For the Sake of All Living Things (107 page)

At this point major changes occurred among the backers of the two sides. The U.S. 1973-74 war budget for South Viet Nam was 4 percent of its 1969 level. The 1974-75 funding was only 43 percent of what the U.S. Defense Attaché Office had requested. Adjusted for inflation, this sum equaled approximately 1 percent of the 1969 allocation. By contrast, Soviet and Chinese aid to the NVA, which had been reduced in response to the apparent Northern defeat in 1972, increased by 50 percent after the peace agreement was signed, reaching a level 10 percent higher than the previous high of 1971. In 1974, support for the NVA quadrupled, reaching 440 percent of the 1971 high.

The reduced aid to ARVN caused the retirement of 224 military aircraft, including 61 fighter-bombers, 36 of 46 Spooky/ Shadow gunships (C-47s or C-119s) and 50 percent of the South’s C-130 air transport cargo planes. In addition, 4,000 tanks, APCs and trucks were immobilized because of a lack of spare parts. Beyond this, although the South had the manpower to create a new strategic reserve division (reaction force), under reduced U.S. aid levels, the ARVN did not have the money to equip this unit with artillery, transportation and communication equipment. All this came to mean reduced ARVN mobility (helicopter repair and maintenance was poor—during the battle of Ban Me Thuot, 13 of 14 CH-53s were grounded within three days) against a tremendously expanded NVA force with vastly increased, motorized mobility.

Before the final assault began in 1975 the NVA would have 370,000 troops in the South—200,000 seasoned combatants, 100,000 support soldiers and an additional force of seven newly deployed divisions. The NVA also had 600 to 700 Soviet tanks—a two-to-one advantage over the ARVN—400 130mm howitzers, 200 large-caliber antiaircraft guns and numerous batteries of SAM-7 surface-to-air missiles (which effectively negated RVNAF air power).

In spite of this lopsided advantage, or perhaps in ignorance of it, many commentators have viewed the effect of lowered American support as chiefly psychological—a fatalism, not unlike that of FANK, caused by ever-decreasing American commitments in the face of ever-increasing Russian and Chinese support to the NVA. Nineteen seventy-four was the bloodiest year of that long war in South Viet Nam. Still the ARVN fought well when attacked. Not until January 1975 did the NVA capture a provincial capital. On 6 January, Phuoc Binh (Song Be City) fell to the NVA. Two significant points must be noted: (1) the ARVN no longer had the reserve forces to flank or to counter NVA movement, and (2) there was no American reaction to the fall of a major South Viet Namese population center. The NVA now became certain that the United States would not, in any way, reenter the war.

In March, the ARVN in the Central Highlands, anticipating a major assault, deployed its forces around the northern highland towns of Plei Ku and Kontum. The attack, a five-division mechanized assault, hit Ban Me Thuot far to the south. The ARVN was unable to react and reinforce. Ban Me Thuot’s five battalions held out against 24 NVA battalions for a week. This was followed by preposterous Saigon-ordered withdrawals and a series of other tactical and strategic blunders. By the end of March, six of South Viet Nam’s thirteen divisions had been destroyed. Panic in the northern military regions multiplied these errors. Some major centers evacuated even before the NVA approached. Even had President Thieu been a tactical genius and a great leader, it is doubtful that seven ARVN divisions could have held out against 25 well-equipped NVA divisions for any great length of time. The mid-April 13-day battle of Xuan Loc, during which the ARVN 18th Division not only stalled but severely damaged three NVA divisions, was the last major heroic stand of the South Viet Namese army. Although unseen and unnoted in the West, fighting continued in numerous locations for many months. Saigon fell on 30 April 1975.

THE IMPLEMENTATION OF COMMUNISM IN DEMOCRATIC KAMPUCHEA

The Khmer Krahom victory of 17 April 1975 ushered in a new age, one the Khmer call
peal chur chat
, a sour and bitter time. One thing it did not bring was peace.

Phnom Penh’s nearly three million inhabitants were herded from the capital in coerced chaos beginning only hours after Khmer Krahom soldiers entered the city. Battambang (population, 120,000) was similarly evacuated the next day. Western reporters and editors, some who had ignored or downplayed earlier reports of Communist atrocities, expressed public shock. Banner headlines, such as “REDS BEHEAD FORMER CAMBODIAN LEADERS” (from the Los Angeles
Herald Examiner
), appeared as early as 19 April. By the 23rd the victorious Khmer Communists had emptied most of Cambodia’s medium-sized to small cities (Pailin, Kompong Chhnang, Pursat and others) and many of the nation’s towns, villages and hamlets. Surprisingly, the southeastern region about Neak Luong, which had fallen more than three weeks earlier, was one of the last areas to be subjected to evacuation. Throughout the country evacuations were swift and
always
termed temporary. Frightened people, told that “the Americans are going to bomb” (Communist officials moved into Phnom Penh almost immediately, knowing no bombs were coming) and expecting to return home within a day or two, took few belongings. Soon, escapees later reported, many people were out of food and at the mercy of the Communists. Because they had to rely on the soldiers for basic subsistence, they obeyed orders. Of first priority to the Communists, and thus among the first orders issued to the evacuees, was the collecting of personal data on individuals and families. Each person was “requested” to write his or her autobiography, including family relations, occupation and education. The KK ruse was to tell people that the new regime needed them to help rebuild the country. Within weeks, sometimes days, this hoax was exposed. The new regime wished only to identify “enemies” of the new state.

Some reports of bloodbaths seeped across the closed border into Thailand. Within a month of Phnom Penh’s fall, 7,000 refugees reached Thai soil; 300 more were shot and killed at the border by KK yotheas. In late April came unconfirmed reports of the methodical killing of FANK soldiers and families on a platform at Mongkol Borei. On 8 May the
Los Angeles Times
reported under the headline “REDS ‘PURIFYING’ CAMBODIA”:

The Red Khmer forces which took over the country on April 17 had long ago prepared a plan to move millions of inhabitants into liberated zones where they would be instilled with the spirit of service to the revolution.

And as the revolution started from zero, so will the people of Cambodia.

The 12 May 1975 issue of
Newsweek
reported that all the officers of the old army, down to second lieutenant, were being executed.
Newsweek
said that thousands had already been killed and that the figure might reach into the tens of thousands. By June, while KK units attacked Viet Nam’s Mekong Delta with the announced intent of exterminating the Viet Namese and annexing “lost” territory, there were unconfirmed reports (flatly denied by several prominent journalists) that 3.5 million city dwellers and half a million peasants had been “deported” in the forced migration; that 300,000 had died in the first month; that at least 8,000 corpses, and perhaps up to ten times that, lay along Highway 6 north of Phnom Penh; and that there, too, stood a forest of 200 heads on stakes.

In August, new evacuations and executions, “forced” by Viet Namese counterattacks following KK June and July raids into the Mekong Delta, were ordered by the Center. At the time of Phnom Penh’s fall, Ieng Sary (deputy premier for foreign affairs and number-two man in the KCP) said the Krahom army had been charged with “driving out the Viet Namese who had been [in the border area] throughout the war.” The NVA (now PAVN, the People’s Army of Viet Nam) had, even after Saigon’s fall, refused to withdraw. Battles flared from the triborder area southward through Ratanakiri, Mondolkiri and the Fishhook to the disputed offshore islands. Krahom leaders, paranoid about the Viet Namese counterattacks, ordered all cadre of all divisions who were trained in Viet Nam (or by Viet Namese—that is, “had the wrong background”) arrested and killed. In April there had been 14,000 members of the Kampuchean Communist Party (KCP) and approximately 68,000 yotheas. In May, Party membership was closed. By August the inner-Party and inner-military political purge was under way, and General Pol Pot had ordered the establishment of a wide no-man’s-land along the entire length of the border. (This was why, when U.S. Marines attempted to assault the sparsely inhabited island to free the crew of the seized U.S. freighter
Mayaguez
, they were met by a large, deeply entrenched, heavily armed Krahom force. The U.S. suffered 38 killed. General Pol Pot and the Center used the
Mayaguez
raid as “proof” of U.S. designs on Kampuchea and for two years beat the drums of imperialistic adventurism. This, according to refugee reports, was used to justify the purging of additional thousands as “CIA agents.”) A third (second nationwide) massive forced relocation was ordered in late October and carried out in November and December 1975.

This new wave of postvictory forced evacuations came just as the rice, which would have fed half a million Cambodians, was ripening; and these evacuations were not confined to areas near the Viet Namese border. Some commentators have bent over backwards to justify these Communist policies, as can be seen in this quote from
Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution
, by Gareth Porter and George C. Hildebrand:

...only the revolutionary left in Cambodia had the will and capability to resolve [the food] problem....The National United Front of Kampuchea [NUFK, KR, KK or Angkar Leou]...with only its own resources, not only fed its own people but also the more than 3 million people living in GKR [Government of Kampuchean Republic, or Lon Nol’s regime] enclaves at the close of the war....By the summer of 1975 the NUFK had successfully dealt with Cambodia’s postwar food problem....

The stark contrast in determination to meet the most elementary human needs clearly reflects the social and political character of the NUFK and the GKR. The Lon Nol side had no commitment...for the prevention of famine....NUFK...had from the beginning an ideological and political commitment to bring about the development of Cambodia’s economy and raise the living standards of Cambodia’s people. Moreover, its...political success clearly depended not on vast quantities of aid from abroad but on its ability to assure a minimum diet under the most difficult conditions. The NUFK was able to produce sufficient food only by adopting revolutionary forms of organization, which permitted the mobilization of the Cambodian people...an achievement completely beyond the capabilities of the old society. Then, through careful management of centralized food stocks at the village level, the NUFK was able to feed its people, its soldiers, and the refugees.

In the aftermath of the Cambodian war, however, the U.S. government had a significant stake in attempting to deny the NUFK’s success....

Cambodia is only the latest victim of the enforcement of an ideology that demands that social revolutions be portrayed as negatively as possible, rather than as responses to real human needs which the existing social and economic structure was incapable of meeting. In Cambodia...the systematic process of myth making must be seen as an attempt to justify the massive death machine which was turned against a defenseless population in a vain effort to crush their revolution. The lessons of the Cambodian experience, moreover, have a significance that goes far beyond Cambodia itself. We hope that they will not be lost to the American people in the rewriting of history that is already taking place.

In light of the third mass relocation in which an estimated half million people were expelled from areas they had cultivated for six months, expelled just prior to the ripening of the crop and “deported” for no food reason (those in the West were moved east, those in the East moved west), to areas which not only had no surplus but which already had shortfalls; in light of the thousands of confirmed reports of soldiers confiscating most of the harvest for shipment to Center granaries (not in villages, and little was ever shipped back); in light of the documented policy to break the bonds of the people with everything past (in Pol Pot’s words, “to make an additional, total and permanent break from the old culture”), a policy which included the purposeful denial of sufficient sustenance to the masses; in light of the systematic and ruthless elimination of all previous authority and the total uprooting of all towns—not a reprisal reaction by local cadre to the horrors they’d endured, but exact, deliberate, long-formulated policies and plans originating from the high command; in light of all this, it is absurd to see these evacuations and executions as anything other than willful, malicious mass murder in the name of cultural revolution.

In addition to the October-November deportations, there was a new wave of killings. Radio orders went out to all “exterminators” that the new regime “no longer needed” certain classes of people.
All
former government soldiers, civil servants, teachers and students, and their families, were to be “weeded out” (because many had learned to hide their backgrounds) and eliminated.

Another wave of killings reportedly began in January 1976. The methods of Angkar Leou were so inquisitorial that KK troops, many who had been primarily Sihanoukists (Rumdoah), defected en masse. The “era of happiness” promised them if they achieved victory proved to be a lie. Bloodshed and tensions remained high or increased in every area of the country. Only the Party hierarchy prospered. Defectors became prisoners of war. Local controllers received the following order: “Prisoners of war are no longer required by Angkar Leou. Local controllers will dispose of them as they see fit. These are the wishes of Angkar Leou.”

Still the Center was able to further consolidate its power. A new security apparatus emerged. Total class warfare was declared. Now, according to Pol Pot, came the “Second Revolution.” Murder waves swept Democratic Kampuchea as the Glorious 17th of April Independence and Victory Day was celebrated. Efforts to weed out the last vestiges of the three mountains of previous power intensified. Kampuchea lay mutilated. The Center now decreed the New and Glorious Constitution of Democratic Kampuchea. This document included the following clauses: