against Vietnam. From China’s standpoint, he went on, the best outcome would be a peaceful settlement:

  We do not wish the friction between Vietnam and Cambodia to grow. We want the two sides to find a solution through negotiations in a spirit of friendship and understanding, and by making mutual concessions. That said, we agree with Comrade Pol Pot that resolving the problem by negotiations will not be easy. With Vietnam, it is necessary to be very vigilant.

  A few hours after this second round of talks, China received Vietnam’s request to send an envoy to discuss the latest border tension. In the light of Hua’s remarks, the Cambodians had little choice but to agree, and on October 3, Vice Foreign Minister Phan Hien had two lengthy meetings with Ieng Sary. They got nowhere. Hien accused the Cambodians of atrocities along the border. Sary retorted that Vietnam was trying to overthrow the Democratic Kampuchea leadership, and that it would have to stop its ‘acts of aggression, subversion and sabotage’ if it wished to reduce tension. As they were meeting, Pol told a news conference that an unnamed ‘enemy’ was ‘trying to strike [Cambodia] from within and without’.

  Next morning, he flew to Pyongyang where North Korea’s President Kim II Sung received him munificently and was outspoken in his support. ’Those people [the Vietnamese] are really wicked,’ he declared. ‘I am shocked that Vietnam wants to put its hands on the whole of South-East Asia.’ This was easy for Kim to say. Unlike China, North Korea was far from Vietnam and risked nothing by taking such a stand. The Koreans appreciated Cambodia’s plight. They, too, were surrounded by powerful neighbours. In public, Kim praised his visitors for ‘thoroughly smashing . . . counter-revolutionary subversion and sabotage’. In private, he told Pol, ‘we regard your victories as our own.’

  The Vietnamese leaders were in a quandary. To launch a full-scale punitive expedition risked triggering a border war. To do nothing was impossible.

  In the end, Le Duan decided to make one last attempt to obtain Chinese help. The day before Pol’s departure for home on October 22, Deng Xiaoping — now back in power following the fall of the ‘Gang of Four’ — had told a Western reporter that China wanted Cambodia and Vietnam ‘to carry out good negotiations. We ourselves do not judge what is just or erronous.’ General Giap was authorised to launch limited raids into Cambodian territory — which he did in Svay Rieng in October and Prey Veng a month later —
but not to initiate large-scale retaliation. On November 21, Duan arrived in Beijing to a welcome which, to outward appearances, was not noticeably different from that given Pol Pot eight weeks earlier. He, too, was met at the airport by Mao’s successor Hua Guofeng, who accompanied him on the drive into Beijing, through streets lined by several hundred thousand people, waving Chinese and Vietnamese flags and chanting slogans of friendship. But the talks that afternoon were acrimonious, and in a vituperative speech at the welcoming banquet, Duan accused his hosts of abandoning communist principles.

  The rift was now out in the open.

  In mid-December, 50,000 Vietnamese troops, backed by armour and artillery, poured across the border along a front stretching more than a hundred miles, from the Parrot’s Beak in Svay Rieng to Snuol in the north. In the first week, they met little resistance and penetrated about twelve miles into Cambodian territory. Khmer Rouge soldiers who fell into their hands were systematically killed. Reinforcements were then sent in from the South-West, and in some areas Giap’s forces were forced on to the defensive.

  At dawn on December 31, Radio Phnom Penh announced that Cambodia was breaking off diplomatic relations with Vietnam because of its ‘ferocious and barbarous aggression’. The decision, which had been taken by the CPK Standing Committee a week earlier, was designed to cause maximum damage to Vietnam’s image internationally by depicting it as an expansionist power, bent on subjugating its neighbours, while it was in flagrante delicto with tens of thousands of its troops physically on Cambodian soil. Hanoi was taken totally by surprise. Until then, both sides had kept the conflict under wraps. Now not only was it public but the Cambodians had drawn the first blood. Giap had never intended more than a brief incursion, but under the glare of publicity his troops returned home more precipitately than might otherwise have been the case, the last men crossing the border on January 6. The Cambodians crowed victory. In fact neither side had much reason for satisfaction. Khmer Rouge casualties had outstripped Vietnamese by a margin of three to two. Yet far from forcing Pol to the negotiating table, Giap’s campaign had left Phnom Penh more bellicose than ever.