Kampuchea Long Trip Home

Before dawn, crowds of people waving red-and-yellow Vietnamese and Kampuchean flags assembled in the streets of Phnom Penh and along the boulevard leading to Pochentong airport. As marching music blared, senior Vietnamese officers, led by Lieut. General Le Ngoc Hien, drove past the Kampuchean throngs in Soviet-made jeeps, followed by buses carrying other officers and enlisted men. At the airport, a team of Cambodian classical dancers showered fragrant white flowers on the departing officers and soldiers, who boarded planes and helicopters bound for Ho Chi Minh City. After almost ten years in Kampuchea, the Vietnamese army was officially going home.

Viet Nam's phased withdrawal reflects political rather than military concerns. Under pressure from Moscow, Viet Nam has been reassessing its foreign commitments, and seems to have determined that top priority must be given to curing its sick economy. As for Kampuchea's own war-exhausted economy, it cannot be revived without large doses of foreign aid, which Viet Nam is in no position to supply and the Soviet Union is increasingly unwilling to offer.

Viet Nam invaded Kampuchea, formerly Cambodia, in late 1978, eventually driving the murderous Khmer Rouge regime of Pol Pot into exile along the Thai border. The new government of Heng Samrin was itself composed of former Khmer Rouge leaders who had revolted against Pol Pot. In the aftermath of the Vietnamese invasion, the world learned for the first time that in a population of more than 7 million, the Khmer Rouge had slaughtered between 1 million and 2 million of their countrymen.

Even though the two neighbors had long been enemies, the invading Vietnamese were initially welcomed as liberators. In the early years of the occupation as many as 200,000 Vietnamese troops were in Kampuchea, but the number had fallen to 120,000 by the beginning of this year. This past spring Hanoi announced that it would withdraw its troops completely by 1990, and last week's ceremony marked the departure of the top commanders. In a striking statistical footnote, Vietnamese officials admitted last week that they had lost 50,000 soldiers in Kampuchea since the 1978 invasion -- roughly the same number of Americans killed in Viet Nam.