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If that chilling assessment is correct, what does the future hold for Cambodians who may survive the present famine? No viable alternative to Vietnamese rule exists at present. Some Cambodian emigres have placed their hopes in the Khmer Serei, or Free Khmers. These survivors of the Lon Nol forces are bitter enemies of both the Vietnamese and the Khmer Rouge. But with only 3,000 able-bodied soldiers, concentrated in western Battambang province, the Khmer Serei are a very remote threat to Hanoi. TIME's Clark visited a camp on the Cambodian-Thai border north of Aranyaprathet where there are Khmer Serei forces. Though dashingly outfitted in U.S. Marine Corps and Army jungle suits, the Khmer Serei looked anything but warlike. Resting on hammocks, with their transistor radios tuned to American pop music, they seemed to have been reduced to a state of permanent indolence.
Some hopes for creating a future independent government in Cambodia center on the irrepressible Prince Sihanouk, who wanders in exile between Peking and the North Korean capital of Pyongyang. Sihanouk had been put under house arrest by the Pol Pot regime when the former Chief of State had boldly returned to Cambodia at the height of the Khmer Rouge terror. He re-emerged just as Phnom-Penh fell to the Vietnamese invaders last January. He appeared at the U.N. to make an impassioned speech in favor of Cambodian independence in which he compared Viet Nam to a "starving boa constrictor leaping on an innocent animal."
Though erratic and sometimes clownish, the wily Sihanouk is still popular in his country, particularly among the peasants. Because of his longtime residence in Peking he would probably not be acceptable to the Soviet Union as a compromise leader of the country, in the unlikely event that Hanoi could be persuaded to withdraw its forces from Cambodia. Last month Sihanouk announced the formation of a Confederation of Khmer Nationalists in exile, which was building its own armed forces. The Prince also said that he would attempt to establish a provisional government in Cambodia that would exclude backers of both the Peking-supported Khmer Rouge and Hanoi-sponsored Heng Samrin. Sihanouk declared that his organization was supported by 100,000 exiled Cambodians around the world. But, as one U.S. State Department official put it last week, "Sihanouk's fatal flaw is that his so-called troops are actually scattered around the coffee houses of the U.S., Australia and Western Europe."
In reply to questions submitted by TIME to Sihanouk, the Prince cabled that "the majority of the Cambodian people, and me, myself, consider that the No. 1 danger and menace threatening the innocent Cambodian people is the genocidal regime of Pol Pot, and that Vietnamese colonialism is enemy No. 2. It is my opinion that it is necessary that the regime of Pol Pot must first be eliminated by the Vietnamese army." After that, the Prince would hope to eliminate the Vietnamese presence from Cambodia.