Cambodia: YUON + AMERICAN = DESTRUCTION OF KAMPUCHEA (3/5) [EN]

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• published: 13 Nov 2009
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In those days, the present King Norodom Sihanouk still tried to cover up that there were no North Vietnamese troops in Cambodia after Paris Agreement: For his part, Sihanouk gave vent to his feelings in a diplomatic manner. He criticised peace-loving countries that sought to impose a cease-fire on Cambodia. He said American claim that North Vietnam was still fueling the war were untrue-the resistance was no longer receiving aid. He denounced American peace plans which involved the partition of the country. In Washington officials claimed that the North Vietnamese were shipping new men and materiel into South Vietnam and publicly alleged that there were still five thousand North Vietnamese troops operating against Cambodian forces. The conservatives summoned traditional arguments: the Presidents hands should not be tied; this was not the time; the United States was bombing for peace. The North Vietnamese, like the Americans, had sought a stalemate war in Cambodia. But the Khmer Rouge were seeking victory. After attempting to cut the governments supply lines they now closed in on Phnom Penh. Their principal motive, it is apparent, was fear that the North Vietnamese might betray them completely. In Cambodian terms that betrayal had already begun. Sihanouk complained to the New York Times in July that the North Vietnamese were now far more interested in American aid than in helping Cambodia. Suddenly you see Dr. Kissinger smile and Le Duc Tho smile at Dr Kissinger. They shake hands, and they go arm in arm and leave us alone. He later told another journalist, T. D. Allman: We do not have enough ammunition. I look back to the Treaty we signed with the Pathet Lao, with the North Vietnamese and with the (Vietcong), at the South China Conference in 1970. We promised to fight to the end. Now the North Vietnamese sign agreements with Kissinger. No matter, we will fight one alone.The North Vietnamese want American aid so they do not help as much as they could. The Chinese play the big power game with America. Brezhnev and Nixon are friends. But we will not play the big power game. We will fight for the unity of our country.Nixon continues to pour arms into Phnom Penh. We get very little from our Communist allies. Still we will fight for Cambodia. On several occasions he said he feared that Washington and Hanoi might agree to the partition of Cambodia. In these matters Sihanouk expressed ageless Cambodian fears, and there was no reason to suppose that he did not represent the feelings of the Khmer Rouge as well. Later the Khmer Communists claimed that the North Vietnamese entered into negotiations in 1973 in an attempt to swallow us, but they did not succeed. Pol Pot, the Party leader and Prime Minster after the war, commented If we had agreed to have a cease-fire in 1973 in accordance with the manoeuvres of the U.S. and Vietnamese enemies, we should have suffered a heavy loss. First of all, we should become slaves of the Vietnamese, and the Cambodian race would have entirely lost its identity. For those men, 1973 confirmed a historic conviction that survival, let alone victory, could be guaranteed only by absolute independence and an astonishing fixity of purpose. As it was, the indifference of their allies and the assault upon them by the supporters of their enemy stamped out thousands upon thousands of them, and the survivors had neither the men nor the firepower for a final assault upon the capital when, after August 15, 1973, the rain re-inherited the skies. When he had arrived in 1970 the glow of enthusiasm at least among the townspeople for Sihanouks removal and for the chance of fighting the North Vietnamese was dimming, but it was still perceptible. By the fall of 1973 it had long disappeared.