Vietnamization -- Philip Short's POL POT: Anatomy of a Nightmare

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Philip Short's POL POT: Anatomy of a Nightmare

To the overwhelming majority of Cambodians [our Seng family included] in January 1979, the Vietnamese appeared as saviours. Hereditary enemies or not, Khmer Rouge rule had been so unspeakably awful that anything else had to be better. Vietnamese propagandists exploited this to the full. Vietnam's army, they claimed, had entered Cambodia not to occupy it but to deliver the population from enslavement by a fascist, tyrannical regime which enforced genocidal policies through massacres and starvation. That was of course untrue. The Vietnamese leaders had not been bothered in the least by Khmer Rouge atrocities until they decided that Pol's regime was a threat to their own national interests. But the notion of a 'humanitarian intervention' influenced opinion abroad and, for a time, coloured attitudes inside Cambodia as well. [...]

But policy was set by Vietnam, transmitted through a VWP Central Committee liaison group known as A-40, and implemented by Vietnamese 'advisers' who were in charge of every Ministry and provincial administration. 

[Theary: When the USSR disintegrated and no longer could financially support its satellite Vietnam, with the end of the Cold War forcing Vietnam to end occupation of Cambodia after 10 years, these Vietnamese "advisers" continued to control the various ministries and provincial administration, but now in civilian clothes and with changed Cambodian names.]

It was the same system that the Vietnamese had used in Laos since the early 1950s. The impression of a country under occupation was heightened by the way the army behaved. In the spring of 1979, Phnom Penh was systematically looted. Nayan Chanda, of the Far Eastern Economic Review, reported:

Convoys of trucks carrying refrigerators, air conditioners, electrical gadgets, furniture, machinery and precious sculptures headed towards Ho Chi Minh City... The once busy Chinese business section of Phnom Penh looked like a scene after a cataclysmic storm. Every house and shop had been ransacked and remains of broken furniture and twisted pieces of household goods were strewn over the road. Damp modules of cotton from ripped-open mattresses and pillows, covered the ground. Clearly marauders had gone through the households, searching for gold and jewellery.  (p.409)