Kampuchea Where Fear and Silence Reign

By William Stewart/Phnom Penh

Kampuchea is quiet. Everywhere. In Kep, a small seaside resort near the Vietnamese border, the ruins of churches, schools and villas rise from encroaching jungle. The narrow road leading into the town, once a weekend retreat for Phnom Penh's well-off, is choked with underbrush. Here and there on the nearly deserted beach, small groups picnic -- families, a gathering of friends. A song of the '60s drifts from a tape recorder, bringing with it the memory of better times.

After nearly two decades of war, peace may be coming to Kampuchea at last. Officials of the Heng Samrin government met outside Jakarta last week with representatives of the three resistance groups that have been fighting the Phnom Penh regime and its Vietnamese supporters. Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the former head of state who last month resigned as leader of the resistance coalition, declined to attend the talks but made plans to meet with Kampuchean Prime Minister Hun Sen in Paris in October. While the so-called cocktail party failed to produce immediate results, it was nonetheless considered a psychological breakthrough on the long road to a political solution. The participants did agree to form a working group of officials to continue discussions. Perhaps more important, Kampuchea will be a main topic of Sino- Soviet talks in Beijing this month.

Whatever the shape of an eventual accord, it will take years for Kampuchea to recover from its ordeal. Provincial centers like Kampot, a river town 70 miles south of Phnom Penh, seem half empty. The government says there are 20,000 people in Kampot province, which once had a population of 420,000. It is possible to stand on a main street now and not see a soul. The reduction of urban populations by the Khmer Rouge was so thorough that towns have been largely taken over by peasants and displaced persons. They squat in empty houses or in lean-tos they have erected in abandoned gardens.

In late afternoon many head for the riverbank to watch the sunset and the men building fishing boats, still the town's main industry. It is peaceful by the Mekong. The water provides relief from the scorching heat of the day. Electric power is available only between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m., when a few lights come on and residents gather to watch a video in a public hall. Then a curfew clamps down, and like a jungle mist, stillness descends again.

Fear lingers everywhere. Hardly anyone is eager to talk politics, or about the dreaded Khmer Rouge, during whose five-year reign an estimated 2 million of Kampuchea's 7 million people were killed. An exception is Bour-Chinell, 64, chief of the provincial public works department in Kampot, who says, "I want national reconciliation. It's a good idea to bring Prince Sihanouk back. The old people still love him, and the young people have all heard of him."

Kampot's Revolutionary Hospital, filled with victims of the war, offers ample evidence of the need for peace. A small Polish surgical team has saved many lives, but the wards remain crowded with soldiers and civilians who stepped on mines laid by the Khmer Rouge and others during the war. "What kind of life do I lead now?" asks Nget Run, 20, who lost a leg while gathering firewood.

The current military strength of the Khmer Rouge, largest of the three guerrilla groups (the others are Sihanouk's Nationalist Army and former Premier Son Sann's Khmer People's National Liberation Front), is in dispute. Soviet and Vietnamese military advisers insist that the Kampuchean armed forces can contain the threat, but Western analysts have their doubts. Kampuchea's 30,000-man regular army and the 100,000 irregulars assigned to defend their country are largely untested. Many Kampucheans fear that once the Vietnamese draw down their forces, the Khmer Rouge may succeed in grabbing power once more.

Even now, the Khmer Rouge, with an estimated 30,000 to 35,000 guerrillas in the field, are strong enough to carry out effective military operations in many parts of the country. Soviet officials, who number in the hundreds, are not allowed, for fear of ambush, to travel by car in the countryside or to use the open, bicycle-driven pedicabs that provide most of the transportation in Phnom Penh.

With Moscow trying to put its economic house in order, Soviet officials working in Kampuchea appear to be less than pleased with their country's commitment to the Heng Samrin government, which they estimate costs $58 million a year. Nonetheless, Kampuchea's vital signs are strengthening. An illegal import trade thrives, especially in motorbikes smuggled from Thailand. Phnom Penh, almost empty during the years of Khmer Rouge rule, is coming back to life: its population, which had never reached half a million, is now 650,000 to 800,000. City officials believe that more than half are refugees who have settled in empty villas and apartment houses. Says a construction official: "They are making the capital their own, but they still don't understand what they can and cannot do in a city."

Nonetheless, some restaurants have reopened and are well attended. In the early evening, lovers meet again in the shadows of the fabled temple Wat Phnom. Then, as the curfew approaches and the lights begin to dim to half power, fewer and fewer bikes and pedicabs pass one another, quietly, like phantoms in the night. Still ill at ease, not quite believing that their suffering may be coming to an end, Phnom Penh's citizens head home quickly and, as always, silently. Without a political settlement, there is still reason to fear.