Saloth Sar Travels North

“Toward the end of 1969,” reveals the Livre noir, “a delegation of the Communist party of Kampuchea left for Hanoi for discussions with the Vietnamese party.” Before leaving, Sar handed his headquarters camp over to Nuon Chea. Several confessions from S-21 corroborate Sar’s departure, but none suggests why he took the trip or whose idea it was. It is unlikely that he left Cambodia without being summoned by the Vietnamese, who may have wanted to consult with him about the next phase of the war and the growing hostility they faced from Cambodian government forces. It is also possible that Sar wanted to use this opportunity to ask for help for his guerrillas. Since he would have made the trip on foot, the visit was probably not connected with Ho Chi Minh’s funeral in October 1969.36

The only detailed evidence for the trip comes from the Livre noir. Pol Pot contended that he was summoned north to be told to stop fighting. This does not ring true, but his account suggests that he was more forthright with the Vietnamese this time than he had been in 1965 and that some of his demands—which may have been for more military assistance and increased autonomy—angered his counterparts in Hanoi. The Vietnamese would have rejected both requests, although their failure to imagine an alternative to Sihanouk, now on the ropes, forced them to remain allied with Sar’s unsatisfactory party. The Livre noir asserts that the Vietnamese in Cambodia “had taken refuge in areas controlled by the Communist party of Kampuchea,” a reversal of what Sar and Ieng Sary had done in 1963; this suggests that the Vietnamese needed Cambodian protection more than the Cambodians needed patronage from Hanoi. Although these attitudes were common currency among party faithful by 1978, they had not come into the open at the time of Sar’s visit to Hanoi. Had Sar made such demands in 1969, even in the heat of the moment, he would have drawn the angry response he said he drew in the Livre noir Had he made them part of a coherent, independent policy, it is likely that the Vietnamese would have replaced him as secretary of the party. At the same time, it is possible that even a polite request by him for assistance would have been dismissed out of hand. In other words, although it is likely that the Livre noir narrative is an accurate description of Sar’s psychological state in 1978, and perhaps of his anger in 1969-1970, his conduct and statements until about 1972 cannot be construed as independent or anti-Vietnamese. Indeed, if relations between Cambodia and Vietnam were as poor as the Livre noir suggests, it is doubtful that Saloth Sar would have risked a trip to Hanoi or that he would have lingered there as he did for several months. What Sar probably found offensive about his visit was that the Vietnamese, whose thoughts were elsewhere, once again failed to come to grips with his importance, the sufferings of his followers, or the uniqueness of the Cambodian revolution.37