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BODY (excerpts only):
Our Ford van, bearing the markings of the Ho Chi Minh Tourist Office, bumped
along the old French-built Highway 1, heading west from the Vietnamese border post of Go Dau to
the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh. I had traveled this road several times before.
Eight years ago, I made this journey in fewer than five hours. Today it took nearly 10. Progress
was impeded by the ditches the Khmer Rouge apparently had dug every 20 yards or so across the road
o slow the advance of military convoys during the war. Now, American-built bulldozers and road graders with Vietnamese soldiers in the driver seats
shoved gravel along the rutted route. And in their wake, trucks and buses carrying hundreds of
Vietnamese troops bounced their way along, heading west to fight the Khmer Rouge on the far side
of Phnom Penh.
Seemingly oblivious to all this activity, hundreds of weary Cambodian civilians trudged this way
and that, the luckier ones mounting their families on bullock carts. For more than three months
now, we were told, similar processions have been crisscrossing the country looking for families,
returning to home they were forced to abandon by the Pol Pot regime four years ago.
The province capital of Svay Rieng is representative of the destruction and desolations that is
most of Cambodia...
Slowly, Svay Rieng, like all the cities and towns of Cambodia, is being repopulated. In their
distrust of the urban population, the Khmer Rouge emptied all urban areas at gunpoint during the
months of April and May 1975. Now people are re-settling, working to rebuild shattered homes.
Along the street, the black of the Khmer Rouge imposed clothing predominates, but young girls in
the marketplace had donned the brightly colored sarongs I remembered from my earlier days here...
Between Svay Rieng and the ferry crossing at Neak Luong, the remains of a Pol Pot commune lie off
to the right. The Kompong Trabek commune consists of rows of neat, tile-roofed houses facing well-irrigated
fields. A large communal dining room stands empty at the center of the complex. A
system of canals, new abutments along the road and irrigation ditches remained as testament to four
years of hard labor by "new people," the former city residents who were forced from their homes
and into the rural labor camps.
What was worrisome now was that few people seemed to be preparing these well-laid-out commune
fields for the rice planting which must be completed as the monsoon rains begin during the month
of June. Both Vietnamese and Cambodian officials admitted concern about a food
crisis. Western experts in Hanoi had warned us that Cambodians faced near-certain famine by late summer if a
substantial rice crop was not planted or international assistance was not forthcoming.
The prospect of international aid, however, appears slim...
...we came away convinced that the long suffering Cambodian people would now face only further
suffering.
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The writer recently returned from a visit to Cambodia.; Jim Laurie is the Hong Kong bureau chief
for ABC News, and will narrate a one-hour close-up documentary later this month on ABC television.
His six-week visit to Cambodia ended in January.
BODY:
Cambodia is a nation that it struggling, with some success, to bring itself out of the utter devastation
caused by five years of war followed by four years of the unpopular Pol Pot regime.
Such an assessment does not necessarily square with the prevailing pessimistic view on Cambodia
reflected outside the country.
But definite signs of recovery were apparent to this writer after traveling through the 11 of
Cambodia's 19 provinces that are firmly under the control of the Vietnam-backed Phnom Penh
government. The government has been unable to exercise complete control of the rest of the country because of
pockets of resistance led by the ousted Khmer Rouge forces of former ruler Pol Pot.
Indications of a return to normality in Cambodia are at odds with the commonly held view that
Vietnam seeks to subjugate the population through colonization or forced starvation and that it
is obstructing international relief deliveries.
Among the telltale signs of national rehabilitation witnessed during a six week visit:
 Families are being reunited and permitted to own property such as household items, bicycles,
and farm animals.
 Schools are being reopened. Market activity has resumed (but so has smuggling and corruption).
Abandoned cities and towns are slowly being repopulated. All the moves appear calculated to win
at least the qualified support of the people.
 In Kandal Province, 25 miles southeast of Phnom Penh, I happened across a saffron-robed mendicant
monk walking house to house. A small boy carrying a food bucket preceded him, announcing the bonze's
arrival with a brief Buddhist chant. People who had not been allowed to practice religion for four
years under the Khmer Rouge came out of their houses and offered small plates of mixed rice and
corn. The monk delivered his blessing and moved on.
The people said that most pagodas had been desecrated by the Khmer Rouge and that all bonzes were
killed or defrocked during the Pol Pot regime. In January 1979 the new government began promoting
the return of religion.
 At the national theater in Phnom Penh on the Bassac River, I watched as a dozen-or-so former
members of the royal ballet attempted dances unpracticed since 1975. Miss V. Savoy, the lead
dancer, estimated that most of the better dancers and teachers of the original 300-woman troupe
had perished under the Khmer Rouge. Her own 44 months of toil in the rice fields had put her out
of shape for the ballet, but she and the others were now encouraged to resume classes.
Still, it would be far too sanguine to suggest that the Cambodians I met were generally pleased
with their way of life under Vietnamese domination. Most clearly were not.
Two fears were voiced repeatedly: fear of hunger and the fear of a never-ending Vietnamese military
occupation. These show no signs of disappearing.
Many Cambodians I talked to expressed ambivalent feelings toward the presence of the Vietnamese.
Hanoi's military presence was an onerous one.
Few Cambodians disguised their desire that Vietnam's troops go home. Yet many expressed the fear
that if the Vietnamese did leave, the dreaded Khmer Rouge would return and there would be another
round of reprisals.
Vietnamese advisers assigned to the Phnom Penh government were forced to admit that what had been
greeted as "a liberating army" was now regarded as an army of occupation. One adviser acknowledged,
"We know that the longer we stay, the more resentment against us will grow."
Historical antipathy between the Vietnamese and the Khmer seemed to play a greater role in rising
resentment than specific Vietnamese actions. But some Cambodians did complain of individual acts
of theft and extortion. The Vietnamese adviser admitted to "bad elements in the Vietnamese Army. . . .Even if that number is only 1 percent," he concluded, "that represents a lot of trouble for Vietnamese-Cambodian relations."
In addition to an estimated 200,000 troops in Cambodia, the Vietnamese have placed advisers at all
levels of Cambodian government. The extent of their presence has given rise to accusations of Vietnamese colonialism. Since August, Cambodians reported that the advisers have turned more responsibility over to their Cambodian counterparts, though the Vietnamese appear to retain the privilege of veto over most decisions.
I could find no evidence, however, of Vietnamese in any great number settling in Cambodia, though it
would be understandable if some of the more than 300,000 Vietnamese residents of Cambodia in the
1960s returned.
The Phnom Penh government has clearly not met the nation's food and medical needs, and Vietnam's
suspicion and distrust of outside help has limited the number of foreign-aid teams inside Cambodia.
After seven months in Phnom Penh, the international aid agencies are still limited to fewer than
30 "observers" in the capital. Only in late January did the government permit entry of foreign
medical teams, and these were from Cuba and the Soviet Union.
A random survey conducted in Phnom Penh and four outlying provinces revealed considerable disparity
in food allocations.
Adult city residents received between 12 and 16 kilograms of rice and corn a month. At three of
the four rural food distribution centers, people were receiving less than two kilograms.
That food distribution continues to be slow and inefficient is widely acknowledged in Phnom
Penh. Foreign observers who have taken the time to look around do not believe officials are
purposefully hampering the process, however.
Delays, they say, are caused by a disorganized bureaucracy, inexperienced and incompetent
administrators, lack of transport, and primitive communications.
In general, it appears that as government control has improved and the Cambodian government
structure set up by the Vietnamese has gained in experience, food deliveries have become more
efficient.
During my visit to the port of Kompong Som in December, it was evident that thousands of tons of
rice, donated by other countries, had piled up in warehouses. It was expected that 16,000 tons of
this would be shipped to the countryside that month, yet less than half that amount was moved out.
The situation improved somewhat in January, when 12 thousand tons was trucked to the countryside.
There are reports that February deliveries topped those of January.
More worrisome to Cambodian officials than food distribution is the continued failure in
agriculture.
In the east I saw newly cultivated fields, and along the Tonle Sap Lake in the northwest, people
were planting an extra crop of rice. But elsewhere there was an ominous lack of farm activity.
Even the best official government estimates predicted only 60 percent of the land cultivated in
1969 would be tilled by the end of 1980. At present only 25 percent of the 1969 cultivation level
has been reached.
Yet few Cambodians I spoke to expressed much confidence in the government of former Khmer Rouge
Battalion commander Heng Samrin. A Cambodian from Kandal Province told me the Phnom Penh government
possessed some good men but "most were incapable of independent thinking."
Both Cambodians in the government and some Vietnamese advisers seemed to believe that if it were
to succeed, the Heng Samrin government would have to move to distance itself from Hanoi and broaden
its base to include Khmers of different backgrounds.
At present the lower ranks of government are filled with bureaucrats who have survived the Khmer
Rouge purges and who once were aligned with either Norodom Sihanouk, former head of state, or the
Lon Nol regime.
These people voiced uncertainty about the future, but hoped they could somehow preserve an
independent Cambodia while, at the same time keeping Vietnam happy.
A government timetable for 1980 calls for the writing of a constitution; village, district, and
provincial elections; and the formation of a national assembly.
Some Cambodians hope these formalities will allow a more Cambodian, and less Vietnamese, government
to emerge. At the very least any Cambodian government will have to take note of and deal with
rising popular resentment to the continued Vietnamese occupation.
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