The offensive, in fact, failed to ignite a national uprising, despite its psychological success in speeding U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. One of its effects was that NLF forces, cut to pieces in the campaign, were soon replaced in Cambodia by units from North Vietnam, who seemed more foreign to local Khmer and made more demands on them. This development led to increased tension between the Communist forces and Lon Nol’s army, on the one hand, and more systematic cooperation between Vietnamese forces and local Red Khmer, on the other.30

From the beginning of 1968 to the end of 1969, when Saloth Sar traveled for the second time to Hanoi, he disappeared from view. Siet Chhae, who was in the northeast with him, later recalled that “the Brothers were often away on business for months at a time.” If Sar’s subsequent conduct is a guide, these trips involved giving talks to cadre and combatants to raise their morale, explain tactics, and clarify strategy.

Sar’s forlorn descriptions of this period, which ring true, suggest that he spent much of his time in hiding and on the run.31 In 1972, for example, he described the odds that his forces had faced in the early phases of combat with Sihanouk’s army:

In some areas where the enemy engaged the people, we were cut off. We lacked personnel. We had no economy. We had no military strength and nowhere to hide. No matter how big the forests were, we found no shelter. No matter how good the people were, the enemy squeezed and manhandled them, and they could do nothing. If people were not good, the enemy controlled and commanded them. The enemy knew the forests. Wherever we came and went, he was aware of us. We had a few weapons here and there, but we had no land, and no people under our control.32

As Pol Pot often said, the early stages of the revolution were “waged with empty hands.” The phrase is not hyperbolic in view of his assertion in 1977 that the Central Committee in 1968 was protected by four armed men. Although by early 1970 Communist-led guerrilla forces had rendered large parts of the country unsafe for day-to-day administration from Phnom Penh, the military balance of power still favored government forces, and the Communists still depended on captured weapons. It is ironic that the Vietnamese, themselves armed from abroad, should have encouraged a Maoist autonomy for the Khmer as far as weaponry was concerned while insisting on the Khmer’s obedience to Vietnam. What drew them to Cambodia (and was later to draw the attention of the United States) were their supply lines into South Vietnam. Insofar as these were threatened by Lon Nol, Sihanouk, and U.S. bombing, the Cambodian Communists and their followers had useful roles to play in providing sentries, laborers, and porters.