The leaders of the three factions despised each other, and the leaders of the Phnom Penh government despised all three. Pol Pot’s troops did most of the fighting against the Vietnamese, particularly in the rainy season from April to October, when roads became impassable for Vietnamese trucks and tanks. The Red Khmer troops were better trained, better equipped, and better motivated than most of those raised by Sihanouk and Son Sann, but they were unable to secure any Cambodian territory for long and were repeatedly driven back over the frontier by Vietnamese forces aided by troops from the People’s Republic of Kampuchea. Arms for the three factions were provided by China with Thai cooperation, while financial and political support for the noncommunists came from Thailand, China, and the United States. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees helped construct a string of refugee camps in Thailand along the frontier to house and feed all Cambodians, including the Red Khmer. The camps, in turn, were controlled by the factions and provided manpower for their military forces.8

Repentant Optimist, 1979—1981

In December 1979 Pol Pot gave several interviews to journalists from Japan, Sweden, China, and the United States. The most extensive one was carried out by four sympathetic Japanese newsmen who met with him “at his camp in the Kampuchean jungle” for two days. The mood he conveyed “with an unceasing smile on his face” was one of studied optimism. He denied that his forces had been driven out of Cambodia, claiming that over fifty thousand of them were operating “like a mesh” on Cambodian soil. These troops, he said, had recently “put out of action” a similar number of Vietnamese.

“Asked about murders in his country when he was in power, Pol Pot said, ‘Only several thousand Kampucheans might have died [sic] due to some mistakes in implementing our policy of providing an affluent life for the people.’” He added that the Vietnamese were “shifting the blame to him” for the “millions” of deaths they had recently inflicted. From 1976 to 1978, “there had been six coups d‘état against his government. ’If we had [not?] executed the plotters, several thousand people would have died,‘ he said.” The translation leaves it uncertain whether the plotters were executed or not. Pol Pot’s only regret about his years in power was abolishing money—“a drastic measure.” In passing, he admitted for the first time that he had originally been named Saloth Sar.9

A few days later Pol Pot greeted an American Broadcasting Corporation television team and used the opportunity to plead for help to drive the Vietnamese out of Cambodia, where, he said, they were waging a “war of genocide.” In a revealing passage, Pol Pot said he found them “more ferocious” than Hitler: “Hitler killed the Jews and those who opposed him. Vietnam kills those who oppose it and innocent people who will not join it.”10