Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Enter the Vietnamese
Relations between Cambodia and Vietnam have historically been tense, as the Vietnamese
have slowly but steadily expanded southwards, encroaching on Cambodian territory. Des-
pite the fact the two communist parties had fought together as brothers in arms, old ten-
sions soon came to the fore.
From 1976 to 1978, the Khmer Rouge instigated a series of border clashes with Vietnam,
and claimed the Mekong Delta, once part of the Khmer empire. Incursions into Vietnamese
border provinces left hundreds of Vietnamese civilians dead. On 25 December 1978, Viet-
nam launched a full-scale invasion of Cambodia, toppling the Pol Pot government two
weeks later. As Vietnamese tanks neared Phnom Penh, the Khmer Rouge fled westward
with as many civilians as it could seize, taking refuge in the jungles and mountains along
the Thai border. The Vietnamese installed a new government led by several former Khmer
Rouge officers, including current Prime Minister Hun Sen, who had defected to Vietnam in
1977. The Khmer Rouge's patrons, the Chinese communists, launched a massive reprisal
raid across Vietnam's northernmost border in early 1979 in an attempt to buy their allies
time. It failed and after 17 days the Chinese withdrew, their fingers badly burnt by their Vi-
etnamese enemies. The Vietnamese then staged a show trial in Cambodia in which Pol Pot
and Ieng Sary were condemned to death in absentia for their genocidal acts.
Only a handful of foreigners were allowed to visit Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge period of
Democratic Kampuchea. US journalist Elizabeth Becker was one who travelled there in late
1978; her book
When the War Was Over
(1986) tells her story.
A traumatised population took to the road in search of surviving family members. Mil-
lions had been uprooted and had to walk hundreds of kilometres across the country. Rice
stocks were decimated, the harvest left to wither and little rice planted, sowing the seeds
for a widespread famine in 1979 and 1980.
As the conflict in Cambodia raged, Sihanouk agreed in 1982, under pressure from China,
to head a military and political front opposed to the Phnom Penh government. The
Sihanouk-led resistance coalition brought together - on paper, at least - Funcinpec (the
French acronym for the National United Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful and
Cooperative Cambodia), which comprised a royalist group loyal to Sihanouk; the Khmer
People's National Liberation Front, a noncommunist grouping under former prime minister
Son Sann; and the Khmer Rouge, officially known as the Party of Democratic Kampuchea
