The War Begins

The Vietnamese attacks of December 1977 were the most serious so far. Their forces penetrated more than 20 kilometers inside Cambodia in some places and reached the city of Svay Rieng. The Livre noir claims that the Vietnamese committed fifty thousand troops to the incursion. They probably hoped that the exercise would force Cambodia to desist from its own operations (several thousand troops in small units had plunged into Vietnam earlier in December, leaving the frontier undefended) and to agree to a cease-fire. 11

On December 31, 1977, while Vietnamese units were still on Cambodian soil, Democratic Kampuchea broke off diplomatic relations with Hanoi, broadcast a catalog of Vietnamese “aggression,” and opened its own propaganda war. The decision to break relations had been taken on December 25, when the Central Committee decided to send troops from the capital to reinforce the areas that had been attacked. Preparing the documents used to announce and justify the break occupied officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (B-1) for a stretch of forty-eight hours.12

After another week of fighting the Vietnamese withdrew, taking thousands of prisoners, as well as civilians to whom they had offered shelter in Vietnam. Radio Phnom Penh treated the withdrawal as a “historic victory”—and so did the Livre noir, in an attempt to conceal the fact that Pol Pot and his military commander, Son Sen, had left the frontier undefended. To cover themselves further, the two men asserted privately that “enemies” in the party had allowed the Vietnamese units to withdraw. The stage was set for a purge of the eastern zone, where the Vietnamese had penetrated deepest and where senior Cambodian cadre had long been suspected of dragging their feet in implementing the party’s policies. Before the purge began, but probably after deciding to set it in motion, Pol Pot visited the zone to congratulate military leaders on their heroism. The tactic of lulling people before attacking them was one he used often.13

The Vietnamese had invaded Cambodia intending to spur negotiations; instead, it was as if they had poked a beehive with a stick. Cambodia’s leaders were now convinced that Vietnam wanted to swallow their country. They began preparing for a holy war. In January and February 1978, Red Khmer units swept repeatedly into lightly defended parts of Vietnam, massacring villagers, burning houses, and disrupting commercial life. At other times the Red Khmer lobbed artillery shells across the frontier. Vietnamese offers for talks were brushed aside. In a speech on January 17, 1978, Pol Pot cited “world opinion” and said: “The majority of it has been confident that [we] would ... defeat and wipe out the Vietnamese for [we] had already defeated the U.S. imperialists.” He was hoping that he had interpreted Chinese opinion correctly and that more aid would be coming from Beijing.14