The Cardamom Project: About Cambodia

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Abridged from Andy Carvin's excellent site, "From Sideshow to Genocide: Stories of the Cambodian Holocaust"

7. The Vietnamese Invasion

As the Khmer Rouge systematically destroyed nearly all aspects of Cambodian society, a new conflict simmered with its historical enemy, Vietnam. The Khmer Rouge received support from China, Vietnam's rival to the north, while the Vietnamese were assisted by the Soviet Union, which competed with China for standing in the communist world. To Pol Pot, the fact that Cambodian communists had once needed Vietnamese help was so shameful that he purged thousands of Khmer Rouge cadres simply because certain KR leaders acknowledged that the Cambodian communist party was founded in 1951, at a time when the Vietnamese communists were involved in Cambodian insurgencies.

After a couple of years of skirmishes, on December 25, 1978 - Christmas Day - 100,000 Vietnamese troops poured across the Cambodian border, quickly gaining a foothold in Cambodia's northeast. The Vietnamese intended to create a secure buffer zone between Vietnam proper and Khmer Rouge forces. The military encroachment went so well, though, Vietnam quickly realized that they could even seize Phnom Penh and knock out the Khmer Rouge in a matter of weeks. By January 7, 1979, less than two weeks after their initial attack, Vietnamese forces successfully occupied Phnom Penh, forcing the Khmer Rouge to flee into the wilderness. Pol Pot himself escaped by helicopter as the city fell, ironically mirroring the U.S. ambassador's departure in April 1975.

As the dust settled, Vietnam established a new Cambodian government known as the People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK), led by a new prime minister, Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge cadre who had fled to Vietnam. Hundreds of thousands of Cambodian families began the long march to their home villages in the hopes of finding surviving relatives. In many cases, though, Cambodians returned to find nothing left of their former lives - no homes, no possessions, and most tragic, no relatives. The Khmer Rouge came hauntingly close to succeeding in their radical attempt to erase all memories of the old Cambodia.

Vietnamese occupying forces, who themselves were hardened by the brutalities of the Vietnam War, were shocked as they soon discovered the legacy of the Khmer Rouge. Throughout the countryside, Cambodia was pockmarked by sunken depressions of dirt, as if hell had sucked in small pockets of earth in the hopes of devouring the world above it. As was soon discovered, the depressions were indeed the stuff of hell, for each marked the spot of another mass grave — hundreds of thousands of Cambodians had been slaughtered by their own countrymen.