Vietnamese troops leaving Cambodia 21st September 1989, 10 and a half years after they invaded Cambodia and toppled the Khmer Rouge regime.By Theary Seng
Here are excerpts, emphasis added, from Brother Enemy— The War after the War: A History of Indochina Since the Fall of Saigon (New York, 1986) by Nayan Chanda to give some historical context to the VOA report of 16 June 2011 Assembly Approves Triple-Country Convention
“Cambodia’s ruling party on Thursday approved a regional convention that would set up a joint development area between Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, but which opposition critics argue would cede land to Vietnam.”
Theary Seng (Photo: Nigel Dickinson, 2010)
________
Chapter 11: Indochina: War Forever? Three Countries, One Current (p. 370)
One refrain that I heard constantly from the survivors was “If the Vietnamese hadn’t come, we’d all be dead.” That expression of gratitude was, however, often laced with apprehension that the traditional enemy—Vietnam—might now annex Cambodia. “I fear they [the Vietnamese] want to stay here to eat our rice,” a former schoolteacher whispered to me on the road on his long march back home.
The Vietnamese certainly did not help to foster confidence. In the three months following the occupation of Phnom Penh they had systematically plundered the capital. Convoys of trucks carrying refrigerators, air conditioners, electrical gadgets, furniture, machinery, and precious sculptures headed toward Ho Chi Minh City.
[…]
Thousands of Vietnamese officials and technicians were commandeered to Cambodia to restore the water supply and electricity in Phnom Penh, put the railway line back into service, and reopen rudimentary health clinics with Vietnamese doctors and paramedics and a handful of Cambodian doctors. Ministries were set up, with Vietnamese advisers running things behind the scenes. Hundreds of Khmers were sent to Vietnam to take crash courses in health care, education, banking, foreign trade, and security work.
[…]
Militarily, Cambodia was brought under the responsibility of Vietnam’s Fourth Army Corps… three Khmer divisions had been raised to play a supporting role, the 180,000 strong Vietnamese army led by Fourth Corps commander General Le Duc Anh…
Three shadowy Vietnamese organizations controlled the pulse of the People’s Republic of Kampuchea, as the new regime calls itself. The highest of these organizations was a body called A-40 composed of some experts from the Vietnamese party’s Central Committee. They maintained liaison between the Cambodian and Vietnamese parties and offered advice on all key issues. Another group, called B-68, was headed by Tran Xuan Bach, a member of Vietnamese Party secretariat and consisted of midlevel Vietnamese experts attached to various Cambodian ministries and participating in day-to-day decision making. A third group of advisers, A-50, consisted of experts who worked with provincial administration.
In rural areas, civilian advisers from Vietnamese “sister” provinces worked in Khmer provincial offices and services. Below the provincial level the advisory work was left to special teams from the Vietnamese army commanded by captains.
In the years since its invasion and occupation of Cambodia the Vietnamese have refined their justifications for an Indochinese alliance and raised it to the level of some immutable natural law—a law dictated by geography and history. “For centuries,” General Le Duc Anh wrote in a major article, “the three-countries [Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam] shared the same fate as victims of aggression by the Chinese feudalistic forces, imperialism, and international reactionary forces.” Dividing one country from another, using one as a springboard from which to annex another, and then annexing all three countries “became the law for all wars of aggression by outside forces against the Indochinese peninsula.” Consequently, Anh argued, building a “strategic and combat alliance among the three Indochinese countries constitutes the law of survival and development for each individual country and the three countries as well.”
[…] “If Phnom Penh falls, Saigon falls. If we have to fight and die, we do it here, not in Vietnam.” This was the way Vietnamese officers explained the reason for their presence in Cambodia.
[…] Thenceforward such gatherings became regular biannual affairs to present the latest Hanoi position as that of the whole Indochinese grouping. By associating Laos and Cambodia with its policy position, Hanoi only formalized its leadership role vis-à-vis those countries but sought to boost the legitimacy of its client regime in Phnom Penh and to convey a sense of irreversibility to the newly formed alliance.
[…]
What Hanoi sought was not only the security of a politically bloc, but the creation of an economically integrated unit in which to achieve “gradual implementation of labor distribution, ensuring an effective use of labor and land potentials of the three countries.” With its 6 million hectares of cultivated land and population of 60 million (1985), Vietnam clearly saw potential in sparsely populated Cambodia (7 million population) with its 1.5 million hectares of cultivated land and enormous fishing grounds.
Pursuing a policy begun since the signing of the Lao-Vietnamese treaty of 1977, all the Lao and Cambodian provinces were coupled with sister provinces in Vietnam. Vietnamese advisers, technical experts, and doctors from the provinces were dispatched to sister provinces in Laos and Cambodia to help in small projects and to build a special Indochinese bond.
[…] Whether it was Hanoi’s deliberate policy to settle Vietnamese in Cambodia, as its opponents charged, or whether it was just the continuation of the historical pattern of spontaneous movement of the Vietnamese to less populated areas, the result could only be strengthening of the Vietnamese hold over the country. According to the estimate of a leading Western demographer, by 1985 more than one hundred and seventy-five thousand Vietnamese civilians—including former residents, new landless immigrants, traders, and discharged soldiers—had settled in Cambodia. Other estimates were as high as six hundred thousand.
. . . . .
The problem is us—our leadership, our reactions, our policy—and the Vietnamese political aggression and policies, not the Vietnamese people. If we really care about Cambodia, focus on EDUCATION. Think Singapore. If we care about Cambodia, get Vietnamese-military owned Viettel/Metfone out of Cambodia by not using its services.
- Theary C. Seng, Phnom Penh, 17 June 2011
“Cambodia’s ruling party on Thursday approved a regional convention that would set up a joint development area between Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, but which opposition critics argue would cede land to Vietnam.”
Theary Seng (Photo: Nigel Dickinson, 2010)
________
Chapter 11: Indochina: War Forever? Three Countries, One Current (p. 370)
One refrain that I heard constantly from the survivors was “If the Vietnamese hadn’t come, we’d all be dead.” That expression of gratitude was, however, often laced with apprehension that the traditional enemy—Vietnam—might now annex Cambodia. “I fear they [the Vietnamese] want to stay here to eat our rice,” a former schoolteacher whispered to me on the road on his long march back home.
The Vietnamese certainly did not help to foster confidence. In the three months following the occupation of Phnom Penh they had systematically plundered the capital. Convoys of trucks carrying refrigerators, air conditioners, electrical gadgets, furniture, machinery, and precious sculptures headed toward Ho Chi Minh City.
[…]
Thousands of Vietnamese officials and technicians were commandeered to Cambodia to restore the water supply and electricity in Phnom Penh, put the railway line back into service, and reopen rudimentary health clinics with Vietnamese doctors and paramedics and a handful of Cambodian doctors. Ministries were set up, with Vietnamese advisers running things behind the scenes. Hundreds of Khmers were sent to Vietnam to take crash courses in health care, education, banking, foreign trade, and security work.
[…]
Militarily, Cambodia was brought under the responsibility of Vietnam’s Fourth Army Corps… three Khmer divisions had been raised to play a supporting role, the 180,000 strong Vietnamese army led by Fourth Corps commander General Le Duc Anh…
Three shadowy Vietnamese organizations controlled the pulse of the People’s Republic of Kampuchea, as the new regime calls itself. The highest of these organizations was a body called A-40 composed of some experts from the Vietnamese party’s Central Committee. They maintained liaison between the Cambodian and Vietnamese parties and offered advice on all key issues. Another group, called B-68, was headed by Tran Xuan Bach, a member of Vietnamese Party secretariat and consisted of midlevel Vietnamese experts attached to various Cambodian ministries and participating in day-to-day decision making. A third group of advisers, A-50, consisted of experts who worked with provincial administration.
In rural areas, civilian advisers from Vietnamese “sister” provinces worked in Khmer provincial offices and services. Below the provincial level the advisory work was left to special teams from the Vietnamese army commanded by captains.
In the years since its invasion and occupation of Cambodia the Vietnamese have refined their justifications for an Indochinese alliance and raised it to the level of some immutable natural law—a law dictated by geography and history. “For centuries,” General Le Duc Anh wrote in a major article, “the three-countries [Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam] shared the same fate as victims of aggression by the Chinese feudalistic forces, imperialism, and international reactionary forces.” Dividing one country from another, using one as a springboard from which to annex another, and then annexing all three countries “became the law for all wars of aggression by outside forces against the Indochinese peninsula.” Consequently, Anh argued, building a “strategic and combat alliance among the three Indochinese countries constitutes the law of survival and development for each individual country and the three countries as well.”
[…] “If Phnom Penh falls, Saigon falls. If we have to fight and die, we do it here, not in Vietnam.” This was the way Vietnamese officers explained the reason for their presence in Cambodia.
[…] Thenceforward such gatherings became regular biannual affairs to present the latest Hanoi position as that of the whole Indochinese grouping. By associating Laos and Cambodia with its policy position, Hanoi only formalized its leadership role vis-à-vis those countries but sought to boost the legitimacy of its client regime in Phnom Penh and to convey a sense of irreversibility to the newly formed alliance.
[…]
What Hanoi sought was not only the security of a politically bloc, but the creation of an economically integrated unit in which to achieve “gradual implementation of labor distribution, ensuring an effective use of labor and land potentials of the three countries.” With its 6 million hectares of cultivated land and population of 60 million (1985), Vietnam clearly saw potential in sparsely populated Cambodia (7 million population) with its 1.5 million hectares of cultivated land and enormous fishing grounds.
Pursuing a policy begun since the signing of the Lao-Vietnamese treaty of 1977, all the Lao and Cambodian provinces were coupled with sister provinces in Vietnam. Vietnamese advisers, technical experts, and doctors from the provinces were dispatched to sister provinces in Laos and Cambodia to help in small projects and to build a special Indochinese bond.
[…] Whether it was Hanoi’s deliberate policy to settle Vietnamese in Cambodia, as its opponents charged, or whether it was just the continuation of the historical pattern of spontaneous movement of the Vietnamese to less populated areas, the result could only be strengthening of the Vietnamese hold over the country. According to the estimate of a leading Western demographer, by 1985 more than one hundred and seventy-five thousand Vietnamese civilians—including former residents, new landless immigrants, traders, and discharged soldiers—had settled in Cambodia. Other estimates were as high as six hundred thousand.
. . . . .
The problem is us—our leadership, our reactions, our policy—and the Vietnamese political aggression and policies, not the Vietnamese people. If we really care about Cambodia, focus on EDUCATION. Think Singapore. If we care about Cambodia, get Vietnamese-military owned Viettel/Metfone out of Cambodia by not using its services.
- Theary C. Seng, Phnom Penh, 17 June 2011
5 comments:
“If the Vietnamese hadn’t come, we’d all be dead.” There is a similar expression that I have heard from African American. “If the North (the Union) didn’t win the war, we would still be slaves.” These two expressions have a lot of true, but have plenty of room for me to speculate and looking closely at the source of the cause of the conflict.
First of all, America did not fight in order to free the slaves, but when the American civil war was over, the slaves were freed. This is the same concept when we talk about Vietnam invasion Cambodia. The Vietnamese did not care what was happening in Cambodia or to the Cambodian people. The Stalinist Vietnamese regime was only interested and only wanted to remove the Maoist Khmer Rouge regime from power in Cambodia. The Vietnamese has no interest to free the Cambodian people from extirpation, but when the Maoist Khmer Rouge gets removed, the people of Cambodia were free.
I’m not going to lecture any one in detail about American Civil War, because I am trying to write a comment, not a book. I only want to make my point, not writing a long article.
We have and must get rid off the Viet leech out of our country the sooner the better. We have to let them know that we don't need their services or try to take over our country. We have to let them know that we are aware of their greedy intention to suck our blood. For the new leader, this is a top priority for you. Deport all the illegal Viets people out of our country now. Khmer people will not rest until the Viets leech are out!!!
This is very good article; the source of Khmer Rouge remains suspect. Could anybody find the story of CPP and how it becomes 60 years old organization? I would to find out more about it and who was in leadership then.
60 Years of Scheming!
...........
'The original Kampuchean (or Khmer) People's Revolutionary Party (KPRP) was founded in French colonial times, in September 1951, when the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP), founded by Ho Chi Minh in 1930, was dismembered into three national parties, the KPRP, the Vietnam Workers' Party and the Lao Itsala, prior to the independence of the three countries.
(Tou)Samouth, one of the Khmer Krom of southern Vietnam, was originally a Buddhist monk. In 1945, he was professor of Pali at Unnalom Monastery in Phnom Penh when an American air raid directed against Japanese military targets struck the building, causing several deaths. Samouth was so frightened by this event that he fled to the countryside, eventually making his way to Vietnam, where he joined the Viet Minh.
In the late 1940s, Samouth lectured groups of Khmer recruits on political awareness and economics.
Samouth went on to be a founder member of the Khmer People's Revolutionary Party, the precursor to the Communist Party of Kampuchea, along with Son Ngoc Minh. He was also one of the leaders of the United Issarak Front, a broadly leftist affiliation of various disparate elements of the anti-French resistance, the Khmer Issarak. When the Front formed its 'Khmer Resistance Government', Samouth was named as the Interior Minister.
As head of the Vietnamese-sponsored 'urban' faction of the Cambodian Party, Samouth's presence helped to attract many Buddhist monks to the left-wing cause. The 'urban' communists, as opposed to Sieu Heng's 'rural' cadres, advocated generally more moderate policies; in particular, they supported the presence of the Cambodian king, Norodom Sihanouk, as a figure of national unity and a useful ally in the North Vietnamese attempt to overcome the South.
It was within Samouth's faction of the Party that Pol Pot, and the other recent returnees from Paris who would form the nucleus of the Party's later incarnation as the Khmer Rouge, would gain experience. Samouth appears to have adopted Pol Pot as his protege, leading to the latter's rapid promotion within the Party subsequent to Cambodian independence'.
(NB: There was a fringe 'leftist' political party, The 'Pracheachun' (the People's Party), operating within Sihanouk's formal multi-party setup under his Sangkhum Reastr Niyum (Popular Socialist Community) Party in the 1950s and 1960s that is believed to be an arm of this Viet Minh sponsored movement. The Pracheachun is thus also regarded as a (or 'the') forerunner of the CPP.
Tou Samouth himself is the officially recognised founder of the CPP, and his image appeared in earlier bank notes issued under the Heng Samrin/Hun Sen regime.
Note also the present incorporation of the Sihanouk/Royalist faction into the formal political alliance favoured by Tou Samouth and Ho Chin Minh as an expedient, populist recruiting bate or strategy.
Source:
Dommen, A. The Indochinese experience of the French and the Americans, Indiana University Press, 2001, p.63
^ Ross, R. (ed) The KPRP Second Congress in Cambodia: A Country Study, Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1987
^ Thayer, N. Day of Reckoning, accessed 26-05/09
^ Kiernan, p.241
If there were no Vietnam coming to help, us Cambodian would all be in hell right now because of PolPot Chinese
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