Monday, May. 28, 1973

The Rebels: A Force of Many Faces

One of the larger mysteries of the war in Cambodia is the precise nature of the antigovernment insurgents who now control more than half the population and 80% of the country.

Until the 1970 coup d'etat, in which Marshal Lon Not overthrew the government of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the Cambodian rebel force, then known as the Khmer Rouge, was a ragged band of perhaps 3,000 guerrillas who were affiliated with the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong. Since then, the rebels have grown into a seasoned revolutionary army of at least 45,000 troops, with a solid support cadre of more than 70,000 civilians. Last week, after visiting Phnom-Penh, TIME Correspondent Barry Hillenbrand sent this report on the insurgents:

DROP into Phnom-Penh and begin talking about the antigovernment forces now attacking round the capital, and it soon becomes apparent that the "faceless enemy" out there is not faceless at all. Indeed the problem is just the opposite: the Khmer insurgents (or the K.I., as intelligence officers call them these days) have so many faces that it is nearly impossible to keep them straight.

The official policy of the Lon Nol government is to lump all antigovernment forces together as "the Vietnamese Communists." By contrast, a young Khmer with royal blood and intelligence contacts makes an impassioned case that the K.I. are not really Communists at all, but anti-Lon Nol forces who would quickly settle the war if the marshal were put out to pasture.

Rallying Point. The American embassy pushes another line: the leadership of the K.I. is Khmer (native Cambodians), but they are also hard-core Communists who are irreversible servants of Hanoi. One Western military attache has still another theory. He claims that the insurgents are divided between the Khmer Rouge (the old Communists), the Khmer Rumdos (the Sihanoukists) and the Khmer Issarak (the old anti-French forces). Then there is the opinion of Sihanouk, who says that the insurgency movement is a patriotic national liberation army loyal to the exiled Prince.

There is in fact a grain of truth in all of these theories. The insurgents are part leftist, part nationalist, part Communist and part Sihanoukist. Equally clear is that their military training and direction come from Hanoi. The 1970 coup, the subsequent U.S. and South Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, and the American bombing, served as the rallying point to bring all these factions together. They are united too in their contempt for Lon Nol, who is widely viewed as an American puppet--and an ineffectual and corrupt one at that.

Those who have gone over to the K.I. include entire units of disgruntled soldiers from the Cambodian army, thousands of dissident intellectuals and professionals and at least ten battalions of Cambodian-born Vietnamese--a minority group that was massacred after the coup by Lon Nol's troops, who whipped up traditional anti-Vietnamese enmity to a frenzy. There are also battle-seasoned remnants of the old Khmer Viet Minh who fought against the French and went to North Viet Nam after the 1954 Geneva agreements. Intelligence sources estimate that 1,800 of these men have been put in command positions of the K.I.

Most of the ground troops, however, are non-Communist Khmers recruited in 1970 and 1971. Because it is a lush, underpopulated nation where most of the peasants own land, Cambodia was hardly fertile soil for spawning revolutionaries. But with careful use of propaganda and the Sihanouk name (still revered in the countryside), the insurgents and their North Vietnamese advisers were able to raise a substantial army. Good revolutionary manners helped. The North Vietnamese always paid for their rice and left the women alone. They provided medical treatment as well. Only after a period of moving in and establishing rapport with the peasantry did the K.I. set up rustic revolutionary schools and local governing committees in the Chinese or North Vietnamese style.

In many ways the present relationship of the North Vietnamese to the K.I. seems modeled on that of the Americans to the South Vietnamese. Though most units are commanded by Khmer officers, NVA advisers are never far away. In addition, the North shoulders much of the communications, planning and heavy weapons operations.

Despite Hanoi's powerful military hand, Sihanouk is at least the titular political leader of the K.I. Also increasingly prominent in the movement is an elusive trio known as "the Three Phantoms": Hou Youn, Hu Nim and Khieu Samphan, all members of the Assembly, who dropped from sight in 1967 and were later reported to be ministers in Sihanouk's government-in-exile. Their names frequently appear on documents and in radio broadcasts; in a recent interview with TIME, Sihanouk said that Khieu Samphan is his Premier and head of government. There is some doubt among Western intelligence sources, however, as to whether the Phantoms really run the movement or are merely surrogates for Hanoi.

If the K.I.'s real leadership is obscure, so are the insurgents' goals. There is evidence that some elements would be willing to settle for a coalition government if they could only get rid of Lon Nol. On the other hand, it is argued, why should they agree to talk with a government they have all but defeated on the battlefield? Still another view is that any settlement in Cambodia is not in the Communists' interests at this time because it would be overly threatening to the U.S., South Viet Nam and Thailand. Indeed, when the time is ripe for the K.I. to negotiate, it seems likely that the many faces of the K.I.--which, for the present, appear to serve them very well--will coalesce into one.

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