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Innocent Cambodians are, as ever, caught in the crossfire. According to refugees, Vietnamese troops "liberating" a hamlet from the Khmer Rouge will customarily abolish the communal kitchens and other vestiges of Pol Pot's extremist brand of Communism and allow the citizens to elect their own leaders. The Vietnamese then move on to other villages, leaving the inhabitants defenseless against the revenge of Khmer Rouge who swoop down at night, reinstitute the communal kitchens, seize what food is available, and kill the elected leaders.
Although the Vietnamese troops in Cambodia outnumber the Khmer Rouge 7 to 1, it is by no means certain that Hanoi can defeat the Khmer Rouge. The Cardamom Mountains are densely forested and remote. The Vietnamese supply lines are long and vulnerable to harassment, and the Khmer Rouge know the country. Continuing Vietnamese efforts to root out the guerrillas may merely add to the chaos in Cambodia.
One advantage enjoyed by the Khmer Rouge is their ability to make tactical retreats into Thailand, where they rest and regroup—much to the discomfiture of the neutral Thais. Some 30,000 Khmer Rouge and their supporters crossed into Thailand last month during a Vietnamese offensive, and reportedly have since returned to Cambodia, presumably having hidden their arms there. One obvious danger is that Hanoi might risk a direct attack into Thailand. Said a top Western diplomatic observer in Bangkok last week: "The war can easily spill over into Thailand. Hanoi wants very badly to get rid of the Khmer Rouge and may use hot pursuit to accomplish its purpose."
To blunt that possibility, Washington has sold Bangkok $400 million worth of sophisticated weapons in the past fiscal year, including 150 M48 tanks. A spokesman for the Defense Department said last week that shipments of arms to Thailand had been speeded up during the past several months because the U.S. has been concerned that the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia might spread to other countries.
The U.S. can help arm the Thais against a Vietnamese incursion, but Washington seems virtually helpless to influence the apparently inexorable course of events that is engulfing the Cambodian people. One reason is that the war being waged inside the country is ultimately a reflection of the deep-rooted Sino-Soviet conflict. Another is that Hanoi perceives all humanitarian efforts by the world to feed the starving Cambodians as "interference" in the affairs of the Phnom-Penh government. In spite of growing Western pressure, many diplomatic observers believe that Phnom-Penh, under Hanoi's direction, will continue to obstruct any large-scale relief efforts. Said one Western diplomat in Bangkok: "The Vietnamese might not want supply trucks rolling down the Cambodian highways because they are engaged in military operations on those roads. They also may not want outsiders to see that it is Hanoi that is righting the war against the Khmer Rouge and not Phnom-Penh. They fear that even if the food is distributed to Cambodian civilians, some of those civilians may pass it on to the Khmer Rouge, or have it seized. Finally, the Vietnamese simply don't give a damn about what happens to the Cambodians."