Vietnamese army Capt. Dinh Van Boah, 33, cast a final glance at the rice paddies, palm groves and world-famous ruins of the ancient temple city that had been part of his home for eight years.
Down the road flags fluttered and banners promised ”United forever.” A ragtag pop band endlessly played a song about fraternal bonds. Cambodia`s army commander in chief praised departing Vietnamese troops for saving his nation from the genocidal Pol Pot regime in 1979.
In a symbolic gesture, the first 3,000 Vietnamese troops Thursday began their final exodus from Angkor Wat, Cambodia`s greatest monument to its ancient glory. The final 26,000 will return to Vietnam on Tuesday.
They came here to ”the killing fields” on Christmas Day, 1978, and soon wrested power from Pol Pot`s Khmer Rouge, who had indulged in an orgy of slaughter that left 1 million to 2 million Cambodians dead.
At one point Vietnam had 200,000 men here. It says 55,300 of them were killed. And now Vietnam`s departure after a decade-long military adventure leaves in its wake a complicated, agonizing irony:
While the Vietnamese are aggressors in Western eyes, they are a shield against the Khmer Rouge guerrillas to the Cambodians.
Cambodia is more than weary of war. It is deathly afraid of more war.
”I wish them well,” Dinh said as he climbed into his Soviet-made jeep.
”I have many friends here, but now I go to a home where I am almost a stranger and where I may not have a job.”
So Huan, an Angkor Wat temple guide, has a starker view of the future.
”We hope our soldiers are strong enough to keep Pol Pot away,” he said.
”He has already killed five members of
See Cambodia, pg. 2
my family. I don`t want to lose any others.”
Villagers, farmers and schoolchildren loyally lined the road as the 750-truck convoy passed by. Each waved a Vietnamese flag.
The soldiers waved back with Cambodian flags and three standard slogans:
”Resist so our sacrifice will not be in vain,” ”Long live the Cambodian people” and ”United we stand, divided we fall.”
A cluster of unmanned Vietnamese artillery pieces squatted in a palm grove. A water buffalo nosed them curiously.
Sheik Sou-Abdullah Souha, the bearded leader of the 1,900 Moslems in the region, listened intently as the speeches recalled the mad days when Pol Pot`s men made the Moslems eat pork and smashed their three mosques in nearby Siem Reap.
”Before Pol Pot we were 1 million Moslems in Cambodia. Now we are 200,000,” the sheik said. ”Here we had 166 families, but only six were left after the Pol Pot regime.”
The farewell was well-orchestrated, and for the next five days, similar public spectacles throughout Cambodia and in the capital, Phnom Penh, are intended to pay tribute to an army whose presence offended Cambodian nationalism but whose departure has left a gnawing fear of the future in the hearts of most Cambodians.
”Once the wet season is over next month I expect a major offensive by all three resistance groups who will try to establish bases inside Cambodia,” said the regional army commander, Maj. Gen. Huol Savorn, 37.
But among the three resistance factions that have kept both the Vietnamese and the Cambodian army busy along the Thai border for years, the only one that terrifies Cambodians is Pol Pot`s Khmer Rouge.
After its reign of terror between 1976 and 1979-the exact number of people killed may never be known-Pol Pot`s Chinese-backed regime was smashed by the Vietnamese and pushed into the jungle along the border with Thailand.
Cambodian authorities have embarked on a confidence-boosting campaign to placate general unease about the ability of the army and the 300,000-member militia to fight back the expected challenge from the Khmer Rouge.
”We are stronger than the Vietnamese,” boasted Gen. Huol. ”Pol Pot`s equipment only allows him hit-and-run guerrilla tactics. We can smash him. Besides, the three guerrilla factions keep fighting among themselves. They have no popular support and not enough food supplies for strikes deep into the country.”
The general, who claims his soldiers killed 3,000 guerrillas over the last 12 months and suffered only 100 casualties, has himself been wounded twice in guerrilla attacks. He admitted that no day passes without an incident near the border where guerrillas ”burn houses, steal food or kill the village leaders.”
As he watched the last Vietnamese trucks vanish behind a clump of gum trees, the local governor, Leng Vy, snapped: ”Nobody wants the Khmer Rouge back. That`s why we are strong.”
Even the Vietnam-backed prime minister, Hun Sen, joined the saber-rattling Thursday.
”After the withdrawal of the Vietnamese troops you will see the real strength of the Cambodian army,” he said after his return from Bangkok on yet another mission to reach a peace agreement.
But the official chest-beating is often no more than a front. In an attempt to rally antiguerrilla support at the grass-roots level, Cambodian authorities have armed many villages in the areas where guerrilla strikes are expected.
Chong Kneas, for instance, is a picturesque fishing village a half-hour`s drive from Angkor Wat on the Nea Sam river. Its people live on houseboats moored side-by-side like Siamese twins. But the wiry, bare-chested fishermen did not cast their nets on Thursday. Instead they received another lesson from an army corporal in using the new AK-47 assault rifles the army issued for self-defense against Khmer Rouge incursions.
On the rickety piers, soldiers and villagers unloaded hand grenades and rifle-propelled grenades destined for village militia forces along the river. ”Every man between 18 and 50 has a gun now,” said Sovann, a village elder. ”We intend to use them against the enemy.”
The psychological argument behind this sudden militia army is that people on the spot, defending their homes, families and property, fight harder than if on foreign terrain. But it was obvious from the way some of the youths handled their weapons that none had received more than rudimentary
instruction.
”We give them a two-week course,” said Gov. Vy. ”Well, not every day . . . but they will manage.”
But there are further complications.
In a country torn by ethnic rivalries and age-old hatred for ethnic Vietnamese settlers, many Cambodians claim the guns are mainly issued to the Khmer Crum minority, those Cambodians of Vietnamese origin whose fate has always depended on the benevolence of the ruling party. After 10 years of Vietnamese occupation, the Crum are now a powerful faction.
The three-party resistance headed by Prince Norodom Sihanouk alleges that a million Vietnamese ”settlers” are being left behind in Cambodia after the troop withdrawals. But Cambodian government officials argue that these are mainly Khmer Crum who have lived in Cambodia for centuries or who returned to their Cambodian homeland after fleeing to Vietnam to escape the Khmer Rouge.
”The Vietnamese get all the good things nowadays. We Cambodians have to do all the hard work and pay all the contributions. For that reason many people still sympathize with Pol Pot because he hates the Vietnamese,”
explained a rice farmer.
The deadly truth of all this is that the hatred for the industrious Khmer Crum is often stronger than the loathing for Pol Pot.
And with Hun Sen`s government tainted as a Vietnamese puppet regime, it may ultimately be this racial rivalry, rather than any fear of a renewed Pol Pot holocaust, that plunges Cambodia into another era of suffering and civil war.
