Monday, Apr. 28, 1975Time Magazine (USA)Silence finally fell across Cambodia's battlefields last week after five years of fratricidal fighting that claimed as many as 1 million casualties, leveled once graceful Cambodian cities and scorched the tranquil countryside. Admitting the futility of further resistance, the remaining leaders of the Khmer Republic drove to a prearranged meeting place—Kilometer 6 on Route 5—and there surrendered to officers of the Communist-dominated Khmer Rouge insurgents. Not since Seoul was overrun by North Korean attackers nearly a quarter-century ago had a national capital fallen in combat to Communist troops.
White Flags. Although government leaders had been vowing "to fight until the last drop of blood," there was no attempt at a last-ditch stand. Instead, with the city's last defenses collapsing before the rebels' relentless pounding, the government military command ordered its troops to surrender their weapons to the insurgents. As announcements blared from loudspeakers mounted on army trucks, white flags and banners sprouted everywhere—from downtown buildings and shops, from the masts of government gunboats in the Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers, from armored personnel carriers of the government's 2nd Infantry Division.
Then the black-uniformed rebels started entering the capital, first from the north and then from the west and south. Initially, at least, there was none of the carnage that some government officials had predicted. Neither was there the stony silence that has greeted conquerors in other civil wars. The rebels were given a tumultuous welcome. Streets were crowded as the besieged city's inhabitants cheered and waved white flags or strips of white cloth. About the only shooting came from jubilant insurgents triumphantly firing into the air.
There were, to be sure, some ominous notes. When the Khmer Rouge seized the government radio station, a rebel spokesman said menacingly in a broadcast: "We did not come here to talk. The Lon Nol clique [a reference to the President, who fled about a month ago] and some of its officers should all be hanged." Fearing reprisals from the Communists, a number of government officials and military officers, plus an estimated 2,000 other Cambodians, took refuge in the Hotel Le Phnom, which the International Red Cross had declared a neutral zone.
At the Ministry of Information, meanwhile, the Khmer Rouge commander in Phnom-Penh broadcast an appeal to all "ministers and generals who have not run away" to meet with him to "help formulate measures to restore order." At week's end, although almost all communication with Phnom-Penh was closed, there were unconfirmed reports that the Khmer Rouge had beheaded some members of the former government. There was no word as to the fate of Premier Long Boret, who was said to have been arrested while attempting to escape by helicopter.
The surrender ended a bloody chapter that began in March 1970, after a bloodless coup ousted Prince Norodom Sihanouk as chief of state. The new regime, headed by General Lon Nol, almost immediately launched a campaign to drive Hanoi's troops from their base camps inside Cambodia and quash the Khmer Rouge, a ragtag band of 3,000 to 5,000 leftist guerrillas. After initial hesitations, Washington backed the new regime. The U.S. invasion of Cambodia in 1970, directed against North Vietnamese sanctuaries, was partly designed to help Lon Nol. Also helpful were $1.8 billion in aid and thousands of bombing missions flown by the U.S. until Congress banned them in August 1973.
Swelling Ranks. For the first two years of the war, highly professional North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers fought beside the Khmer Rouge; as volunteers and conscripted peasants swelled their ranks, the rebels fought alone. By the time the U.S. bombing ceased, the Communists claimed 90% of Cambodia's territory and were on the outskirts of the capital. Only the stubborn and unexpected resistance of the government's poorly paid troops kept Phnom-Penh from falling in 1973 or 1974. This year, when the insurgents blockaded the Mekong River and cut off all land access to the capital, the government had to rely on a U.S. airlift for food, fuel and ammunition.
It was thus just a matter of time before the capital would fall and, as last week began, an insurgent victory was imminent. After the evacuation of the U.S. embassy (TIME, April 21), the Phnom-Penh government stood alone. "We feel completely abandoned," said Premier Long Boret, who stated at the time that he had decided to remain in Cambodia. Any hope of resupplying or defending the capital ended when the U.S. airlift halted the day the embassy closed.
Soon after the U.S. evacuation, the insurgents, as if waiting for a signal that Washington had finally, irrevocably given up on Cambodia, began what proved to be the final assault of the war. Reinforced by units brought in from the provinces and from blockade stations along the Mekong River, about 40,000 Khmer Rouge troops attacked the capital from all sides.
The road between Phnom-Penh and Pochentong Airport was severed; suburbs to the northwest of the city fell; in the south, in the southwest, on the Mekong riverbank across from the capital's east side, insurgents rolled easily over government defenders. Highly accurate U.S.-made 105-mm. howitzers, captured from government forces, were brought within range of the airport to support a punishing rebel ground assault. After a three-day-long seesaw battle, first the control tower and then the airfield fell.
As the Khmer Rouge pushed forward, setting fire to houses and refugee camps, thousands of new refugees preceded them. The endless stream, including government soldiers who had shed their uniforms and insurgents who were attempting to infiltrate Phnom-Penh, pressed toward the capital on foot, in oxcarts and by motorbike.
Ghost Town. As the battle moved closer to Phnom-Penh, military police used rifle butts in a futile attempt to control the mobs of refugees flowing into the city. After a disaffected air force pilot bombed the military command headquarters (killing seven), a 24-hour curfew was imposed for one day while police went from house to house to search for infiltrators. Hospitals were crowded to two and three times their capacity. The small French community, anticipating the imminent arrival of the insurgents, began affixing the Tricolor to their houses; Paris had already recognized the Khmer Rouge. Meanwhile, the evacuated U.S. compound looked like a ghost town, picked clean of all movable objects by the Cambodian employees and police assigned to guard it.
By midweek, Phnom-Penh radio admitted that the situation "is boiling hotter and hotter." The insurgents had moved their 105-mm. howitzers close enough to shell downtown Phnom-Penh. The army's ammunition was nearly exhausted. "The end is fast approaching," a Cambodian employee of TIME cabled. "All is about to be lost. There will be no more escape."
Belatedly, the regime sought some political alternative to complete surrender. Only hours after interim President
Saukham Khoy fled Cambodia along with the U.S. diplomats, Long Boret announced a three-month suspension of the National Assembly and the creation of a seven-man "Revolutionary Committee," headed by Armed Forces Chief of Staff Sak Suthsakham, to rule the country. The committee offered the rebels a cease-fire if they would permit national elections to determine the future government of the country. The insurgents ignored the proposal.
With the military situation rapidly deteriorating, the government dropped its demands for elections. Via the Red Cross, it sent an urgent message to Prince Sihanouk, who had been titular head of the Khmer Rouge. The government offered a complete cease-fire and full transfer of powers to the insurgents. Its only condition: no reprisals. From Peking, where he lives in exile, Sihanouk spurned the proposals. He denounced the members of the Revolutionary Committee as "traitors who deserve hanging and should try to escape while they can." He urged the government's soldiers to "lay down their arms, raise the white flag and surrender." With that, the government surrendered completely and unconditionally.
It is expected that Khieu Samphan, 43, will quickly emerge as the major figure in the new government (see box below). For most of the war, the French-educated Samphan was Deputy Premier to Sihanouk, but it was clear all along that it was he who held the power, not the exiled prince.
A soft spoken Marxist, Samphan is expected to try to transform his nation into a one-party Communist-dominated state. In fact, in those areas that have been controlled by the insurgents for some time, there have been zealous efforts to sweep away the traditional easygoing habits of old Cambodia. A highly politicized, regimented life has been stressed, peasants have been herded into communes, and the state has acquired a dominant authority over private activities.
What role awaits Sihanouk is highly uncertain. In a series of statements last week, the mercurial prince insisted that he is neither a Khmer Rouge nor a Communist but a neutralist. "I am a very independent man," he said. He may have some voice in the new regime, perhaps as its representative abroad, though he has indicated that what he would really like is to be named lifetime head of state. Whatever the role, he said, he would advocate a Cambodia that would be nonaligned, progressive and nonCommunist. That would surely bring him into conflict with Khieu Samphan, who would surprise nobody by keeping Sihanouk in a figurehead role for a decent interval and then dumping him.
Rumbling Trucks. The most urgent task confronting the new regime is, of course, administration of the country. Some 2 million refugees (from a population of only 7.6 million) must be fed and sheltered. Government troops must be demobilized and put to work. The shattered economy must be reconstructed; in particular the lush ricelands, which once yielded surpluses, must be restored to productivity. Order must be restored in the capital, swollen to three times its normal population. In a calculated effort to thin out teeming Phnom-Penh, presumably to get refugees into the countryside to plant rice in time for the rainy season and perhaps to facilitate the search for hidden government and army officials, rebel sound trucks rumbled through Phnom-Penh toward week's end, warning of immediate attack. Panicked, thousands of refugees fled the city.
One advantage enjoyed by the Khmer Rouge is its apparent popularity among the general public, possibly because of relief and gratitude that the war is finally over. That reservoir of good will could quickly dry up, however, if the new rulers launch widespread reprisals or move quickly to create a harsh, regimented state. Addressing himself to these potential pitfalls, Khmer Rouge Politburo Member Chau Seng assured a Paris press conference last week that while "there will be some trials in Phnom-Penh, we will judge in a humane way." The new regime will in turn be judged—by its own citizens and by the rest of the world—on the basis of just how humanely it does behave.
