Cambodia Regime Facing Stiffer Test Against Rebels

The withdrawal of nearly half the Vietnamese occupation army in Cambodia this year will tilt the battlefield balance in the long-running guerrilla war, but the defenders insist they can beat back any attempt to break the stalemate.

“The reactionary forces can threaten and oppress a certain number of our people, but they have no popular sympathy. They cannot win,” declared Heng Samrin, president of the regime installed here by the Vietnamese nearly a decade ago.

Heng Samrin, addressing a Communist Party conference Tuesday, two days before the top commanders of the Vietnamese army left Phnom Penh, said, “From this day forward, the party, the army and the people take upon themselves the work of defending the country.”

Since its formation in January, 1979, the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (Cambodia) and its Vietnamese allies have fought a persistent but low-level war against guerrillas of the tyrannical Khmer Rouge regime ousted by the Vietnamese invasion as well as the non-Communist forces of two other Cambodian factions, one led by Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the former Cambodian ruler.

Capital Never Threatened

Phnom Penh, the capital, has never been threatened by the fighting, which has been centered in the west, along the Thai border, where the guerrillas have based their forces.

The Vietnamese army played the major role in the defense. And now that it is being partially withdrawn--Hanoi has pledged that all its soldiers will return home by the end of 1990--the focus is turning to Heng Samrin’s small military forces, which only in the past few years have been assigned front-line duties.

Once the Vietnamese are gone, a Western diplomat in Bangkok said, Phnom Penh’s forces “will melt like ice cubes in the sun” in the face of the guerrillas. Bangkok-based diplomats say that the Khmer Rouge, the Chinese-backed main guerrilla force, is stockpiling weapons deep inside Cambodia for a thrust toward the capital once all the Vietnamese have left. Khmer Rouge radio, broadcasting from western Cambodia, has encouraged this appraisal.

But Heng Samrin said: “They (the guerrillas) have not been able to occupy a single inch of territory. . . . They have not been able to administer a single village.”

Emphasis on Militia

Ngo Dien, the Vietnamese ambassador here, told a group of Western reporters this week that the emphasis in the months ahead will be on building up the Phnom Penh government’s militia to counter any guerrilla offensive.

“The problem for (Cambodia) is not to organize a big regular army; the problem is to organize the villages,” Dien said, citing a strategy that failed to defeat North Vietnamese regulars and Viet Cong guerrillas in the Vietnam War two decades ago.

By Western intelligence estimates, Vietnam’s military withdrawal would leave about 70,000 Vietnamese troops in Cambodia by the end of this year, while by Vietnamese accounting about 50,000 would remain. Of the withdrawal, Dien said:

“Now, many units of the Vietnamese military are not necessary--for instance, artillery. Maybe along the (Thai) border (where Vietnamese guns rake guerrilla infiltration routes), but not elsewhere. Aircraft? No need except for transport. Tanks? Only in certain areas.”

Disparages Khmer Rouge

Dien disparaged the fighting quality of the Khmer Rouge, which is held in high regard by many Western intelligence experts.

“They have lost their motivation since 1975 (when the Khmer Rouge ousted the U.S.-backed regime of Lon Nol),” he said. “Now they operate from camps on the Thai border. They drink Coca-Cola. They watch videos.”

But if the main defense becomes the Phnom Penh army and its militias, the guerrillas will face a far softer adversary than the tough Vietnamese. This week on a trip 10 miles down the Mekong River from Phnom Penh, in the so-called Red Belt defense perimeter around the capital, local militiamen were trotted out for visiting reporters. They carried an assortment of rifles--American M-16s, Soviet-made Kalashnikovs and old bolt-action weapons from some distant conflict. Each of these types used different ammunition. The militiamen had no boots but wore rubber flip-flops.

In the course of a week of ceremonies marking the Vietnamese withdrawal, all the top Phnom Penh leaders conceded that the fighting will not end unless a political solution is found.

Nick B. Williams Jr. was on assignment in Phnom Penh before traveling to Ho Chi Minh City.