Rbalitbs Cambodgiennes, a Weekly Journal of News and Comment

Rbalitbs Cambodgiennes, a weekly journal of news and comment long, who was said to have accepted regular bribes deposited into edited by one of Sihanouk's French advisers, Jean Barrd, who had accounts in Paris and Switzerland, to the smallest border customs privately suggested a more moderate stance in Cambodian foreign posts. policy. Sihanouk's open acknowledgement of the presence of Vietnam- The item began, "Foreign armed elements are found in great ese Communists, at a press conference on March 28, 1969, con- numbers (a 'large unit,' they say) in the region of Nam Lyr, two firmed a phenomenon that was already widely accepted as true in kilometers from our frontier, in Mondulkiri," a northeastern prov- Phnom Penh. Thus he was not sharply reversing his policy but ince just south of Ratanakiri. "The chiefs of these 'armed foreign bowing before mounting pressure from his own ministers, notably elements7 must understand once and for all that sovereign and Lon Nol, whose troops had engaged in a series of minor armed neutral Cambodia cannot tolerate the use of its territory by for- clashes with the North Vietnamese along the border. Sihanouk eign forces."* There was no doubt, in this case, that the "foreign may have hoped, by "exposing" Communist activities, both to elements" to which the item alluded were Vietnamese Commu- placate Lon No1 and to enter into some formal agreement with nist, not U.S. or Saigon government, troops. the Vietnamese Communists to legitimize previously illegal activi- Cambodian officials were increasingly disturbed by the connec- ties. Lon No1 and Sihanouk were working with each other, but for tion between the Vietnamese Communists and the Khmer Loeu, different ends. Sihanouk still planned to maintain the old arrange- or Cambodian mountain people, in the northeastern provinces. Be- inknt with the Vietnamese Communists, while Lon Nol wanted tween 1,500 and 2,000 Khmer Loeu rebels were based in Ratana- to persuade them to leave the country. kiri, said army officers, who charged that the North Vietnamese Beginning in June, 1969, Cambodian magazines published a trained the rebels in guerrilla tactics to harass government troops. series of "confidential reports7' in which Lon No1 detailed the lo- The army in 1968 increased its strength in Ratanakiri from two to cation and size of Vietnamese Communist bases in Cambodia. five battalions, but Cambodian soldiers still refrained from ven- Lon Nol's first report, based in part on information supplied by turing far beyond Route 19, the main east-west road that once car- U.S. military intelligence sources in Vietnam, summarized a con- ried traffic to the Vietnamese central highlands. Even more alarm- versation between the general and two senior Vietnamese Com- ing than the news from the northeast, which after all was foreign lnunist diplonlats, the North Vietnamese Ambassador, Nguyen territory to most Cambodians, were published reports of the per- Thuong, and the NLF Ambassador, Nguyen Van Hieu. Lon No1 manent encampment of Vietnamese Communist troops within 40 charged that North Vietnamese troops were encamped in the miles of Phnom Penh. Agence Khmhre de Presse, the official news northeastern provinces of Ratanakiri, Mondulkiri, and Stung Treng agency, listed the names of ten villages in the Parrot's Beak, the as well as in the central provinces of Kompong Cham, Prey Veng, portion of Cambodia that juts into South Vietnam southeast of and Svay Rieng, all within easy driving distance from Phnom Penh. Phnom Penh, in which "Vietnamese armies" had purportedly in- In Mondulkiri, Lon No1 told the ambassadors, "your troops" stalled themselves "despite the efforts of provincial authorities to had set up "logistical bases, hospital and command posts." Com- repel them.773 munist soldiers, as "masters of the occupied regions," not only Such sporadic reports of Communist activities undoubtedly dictated the laws but exacted from Cambodian military and civil- were prompted by senior Cambodian military officers, possibly ian authorities "prior authorization to travel in them." In Kom- Lon No1 himself, in an effort to induce Sihanouk personally to pong Cham Province, the report went on, "Occupation is also in denounce the presence of the Communists and ask them to leave. effect, not onlv in the border areas, but also in the interior," where Lon Nol's behind-the-scenes campaign to reverse the pattern of the Comnlunists had established "bases, command posts, etc." Cambodia's de facto military alliance with the Communists was Conln~unistpersonnel, said Lon Nol, "actively organized the popu- complicated by some of the comfortable arrangements formed be- lation to deal in contraband." This situation persisted, he added, tween military officers and Communist cadres. The Communists despite "our friendly recommendations to wipe out the smuggling had in effect infiltrated every level of the Cambodian structure, and in spite of talks with vour representative^."^ from the office of the military commander, General Nhiek Tiou- Sihanouk's policy, even at this late stage, was to discourage Cambodian troops from interfering with the activities of the North The Vietnamese Communists were not enthusiastic about Si- Vietnamese. Cambodian officers, returning from patrols in the hanouk's desire for a written agreement on arms since they jungle, said that Sihanouk personally had ordered their comniand- would have had to submit to regularized Cambodian controls and ers to recall them from locales where they niight engage Conimu- I pay considerably more to the Cambodian Government for the use nist troops. Nonetheless, as the North Vietnamese built up their of Cambodian ports, trucks, and storage facilities than they had bases in Cambodia, small skirmishes were inevitable. In his con- customarily proferred Cambodian officials and Chinese trucking versation with the Vietnamese Communist ambassadors, Lon No1 firms in secret. Sihanouk's order to close the ports was not imme- reported that hostile soldiers had destroyed Cambodian Army diately injurious to the interests of the Communists, who al- road-building equipment in the northeast, had wounded and 1 ready had all the arms they needed for their fall and winter cam- killed civilian and military officials in the central provinces, and paigns stored along the frontier. Cambodian Army supply depots, had supplied cadres for local Khmer Rouge forces, who were en- which served in effect as logistics bases for the Communists, had couraged to ambush government patrols. Lon Nol's report did not stockpiles capable of fulfilling their needs for another year or two, exaggerate the gravity of the threat. Sihanouk had permitted him provided Cambodia remained willing to transfer these supplies to to make the report and then publish it in a Cambodian magazine the Communists. only after Lon No1 had convinced Sihanouk of the need for a con- The Vietnamese Communists might have been well advised at frontation with Vietnamese Communist diplomats. this stage to maintain a 'low profilew-a term often used to de- The Communists, like Sihanouk, still hoped to balance their scribe the U.S. diplomatic position vis-a-vis Cambodia-and to at- own military interests with those of the Cambodian Government. tempt to demonstrate their solidarity with the Cambodian forces. For this reason both ambassadors informed Lon No1 that they i In fact, during this period, the Communists began ranging much would investigate his charges but claimed that the Americans and r further from their bases, often wandering at will through villages South Vietnamese must reallv be the culprits. This reply provided once entirely off limits to them. Although Cambodian policy to- a face-saving pretext that might have led to a much closer military ward the North Vietnamese had not changed, Lon No1 decided, relationship between the Vietnamese Communists and the Cam- in October, 1969, to reveal some statistics that might explain the bodian Government. Sihanouk's aim, once he realized that the increase in the number of clashes between Cambodians and Viet- Co~nmunistpresence had become too big to hide, was to reach a namese Communists. In September alone, he said, the total num- definite understanding with Hanoi and the NLF from which Cam- ber of "foreign troops on our soil" had increased from between bodia might profit monetarily, if not militarily. I 32,000 and 35,000 men to between 35,000 and 40,000. Lon No1 es- It was seemingly ironic, in view of this aim, that Sihanouk should timated that Communist strength along the northern and northeast- have ordered the closing of the ports of Sihanoukville and Ream ern borders had risen from 16,000 to well over 17,000 troops and, to the flow of Communist arms in July, 1969, shortly after the I near the frontiers south and east of Phnom Penh, from 13,800 to visit, from June 30 to July 5, of President Huynh Tan Phat, of the 17,000. The remainder were presumably scattered in isolated pock- Provisional Revolutionary Government. Sihanouk's decision may ets of strength elsewhere in the country. "In this period nothing have represented a concession to Lon Nol, but it also was a means indicates that the foreign units will soon leave our soil," his report of inducing the NLF and Hanoi to acquiesce to a written agree- c~ncluded.~ ment that niight not be altogether favorable to theni. Sihanouk Lon Nol's statistical summary was no doubt realistic, as was his hoped to put the arms trade on an entirely legal basis, whereby the assessment of the prospects for the departure of some of the Com- Cambodian Government profited, rather than the Chinese trucking I munist forces. In the next few months, while Sihanouk was in companies and individual military and civilian officials. Sihanouk's France, Cambodian troops began to probe more deeply than ever bargaining was partially responsible for the trade agreement signed I before into regions where they knew they were likely to encounter with the Provisional Revolutionary Government in September, the enemy.

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