The model for these bewildering arrangements—aptly described by Elizabeth Becker as a “hall of mirrors”—was provided by the National Liberation Front in South Vietnam, whose socialist agenda and links with North Vietnam were concealed from the Vietnamese public and even from some of the front’s most dedicated members. Sihanouk, ensconced in Beijing with an entourage of chefs, courtiers, and hangers-on, was a figurehead from the start, although he vigorously maintained and probably believed that he was beloved by most Khmer and would hold some kind of position when the war was over. His Chinese patrons, including Zhou Enlai, the prime minister, warmly supported him; and the front’s publications, financed and printed in China, conveyed the impression that the guerrillas inside Cambodia were fighting on his behalf.2

At the time of the coup, U.S. intelligence estimated that the Red Khmers had fewer than three thousand men and women under arms. Not many of these guerrillas were organized into units larger than platoons, and few were trained for combat. Their Marxist-Leninist reading was patchy, and few had any understanding of the international aspects of the movement. In early 1970 they were scattered in small bands in the forested periphery of Cambodia in Kompong Speu, Kampot, Battambang, Kratie, and the northeast.

Saloth Sar Comes Home

While “Brother Number One” was visiting Vietnam and China in 1969-1970, Nuon Chea took command of the party’s headquarters in the northeast. Ieng Sary was in charge of a secondary base in Ratanakiri. Shortly after the coup, before Saloth Sar returned home, Vietnamese officers visited Sary’s camp asking for Cambodian support. According to Kheang Sim Hon’s confession, “They asked for support for their combatants, help with their cadre at all levels, and our help to build a hospital. [Ieng Sary] tried to evade these requests, but it didn’t work, and a Vietnamese divisional commander, who claimed to have had a working relationship with Saloth Sar, slept at the base and wouldn’t leave.”

After acceding to the Vietnamese demands, the Khmer allowed the Vietnamese to train their soldiers. In other parts of the country, the Vietnamese were more abrupt. Without consulting local Cambodian Communists, they mobilized Cambodian villages to “fight for Sihanouk” and took command of the young people they recruited. They hoped to capitalize on people’s shock at the coup and Sihanouk’s popularity to secure their bases and supply lines in Cambodia. In these early phases of resistance, as Ben Kiernan has written, “revolutionary administration was essentially the creation of Vietnamese Communists and the Khmer working ... with them.”3