Saloth Sar knew that Lon Nol’s army would be no match for the Vietnamese. He also suspected (and may have been told) that the Vietnamese had no intention of reinstating Sihanouk with genuine power when the war was over. For the time being, however, Sar believed that Sihanouk’s presence as head of a united, anti-American front would assure the Communists of international support. The crippling contradiction of being allied with Vietnam and opposing “feudalism” in Cambodia had now dissolved. For the first time since he had returned to Cambodia in 1953, Saloth Sar could contemplate actually seizing power. In his years in hiding, he and his associates had lived on hope. The thought of his dream coming true must have exhilarated him as he left Hanoi for Cambodia. After seven years in the wilderness, Saloth Sar was back on the revolutionary path.

CHAPTER SIX - Coming to Power, 1970—1976

CHAPTER SIX

Coming to Power, 1970—1976

The decision to form a National Front with Sihanouk as chief of state had two effects on Saloth Sar’s career. One was that after seven years on the run he became, at forty-five, the military commander of the Cambodian Communist component of a popular alliance. Another was that the movement he commanded now benefited from extensive Vietnamese military support. These two factors meant that he could preside over the expansion of the Cambodian Communist party, while his forces could be trained behind a shield provided by the battle-hardened Vietnamese.

Saloth Sar did not emerge from hiding, and it was more than a year before he was even identified as an official of Sihanouk’s National Front. Inside the country, authority was supposedly placed in the hands of one of the Three Ghosts—Khieu Samphan—ostensibly working on Sihanouk’s behalf. The Vietnamese Communists, for their part, openly admitted their alliance with the prince but said nothing about their relations with the Cambodian Communists or the presence of Vietnamese troops on Cambodian soil.1

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