History of Cambodia
History of Cambodia

This article is part of a series
________________________________________
Early history of Cambodia

Funan (68 AD – 550 AD)

Chenla (550 AD – 802 AD)

Khmer Empire (802 AD – 1431 AD)

Charktomok (1437 AD – 1525 AD)

Lovek (1525 – 1593)

Dark ages of Cambodia (1593 – 1863)

Loss of Mekong Delta to Việt Nam

French Colonial Rule (1863–1953)

Post-Independence Cambodia

Coup of 1970

Khmer Republic (1970–1975)

Việt Nam War Incursion of 1970

Khmer Rouge Regime (1975–1979)

Cambodian–Vietnamese War (1975–1989)

People's Republic of Kampuchea (1979–1993)

1992–93 UNTAC

Modern Cambodia (1993–present)

Timeline

________________________________________
Cambodia Portal
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Archaeological evidence indicates that parts of the region now called Cambodia were inhabited from around 1000-2000 BCE by a Neolithic culture that may have migrated from South Eastern China to the Indochinese Peninsula. By the first century CE, the inhabitants had developed relatively stable, organized societies which had far surpassed the primitive stage in culture and technical skills. The most advanced groups lived along the coast and in the lower Mekong River valley and delta regions in houses constructed on stilts where they cultivated rice, fished and kept domesticated animals. Recent research has unlocked the discovery of artificial circular earthworks dating to Cambodia's Neolithic era.1 The Khmer people were one of the first inhabitants of South East Asia. They were also among the first in South East Asia to adopt religious ideas and political institutions from India and to establish centralized kingdoms surrounding large territories. The earliest known kingdom in the area, Funan, flourished from around the first to the sixth century AD. This was succeeded by Chenla, which controlled large parts of modern Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand.
























Map of Funan at around 3rd century AD.
Contents
• 1 Funan Empire: 68-550
• 2 Chenla: 550-802
• 3 Khmer Empire: 802-1431
• 4 Dark Ages: 1618-1863
• 5 French colonial period: 1863-1953
• 6 First administration of Sihanouk: 1955-1970
• 7 The Khmer Republic and the War: 1970-1975
• 8 Democratic Kampuchea (the Khmer Rouge/Red Khmer age): 1975-1979
• 9 People's Republic of Kampuchea (Vietnamese occupation): 1979-1993
• 10 Modern Cambodia: 1993-Present
• 11 References
• 12 See also
• 13 External links

Funan
For other uses, see Funan DigitaLife Mall.
Funan (Old Khmer Bnam, Modern Khmer Phnom, Khmer script: នគរភ្នំ (i.e., "city of mountain" or "state of mountain"), Vietnamese Phù Nam; Chinese 扶南, Fúnán; Thai ฟูนาน, pronounced [fuːnaːn][missing tone]) was an ancient pre-Angkor Indianized Khmer kingdom located around the Mekong Delta. It is believed to have been established in the first century C.E., although extensive human settlement in the region may have gone back as far as the 4th century B.C.E. Though regarded by Chinese envoys as a single unified empire, Funan may have been a collection of city-states that sometimes warred with one another and at other times constituted a political unity.[1] At its height, Funan and all its principalities covered much of mainland Southeast Asia, including within its scope the territory of modern day Cambodia and Southern Vietnam, as well as parts of Laos, Thailand and Myanmar, and extending into the Malay Peninsula.[2]
Little is known about Funan, except that it was a powerful trading state, as evidenced by the discovery of Roman, Chinese, and Indian goods during archaeological excavations at the ancient port of Oc Eo in southern Vietnam.[3] The capital, initially located at Vyadhapura (City of the Hunter) near the modern Cambodian town of Banam in Prey Veng Province, may have been moved to Oc Eo at a later time.[4] Most of what is known about Funan is from records by Chinese and Cham sources dating from the third to sixth centuries and from archaeological excavations. No archaeological research has been conducted on this state in Cambodia's Mekong Delta in several decades, and it is precisely this region that reputedly housed the capitals of Funan.[5]
នគរភ្នំ
Funan or Nakhor Phnom

68–550 →


Capital
Vayadharapura (Baphnom): 68-550, Navornakor
Language(s) Old Khmer

Religion
Buddhism, Hindu

Government
Monarchy

Emperor

- 68-? Kaodinya I

- 514-550 Rudravarman

Historical era Funan of Cambodia History (68-550)
- Established in Prey Veng of Cambodia 68, 68

- Fall
550, 550

- End of the Southern Funan 628


Contents
[hide]
• 1 Origin
• 2 History
• 3 Organization
• 4 Culture
• 5 Economy
• 6 Legacy
• 7 Relations
• 8 Funan rulers
• 9 Notes
• 10 References
• 11 External links

[edit] Origin
The race and language of the Funanese are not known, but Chinese records dating from the third century C.E. reveals the same origin myth of the Khmer people that survives in modern Khmer folklore.[6][7][8] In a tenth-century document of the Chinese official Rang Tai's visit to Funan in the middle of the third century C.E. records one of the earliest variants of the legend. In it, Rang Tai learned that the original sovereign of Funan was a woman named Liu-Ye. According to the story, Kaundinya had been given instruction in a dream to take a magic bow from a temple and to embark on a journey. He did so and went to Cambodia, where a local queen (Liu-ye) launched an attack on the Brahmin's boat. With the aid of the divine bow, Kaundinya repelled the attack and persuaded the defeated queen to marry him. Their lineage became the royal dynasty of Funan.[9] A similar account is recorded in the seventh century History of Chin.[10]
Although the Chinese records shows bias, similar names have been recorded in stone inscriptions at My Son dating to A.D. 657. In this Cham version, the prince is known as Kaudinya and the queen as Soma, the daughter of the naga king. A Khmer inscription from the tenth century described the ruling line as descendants of Sri-Kaudinya and the daughter of Soma.[11][12][13] The same origin myth in modern Khmer folklore gives the name Preah Thaong to the prince and Neang Neak to the queen. In this version, Preah Thaong arrives by sea to an island marked by a giant thlok tree, native to Cambodia. On the Island, he found the home of the nagas and met Neang Neak, daughter of the naga king. He married her with blessing from her father and returned to the human world. The naga king drank the sea around the island and gave the name Kampuchea Thipdei, which in Sanskrit (Kambuja Dhipati) translates into the king of Kambuja. In another version, it is stated that Preah Thaong fights Neang Neak. The continuation of the same origin myth implies that modern Khmers are descendants of the Funanese people.[14][15][16]
The first Khmer inscription dated shortly after the fall of Funan and those dating to later dates are concentrated in southern Cambodia suggests that the Khmers already inhabited lowland Cambodia.[17]
[edit] History


Funan's Empire at it's greatest extent.
The Funanese Empire reached its greatest extent under the rule of Fan Shih-man in the early third century C.E., extending as far south as present-day Malaysia and as far west as present-day Myanmar. The Funanese established a strong system of mercantilism and commercial monopolies that would become a pattern for empires in the region. Fan Shih-man expanded the fleet and improved the Funanese bureaucracy, creating a quasi-feudal pattern that left local customs and identities largely intact, particularly in the empire's further reaches.
[edit] Organization
Keeping in mind that Funanese records did not survive into the modern period, much of what is known came from archaeological excavation. Excavations yielded discoveries of brick wall structures, precious metals and pottery from southern Cambodia and Vietnam. Also found was a large canal system that linked the settlements of Angkor Borei and coastal outlets; this suggests a highly organized government.[18] Funan, a complex and sophisticated society with a high population density, advanced technology, and a complex social system dominated the area of Cambodia because of the Khmer people's ability to produce food in Cambodia's fertile plains.
[edit] Culture
Funanese culture was a mixture of native beliefs and Indian ideas. The kingdom is said to have been heavily influenced by Indian culture, and to have employed Indians for state administration purposes. Sanskrit was the language at the court, and the Funanese advocated Hindu and, after the fifth century, Buddhist religious doctrines. Records show that taxes were paid in silver, gold, pearls, and perfumed wood. K'ang T'ai reported that the Funanese practiced slavery and that justice was rendered through trial by ordeal, including such methods as carrying a red-hot iron chain and retrieving gold rings and eggs from boiling water.
Archaeological evidence largely corresponds to Chinese records. the Chinese described the Funanese as people who lived on stilt houses, cultivated rice and sent tributes of gold, silver, ivory and exotic animals.[19]
K'ang T'ai's report was unflattering to Funanese civilization, though Chinese court records show that a group of Funanese musicians visited China in 263. The Chinese emperor was so impressed that he ordered the establishment of an institute for Funanese music near Nanking.[citation needed] The Funanese were reported also to have extensive book collections and archives throughout their country, demonstrating a high level of scholarly achievement.
[edit] Economy
Funan was Southeast Asia's first great economy. The Kingdom was rich because of trade and agriculture. Funan grew wealthy because it dominated the Isthmus of Kra, the narrow portion of the Malay peninsula where merchants transported trade goods between China and India. They use their profits to construct an elaborate system of water storage and irrigation. Citizens lived relaxed lifestyles. The Funanese population was concentrated mainly along the Mekong River: the area was a natural region for the development of an economy based on fishing and rice cultivation. The Funanese economy depended on rice surpluses produced by an extensive inland irrigation system. Maritime trade also played an extremely important role in the development of Funan. Archaeological remnants of what was the kingdom's main port, Oc Eo, were found to include Roman as well as Persian, Indian, and Greek artifacts.The German classical scholar Albrecht Dihle believed that Funan’s main port, identified with Oc Eo, was the Kattigara referred to by the second century Alexandrian geographer Ptolemy as the emporium where merchants from the Chinese and Roman empires met to trade. Dihle believed that Oc Eo best fitted the details given by Ptolemy of a voyage made by a Graeco-Roman merchant named Alexander to Kattigara, situated at the easternmost end of the maritime trade route from the eastern Roman Empire.[20]
[edit] Legacy
King Fan Shih-man, the greatest king of Funan, and his successors sent ambassadors to China and India. The kingdom likely accelerated the process of Indianization into Southeast Asia. Later kingdoms of Southeast Asia emulated the Funanese court.
During its golden age, Funan controlled modern-day southern Vietnam, Cambodia, central Thailand, northern Malaysia, and southern Myanmar. Although Funan collapsed under the pressure of neighboring Chenla, its capital Vyadhapura remained the largest and most important urban center in the region until Angkor Thom.
The Funan kingdom had an efficient navy and rose to prosperity by regulating the sea trade between China and India.
Funan collapsed in the sixth century and was absorbed by the Chenla kingdom who are undeniably Khmers. Funan is held to be the first Khmer kingdom and the forerunner of the mighty Khmer Empire. The Khmers and the Funanese share the same origin myth and under Funan, Cambodia became an indianized polity which had a profound effect on its culture.
[edit] Relations


Asia in AD 400, showing Funan and its neighbors.
The French historian George Coedès once hypothesized a relation between the rulers of Funan and the Sailendra dynasty of Indonesia. Coedès believed that the title of "mountain lord" used by the kings of Sailendra may also have been used by the kings of Funan, since the name "Funan" is related to the Khmer "phnom," which means "mountain."[21] Other scholars have rejected this hypothesis, pointing to the lack of evidence in early Cambodian epigraphy for the use of any such titles.[22] The Funanese also traded with the Liang dynasty of southern China.[18]
Little is known about Funan's political history apart from its relations with China. A brief conflict is recorded to have happened in the 270s, when Funan and its neighbour, Champa, joined forces to attack the area of Tongking (which was under chinese control at the time), located in what is now modern Northern Vietnam. In 357, Funan became a vassal of China, and would continue as such until its disintegration in the sixth century. Chenla, a vassal of Funan eventually absorbed Funan entirely.
Chenla
ចេនឡា
Chenla
←
550–802 →




Capital
Isanapura, Shreshthapura
Language(s) Old Khmer

Religion
Buddhism,Hindu

Government
Monarchy

Historical era Middle Ages

- Vassal of Funan 550
- independence from Funan 610

- divided into northern and southern states 613

- Succession to Khmer Empire 802























Chenla (Khmer: ចេនឡា), known as Zhenla (真腊) in Chinese and Chân Lạp in Vietnamese (which is the Sino-Vietnamese pronunciation of 真腊), was an early Khmer kingdom.
At first a vassal state to Funan (circa AD 550), over the next 60 years it achieved its independence and eventually conquered all of Funan, absorbing its people and culture. The weakening of the Funan state at this time can largely be explained by distant events: the collapse of the Roman Empire and subsequently trade routes between the Mediterranean and China.
In 613, Isanapura became the first capital of the new empire. Chenla later divided into northern and southern states, known as "Chenla of the Land" and "Chenla of the Sea," respectively. The Champassak province of modern-day Laos was the center of the northern part, while the territory of the Mekong Delta and the coast belonged to the southern part. Several smaller states broke off from Northern and Southern Chenla in 715, further weakening the region.
Contents
[hide]
• 1 History
• 2 Rulers
• 3 See also
• 4 Sources

History
Khmers, who are believed to be vassals of Funan had reached the Mekong River from the northern Menam River via the Mun River Valley. Chenla, their first independent state developed out of Funan, absorbing Funanese influence.
Ancient Chinese records mention two kings, Shrutavarman and Shreshthavarman who ruled at the capital Shreshthapura located in modern day southern Laos. The immense influence on the identity of Cambodia to come was wrought by the Khmer Kingdom of Bhavapura, in the modern day Cambodian city of Kompong Thom. Its legacy was its most important sovereign, Ishanavarman who completely conquered the kingdom of Funan during 612-628. He chose his new capital at the Sambor Prei Kuk, naming it Ishanapura.
After the death of Jayavarman I in 681, turmoil came upon the kingdom and at the start of the 8th century, the kingdom broke up into many principalities. Pushkaraksha, the ruler of Shambhupura announced himself as king of the entire Kambuja. Chinese chronicles proclaim that in the 8th century, Chenla was split into land Chenla and water Chenla. During this time, Shambhuvarman son of Pushkaraksha controlled most of water Chenla until the 8th century which the Malayans and Javanese dominated over many Khmer principalities.
Khmer Empire


Khmer Empire
←
802–1431 →



Map of Khmer Empire under Jayavarman VII (1200)
Capital
Hariharalaya
(802-889)
Yasodharapura
(889-1431)
Koh Ker
(928-944)
Language(s) Khmer

Religion
Buddhism, Hinduism

Government
Monarchy/Theocracy

Emperor

- 802-850 Jayavarman II

- 889-900 Yasovarman I

- 1002-1050 Suryavarman I

- 1113-1150 Suryavarman II

- 1181-1218 Jayavarman VII

History
- Jayavarman II declared independence from Srivijaya under the Sailendra, proclaiming himself the divine king of Kambuja. 802, 802

- The first time of Surrender of Angkor
1352-1357
- The Second time of Surrender of Angkor
1393

- The Thai invaded Angkor. 1431, 1431
























The Khmer Empire was the second largest empire of South East Asia (the largest empire is srivijaya), based in what is now Cambodia. The empire, which seceded from the kingdom of Chenla, at times ruled over and/or vassalised parts of modern-day Laos, Thailand,Vietnam, Myanmar, and Malaysia. During the formation of the empire, Khmer had close cultural, political and trade relations with Java, and later with Srivijaya empire that lay beyond Khmer's southern border. Its greatest legacy is Angkor, which was the capital during the empire's zenith. Angkor bears testimony to the Khmer empire's immense power and wealth, as well as the variety of belief systems that it patronised over time. The empire's official religions included Hinduism and Mahayana Buddhism, until Theravada Buddhism prevailed after its introduction from Sri Lanka in the 13th century. Modern satellites have revealed Angkor to be the largest pre-industrial urban center in the world, larger than modern day New York.
The history of Angkor as the central area of settlement of the historical kingdom of Kambuja is also the history of the Khmer from the 9th to the 15th centuries.
From Kambuja itself - and so also from the Angkor region - no written records have survived other than stone inscriptions. Therefore the current knowledge of the historical Khmer civilization is derived primarily from:
• archaeological excavation, reconstruction and investigation
• inscriptions on stela and on stones in the temples, which report on the political and religious deeds of the kings
• reliefs in a series of temple walls with depictions of military marches, life in the palace, market scenes and also the everyday lives of the population
• reports and chronicles of Chinese diplomats, traders and travellers.
The beginning of the era of the Khmer kingdom of Angkor is conventionally dated to 802. In this year, king Jayavarman II had himself declared "Chakravartin" (king of the world).
Contents
[hide]
• 1 History
o 1.1 Jayavarman II - the founder of Angkor
o 1.2 Yasodharapura - the first city of Angkor
o 1.3 Suryavarman II - Angkor Wat
o 1.4 Jayavarman VII - Angkor Thom
o 1.5 Zhou Daguan - the last blooming
o 1.6 Decline and the end of Angkor
• 2 Timeline of rulers
• 3 References

[edit] History
[edit] Jayavarman II - the founder of Angkor
Jayavarman II lived as a prince at the court of Sailendra in Java, whether as a royal hostage of Java's vassal kingdom, or for his education (or both), has not yet been established. Thus he brought the art and culture of Javanese Sailendran court to Cambodia. After he eventually returned to his home, the former kingdom of Chenla, he quickly built up his influence, conquered a series of competing kings, and in 790 became king of a kingdom called "Kambuja" by the Khmer. In the following years he extended his territory and eventually established his new capital of Hariharalaya near the modern Cambodian town of Roluos. He thereby laid the foundation of Angkor, which was to arise some 15 km to the northwest. In 802 he declared himself Chakravartin, in a ritual taken from the Indian-Hindu tradition. Thereby he not only became the divinely appointed and therefore uncontested ruler, but also simultaneously declared the independence of his kingdom from Java. Jayavarman II died in the year 834.
[edit] Yasodharapura - the first city of Angkor
Jayavarman II's successors continually extended the territory of Kambuja. Indravarman I (reigned 877 - 889) managed to expand the kingdom without wars, and he began extensive building projects, thanks to the wealth gained through trade and agriculture. Foremost were the temple of Preah Ko and irrigation works. He was followed by his son Yasovarman I (reigned 889 - 915), who established a new capital, Yasodharapura - the first city of Angkor.
The city's central temple was built on Phnom Bakheng, a hill which rises around 60 m above the plain on which Angkor sits. Under Yasovarman I the East Baray was also created, a massive water reservoir of 7.5 by 1.8 km.


A 12 or 13th century relief at the Bayon temple in Angkor depicts the Khmer army going to war against the Cham.
At the beginning of the 10th century the kingdom split. Jayavarman IV established a new capital at Koh Ker, some 100 km northeast of Angkor. Only with Rajendravarman II (reigned 944 - 968) was the royal palace returned to Yasodharapura. He took up again the extensive building schemes of the earlier kings and established a series of temples in the Angkor area; not the least being the East Mebon, on an island in the middle of the East Baray, and several Buddhist temples and monasteries. In 950 the first war took place between Kambuja and the kingdom of Champa to the east (in the modern central Vietnam).
From 968 to 1001 reigned the son of Rajendravarman II, Jayavarman V. After he had established himself as the new king over the other princes, his rule was a largely peaceful period, marked by prosperity and a cultural flowering. He established a new capital near Yashodharapura, Jayenanagari. At the court of Jayavarman V lived philosophers, scholars and artists. New temples were also established: the most important of these are Banteay Srei, considered one of the most beautiful and artistic of Angkor, and Ta Keo, the first temple of Angkor built completely of sandstone.
After the death of Jayavarman V a decade of conflict followed. Kings reigned only for a few years, and were successively violently replaced by their successors until eventually Suryavarman I (reigned 1010 - 1050) gained the throne. His rule was marked by repeated attempts by his opponents to overthrow him and by military conquests. In the west he extended the kingdom to the modern Lopburi in Thailand, in the south to the Kra Isthmus. At Angkor, construction of the West Baray began under Suryavarman I, the second and even larger {8 by 2.2 km) water reservoir after the Eastern Baray.No one knows if he had children or wives
[edit] Suryavarman II - Angkor Wat
The 11th century was a time of conflict and brutal power struggles. Only with Suryavarman II (reigned 1113 - 1150) was the kingdom united internally and extended externally. Under his rule, the largest temple of Angkor was built in a period of 37 years: Angkor Wat, dedicated to the god Vishnu. Suryavarman II conquered the Mon kingdom of Haripunjaya to the west (in today's central Thailand), and the area further west to the border with the kingdom of Bagan (modern Burma), in the south further parts of the Malay peninsula down to the kingdom of Grahi (corresponding roughly to the modern Thai province of Nakhon Si Thammarat), in the east several provinces of Champa and the countries in the north as far as the southern border of modern Laos. Suryavarman II's end is unclear. The last inscription, which mentions his name in connection with a planned invasion of Vietnam, is from the year 1145. He probably died during a military expedition between 1145 and 1150.
There followed another period in which kings reigned briefly and were violently overthrown by their successors. Finally in 1177 Kambuja was defeated in a naval battle on the Tonle Sap lake by the army of the Chams, and was incorporated as a province of Champa.
[edit] Jayavarman VII - Angkor Thom


French map of Khmer empire.
The future king Jayavarman VII (reigned 1181-1219) was already a military leader as prince under previous kings. After the Cham had conquered Angkor, he gathered an army and regained the capital, Yasodharapura. In 1181 he ascended the throne and continued the war against the neighbouring eastern kingdom for a further 22 years, until the Khmer defeated Champa in 1203 and conquered large parts of its territory.
Jayavarman VII stands as the last of the great kings of Angkor, not only because of the successful war against the Cham, but also because he was no tyrannical ruler in the manner of his immediate predecessors, because he unified the empire, and above all because of the building projects carried out under his rule. The new capital now called Angkor Thom (literally: "Great City") was built. In the centre, the king (himself a follower of Mahayana Buddhism) had constructed as the state temple the Bayon, with its towers bearing faces of the boddhisattva Avalokiteshvara, each several metres high, carved out of stone. Further important temples built under Jayavarman VII were Ta Prohm, Banteay Kdei and Neak Pean, as well as the reservoir of Srah Srang. Alongside, an extensive network of streets was laid down, which connected every town of the empire. Beside these streets 121 rest-houses were built for traders, officials and travellers. Not least of all, he established 102 hospitals.
[edit] Zhou Daguan - the last blooming
After the death of Jayavarman VII, his son Indravarman II (reigned 1219-1243) ascended the throne. Like his father, he was a Buddhist, and completed a series of temples begun under his father's rule. As a warrior he was less successful. In the year 1220 the Khmer withdrew from many of the provinces previously conquered from Champa. In the west, his Thai subjects rebelled, established the first Thai kingdom at Sukhothai and pushed back the Khmer. In the following 200 years, the Thais would become the chief rivals of Kambuja. Indravarman II was succeeded by Jayavarman VIII (reigned 1243-1295). In contrast to his predecessors, he was a Hindu and an aggressive opponent of Buddhism. He destroyed most of the Buddha statues in the empire (archaeologists estimate the number at over 10,000, of which few traces remain) and converted Buddhist temples to Hindu temples. From the outside, the empire was threatened in 1283 by the Mongols under Kublai Khan's general Sagatu. The king avoided war with his powerful opponent, who at this time ruled over all China, by paying annual tribute to him. Jayavarman VIII's rule ended in 1295 when he was deposed by his son-in-law Srindravarman (reigned 1295-1309). The new king was a follower of Theravada Buddhism, a school of Buddhism which had arrived in southeast Asia from Sri Lanka and subsequently spread through most of the region.
In August of 1296, the Chinese diplomat Zhou Daguan arrived at Angkor, and remained at the court of king Srindravarman until July 1297. He was neither the first nor the last Chinese representative to visit Kambuja. However, his stay is notable because Zhou Daguan later wrote a detailed report on life in Angkor. His portrayal is today one of the most important sources of understanding of historical Angkor. Alongside descriptions of several great temples (the Bayon, the Baphuon, Angkor Wat, for which we have him to thank for the knowledge that the towers of the Bayon were once covered in gold), the text also offers valuable information on the everyday life and the habits of the inhabitants of Angkor. this was a good source for the emperor
[edit] Decline and the end of Angkor
There are few historical records from the time following Srindravarman's reign. The last known inscription on a pillar is from the year 1327. No further large temples were established. Historians suspect a connection with the kings' adoption of Theravada Buddhism: they were therefore no longer considered "devarajas", and there was no need to erect huge temples to them, or rather to the gods under whose protection they stood. The retreat from the concept of the devaraja may also have led to a loss of royal authority and thereby to a lack of workers. The water-management apparatus also degenerated, meaning that harvests were reduced by floods or drought. While previously three rice harvests per years were possible - a substantial contribution to the prosperity and power of Kambuja - the declining harvests further weakened the empire. Its western neighbour, the first Thai kingdom of Sukhothai,after repelling Angkorian hegemony, was conquered by another Thai kingdom, Ayutthaya, in 1350. After 1352 Ayutthaya became Angkor's rival. It launched several assaults on Kambuja, although these were repelled. In 1431, however, the superiority of Ayutthaya was too great, and the Thai army conquered Angkor.
The centre of the residual Khmer kingdom was in the south, in the region of today's Phnom Penh. However, there are indications that Angkor was not completely abandoned. One line of Khmer kings would have remained there, while a second moved to Phnom Penh to establish a parallel kingdom. The final fall of Angkor would then be due to the transfer of economic - and therewith political - significance, as Phnom Penh became an important trade centre on the Mekong. Costly construction projects and conflicts over power between the royal family sealed the end of the Khmer empire.
Ecological failure and infrastructural break down is a new alternative answer to the end of the Khmer Empire. The Great Angkor Project believe that the Khmers had an elaborate system of reservoirs and canals used for trade, travel and irrigation. The canals were used for the harvesting of rice. As the population grew there was more strain on the water system. Failures include water shortage and flooding. To adapt to the growing population, trees were cut down from the Kulen hills and cleared out for more rice fields. That created rain runoff carrying sediment to the canal network. Any damage to the water system would leave an enormous amount of consequences.1
In any event, there is evidence for a further period of use for Angkor. Under the rule of king Barom Reachea I (reigned 1566 - 1576), who temporarily succeeded in driving back the Thai, the royal court was briefly returned to Angkor. From the 17th century there are inscriptions which testify to Japanese settlements alongside those of the remaining Khmer.


A plan of Angkor Wat created by a Japanese pilgrim from c. 1623 to 1636
The best-known tells of Ukondafu Kazufusa, who celebrated the Khmer New Year there in 1632.
Colonial Cambodia
កម្ពុជាសម័យអាណានិគម
Protectorat du Cambodia
Protectorate of Cambodia
Protectorate of France

1863–1887 →



Flag



Capital
Phnom Penh

Language(s) French, Khmer

Political structure
Protectorate

King

- 1860-1904 Norodom

Historical era New Imperialism

- Protectorate established 1863
- Merged into Indochinese Union 1887
- Independence
9 November 1953


In 1863, Cambodia under king Norodom became a protectorate of France. In October 1887, the French announced the formation of the Union Indochinoise (Union of Indochina), which at that time comprised Cambodia, already an autonomous French possession, and the three regions of Vietnam (Tonkin, Annam, and Cochinchina. In 1893, Laos was annexed after the French threatened Siam's King Chulalongkorn with war, thereby forcing him to give up the territory.
Contents
[hide]
• 1 French colonial occupation
• 2 Economy during the French colonial occupation
• 3 Emergence of Khmer nationalism
• 4 Struggle for Khmer unity
• 5 The campaign for independence
• 6 References
• 7 External links























[edit] French colonial occupation
The seat of the Governor-General for the whole of French Indochina was based in Hanoi, which was situated in Tonkin (now northern Vietnam). Cambodia, being a constituent protectorate of French Indochina, was governed by the Résident Supérieur (Resident-General) for Cambodia, who was directly appointed by the Ministry of Marine and Colonies in Paris. The Resident-General was in turn assisted by Residents, or local governors, who were posted in all the provincial centers, such as, Battambang, Pursat, Odong, and Siem Reap. Phnom Penh, the capital, was under the direct administration of the Resident-General.
The Resident-General held considerable power, but the person in the position frequently wanted more. In 1897, the ruling Resident-General complained to Paris that the current king of Cambodia, King Norodom was no longer fit to rule and asked for permission to assume the king's powers to collect taxes, issue decrees, and even appoint royal officials and choose crown princes. From that time, Norodom and the future kings of Cambodia were figureheads and merely were patrons of the Buddhist religion in Cambodia, though they were still viewed as god-kings by the peasant population. All other power was in the hands of the Resident-General and the colonial bureaucracy. Nonetheless, this bureaucracy was formed mostly of French officials, and the only Asians freely permitted were ethnic Vietnamese, who were viewed as the dominant Asians in the Indochinese Union.
In 1904, King Norodom died. Rather than pass the throne on to Norodom's sons, the French passed the succession to Norodom's brother Sisowath, whose branch of the royal family was more submissive and less nationalistic to French rule than Norodom's, who was viewed as the more nationalistic branch of the family. Likewise, Norodom was viewed as responsible for the constant Cambodian revolts against French rule. Another reason was that Norodom's favorite son, who he wanted to succeed him as king, Prince Yukanthor, had, on one of his trips to Europe, stirred up public opinion about French colonial brutalities in occupied Cambodia.


Siem Reap, Battambang & Preah Vihear received by King Sisowath, 1907
Meanwhile, the rule of King Sisowath, and his son, King Sisowath Monivong, were peaceful, even though the monarchs were nothing but puppets and pliant instruments of the French. During Sisowath's reign, the French succeeded in getting Thailand's reformist king, King Chulalongkorn, to sign a new treaty in 1907, which returned the northwestern provinces of Battambang and Siemreab back to Cambodian rule. In this sense, the Sisowath branch of the family is seen in restoring Cambodian land, even though it all passed under oppressive French colonial rule.
[edit] Economy during the French colonial occupation
Not long after the French first established an autonomous presence in Cambodia in 1863, the French realized that their dream of Cambodia becoming the "Singapore of Indochina" was an illusion and that Cambodia had no hidden wealth.[citation needed] Thereafter, Cambodia's economy was not significantly modernized. France collected taxes efficiently, but otherwise brought few changes to the Cambodian village economy.
Discrimination against non-Vietnamese by the French continued, especially when it was revealed that Cambodians paid the highest taxes per capita in Indochina. In 1916, a tax revolt bought tens of thousands of peasants to Phnom Penh to petition King Sisowath Monivong for a reduction in taxes. The French, who had thought the Cambodians were too quiet and indolent to organize a protest, were shocked[citation needed]. Despite the protest, King Sisowath Monivong could do nothing. In 1925, villagers killed a French resident who threatened to arrest tax delinquents.
Some areas of the economy did develop under French rule. The French built some roads and railroads on Cambodian territory. While relatively few kilometers of railways were laid, one important line connected Phnom Penh and the Thai border through Battambang. The cultivation of rubber and corn was economically important, and soon Battambang and Siemreab provinces became the rice bowls of Indochina. During the 1920s, Cambodia profited when rubber and corn were in demand, but after the Great Depression in 1929, Cambodia began to suffer, especially among rice cultivators whose falling incomes made then more than ever the victims of moneylenders.
Industry was primarily designed to process raw materials for local use or for export. Immigration into Cambodia was considerable; and Cambodia became quite ethnically diverse. As in Burma and Malaysia, which were both under British rule, foreigners dominated the work force of the economy. Vietnamese, despite their privileged position, became laborers on rubber plantations. Soon, many Vietnamese immigrants began to play important roles in the colonial economy as fisherman and businessmen. The Chinese had been living in Cambodia for centuries, and they dominated commerce before the French arrival. Under the French, this status quo remained the same, but the French placed restrictions on the Chinese. Nonetheless, Chinese merchants and bankers in Cambodia developed commercial networks that extended throughout Indochina to China as well.
[edit] Emergence of Khmer nationalism
Unlike Vietnam, Cambodian nationalism was politically quiet during the early 1900s. This was probably so because of the reigning monarch and the way the French handled the monarchy. Khmer villages who were used to abuse of power believed that if the monarch was on the throne, Cambodia was fine as it was. At the same time, low literacy rates in Cambodia, which the French were reluctant to improve, stopped nationalist currents to spread as they were in Vietnam.
However, Cambodian nationalism was emerging among the educated urban Khmer elite. When the French restored the monuments at Angkor Wat, the pride of many Cambodians' was awakened at their country and their past history. Many of the new urban educated elite were graduates of the Cambodian History department at Lycee Sisowath in Phnom Penh. There, resentment at the way Vietnamese students were favored resulted in a petition to King Monivong in the 1930s. Significantly, the first major nationalists, members of the Khmer Krom, were members of the Cambodian minority who lived in Vietnam. Son Ngoc Than and Pach Choeun began publishing Nagaravatta (Angkor Wat), the first Khmer newspaper. It mildly condemned French colonial policies, its corruption, its usury in rural areas, foreign domination of the economy, and also criticized the Vietnamese for their past imperialism and their privileged position in Indochina.


Flag of Cambodia under Japanese occupation
The Khmer were lucky in escaping the suffering endured by most other Southeast Asian peoples during World War II. After the establishment of the Vichy regime in France in 1940, Japanese forces moved into Vietnam and displaced French authority. In mid-1941, they entered Cambodia but allowed Vichy French colonial officials to remain at their administrative posts. The pro-Japanese regime in Thailand, headed by Field Marshal Phibunsongkhram, requested assurances from the Vichy regime that, in the event of an interruption of French sovereignty, Cambodian and Laotian territories formerly belong to Thailand would be returned to Bangkok's authority. The request was rejected. In December 1940 the French-Thai War erupted, and the Thai Burapha Army invaded Cambodia the following month. The French were hard-pressed to resist against the better-equipped Thai forces on the ground and in the air, but nevertheless managed to score a naval victory in the Gulf of Thailand . At this point, Tokyo intervened and compelled the French authorities to agree to a treaty ceding the province of Battambang and part of the province of Siemreab to Thailand in exchange for a small compensation. The Cambodians were allowed to retain Angkor. Thai aggression, however, had minimal impact on the lives of most Cambodians outside the north-western region.
King Monivong died in April 1941. Although his son, Prince Monichao, had been considered the heir apparent, the French chose instead Norodom Sihanouk, the great grandson of King Norodom. Sihanouk was an ideal candidate from their point of view because of his youth (he was nineteen years old), his lack of experience, and his pliability.
Japanese calls of "Asia for the Asiatics" found a receptive audience among Cambodian nationalists, although Tokyo's policy in Indochina was to leave the colonial government nominally in charge. When a prominent, politically active Buddhist monk, Hem Chieu, was arrested and unceremoniously defrocked by the French authorities in July 1942, the editors of Nagaravatta led a demonstration demanding his release. They, as well as other nationalists, apparently overestimated the Japanese willingness to back them, for the Vichy authorities quickly arrested the demonstrators and gave Pach Choeun, one of the Nagaravatta editors, a life sentence . The other editor, Son Ngoc Thanh, escaped from Phnom Penh and turned up the following year in Tokyo.
In a desperate effort to enlist local support in the final months of the war, the Japanese dissolved the French colonial administration on March 9, 1945, and urged Cambodia to declare its independence within the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Four days later, King Sihanouk decreed an independent Kampuchea (the original Khmer pronunciation of Cambodia). Son Ngoc Thanh returned from Tokyo in May, and he was appointed foreign minister. On August 15, 1945, the day Japan surrendered, a new government was established with Son Ngoc Thanh acting as prime minister. When an Allied force occupied Phnom Penh in October, Thanh was arrested for collaboration with the Japanese and was sent into exile in France to remain under house arrest. Some of his supporters went to north-western Cambodia, then still under Thai control, where they banded together as one faction in the Khmer Issarak movement, originally formed with Thai encouragement in the 1940s.
[edit] Struggle for Khmer unity
Cambodia's situation at the end of the war was chaotic. The Free French, under General Charles de Gaulle, were determined to recover Indochina, though they offered Cambodia and the other Inchochinese protectorates a carefully circumscribed measure of self-government. Convinced that they had a "civilizing mission," they envisioned Indochina's participation in a French Union of former colonies that shared the common experience of French culture. Neither the urban professional elites nor the common people, however, were attracted by this arrangement. For Cambodians of practically all walks of life, the brief period of independence, from March to October of 1945, had been enjoyable. The lassitude of the Khmer was a thing of the past.
In Phnom Penh, Sihanouk, acting as head of state, was placed in a delicate position of negotiating with the French for full independence while trying to neutralize party politicians and supporters of the Khmer Issarak and Viet Minh who considered him a French collaborator. During the tumultuous period between 1946 and 1953, Sihanouk displayed the remarkable aptitude for political survival that sustained him before and after his fall from power in March 1970. The Khmer Issarak was an extremely heterogeneous guerrilla movement, operating in the border areas. The group included indigenous leftists, Vietnamese leftists, anti-monarchical nationalists (Khmer Serei) loyal to Son Ngoc Thanh, and plain bandits taking advantage of the chaos to terrorize villagers. Though their fortunes rose and fell during the immediate postwar period (a major blow was the overthrow of a left-wing friendly government in Bangkok in 1947), by 1954 the Khmer Issarak operating with the Viet Minh by some estimates controlled as much as 50 percent of Cambodia's territory.
In 1946, France allowed the Cambodians to form political parties and to hold elections for a Consultative Assembly that would advise the monarch on drafting the country's constitution. The two major parties were both headed by royal princes. The Democratic Party, led by Prince Sisowath Yuthevong, espoused immediate independence, democratic reforms, and parliamentary government. Its supporters were teachers, civil servants, politically active members of the Buddhist priesthood, and others whose opinions had been greatly influenced by the nationalistic appeals of Nagaravatta before it was closed down by the French in 1942. Many Democrats sympathized with the violent methods of the Khmer Issarak. The Liberal Party, led by Prince Norodom Norindeth, represented the interests of the old rural elites, including large landowners. They preferred continuing some form of the colonial relationship with France, and advocated gradual democratic reform. In the Consultative Assembly election held in September 1946, the Democrats won 50 of 67 seats.
With a solid majority in the assembly, the Democrats drafted a constitution modeled on that of the French Fourth Republic. Power was concentrated in the hands of a popularly elected National Assembly. The king reluctantly proclaimed the new constitution on May 6, 1947. While it recognized him as the "spiritual head of the state," it reduced him to the status of a constitutional monarch, and it left unclear the extent to which he could play an active role in the politics of the nation. Sihanouk would turn this ambiguity to his advantage in later years, however.
In the December 1947 elections for the National Assembly, the Democrats again won a large majority. Despite this, dissension within the party was rampant. Its founder, Sisowath Yuthevong, had died and no clear leader had emerged to succeed him. During the period 1948 to 1949, the Democrats appeared united only in their opposition to legislation sponsored by the king or his appointees. A major issue was the king's receptivity to independence within the French Union, proposed in a draft treaty offered by the French in late 1948. Following dissolution of the National Assembly in September 1949, agreement on the pact was reached through an exchange of letters between King Sihanouk and the French government. It went into effect two months later, though National Assembly ratification of the treaty was never secured.
The treaty granted Cambodia what Sihanouk called "fifty percent independence": by it, the colonial relationship was formally ended, and the Cambodians were given control of most administrative functions. Cambodian armed forces were granted freedom of action within a self-governing autonomous zone comprising Battambang and Siemreab provinces, which had been recovered from Thailand after World War II, but which the French, hard-pressed elsewhere, did not have the resources to control. Cambodia was still required to coordinate foreign policy matters with the High Council of the French Union, however, and France retained a significant measure of control over the judicial system, finances, and customs. Control of wartime military operations outside the autonomous zone remained in French hands. France was also permitted to maintain military bases on Cambodian territory. In 1950 Cambodia was accorded diplomatic recognition by the United States and by most non-communist powers, but in Asia only Thailand and South Korea extended recognition.
The Democrats won a majority in the second National Assembly election in September 1951, and they continued their policy of opposing the king on practically all fronts. In an effort to win greater popular approval, Sihanouk asked the French to release nationalist Son Ngoc Thanh from exile and to allow him to return to his country. He made a triumphant entry into Phnom Penh on October 29, 1951. It was not long, however, before he began demanding withdrawal of French troops from Cambodia. He reiterated this demand in early 1952 in Khmer Krok (Khmer Awake!) a weekly newspaper that he had founded. The newspaper was forced to cease publication in March, and Son Ngoc Thanh fled the capital with a few armed followers to join the Khmer Issarak. Branded alternately a communist and an agent of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) by Sihanouk, he remained in exile until Lon Nol established the Khmer Republic in 1970.
[edit] The campaign for independence
In June 1952, Sihanouk announced the dismissal of his cabinet, suspended the constitution, and assumed control of the government as prime minister. Then, without clear constitutional sanction, he dissolved the National Assembly and proclaimed martial law in January 1953. Sihanouk exercised direct rule for almost three years, from June 1952 until February 1955. After dissolution of the assembly, he created an Advisory Council to supplant the legislature and appointed his father, Norodom Suramarit, as regent.
In March 1953, Sihanouk went to France. Ostensibly, he was traveling for his health; actually, he was mounting an intensive campaign to persuade the French to grant complete independence. The climate of opinion in Cambodia at the time was such that if he did not achieve full independence quickly, the people were likely to turn to Son Ngoc Thanh and the Khmer Issarak, who were fully committed to attaining that goal. At meetings with the French president and with other high officials, Sihanouk was suggested as being unduly "alarmist" about internal political conditions. The French also made the thinly veiled threat that, if he continued to be uncooperative, they might replace him. The trip appeared to be a failure, but on his way home by way of the United States, Canada, and Japan, Sihanouk publicized Cambodia's plight in the media.
To further dramatize his "royal crusade for independence," Sihanouk, declaring that he would not return until the French gave assurances that full independence would be granted. He then left Phnom Penh in June to go into self-imposed exile in Thailand. Unwelcome in Bangkok, he moved to his royal villa near the ruins of Angkor in Siemreab Province. Siemreab, part of the autonomous military zone established in 1949, was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Lon Nol, formerly a right-wing politician who was becoming a prominent, and in time would be an indispensable Sihanouk ally within the military. From his Siemreab base, the king and Lon Nol contemplated plans for resistance if the French did not meet their terms.
Sihanouk was making a high-stakes gamble, for the French could easily have replaced him with a more pliable monarch; however, the military situation was deteriorating throughout Indochina, and the French government, on July 3, 1953, declared itself ready to grant full independence to the three states of Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos. Sihanouk insisted on his own terms, which included full control of national defense, the police, the courts, and financial matters. The French yielded: the police and the judiciary were transferred to Cambodian control at the end of August, and in October the country assumed full command of its military forces. King Sihanouk, now a hero in the eyes of his people, returned to Phnom Penh in triumph, and independence day was celebrated on 9 November 1953. Control of residual matters affecting sovereignty, such as financial and budgetary affairs, passed to the new Cambodian state in 1954.
Cambodia under Sihanouk (1954–1970)

Preăh Réachéanachâkr Kâmpŭchea
Vương quốc Kampuchea
Kingdom of Cambodia
←
1953–1970 →





Flag
Coat of arms




Capital
Phnom Penh

Language(s) Khmer

Government
Constitutional monarchy

King/Queen

- 1941–55 Norodom Sihanouk¹

- 1955-60 Norodom Suramarit

- 1960-70 Sisowath Kossamak

Head of State

- 1960–70 Norodom Sihanouk¹

Prime Minister

- 1953 Penn Nouth(first)

Norodom Sihanouk¹

- 1969-72 Lon Nol(last)

Historical era Cold War

- Independence
November 9, 1953

- Coup d'etat
March 18, 1970

- South Vietnamese invasion
April 29, 1970

¹ Variously head of state and/or head of government as monarch, regent or prime minister.
























The First administration of Sihanouk from 1954–1970 was an especially significant time in the history of Cambodia. Norodom Sihanouk continues to be one of the most controversial figures in Southeast Asia's turbulent, and often tragic, postwar history. Admirers view him as one of the country's great patriots, whose insistence on strict neutrality kept Cambodia out of the maelstrom of war and out of the revolution in neighboring Vietnam for more than fifteen years before he was deposed by his close associate, Lon Nol.
Contents
[hide]
• 1 The Geneva Conference and Viet Minh Incursion
• 2 Domestic Developments
• 3 Nonaligned Foreign Policy
• 4 The Cambodian Left: The Early Phases
• 5 The Paris Student Group
• 6 The KPRP Second Congress
• 7 References

[edit] The Geneva Conference and Viet Minh Incursion
Although Cambodia had achieved independence by late 1953, its military situation remained unsettled. Noncommunist factions of the Khmer Issarak had joined the government, but pro-communist Viet Minh and United Issarak Front activities increased at the very time French Union forces were stretched thin elsewhere. In April 1954, several Viet Minh battalions crossed the border into Cambodia. Royalist forces engaged them but could not force their complete withdrawal. In part, the communists were attempting to strengthen their bargaining position at the Geneva Conference that had been scheduled to begin in late April.
The Geneva Conference was attended by representatives of Cambodia, North Vietnam, the Associated State of Vietnam (the predecessor of the Republic of Vietnam, or South Vietnam), Laos, the People's Republic of China, the Soviet Union, France, Britain, and the United States. One goal of the conference was to restore a lasting peace in Indochina. The discussions on Indochina began on May 8, 1954. The North Vietnamese attempted to get representation for the resistance government that had been established in the south, but failed. On July 21, 1954, the conference reached an agreement calling for a cessation of hostilities in Indochina. With respect to Cambodia, the agreement stipulated that all Viet Minh military forces be withdrawn within ninety days and that Cambodian resistance forces be demobilized within thirty days. In a separate agreement signed by the Cambodian representative, the French and the Viet Minh agreed to withdraw all forces from Cambodian soil by October 1954.
In exchange for the withdrawal of Viet Minh forces, the communist representatives in Geneva wanted full neutrality for Cambodia and for Laos that would prevent the basing of United States military forces in these countries. On the eve of the conference's conclusion, however, the Cambodian representative, Sam Sary, insisted that, if Cambodia were to be genuinely independent, it must not be prohibited from seeking whatever military assistance it desired (Cambodia had earlier appealed to Washington for military aid). The conference accepted this point over North Vietnam's strenuous objections. In the final agreement, Cambodia accepted a watered-down neutrality, vowing not to join any military alliance "not in conformity with the principles of the Charter of the United Nations" or to allow the basing of foreign military forces on its territory "as long as its security is not threatened."
The conference agreement established the International Control Commission (officially called the International Commission for Supervision and Control) in all the Indochinese countries. Made up of representatives from Canada, Poland and India, it supervised the cease-fire, the withdrawal of foreign troops, the release of prisoners of war, and overall compliance with the terms of the agreement. The French and most of the Viet Minh forces were withdrawn on schedule in October 1954.
[edit] Domestic Developments
The Geneva agreement also stipulated that general elections should be held in Cambodia during 1955 and that the International Control Commission should monitor them to ensure fairness. Sihanouk was more determined than ever to defeat the Democrats (who, on the basis of their past record, were expected to win the election). The king attempted unsuccessfully to have the constitution amended. On March 2, 1955, he announced his abdication in favor of his father, Norodom Suramarit. Assuming the title of samdech (prince), Sihanouk explained that this action was necessary in order to give him a free hand to engage in politics.
To challenge the Democrats, Prince Sihanouk established his own political machine, the Sangkum Reastr Niyum (Popular Socialist Community), commonly referred to as the Sangkum, which, despite its name, contained significant right-wing elements that were virulently anticommunist. The Sangkum's emergence in early 1955 unified most right-wing groups under the prince's auspices. In the September election, Sihanouk's new party decisively defeated the Democrats, the Khmer Independence Party of Son Ngoc Thanh, and the leftist Pracheachon Party, winning 83% of the vote and all of the seats in the National Assembly.
The results of the 1955 election have been attributed to fraud and intimidation. Voters were intimidated by a voting system involving colored pieces of paper that had to be put into a box in full view of Sihanouk's political figures, soldiers and local police. In many cases, voting results were simply falsified as in the case where a district that had been a Viet Minh stronghold for years did not return a single vote for the far left. Writer Philip Short points to a 1957 statement by Sihanouk admitting that thirty six electoral districts had voted Pracheachon or Democrat majority whereas the official results said that they had won none.
Khmer nationalism, loyalty to the monarch, struggle against injustice and corruption, and protection of the Buddhist religion were major themes in Sangkum ideology. The party adopted a particularly conservative interpretation of Buddhism, common in the Theravada countries of Southeast Asia, that the social and economic inequalities among people were legitimate because of the workings of karma. For the poorer classes, virtuous and obedient conduct opened up the possibility of being born into a higher station in a future life. The appeal to religion won the allegiance of the country's many Buddhist priests, who were a particularly influential group in rural villages.
In August 1957, Sihanouk summoned the leaders of the Democrat party to what he called a "debate" at the Royal Palace. They were subjected to five hours of public humiliation. After the event was over, the participants were dragged from their cars and beaten with rifle butts by Sihanouk's police and army.
Around the same time, the Pracheachon party put up five candidates for election. Sihanouk travelled in person to each district and the government mounted a full campaign against the party. The national radio service accused the party of being Vietnamese puppets. Posters showing supposed atrocities were hung in the districts. Eventually four candidates were intimidated into dropping out of the election. The only one who stayed in was credited by government officials with 396 votes out of an electorate of 30,000 in an area where Pracheachon was known to have deep support.
As the 1960s began, organized political opposition to Sihanouk and the Sangkum virtually had been largely driven underground. According to Vickery, the Democratic Party disbanded in 1957 after its leaders--who had been beaten by soldiers--requested the privilege of joining the Sangkum.
Despite its defense of the status quo, especially the interests of rural elites, the Sangkum was not an exclusively right-wing organization. Sihanouk invited a number of leftists into his party and government to provide a balance to the right-wing. Among these were future leaders of the Khmer Rouge. Hu Nim and Hou Yuon served in several ministries between 1958 and 1963, and Khieu Samphan served briefly as secretary of state for commerce in 1963.
But the independent parties of the left were generally targeted for destruction. On October 9, 1959 the editor of the Pracheachon Weekly Paper, Nop Bophann was shot to death outside his office by state security police. In 1960, some two thousand people were detained for political reasons in a holding camp outside the capital. State Security cases were handled by a military tribunal from which there was no appeal. The tribunal handed down over thirty death decrees in its first six months of operation and it was widely known that the verdicts were the personal decision of Sihanouk himself.
In 1960, the editor of the paper l'Observateur, was beaten in the street, stripped naked and photographed by members of the security police a few hundred yards from the Central Police Station. The editor reported the attack to the police. When the National Assembly summoned the minister responsible to explain the incident, he said it was the job the police to protect the opponents of the government. The minister then proceeded to name members of the National Assembly who he considered to be in the same category of opponents. One of the named deputies, Uch Ven, tabled a censure motion that had been drawn up against the minister. Sihanouk issued a statement afterward attacking the members of the National Assembly for their hostile attitude toward the police. Within days, l'Observateur and two other papers were closed by the government, fifty people were detained indefinitely for questioning and the political director of Sihanouk's own newspaper was fired for an editorial objecting to heavy-handed political intimidation.
In July 1962, one of the leading leftists in the country, Tou Samouth was grabbed by the security police while seeking medicine for his child in a street market. He was held in secret and tortured for several days. He was eventually simply murdered with his body dumped into a wasteland in the Stung Meancheay district of Phnom Penh.
In March 1963, Sihanouk published a list of thirty four leftists. After denouncing them as cowards, hypocrites, saboteurs, subversive agents and traitors, he demanded that they form a government for the country. Shortly after, they were brought into the presence of Sihanouk and each signed a statement saying that he was only man capable of leading the country. After the incident, police officers were posted outside the residences and places of employment of each of the named men. They were essentially under permanent police observation.
The results of 1962 and 1963 were to drive the underground leftist movement out of the cities and into the countryside. Even underground politics or proxy actions through above-ground parties against the government had effectively ceased to be possible.
Sihanouk's attitude toward the left was often cynical. He realized that his own political position was dependent on carefully balancing off the left in Cambodia against the right. If one side ever defeated the other, the next step of either party would be to end Sihanouk's role in ruling the country. He often declared that if he had not been a prince, he would have become a revolutionary. Sihanouk's chronic suspicion of United States intentions in the region, his perception of revolutionary China as Cambodia's most valuable ally, his respect for such prominent and capable leftists as Hou, Hu, and Khieu, and his vague notions of "royal socialism" all impelled him to experiment with socialist policies. It should also be recognized that each move toward socialism gave Sihanouk and his inner circle the able to reward each other with lucrative political "spoils" and patronage. In 1963 the prince announced the nationalization of banking, foreign trade, and insurance as a means of reducing foreign control of the economy. In 1964 a state trading company, the National Export-Import Corporation, was established to handle foreign commerce. The declared purposes of nationalization were to give Khmer nationals, rather than Chinese or Vietnamese, a greater role in the nation's trade, to eliminate middlemen and to conserve foreign exchange through the limiting of unnecessary luxury imports. As a result of this policy, foreign investment quickly disappeared, and a nepotistic "crony socialism" emerged somewhat similar to the "crony capitalism" that evolved in the Philippines under President Ferdinand Marcos. Lucrative state monopolies were parceled out to Sihanouk's most loyal retainers, who "milked" them for cash.
Sihanouk was headed steadily for a collision with the right. To counter charges of one-man rule, the prince declared that he would relinquish control of candidate selection and would permit more than one Sangkum candidate to run for each seat in the September 1966 National Assembly election. The returns showed a surprising upsurge in the conservative vote at the expense of more moderate and left-wing elements, although Hou, Hu, and Khieu were reelected by their constituencies. General Lon Nol became prime minister.
Out of concern that the right wing might cause an irreparable split within the Sangkum and might challenge his domination of the political system, Sihanouk set up a "counter government" (like the British "shadow cabinet") packed with his most loyal personal followers and with leading leftists, hoping that it would exert a restraining influence on Lon Nol. Leftists accused the general of being groomed by Western intelligence agencies to lead a bloody anticommunist coup d'état similar to that of General Suharto in Indonesia. Injured in an automobile accident, Lon Nol resigned in April 1967. Sihanouk replaced him with a trusted centrist, Son Sann. This was the twenty-third successive Sangkum cabinet and government to have been appointed by Sihanouk since the party was formed in 1955.
[edit] Nonaligned Foreign Policy
Sihanouk's nonaligned foreign policy, which emerged in the months following the Geneva Conference, cannot be understood without reference to Cambodia's past history of foreign subjugation and its very uncertain prospects for survival as the war between North Vietnam and South Vietnam intensified. Soon after the 1954 Geneva Conference, Sihanouk expressed some interest in integrating Cambodia into the framework of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), which included Cambodia, Laos, and South Vietnam within the "treaty area," although none of these states was a signatory. But meetings in late 1954 with India's Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Burma's Premier U Nu made him receptive to the appeal of nonalignment. Moreover, the prince was somewhat uneasy about a United States-dominated alliance that included one old enemy, Thailand, and encompassed another, South Vietnam, each of which offered sanctuary to anti-Sihanouk dissidents.
At the Bandung Conference in April 1955, Sihanouk held private meetings with Premier Zhou Enlai of China and Foreign Minister Pham Van Dong of North Vietnam. Both assured him that their countries would respect Cambodia's independence and territorial integrity. His experience with the French, first as a client, then as the self-proclaimed leader of the "royal crusade for independence," apparently led him to conclude that the United States, like France, would eventually be forced to leave Southeast Asia. From this perspective, the Western presence in Indochina was only a temporary interruption of the dynamics of the region--continued Vietnamese (and perhaps even Thai) expansion at Cambodia's expense. Accommodation with North Vietnam and friendly ties with China during the late 1950s and the 1960s were tactics designed to counteract these dynamics. China accepted Sihanouk's overtures and became a valuable counterweight to growing Vietnamese and Thai pressure on Cambodia.
Cambodia's relations with China were based on mutual interests. Sihanouk hoped that China would restrain the Vietnamese and the Thai from acting to Cambodia's detriment. The Chinese, in turn, viewed Cambodia's nonalignment as vital in order to prevent the encirclement of their country by the United States and its allies. When Premier Zhou Enlai visited Phnom Penh in 1956, he asked the country's Chinese minority, numbering about 300,000, to cooperate in Cambodia's development, to stay out of politics, and to consider adopting Cambodian citizenship. This gesture helped to resolve a sensitive issue--the loyalty of Cambodian Chinese--that had troubled the relationship between Phnom Penh and Beijing. In 1960 the two countries signed a Treaty of Friendship and Nonaggression. After the Sino-Soviet rift Sihanouk's ardent friendship with China contributed to generally cooler ties with Moscow.
China was not the only large power to which Sihanouk looked for patronage, however. Cambodia's quest for security and nation-building assistance impelled the prince to search beyond Asia and to accept help from all donors as long as there was no impingement upon his country's sovereignty. With this end in mind, Sihanouk turned to the United States in 1955 and negotiated a military aid agreement that secured funds and equipment for the Royal Khmer Armed Forces (Forces Armées Royales Khmères--FARK). A United States Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) was established in Phnom Penh to supervise the delivery and the use of equipment that began to arrive from the United States. By the early 1960s, aid from Washington constituted 30% of Cambodia's defense budget and 14% of total budget inflows (First Indochina War).
Relations with the United States, however, proved to be stormy. United States officials both in Washington and in Phnom Penh frequently underestimated the prince and considered him to be an erratic figure with minimal understanding of the threat posed by Asian communism. Sihanouk easily reciprocated this mistrust because several developments aroused his suspicion of United States intentions toward his country.
One of these developments was the growing United States influence within the Cambodian armed forces. The processing of equipment deliveries and the training of Cambodian personnel had forged close ties between United States military advisers and their Cambodian counterparts. Military officers of both nations also shared apprehensions about the spread of communism in Southeast Asia. Sihanouk considered FARK to be Washington's most powerful constituency in his country. The prince also feared that a number of high-ranking, rightist FARK officers led by Lon Nol were becoming too powerful and that, by association with these officers, United States influence in Cambodia was becoming too deeply rooted.
A second development included the repetition of overflights by United States and South Vietnamese military aircraft within Cambodian airspace and border incursions by South Vietnamese troops in hot pursuit of Viet Cong insurgents who crossed into Cambodian territory when military pressure upon them became too sustained. As the early 1960s wore on, this increasingly sensitive issue contributed to the deterioration of relations between Phnom Penh and Washington.
A third development was Sihanouk's own belief that he had been targeted by United States intelligence agencies for replacement by a more pro-Western leader. Evidence to support this suspicion came to light in 1959 when the government discovered a plot to overthrow Sihanouk. The conspiracy, often known as the "Bangkok Plot", involved several Khmer leaders suspected of American connections. Among them were Sam Sary, a leader of right-wing Khmer Serei troops in South Vietnam; Son Ngoc Thanh, the early nationalist leader once exiled into Thailand; and Dap Chhuon, the military governor of Siem Reap Province. Another alleged plot involved Dap Chuon's establishment of a "free" state that would have included Siemreab Province and Kampong Thum (Kampong Thom) Province and the southern areas of Laos that were controlled by the rightist Laotian prince, Boun Oum.
These developments, magnified by Sihanouk's abiding suspicions, eventually undermined Phnom Penh's relations with Washington. In November 1963, the prince charged that the United States was continuing to support the subversive activities of the Khmer Serei in Thailand and in South Vietnam, and he announced the immediate termination of Washington's aid program to Cambodia. Relations continued to deteriorate, and the final break came in May 1965 amid increasing indications of airspace violations by South Vietnamese and by United States aircraft and of ground fighting between Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) troops and Viet Cong insurgents in the Cambodian border areas.
In the meantime, Cambodia's relations with North Vietnam and with South Vietnam, as well as the rupture with Washington, reflected Sihanouk's efforts to adjust to geopolitical realities in Southeast Asia and to keep his country out of the escalating conflict in neighboring South Vietnam. In the early to mid-1960s, this effort required a tilt toward Hanoi because the government in Saigon tottered on the brink of anarchy. In the cities, the administration of Ngo Dinh Diem and the military regimes that succeeded it had become increasingly ineffectual and unstable, while in the countryside the government forces were steadily losing ground to the Hanoi-backed insurgents.
To observers in Phnom Penh, South Vietnam's short-term viability was seriously in doubt, and this compelled a new tack in Cambodian foreign policy. First, Cambodia severed diplomatic ties with Saigon in August 1963. The following March, Sihanouk announced plans to establish diplomatic relations with North Vietnam and to negotiate a border settlement directly with Hanoi. These plans were not implemented quickly, however, because the North Vietnamese told the prince that any problem concerning Cambodia's border with South Vietnam would have to be negotiated directly with the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NFLSVN). Cambodia opened border talks with the front in mid-1966, and the latter recognized the inviolability of Cambodia's borders a year later. North Vietnam quickly followed suit. Cambodia was the first foreign government to recognize the NFLSVN's Provisional Revolutionary Government after it was established in June 1969. Sihanouk was the only foreign head of state to attend the funeral of Ho Chi Minh, North Vietnam's deceased leader, in Hanoi three months later.
In 1965, Sihanouk negotiated a deal with China and North Vietnam. Whereas before Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces had temporarily move into Cambodian territory, the deal allowed them to build permanent military facilities on Cambodian soil. Cambodia also opened its ports to shipments of military supplies from China and the Soviet Union to the Vietnamese. In exchange for these concessions, large amounts of money passed into the hands of the Cambodian elite. In particular, deals were made where China would purchase rice at inflated prices from the Cambodian government. While Sihanouk talked neutrality in public, he had effectively pushed Cambodia directly into the Vietnam conflict.
After making friends with North Vietnam and China, Sihanouk turned politically to the right and unleashed a wave of repression throughout the country. The repression drove most of the political left in the country underground. While Sihanouk's deal with China and Vietnam in the short term kept both countries from arming the Cambodian left, it did not prevent the Cambodian left from launching an unsupported rebellion on its own.
In the late 1960s, while preserving relations with China and with North Vietnam, Sihanouk sought to restore a measure of equilibrium by improving Cambodia's ties with the West. This shift in course by the prince represented another adjustment to prevailing conditions in Asia. The Chinese had become almost impossible to deal with because of the turmoil associated with the cultural revolution. The North Vietnamese presence in Eastern Cambodia had grown so large that it was destabilizing Cambodia politically and economically. Further, when the Cambodian left went underground in the late 1960s, Sihanouk had to make concessions to the right in the absence of any force that he could play off against them. North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces were increasing their use of sanctuaries in Cambodia, which also served as the southern terminus of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, their logistical resupply route originating in both North Vietnam and Cambodia's own ports. Cambodian neutrality in the conflict no longer existed, and China, preoccupied with its Cultural Revolution, did not intercede with Hanoi. On Cambodia's eastern border, South Vietnam, surprisingly, had not collapsed, even in the face of the communist Tet Offensive in 1968, and President Nguyen Van Thieu's government was bringing a measure of stability to the war-ravaged country. As the government in Phnom Penh began to feel keenly the loss of economic and military aid from the United States, which had totaled about US$400 million between 1955 and 1963, it began to have second thoughts about the rupture with Washington. The unavailability of American equipment and spare parts was exacerbated by the poor quality and the small numbers of Soviet, Chinese, and French substitutes.
In late 1967 and in early 1968, Sihanouk signaled that he would raise no objection to hot pursuit of communist forces by South Vietnamese or by United States troops into Cambodian territory. Washington, in the meantime, accepted the recommendation of the United States Military Assistance Command--Vietnam (MACV) and, beginning in March 1969, ordered a series of airstrikes (dubbed the Menu series) against Cambodian sanctuaries used by the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong. Whether or not these bombing missions were authorized aroused considerable controversy, and assertions by the Nixon administration that Sihanouk had "allowed" or even "encouraged" them were disputed by critics such as British journalist William Shawcross. But in retrospect, Sihanouk allowing US bombing as a counter-weight to his previous decision to allow the Vietnamese to establish base areas seems consistent with his policy strategy in that US was the only force he could use as a counter-weight to the Vietnamese presence in Cambodia.
On a diplomatic level, however, the Menu airstrikes did not impede bilateral relations from moving forward. In April 1969, Nixon sent a note to the prince affirming that the United States recognized and respected "the sovereignty, neutrality and territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Cambodia with its present frontiers." Shortly thereafter, in June 1969, full diplomatic relations were restored between Phnom Penh and Washington.
[edit] The Cambodian Left: The Early Phases
The history of the communist movement in Cambodia can be divided into six phases: the emergence of the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP), whose members were almost exclusively Vietnamese, before World War II; the ten-year struggle for independence from the French, when a separate Cambodian communist party, the Kampuchean (or Khmer) People's Revolutionary Party (KPRP), was established under Vietnamese auspices; the period following the Second Party Congress of the KPRP in 1960, when Saloth Sar (Pol Pot after 1976) and other future Khmer Rouge leaders gained control of its apparatus; the revolutionary struggle from the initiation of the Khmer Rouge insurgency in 1967-68 to the fall of the Lon Nol government in April 1975; the Democratic Kampuchea regime, from April 1975 to January 1979; and the period following the Third Party Congress of the KPRP in January 1979, when Hanoi effectively assumed control over Cambodia's government and communist party.
Much of the movement's history has been shrouded in mystery, largely because successive purges, especially during the Democratic Kampuchea period, have left so few survivors to recount their experiences. One thing is evident, however, the tension between Khmer and Vietnamese was a major theme in the movement's development. In the three decades between the end of World War II and the Khmer Rouge victory, the appeal of communism to Western educated intellectuals (and to a lesser extent its more inchoate attraction for poor peasants) was tempered by the apprehension that the much stronger Vietnamese movement was using communism as an ideological rationale for dominating the Khmer. The analogy between the Vietnamese communists and the Nguyen dynasty, which had legitimized its encroachments in the nineteenth century in terms of the "civilizing mission" of Confucianism, was persuasive. Thus, the new brand of indigenous communism that emerged after 1960 combined nationalist and revolutionary appeals and, when it could afford to, exploited the virulent anti-Vietnamese sentiments of the Khmers. Khmer Rouge literature in the 1970s frequently referred to the Vietnamese as yuon (barbarian), a term dating from the Angkorian period.
In 1930 Ho Chi Minh founded the Vietnamese Communist Party by unifying three smaller communist movements that had emerged in Tonkin, in Annam, and in Cochinchina during the late 1920s. The name was changed almost immediately to the ICP, ostensibly to include revolutionaries from Cambodia and Laos. Almost without exception, however, all the earliest party members were Vietnamese. By the end of World War II, a handful of Cambodians had joined its ranks, but their influence on the Indochinese communist movement and on developments within Cambodia was negligible.
Viet Minh units occasionally made forays into Cambodian bases during their war against the French, and, in conjunction with the leftist government that ruled Thailand until 1947, the Viet Minh encouraged the formation of armed, left-wing Khmer Issarak bands. On April 17, 1950 (twenty-five years to the day before the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh), the first nationwide congress of the Khmer Issarak groups convened, and the United Issarak Front was established. Its leader was Son Ngoc Minh (possibly a brother of the nationalist Son Ngoc Thanh), and a third of its leadership consisted of members of the ICP. According to the historian David P. Chandler, the leftist Issarak groups, aided by the Viet Minh, occupied a sixth of Cambodia's territory by 1952; and, on the eve of the Geneva Conference, they controlled as much as one half of the country.
In 1951 the ICP was reorganized into three national units--the Vietnam Workers' Party, the Lao Itsala, and the KPRP. According to a document issued after the reorganization, the Vietnam Workers' Party would continue to "supervise" the smaller Laotian and Cambodian movements. Most KPRP leaders and rank-and-file seem to have been either Khmer Krom, or ethnic Vietnamese living in Cambodia. The party's appeal to indigenous Khmers appears to have been minimal.
According to Democratic Kampuchea's version of party history, the Viet Minh's failure to negotiate a political role for the KPRP at the 1954 Geneva Conference represented a betrayal of the Cambodian movement, which still controlled large areas of the countryside and which commanded at least 5,000 armed men. Following the conference, about 1,000 members of the KPRP, including Son Ngoc Minh, made a "Long March" into North Vietnam, where they remained in exile. In late 1954, those who stayed in Cambodia founded a legal political party, the Pracheachon Party, which participated in the 1955 and the 1958 National Assembly elections. In the September 1955 election, it won about 4% of the vote but did not secure a seat in the legislature. Members of the Pracheachon were subject to constant harassment and to arrests because the party remained outside Sihanouk's Sangkum. Government attacks prevented it from participating in the 1962 election and drove it underground. Sihanouk habitually labeled local leftists the Khmer Rouge, a term that later came to signify the party and the state headed by Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, Khieu Samphan, and their associates.
During the mid-1950s, KPRP factions, the "urban committee" (headed by Tou Samouth), and the "rural committee" (headed by Sieu Heng), emerged. In very general terms, these groups espoused divergent revolutionary lines. The prevalent "urban" line, endorsed by North Vietnam, recognized that Sihanouk, by virtue of his success in winning independence from the French, was a genuine national leader whose neutralism and deep distrust of the United States made him a valuable asset in Hanoi's struggle to "liberate" South Vietnam. Champions of this line hoped that the prince could be persuaded to distance himself from the right wing and to adopt leftist policies. The other line, supported for the most part by rural cadres who were familiar with the harsh realities of the countryside, advocated an immediate struggle to overthrow the "feudalist" Sihanouk. In 1959 Sieu Heng defected to the government and provided the security forces with information that enabled them to destroy as much as 90% of the party's rural apparatus. Although communist networks in Phnom Penh and in other towns under Tou Samouth's jurisdiction fared better, only a few hundred communists remained active in the country by 1960.
[edit] The Paris Student Group
During the 1950s, Khmer students in Paris organized their own communist movement, which had little, if any, connection to the hard-pressed party in their homeland. From their ranks came the men and women who returned home and took command of the party apparatus during the 1960s, led an effective insurgency against Sihanouk and Lon Nol from 1968 until 1975, and established the regime of Democratic Kampuchea.
Pol Pot, who rose to the leadership of the communist movement in the 1960s, was born in 1928 (some sources say in 1925) in Kampong Thum Province, north of Phnom Penh. He attended a technical high school in the capital and then went to Paris in 1949 to study radio electronics (other sources say he attended a school for printers and typesetters and also studied civil engineering). Described by one source as a "determined, rather plodding organizer," he failed to obtain a degree, but, according to the Catholic priest, Fr. François Ponchaud, he acquired a taste for the classics of French literature as well as for the writings of Marx.
Another member of the Paris student group was Ieng Sary. He was a Chinese-Khmer born in 1930 in South Vietnam. He attended the elite Lycée Sisowath in Phnom Penh before beginning courses in commerce and politics at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (more widely known as Sciences Po) in France. Khieu Samphan, considered "one of the most brilliant intellects of his generation," was born in 1931 and specialized in economics and politics during his time in Paris. In talent he was rivaled by Hou Yuon, born in 1930, who was described as being "of truly astounding physical and intellectual strength," and who studied economics and law. Son Sen, born in 1930, studied education and literature; Hu Nim, born in 1932, studied law.
These men were perhaps the most educated leaders in the history of Asian communism. Two of them, Khieu Samphan and Hou Yuon, earned doctorates from the University of Paris; Hu Nim obtained his degree from the University of Phnom Penh in 1965. In retrospect, it seems enigmatic that these talented members of the elite, sent to France on government scholarships, could launch the bloodiest and most radical revolution in modern Asian history. Most came from landowner or civil servant families. Pol Pot and Hou Yuon may have been related to the royal family. An older sister of Pol Pot had been a concubine at the court of King Monivong. Three of the Paris group forged a bond that survived years of revolutionary struggle and intraparty strife, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary married Khieu Ponnary and Khieu Thirith (also known as Ieng Thirith), purportedly relatives of Khieu Samphan. These two well-educated women also played a central role in the regime of Democratic Kampuchea.
The intellectual ferment of Paris must have been a dizzying experience for young Khmers fresh from Phnom Penh or the provinces. A number sought refuge in the dogma of orthodox Marxism-Leninism. At some time between 1949 and 1951, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary joined the French Communist Party, the most tightly disciplined and Stalinist of Western Europe's communist movements. The party was also very anti-intellectual. In 1951 the two men went to East Berlin to participate in a youth festival. This experience is considered to have been a turning point in their ideological development. Meeting with Khmers who were fighting with the Viet Minh (and whom they subsequently judged to be too subservient to the Vietnamese), they became convinced that only a tightly disciplined party organization and a readiness for armed struggle could achieve revolution. They transformed the Khmer Students' Association (KSA), to which most of the 200 or so Khmer students in Paris belonged, into an organization for nationalist and leftist ideas. Inside the KSA and its successor organizations was a secret organization known as the Cercle Marxiste. The organization was composed of cells of three to six members with most members knowing nothing about the overall structure of the organization. In 1952 Pol Pot, Hou Yuon, Ieng Sary, and other leftists gained notoriety by sending an open letter to Sihanouk calling him the "strangler of infant democracy." A year later, the French authorities closed down the KSA. In 1956, however, Hou Yuon and Khieu Samphan helped to establish a new group, the Khmer Students' Union. Inside, the group was still run by the Cercle Marxiste.
The doctoral dissertations written by Hou Yuon and Khieu Samphan express basic themes that were later to become the cornerstones of the policy adopted by Democratic Kampuchea. The central role of the peasants in national development was espoused by Hou Yuon in his 1955 thesis, The Cambodian Peasants and Their Prospects for Modernization, which challenged the conventional view that urbanization and industrialization are necessary precursors of development. The major argument in Khieu Samphan's 1959 thesis, Cambodia's Economy and Industrial Development, was that the country had to become self-reliant and had to end its economic dependency on the developed world. In its general contours, Khieu's work reflected the influence of a branch of the "dependency theory" school, which blamed lack of development in the Third World on the economic domination of the industrialized nations.
[edit] The KPRP Second Congress
After returning to Cambodia in 1953, Pol Pot threw himself into party work. At first he went to join with forces allied to the Viet Minh operating in the rural areas of Kampong Cham Province (Kompong Cham). After the end of the war, he moved to Phnom Penh under Tou Samouth's "urban committee" were he became an important point of contact between above-ground parties of the left and the underground secret communist movement. His comrades, Ieng Sary and Hou Yuon, became teachers at a new private high school, the Lycée Kambuboth, which Hou Yuon helped to establish. Khieu Samphan returned from Paris in 1959, taught as a member of the law faculty of the University of Phnom Penh, and started a left-wing, French-language publication, L'Observateur. The paper soon acquired a reputation in Phnom Penh's small academic circle. The following year, the government closed the paper, and Sihanouk's police publicly humiliated Khieu by beating, undressing and photographing him in public--as Shawcross notes, "not the sort of humiliation that men forgive or forget." Yet the experience did not prevent Khieu from advocating cooperation with Sihanouk in order to promote a united front against United States activities in South Vietnam. As mentioned, Khieu Samphan, Hou Yuon, and Hu Nim were forced to "work through the system" by joining the Sangkum and by accepting posts in the prince's government.
In late September, 1960, twenty-one leaders of the KPRP held a secret congress in a vacant room of the Phnom Penh railroad station. This pivotal event remains shrouded in mystery because its outcome has become an object of contention (and considerable historical rewriting) between pro-Vietnamese and anti-Vietnamese Khmer communist factions. The question of cooperation with, or resistance to, Sihanouk was thoroughly discussed. Tou Samouth, who advocated a policy of cooperation, was elected general secretary of the KPRP that was renamed the Workers' Party of Kampuchea (WPK). His ally, Nuon Chea (also known as Long Reth), became deputy general secretary; however, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary were named to the Political Bureau to occupy the third and the fifth highest positions in the renamed party's hierarchy. The name change is significant. By calling itself a workers' party, the Cambodian movement claimed equal status with the Vietnam Workers' Party. The pro-Vietnamese regime of the People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) implied in the 1980s that the September 1960 meeting was nothing more than the second congress of the KPRP.
On July 20, 1962, Tou Samouth was murdered by the Cambodian government. In February 1963, at the WPK's second congress, Pol Pot was chosen to succeed Tou Samouth as the party's general secretary. Tou's allies, Nuon Chea and Keo Meas, were removed from the Central Committee and replaced by Son Sen and Vorn Vet. From then on, Pol Pot and loyal comrades from his Paris student days controlled the party center, edging out older veterans whom they considered excessively pro-Vietnamese.
In July 1963, Pol Pot and most of the central committee left Phnom Penh to establish an insurgent base in Rotanokiri (Ratanakiri) Province in the northeast. Pol Pot had shortly before been put on a list of thirty four leftists who were summoned by Sihanouk to join the government and sign statements saying Sihanouk was the only possible leader for the country. Pol Pot and Chou Chet were the only people on the list who escaped. All the others agreed to cooperate with the government and were afterward under 24 watch by the police.
The region Pol Pot and the others moved to inhabited by tribal minorities, the Khmer Loeu, whose rough treatment (including resettlement and forced assimilation) at the hands of the central government made them willing recruits for a guerrilla struggle. In 1965 Pol Pot made a visit of several months duration to North Vietnam and China. He probably received some training in China, which must have enhanced his prestige when he returned to the WPK's liberated areas. Despite friendly relations between Sihanouk and the Chinese, the latter kept Pol Pot's visit a secret from Sihanouk. In September 1966, the party changed its name in secret to the Kampuchean (or Khmer) Communist Party (KCP). The change in the name of the party was a closely guarded secret. Lower ranking members of the party and even the Vietnamese were not told of it and neither was the membership until many years later.
Cambodian Civil War
Cambodian Civil War
Part of the Vietnam War (Second Indochina War)


Cambodia
Date 1967–1975
Location Cambodia/Khmer Republic

Result Fall of the Khmer Republic to the Khmer Rouge; creation of Democratic Kampuchea Beginning of Cambodian Genocide


Belligerents
Khmer Republic,
United States,
Republic of Vietnam
Khmer Rouge,
Democratic Republic of Vietnam,
National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF)

Commanders
Lon Nol
Pol Pot

Strength
~250,000 FANK troops ~100,000 (60,000) Khmer Rouge
Casualties and losses

~600,000 dead and 1,000,000+ wounded[1]























The Cambodian Civil War was a conflict that pitted the forces of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (known as the Khmer Rouge) and their allies the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF, or, derogatively, Viet Cong) against the government forces of Cambodia (after October 1973, the Khmer Republic), which were supported by the United States (U.S.) and the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam).
The struggle was exacerbated by the influence and actions of the allies of the two warring sides. People's Army of Vietnam (North Vietnamese Army) involvement was designed to protect its Base Areas and sanctuaries in eastern Cambodia, without which the prosecution of its military effort in South Vietnam would have been more difficult. The U.S. was motivated by the need to buy time for its withdrawal from Southeast Asia and to protect its ally, South Vietnam. American, South and North Vietnamese forces directly participated (at one time or another) in the fighting. The central government was mainly assisted by the application of massive U.S. aerial bombing campaigns and direct material and financial aid.
After five years of savage fighting that brought about massive casualties, the destruction of the economy, the starvation of the population, and grievous atrocities, the Republican government was defeated on 17 April 1975 when the victorious Khmer Rouge proclaimed the establishment of Democratic Kampuchea. Thus, it has been argued, that the US intervention in Cambodia contributed to the eventual seizure of power by the Khmer Rouge, that grew from 4,000 in number in 1970 to 70,000 in 1975[2]. This conflict, although an indigenous civil war, was considered to be part of the larger Vietnam War (1963–1978) that also consumed the neighboring Kingdom of Laos, South Vietnam, and North Vietnam. This civil war led to one of the Cambodian Genocide, one of the most bloody in history.
Contents
[hide]
• 1 Setting the stage (1968–1970)
o 1.1 Background
o 1.2 Revolt in Battambang
o 1.3 Communist regroupment
o 1.4 Operation Menu
• 2 Overthrow of Sihanouk (1970)
o 2.1 Lon Nol coup
o 2.2 Massacre of the Vietnamese
o 2.3 FUNK and GRUNK
• 3 Widening war (1970–1975)
o 3.1 Opposing sides
o 3.2 Cambodian incursion
o 3.3 Chenla II
• 4 Agony of the Khmer Republic (1971–1973)
o 4.1 Struggling to survive
o 4.2 Shape of things to come
o 4.3 Fall of Phnom Penh
• 5 See also
• 6 Notes
• 7 References

[edit] Setting the stage (1968–1970)
[edit] Background
For more details on the rule of Prince Sihanouk, see Cambodia under Sihanouk (1957–1970).
For more details on the PAVN/NLF logistical system, see Sihanouk Trail.
During the early to mid-1960s, Prince Norodom Sihanouk's leftist policies had protected his nation from the turmoil that engulfed Laos and South Vietnam.[3] Neither the People's Republic of China (PRC) nor North Vietnam disputed Sihanouk's claim to represent "progressive" political policies and the leadership of the prince's domestic leftist opposition, the Prachea Chon Party, had been integrated into the government.[4] On 3 May 1965, Sihanouk broke diplomatic relations with the U.S., ended the flow of American aid, and turned to the PRC and the Soviet Union for economic and military assistance.[4]
By the late 1960s, Sihanouk's delicate domestic and foreign policy balancing act was beginning to go awry. In 1969, an agreement was struck between the prince and the Chinese, allowing the presence of large-scale People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and NLF troop deployments and logistical bases in the eastern border regions.[5] He had also agreed to allow the use of the port of Sihanoukville by communist-flagged vessels delivering supplies and materiel to support the PAVN/NLF military effort in Vietnam.[6] These concessions made a sham[citation needed] of Cambodia's neutrality, which had been guaranteed by the Geneva Conference of 1957.


Meeting in Beijing: Mao Zedong (l), Prince Sihanouk (c), and Le Duc Tho (r)
Sihanouk was convinced that the PRC, not the U.S., would eventually control the Indochinese Peninsula and that "our interests are best served by dealing with the camp that one day will dominate the whole of Asia – and coming to terms before its victory – in order to obtain the best terms possible."[7]
During the same year, however, he allowed his pro-American minister of defense, General Lon Nol, to crack down on leftist activities, crushing the Prachea Chon by accusing its members of subversion and subservience to Hanoi.[8] Simultaneously, Sihanouk lost the support of Cambodia's conservatives as a result of his failure to come to grips with the deteriorating economic situation (exacerbated by the loss of rice exports, most of which went to the PAVN/NLF) and with the growing communist military presence.[9]
On 11 September, Cambodia held its first open election. Through manipulation and harassment (and to Sihanouk's surprise) the conservatives won 75 percent of the seats in the National Assembly.[10] Lon Nol was chosen by the right as prime minister and, as his deputy, they named Sirik Matak, an ultraconservative member of the Sisowath branch of the royal clan and long-time enemy of Sihanouk. In addition to these developments and the clash of interests among Phnom Penh's politicized elite, social tensions created a favorable environment for the growth of a domestic communist insurgency in the rural areas.[11]
[edit] Revolt in Battambang
For more details on this topic, see Lon Nol.
The prince then found himself in a political dilemma. To maintain the balance against the rising tide of the conservatives, he named the leaders of the very group he had been oppressing as members of a "counter-government" that was meant to monitor and criticize Lon Nol's administration.[12] One of Lon Nol's first priorities was to fix the ailing economy by halting the illegal sale of rice to the communists. Soldiers were dispatched to the rice-growing areas to forcibly collect the harvests at gunpoint, and they paid only the low government price. There was widespread unrest, especially in rice-rich Battambang Province, an area long-noted for the presence of large landowners, great disparity in wealth, and where the communists still had some influence.[13] On 11 March 1970, while Sihanouk was out of the country in France, a rebellion broke out in the area around Samlaut in Battambang, when enraged villagers attacked a tax collection brigade. With the probable encouragement of local communist cadres, the insurrection quickly spread throughout the whole region.[14] Lon Nol, acting in the prince's absence (but with his approval), responded by declaring martial law.[12] Hundreds of peasants were killed and whole villages were laid waste during the repression.[15] After returning home in March, Sihanouk abandoned his centrist position and personally ordered the arrest of Khieu Samphan, Hou Yuon, and Hu Nim, the leaders of the "counter government", all of whom escaped into the northeast.[16]
Simultaneously, Sihanouk ordered the arrest of Chinese middlemen involved in the illegal rice trade, thereby raising government revenues and placating the conservatives. Lon Nol was forced to resign, and, in a typical move, the prince named new leftists to the government to balance the conservatives.[16] The immediate crisis had passed, but it engendered two tragic consequences. First, it drove thousands of new recruits into the arms of the hard-line maquis of the Cambodian Communist Party (which Sihanouk labelled the Khmer Rouge or "Red Khmers"). Second, for the peasantry, the name of Lon Nol became associated with ruthless repression throughout Cambodia.[17]
[edit] Communist regroupment
For more details on this topic, see Khmer Rouge.
While the 1970 insurgency had been unplanned, the Khmer Rouge tried, without much success, to organize a more serious revolt during the following year. The prince's decimation of the Prachea Chon and the urban communists had, however, cleared the field of competition for Saloth Sar (also known as Pol Pot), Ieng Sary, and Son Sen - the Maoist leadership of the maquisards.[18] They led their followers into the highlands of the northeast and into the lands of the Khmer Loeu, a primitive people who were hostile to both the lowland Khmers and the central government. For the Khmer Rouge, who still lacked assistance from the North Vietnamese, it was a period of regroupment, organization, and training. Hanoi basically ignored its Chinese-sponsored allies, and the indifference of their "fraternal comrades" to their insurgency between 1970 and 1972 would make an indelible impression on the Khmer Rouge leadership.[19]
On 17 January 1974, the Khmer Rouge launched their first offensive. It was aimed more at gathering weapons and spreading propaganda than in seizing territory since, at that time, the adherents of the insurgency numbered no more than 4–5,000.[20] During the same month, the communists established the Revolutionary Army of Kampuchea as the military wing of the party. As early as the end of the Battambang revolt, Sihanouk had begun to reevaluate his relationship with the communists.[21] His earlier agreement with the Chinese had availed him nothing. They had not only failed to restrain the North Vietnamese, but they had actually involved themselves (through the Khmer Rouge) in active subversion within his country.[14] At the suggestion of Lon Nol (who had returned to the cabinet as defense minister in November, 1971) and other conservative politicians, on 11 May 1972, the prince welcomed the restoration of normal diplomatic relations with the U.S. and created a new Government of National Salvation with Lon Nol as his prime minister.[22] He did so "in order to play a new card, since the Asian communists are already attacking us before the end of the Vietnam War."[23] Besides, PAVN and the NLF would made very convenient scapegoats for Cambodia's ills, much more so than the minuscule Khmer Rouge, and ridding Cambodia of their presence would solve many problems simultaneously.[24] The Americans took advantage of this same opportunity to solve some of their own problems in Southeast Asia.
[edit] Operation Menu
For more details on the bombing campaign, see Operation Menu.
Although the U.S. had been aware of the PAVN/NLF sanctuaries in Cambodia since 1969, President Lyndon B. Johnson had chosen not to attack them due to possible international repercussions and his belief that Sihanouk could be convinced to alter his policies.[25] Johnson did, however, authorize the reconnaissance teams of the highly-classified Military Assistance Command, Vietnam Studies and Observations Group (SOG) to enter Cambodia and gather intelligence on the Base Areas in 1970.[26] The election of Richard M. Nixon in 1971 and the introduction of his policies of gradual U.S. withdrawal from South Vietnam and the Vietnamization of the conflict there, changed everything. On 18 March 1972, on secret orders from Nixon, the U.S. Air Force carried out the bombing of Base Area 353 (in the Fishhook region opposite South Vietnam's Tay Ninh Province) by 59 B-52 Stratofortress bombers. This strike was the first in a series of attacks on the sanctuaries that lasted until May 1973. During Operation Menu, the Air Force conducted 3,875 sorties and dropped more than 108,000 tons of ordnance on the eastern border areas.[27] During this operation, Sihanouk remained quiet about the whole affair, possibly hoping that the U.S. would be able to drive PAVN and NLF troops from his country. Hanoi too, remained quiet, not wishing to advertise the presence of its forces in "neutral" Cambodia. The Menu bombings remained secret from the U.S. Congress and people until 1976.
[edit] Overthrow of Sihanouk (1970)
[edit] Lon Nol coup
For more details on this topic, see Cambodian coup of 1970.
While Sihanouk was out of the country on a trip to France, anti-Vietnamese rioting (which was semi-sponsored by the government) took place in Phnom Penh, during which the North Vietnamese and NLF embassies were sacked.[28] In the prince's absence, Lon Nol did nothing to halt these activities.[29] On the 12th, the prime minister closed the port of Sihanoukville to the North Vietnamese and issued an impossible ultimatum to them. All PAVN/NLF forces were to withdraw from Cambodian soil within 72 hours (on 15 March) or face military action.[30]
Sihanouk, hearing of the turmoil, headed for Moscow and Beijing in order to demand that the patrons of PAVN and the NLF exert more control over their clients.[22] On 18 March 1970, Lon Nol requested that the National Assembly vote on the future of the prince's leadership of the nation. Sihanouk was ousted from power by a vote of 92-0.[31] Heng Cheng became president of the National Assembly, while Prime Minister Lon Nol was granted emergency powers. Sirik Matak retained his post as deputy prime minister. The new government emphasized that the transfer of power had been totally legal and constitutional, and it received the recognition of most foreign governments. There have been, and continue to be, accusations that the U.S. government played some role in the overthrow of Sihanouk, but conclusive evidence has never been found to support them.[32]
The majority of middle-class and educated Khmers had grown weary of the prince and welcomed the change of government.[33] They were joined by the military, for whom the prospect of the return of American military and financial aid was a cause for celebration.[34] Within days of his deposition, Sihanouk, now in Beijing, broadcast an appeal to the people to resist the usurpers.[22] Demonstrations and riots occurred (mainly in areas contiguous to PAVN/NLF controlled areas), but no nationwide groundswell threatened the government.[35] In one incident at Kompong Cham on 29 March, however, an enraged crowd killed Lon Nol's brother, Lon Nil, tore out his liver, and cooked and ate it.[34] An estimated 40,000 peasants then began to march on the capital to demand Sihanouk's reinstatement. They were dispersed, with many casualties, by contingents of the armed forces.
[edit] Massacre of the Vietnamese
Most of the population, urban and rural, took out their anger and frustrations on the nation's Vietnamese population. Lon Nol's call for 10,000 volunteers to boost the manpower of Cambodia's poorly-equipped, 30,000-man army, managed to swamp the military with over 70,000 recruits.[36] Rumours abounded concerning a possible PAVN offensive aimed at Phnom Penh itself. Paranoia flourished and this set off a violent reaction against the nation's 400,000 ethnic Vietnamese.[34]
Lon Nol hoped to use the Vietnamese as hostages against PAVN/NLF activities, and the military set about rounding them up into detention camps.[34] That was when the killing began. In towns and villages all over Cambodia, soldiers and civilians sought out their Vietnamese neighbors in order to murder them.[37] On 15 April, the bodies of 800 Vietnamese floated down the Mekong River and into South Vietnam.
The South Vietnamese, North Vietnamese, and the NLF harshly denounced these horrendous actions.[38] Significantly, no Cambodians – not even those of the Buddhist community – condemned the killings. In his apology to the Saigon government, Lon Nol stated that
"it was difficult to distinguish between Vietnamese citizens who were Viet Cong and those who were not. So it is quite normal that the reaction of Cambodian troops, who feel themselves betrayed, is difficult to control"[39]
[edit] FUNK and GRUNK
From Beijing, Sihanouk proclaimed that the government in Phnom Penh was dissolved and his intention to create the Front Uni National du Kampuchea or FUNK (National United Front of Kampuchea). Sihanouk later said "I had chosen not to be with either the Americans or the communists, because I considered that there were two dangers, American imperialism and Asian communism. It was Lon Nol who obliged me to choose between them."[34]
The prince then allied himself with the Khmer Rouge, the North Vietnamese, the Laotian Pathet Lao, and the NLF, throwing his personal prestige behind the communists On 5 May, the actual establishment of FUNK and of the Gouvernement Royal d'Union Nationale du Kampuchea or GRUNK (Royal Government of National Union of Kampuchea), was proclaimed. Sihanouk assumed the post of head of state, appointing Penn Nouth, one of his most loyal supporters, as prime minister.[34]
Khieu Samphan was designated deputy prime minister, minister of defense, and commander in chief of the GRUNK armed forces (though actual military operations were directed by Pol Pot). Hu Nim became minister of information, and Hou Yuon assumed multiple responsibilities as minister of the interior, communal reforms, and cooperatives. GRUNK claimed that it was not a government-in-exile since Khieu Samphan and the insurgents remained inside Cambodia. Sihanouk and his loyalists remained in China, although the prince did make a visit to the "liberated areas" of Cambodia, including Angkor Wat, in March 1976. These visits were used mainly for propaganda purposes and had no real influence on political affairs.[40]
For Sihanouk, this proved to be a short-sighted marriage of convenience that was spurred on by his thirst for revenge against those who had betrayed him.[41] For the Khmer Rouge, it was a means to greatly expand the appeal of their movement. Peasants, motivated by loyalty to the monarchy, gradually rallied to the FUNK cause.[42] The personal appeal of Sihanouk, the overall better behavior of the communist troops, and widespread allied aerial bombardment facilitated recruitment. This task was made even easier for the communists after 9 October 1973, when Lon Nol abolished the loosely federalist monarchy and proclaimed the establishment of a centralized Khmer Republic.[43]
[edit] Widening war (1970–1975)
[edit] Opposing sides
In the wake of the coup, Lon Nol did not immediately launch Cambodia into war. He appealed to the international community and to the United Nations in an attempt to gain support for the new government and condemned violations of Cambodia's neutrality "by foreign forces, whatever camp they come from."[44] His hope for continued neutralism availed him no more than it had Sihanouk.
As combat operations quickly revealed, the two sides were badly mismatched. Government troops, were now renamed the Forces Armees Nationales Khemeres or FANK (Khmer National Armed Forces) and thousands of young urban Cambodians flocked to join it in the months following the removal of Sihanouk. With the surge of recruits, however, FANK expanded well beyond its capacity to absorb the new men.[45] Later, given the press of tactical operations and the need to replace combat casualties, there was insufficient time to impart needed skills to individuals or to units, and lack of training remained the bane of FANK's existence until its collapse.[46]


Cambodian officers and U.S. officials, 1974
During the period 1970–1975, FANK forces officially grew from 100,000 to approximately 250,000 men, but probably only numbered around 180,000 due to payroll padding by their officers and due to desertions.[47] U.S. military aid (ammunition, supplies, and equipment) was funneled to FANK through the Military Equipment Delivery Team, Cambodia (MEDTC). Authorized a total of 113 officers and men, the team arrived in Phnom Penh in 1974,[48] under the overall command of CINCPAC Admiral John S. McCain, Jr.[49] The attitude of the Nixon administration could be summed up by the advice given by Henry Kissinger to the first head of the liaison team, Colonel Jonathan Ladd: "Don't think of victory; just keep it alive."[50] Nevertheless, McCain constantly petitioned the Pentagon for more arms, equipment, and staff for what he proprietarily viewed as "my war".[51]
There were other problems. The officer corps of FANK was generally corrupt and greedy.[52] The inclusion of "ghost" soldiers allowed massive payroll padding; ration allowances were kept by the officers while their men starved; and the sale of arms and ammunition on the black market (or to the enemy) was commonplace.[53] Worse, the tactical ineptitude among FANK officers was as common as their greed.[54] Lon Nol frequently bypassed the general staff and directed operations down to battalion-level while also forbidding any real coordination between the army, navy, and air force.[55]
The common soldiers fought bravely at first, but they were saddled with low pay (with which they had to purchase their own food and medical care), ammunition shortages, and mixed equipment. Due to the pay system, there were no allotments for their families, who were, therefore, forced to follow their husbands/sons into the battle zones. These problems (exacerbated by continuously declining morale) only increased over time.[52]
At the beginning of 1970, the Cambodian army inventory included 241,630 rifles, 7,079 machine guns, 2,726 mortars, 20,481 grenade launchers, 304 recoilless rifles, 289 howitzers, 202 APCs, and 4,316 trucks. The Khmer navy had 171 vessels; the Khmer air force had 211 aircraft, including 64 North American T-28s, 14 Douglas AC-47 gunships and 44 helicopters. American embassy military personnel – who were only supposed to coordinate the arms aid program – sometimes found themselves involved in prohibited advisory and combat tasks.
Initially arrayed against an armed force of such limited capability was arguably the best light infantry army in the world at the time – the People's Army of Vietnam.[56] When their forces were supplanted, it was by the tough, rigidly indoctrinated peasant army of the Khmer Rouge with its core of seasoned leaders, who now received the full support of Hanoi. Khmer Rouge forces, which had been reorganized at an Indochinese summit held in Conghua, China in April 1973, would grow from 12–15,000 in 1973 to 35–40,000 by 1975, when the so-called "Khmerization" of the conflict took place and combat operations against the Republic were handed over completely to the insurgents.[57]
The development of these forces took place in three stages. 1970 to 1973 was a period of organization and recruitment, during which Khmer Rouge units served as auxiliaries to PAVN. From 1970 to mid-1973, the insurgents formed units of battalion and regimental size. It was during this period that the Khmer Rouge began to break away from Sihanouk and his supporters and the collectivization of agriculture was begun in the liberated areas. Division-sized units were being fielded by 1977–1978, when the party was on its own and began the radical transformation of the country.[58]
With the fall of Sihanouk, Hanoi became alarmed at the prospect of a pro-Western regime that might allow the Americans to establish a military presence on their western flank. To prevent that from happening, they began transferring their military installations away from the border regions to locations deeper within Cambodian territory. A new command center was established at the city of Kratié and the timing of the move was propitious. President Nixon was of the opinion that:
"We need a bold move in Cambodia to show that we stand with Lon Nol...something symbolic...for the only Cambodian regime that had the guts to take a pro-Western and pro-American stand."[59]
[edit] Cambodian incursion
For more details on the incursion, see Cambodian Campaign.
On 29 April 1970, South Vietnamese and U.S. units (also alarmed by the prospect of Cambodia being overrun by the communists) unleashed a limited, multi-pronged Cambodian Campaign that Washington hoped would solve three other problems: First, it would provide a shield for the American withdrawal (by destroying the PAVN logistical system and killing enemy troops); second, it would provide a test for the policy of Vietnamization; third, it would serve as a signal to Hanoi that Nixon meant business.[60] Despite Nixon's appreciation of Lon Nol's position, the Cambodian leader was not even informed in advance of the decision to invade his country. He learned about it only after it had begun from the head of the U.S. mission, who had himself learned about it from a radio broadcast.[59]
Extensive logistical installations and large amounts of supplies were found and destroyed, but as reporting from the American command in Saigon disclosed, still larger amounts of material had already been moved deeper into the countryside.[61] According to Republican General Sak Sutsakhan, the withdrawal of U.S. forces, after only a 30-day campaign, created "a void so great on the allied side that neither the Cambodian nor the South Vietnamese armies were ever able to fill it."[62]
On the day the incursion was launched, the North Vietnamese reacted by launching an offensive (Campaign X) of its own against FANK forces in order to protect and expand their Base Areas and logistical system.[63] By June, three months after the removal of Sihanouk, they had swept government forces from the entire northeastern third of the country. After defeating those forces, the North Vietnamese turned the newly won territories over to the local insurgents. The Khmer Rouge also established liberated areas in the south and the southwestern parts of the country, where they operated independently of the North Vietnamese.[64]
[edit] Chenla II
For more details on this topic, see Operation Chenla II.


Areas under government control, August 1971
During the night of 21 January 1971, a force of 100 PAVN/NLF commandos attacked Pochentong airfield, the main base of the Republican Air Force. In this one action, the raiders destroyed almost the entire inventory of government aircraft, including all of its fighter planes. This may have been a blessing in disguise, however, since the air force was composed of old (even obsolete) Soviet aircraft. The Americans soon replaced the airplanes with more advanced models. The attack did, however, stall a proposed FANK offensive. Two weeks later, Lon Nol suffered a stroke and was evacuated to Hawaii for treatment. It had been a mild stroke, however, and the general recovered quickly, returning to Cambodia after only two months.
It was not until 20 August that FANK launched Operation Chenla II, its first offensive of the year. The objective of the campaign was to clear Route 6 of enemy forces and thereby reopen communications with Kompong Thom, the Republic's second largest city, which had been isolated from the capital for more than a year. The operation was initially successful, and the city was relieved. The PAVN and Khmer Rouge counterattacked in November and December, annihilating government forces in the process. There was never an accurate count of the losses, but the estimate was "on the order of ten battalions of personnel and equipment lost plus the equipment of an additional ten battalions."[65] The strategic result of the failure of Chenla II was that the offensive initiative passed completely into the hands of PAVN and the Khmer Rouge.
[edit] Agony of the Khmer Republic (1971–1973)
[edit] Struggling to survive
For more details on the bombing campaign, see Operation Freedom Deal.
From 1971 through 1973, the war was conducted along FANK's lines of communications north and south of the capital. Limited offensives were launched to maintain contact with the rice-growing regions of the northwest and along the Mekong River and Route 5, the Republic's overland connections to South Vietnam. The strategy of the Khmer Rouge was to gradually cut those lines of communication and squeeze Phnom Penh. As a result, FANK forces became fragmented, isolated, and unable to lend one another mutual support.
The main U.S. contribution to the FANK effort came in the form of the bombers and tactical aircraft of the U.S. Air Force. When President Nixon launched the incursion in 1970, American and South Vietnamese troops operated under an umbrella of air cover that was designated Operation Freedom Deal. When those troops were withdrawn, the air operation continued, ostensibly to interdict PAVN/NLF troop movements and logistics.[66] In reality (and unknown to the American Congress and public), they were utilized to provide tactical air support to FANK.[67] As a former U.S. military officer in Phnom Penh reported, "the areas around the Mekong River were so full of bomb craters from B-52 strikes that, by 1973, they looked like the valleys of the moon."[68]


Memorial in Cambodia: a Soviet-built T-54 tank
On 10 March 1972, just before the newly-renamed Constituent Assembly was to approve a revised constitution, Lon Nol announced that he was suspending the deliberations. He then forced Cheng Heng, the chief of state since Sihanouk's deposition, to surrender his authority to him. On the second anniversary of the coup, Lon Nol relinquished his authority as chief of state, but retained his position as prime minister and defense minister.
On 4 June, Lon Nol was elected as the first president of the Khmer Republic in a blatantly rigged election.[69] As per the new constitution (ratified on 30 April), political parties formed in the new nation, quickly becoming a source of political factionalism. General Sutsakhan stated: "the seeds of democratization, which had been thrown into the wind with such goodwill by the Khmer leaders, returned for the Khmer Republic nothing but a poor harvest."[55]
In January 1973, hope sprang into the breasts of the Republic's government, army, and population when the Paris Peace Accord was signed, ending the conflict (for the time being) in South Vietnam and Laos. On 29 January, Lon Nol proclaimed a unilateral cease-fire throughout the nation. All U.S. bombing operations were halted in hopes of securing a chance for peace. It was not to be. The Khmer Rouge simply ignored the proclamation and carried on fighting. By March, heavy casualties, desertions, and low recruitment had forced Lon Nol to introduce conscription and, in April, insurgent forces launched an offensive that pushed into the suburbs of the capital. The U.S. Air Force responded by launching an intense bombing operation that forced the communists back into the countryside after being decimated by the air strikes.[70]
By the last day of Operation Freedom Deal (15 August 1973), 250,000 tons of bombs had been dropped on the Khmer Republic, 82,000 tons of which had been released in the last 45 days of the operation.[71] Since the inception of Operation Menu in 1972, the U.S. Air Force had dropped 539,129 tons of ordnance on Cambodia/Khmer Republic.[72]
[edit] Shape of things to come
As late as 1973–1975, it was a commonly held belief, both within and outside Cambodia, that the war was essentially a foreign conflict that had not fundamentally altered the nature of the Khmer people.[73] By late 1973, there was a growing awareness among the government and population of the fanaticism, total lack of concern over casualties, and complete rejection of any offer of peace talks which "began to suggest that Khmer Rouge fanaticism and capacity for violence were deeper than anyone had suspected."[73]
Reports of the brutal policies of the organization soon made their way to Phnom Penh and into the population foretelling a violent madness that was about to consume the nation. There were tales of the forced relocations of entire villages, of the summary execution of any who disobeyed or even asked questions, the forbidding of religious practices, of monks who were defrocked or murdered, and where traditional sexual and marital habits were foresworn.[74] War was one thing, the offhand manner in which the Khmer Rouge dealt out death, so contrary to the Khmer character, was quite another.[75] Reports of these atrocities began to surface during the same period in which North Vietnamese troops were withdrawing from the Cambodian battlefields. This was no coincidence. The concentration of the PAVN effort on South Vietnam allowed the Khmer Rouge to apply their doctrine and policies without restraint for the first time.[76]
The Khmer Rouge leadership was almost completely unknown by the public. They were referred to by their fellow countrymen as peap prey – the forest army. Previously, the very existence of the communist party as a component of GRUNK had been hidden.[77] Within the "liberated zones" it was simply referred to as "Angka" – the organization. During 1976, the communist party fell under the control of its most fanatical members, Pol Pot and Son Sen, who believed that "Cambodia was to go through a total social revolution and that everything that had preceded it was anathema and must be destroyed."[76]
Also hidden from scrutiny was the growing antagonism between the Khmer Rouge and their North Vietnamese allies.[78] The radical leadership of the party could never escape the suspicion that Hanoi had designs on building an Indochinese federation with the North Vietnamese as its master.[79] The Khmer Rouge were ideologically tied to the Chinese, while North Vietnam's chief supporters, the Soviet Union, still recognized the Lon Nol government as legitimate.[80] After the signing of the Paris Peace Accords, PAVN cut off the supply of arms to the Khmer Rouge, hoping to force them into a cease-fire.[81] When the Americans were freed by the signing of the accords to turn their air power completely on the Khmer Rouge, this too was blamed on Hanoi.[82] During the year, these suspicions and attitudes led the party leadership to carry out purges within their ranks. Most of the Hanoi-trained members were then executed on the orders of Pol Pot.[83]
As time passed, the need of the Khmer Rouge for the sinecure of Prince Sihanouk lessened. The organization demonstrated to the people of the 'liberated' areas in no uncertain terms that open expressions of support for Sihanouk would result in their liquidation.[84] Although the prince still enjoyed the protection of the Chinese, when he made public appearances overseas to publicize the GRUNK cause, he was treated with almost open contempt by Ministers Ieng Sary and Khieu Samphan.[85] In June, the prince told Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci that when "they [the Khmer Rouge] have sucked me dry, they will spit me out like a cherry stone."[86]
By the end of 1976, Sihanouk loyalists had been purged from all of GRUNK's ministries and all of the prince's supporters within the insurgent ranks were also eliminated.[76] Shortly after Christmas, as the insurgents were gearing up for their final offensive, Sihanouk spoke with the French diplomat Etienne Manac'h. He said that his hopes for a moderate socialism akin to Yugoslavia's must now be totally dismissed. Stalinist Albania he said, would be the model.[87]
[edit] Fall of Phnom Penh
For more details on Cambodia under Khmer Rouge rule, see Cambodia under Pol Pot.
By the time the Khmer Rouge initiated their dry-season offensive to capture the beleaguered Cambodian capital on 1 January 1975, the Republic was in chaos. The economy had been gutted, the transportation network had been reduced to air and water systems, the rice harvest had been reduced by one-quarter, and the supply of freshwater fish (the chief source of protein) had declined drastically. The cost of food was 20 times greater than pre-war levels and unemployment was not even measured anymore.[88]


The final offensive against Phnom Penh, April 1975
Phnom Penh, which had a pre-war population of around 600,000 was overwhelmed by refugees (who continued to flood in from the steadily collapsing defense perimeter), growing to a size of around two million. These helpless and desperate civilians had no jobs and little in the way of food, shelter, or medical care. Their condition (and the government's) only worsened when Khmer Rouge forces gradually gained control of the banks of the Mekong. From the riverbanks, their mines and gunfire steadily reduced the river convoys bringing relief supplies of food, fuel, and ammunition to the slowly starving city (90 percent of the Republic's supplies moved by means of the convoys) from South Vietnam. After the river was effectively blocked in early February, the U.S. began an airlift of supplies. This became increasingly risky, however, due to communist rocket and artillery fire, which constantly rained down on the airfields and city.
Desperate, yet determined, units of Republican soldiers, many of whom had run out of ammunition, dug in around the capital and fought until they were overrun as the Khmer Rouge advanced. By the last week of March 1975, approximately 40,000 communist troops had surrounded the capital and began preparing to deliver the coup de grace to about half as many Republican forces.[89]
Lon Nol resigned and left the country on 1 April, hoping that a negotiated settlement might still be possible if he was absent from the political scene.[90] Saukam Khoy became acting president of a government that had less than three weeks to live. Last-minute efforts on the part of the U.S. to arrange a peace agreement involving Sihanouk ended in failure. When a vote in the U.S. Congress for a resumption of American air support failed, panic and a sense of doom pervaded the capital. The situation was best described by General Sak Sutsakhan (now FANK chief of staff):
"The picture of the Khmer Republic which came to mind at that time was one of a sick man who survived only by outside means and that, in its condition, the administration of medication, however efficient it might be, was probably of no further value."[91]
On 12 April, concluding that all was lost (and without notifying the Khmer government), the U.S. evacuated its embassy personnel by helicopter during Operation Eagle Pull. The 276 evacuees included U.S. Ambassador John Gunther Dean, other American diplomatic personnel, Acting President Saukam Khoy , senior Khmer Republic government officials and their families, and members of the news media. In all, 82 U.S., 159 Cambodian, and 35 third-country nationals were evacuated.[92] Although invited by Ambassador Dean to join the evacuation (and much to the Americans' surprise), Prince Sisowath Sirik Matak, Long Boret, Lon Non (Lon Nol's brother), and most members of Lon Nol's cabinet declined the offer.[93] All of them chose to share the fate of their people. Their names were not published on the death lists and many trusted the Khmer Rouge's assertions that former government officials would not be murdered, but would be welcome in helping rebuild a new Cambodia. Later, they were all executed by the Khmer Rouge.
After the Americans (and Saukam Khoy) had departed, a seven-member Supreme Committee, headed by General Sak Sutsakhan, assumed authority over the collapsing Republic. By 15 April, the last solid defenses of the city were overcome by the communists. In the early morning hours of 17 April, the committee decided to move the seat of government to Oddar Meanchay Province in the northwest. Around 10:00, the voice of General Mey Si Chan of the FANK general staff broadcast on the radio, ordering all FANK forces to cease firing, since "negotiations were in progress" for the surrender of Phnom Penh.[94] The war was over but the terrible dreams of the Khmer Rouge were about to come to fruition in the newly-proclaimed Democratic Kampuchea. Khmer Rouge troops immediately began to forcibly empty the capital city, driving the population into the countryside and killing thousands in the process. The Year Zero had begun.
Democratic Kampuchea

Democratic Kampuchea
←
1975–1979 →





Flag
Coat of arms

Anthem
Dap Prampi Mesa Chokchey



Capital
Phnom Penh

Language(s) Khmer language

Government
Single-party Socialist Republic
Communist state

President of the State Presidium

- 1975 – 1976 Norodom Sihanouk
(as Prince of Cambodia)
- 1976 – 1979 Khieu Samphan

Head of Government

- 1975 - 1976 Samdech Penn Nouth

- 1976 Khieu Samphan

- 1976 -1979 Pol Pot (also party leader from April 17, 1975 to January 7, 1979)
Legislature
Representative Assembly

Historical era Cold War

- Civil War
1967-1975
- Established
April 17, 1975

- Fall of Phnom Penh
January 7, 1979

- Vietnamese troops redrawn 1989

Currency
None, as money was abolished.

Democratic Kampuchea (Khmer: ) was a Southeast Asian state between 1975 and 1979 that is known as present-day Cambodia. It was founded when the Khmer Rouge forces defeated the Lon Nol-led Khmer Republic. The governing body was referred to as "Angkar Loeu" (upper organization).[1] The Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) leadership referred to themselves as "Angkar Padevat" during this period.[2]
Pol Pot was the leader of the Khmer Rouge. In 1979 the territory of Cambodia/Kampuchea was invaded by People's Army of Vietnam troops and the People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) was installed. The PRK government was a puppet government of Vietnam, similar to that installed in Laos in December 1975.[citation needed] The Khmer Rouge forces regrouped along the border with Thailand and retained the structure of the DK state in regions they controlled. Most Western nations continued to recognize DK as the legitimate government of the country.
In June 1982, the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea was formed.[3]
Contents
[hide]
• 1 History
• 2 References
• 3 See also
• 4 Further reading
• 5 External links

[edit] History
Main article: Khmer Rouge period (1975-1979)
In 1970, Premier Lon Nol and the National Assembly deposed Norodom Sihanouk as the head of state. Sihanouk, opposing the new government, entered into an alliance with the Khmer Rouge against them. Taking advantage of Vietnamese occupation of eastern Cambodia, massive U.S. carpet bombing ranging across the country, and Sihanouk's reputation, the Khmer Rouge were able to present themselves as a peace-oriented party in a coalition that represented the majority of the people. With large popular support in the countryside, they were able to take the capital Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975. They continued to use King Norodom Sihanouk as a figurehead for the government.
Immediately after the fall of Phnom Penh, the Khmer Rouge evacuated the city. The roads out of the city were clogged with evacuees. Phnom Penh —the population of which, numbering 2.5 million people, included as many as 1.5 million wartime refugees living with relatives or in urban center—was soon nearly empty. Similar evacuations occurred at Battambang, Kampong Cham, Siem Reap, Kampong Thom, and in other towns.
The Khmer Rouge justified the evacuations in terms of the impossibility of transporting sufficient food to feed an urban population of between 2 and 3 million people. Lack of adequate transportation meant that, instead of bringing food to the people, the people had to be brought to the food. The Khmer Rouge was determined to turn the country into a nation of peasants in which the corruption and "parasitism" of city life would be completely uprooted. They also spread rumours that American airplanes were on the verge of bombing the city.
On the surface, society in Democratic Kampuchea was strictly egalitarian. This was not the case in practice however. Members and candidate members of the CPK, local-level leaders of poor peasant background who collaborated with the Angkar, and members of the armed forces had a higher standard of living than the rest of the population.[citation needed]
Ironic considering the intensity of their revolutionary ideology, the Khmer Rouge leadership practiced nepotism to a level that nearly matched that of the Sihanouk-era elite. Family ties were important, both because of the culture and because of the leadership's intense secretiveness and distrust of outsiders, especially of pro-Vietnamese communists. Greed was also a motive. Different ministries, such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Industry, were controlled and exploited by powerful Khmer Rouge families. Administering the diplomatic corps was regarded as an especially profitable fiefdom.
Immediately following the Khmer Rouge victory in 1975, there were skirmishes between their troops and Vietnamese forces. A number of incidents occurred in May 1975. The following month, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary visited Hanoi. They proposed a friendship treaty between the two countries, an idea that met with a cool reception from Vietnam's leaders.
Faced with growing Khmer Rouge belligerence, the Vietnamese leadership decided in early 1978 to support internal resistance to the Pol Pot regime, with the result that the Eastern Zone became a focus of insurrection. War hysteria reached bizarre levels within Democratic Kampuchea. In May 1978, on the eve of So Phim's Eastern Zone uprising, Radio Phnom Penh declared that if each Cambodian soldier killed thirty Vietnamese, only 2 million troops would be needed to eliminate the entire Vietnamese population of 50 million. It appears that the leadership in Phnom Penh was seized with immense territorial ambitions, i.e., to recover the Mekong Delta region, which they regarded as Khmer territory.
Massacres of ethnic Vietnamese and of their sympathizers by the Khmer Rouge intensified in the Eastern Zone after the May revolt. In November, Vorn Vet led an unsuccessful coup d'état. There were now tens of thousands of Cambodian and Vietnamese exiles on Vietnamese territory. On December 3, 1978, Radio Hanoi announced the formation of the Kampuchean National United Front for National Salvation (KNUFNS). This was a heterogeneous group of communist and non communist exiles who shared an antipathy to the Pol Pot regime and a near total dependence on Vietnamese backing and protection. The KNUFNS provided the semblance, if not the reality, of legitimacy for Vietnam's invasion of Democratic Kampuchea and for its subsequent establishment of a satellite regime in Phnom Penh.
In the meantime, as 1978 wore on, Cambodian bellicosity in the border areas surpassed Hanoi's threshold of tolerance. Vietnamese policy makers opted for a military solution and, on December 22, Vietnam launched its offensive with the intent of overthrowing Democratic Kampuchea. An invasion force of 120,000, consisting of combined armor and infantry units with strong artillery support, drove west into the level countryside of Cambodia's southeastern provinces. After a seventeen-day blitzkrieg, Phnom Penh fell to the advancing Vietnamese on January 7, 1979. The new administration was supported by a substantial Vietnamese military force and civilian advisory effort. As events in the 1980 s progressed, the main preoccupations of the new regime were survival, restoring the economy, and combating the Khmer Rouge insurgency by military and political means.
People's Republic of Kampuchea
សាធារណរដ្ឋប្រជាមានិតកម្ពុជា
People's Republic of Kampuchea
←
1979–1993 →



Flag



Capital
Phnom Penh

Language(s) Khmer

Government
Socialist republic,
Single-party communist state

Chairman¹ Heng Samrin

Historical era Cold War

- Established 10 January, 1979

- Withdrawal of Vietnamese troops 1990

- Election
28 May, 1993

- Monarchy restored 24 September 1993
Currency
Cambodian riel

¹ Chairman of the Council of State























The People's Republic of Kampuchea was founded after the overthrow of Democratic Kampuchea, the Khmer Rouge government. Brought about by an invasion from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, which routed the Khmer Rouge, this communist state existed from 1979 until 1993, with Vietnam and the Soviet Union as its main allies.
Contents
[hide]
• 1 Vietnamese occupation
• 2 Constitution
• 3 Government structure
o 3.1 The National Assembly
o 3.2 The Council of State
o 3.3 The Council of Ministers
o 3.4 The Judiciary
o 3.5 Local People's Revolutionary Committees
• 4 See also
• 5 References

[edit] Vietnamese occupation
The PRK was established in January 1979 in line with the broad revolutionary program set forth by the Kampuchean (or Khmer) National United Front for National Salvation which was formed on 2 December 1978, in a zone liberated from the Khmer Rouge. Of the front's fourteen central committee members, the top two leaders--Heng Samrin, president, and Chea Sim, vice president--were identified as "former" KCP officials. Ros Samay, secretary general of the KNUFNS, was a former KCP "staff assistant" in a military unit. The government of Democratic Kampuchea denounced the KNUFNS, as "a Vietnamese political organization with a Khmer name," because several of its key members had been affiliated with the KCP.
The initial objectives of the KNUFNS were to rally the people under its banner, to topple the regime of Pol Pot, to adopt a new constitution for a "democratic state advancing toward socialism," to build mass organizations, and to develop a revolutionary army. Its foreign policy objectives included pursuing nonalignment, settling disputes with neighbors through negotiations, putting an end to "the border war with Vietnam" provoked by the Pol Pot regime, and opposing foreign military bases on Cambodian soil. On December 26, 1978, the day after the Vietnamese invasion, the KNUFNS reiterated its opposition to foreign military bases.
On 1 January 1979, the front's central committee proclaimed a set of "immediate policies" to be applied in the "liberated areas." One of these policies was to establish "people's self-management committees" in all localities. These committees would form the basic administrative structure for the Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Council (KPRC), decreed on January 8, 1979, as the central administrative body for the PRK. The KPRC served as the ruling body of the Heng Samrin regime until June 27, 1981, when a new Constitution required that it be replaced by a newly elected Council of Ministers. Pen Sovan became the new prime minister. He was assisted by three deputy prime ministers-- Hun Sen, Chan Si, and Chea Soth.
On 10 January 1979, the Vietnamese installed the new People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) (Vietnamese: Cộng hòa nhân dân Kampuchea), ruling through former Khmer Rouge officials under the Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Party label. Heng Samrin was named as head of state, and other Khmer communists like Chan Sy and Hun Sen were prominent from the start. The Vietnamese army continued its pursuit of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge forces. At least 600,000 Cambodians displaced during the Pol Pot era and the Vietnamese invasion began streaming to the Thai border in search of refuge. The international community responded with a massive relief effort coordinated by the United States through UNICEF and the World Food Program. More than $400 million was provided between 1979 and 1982, of which the United States contributed nearly $100 million. At one point, more than 500,000 Cambodians were living along the Thai-Cambodian border and more than 100,000 in holding centers inside Thailand.
Vietnam's occupation army of as many as 200,000 troops controlled the major population centers and most of the countryside from 1979 to September 1989. The regime of Heng Samrin fielded 30,000 troops plagued by poor morale and widespread desertion. Resistance to Vietnam's occupation continued, and there was some evidence that Heng Samrin's PRK forces provided logistic and moral support to the guerrillas.
A large portion of the Khmer Rouge's military forces eluded Vietnamese troops and established themselves in remote regions. The non-communist resistance, consisting of a number of groups which had been fighting the Khmer Rouge after 1975--including Lon Nol-era soldiers--coalesced in 1979-80 to form the Khmer People's National Liberation Armed Forces (KPNLAF), which pledged loyalty to former Prime Minister Son Sann, and Moulinaka (Mouvement pour la Libération Nationale du Kampuchea), loyal to Prince Sihanouk. In 1979, Son Sann formed the Khmer People's National Liberation Front (KPNLF) to lead the political struggle for Cambodia's independence. Prince Sihanouk formed his own organization, FUNCINPEC, and its military arm, the Armée Nationale Sihanoukienne (ANS) in 1981.
Warfare followed a wet season/dry season rhythm after 1980. The heavily-armed Vietnamese forces conducted offensive operations during the dry seasons, and the resistance forces held the initiative during the rainy seasons. In 1982, Vietnam launched a major offensive against the main Khmer Rouge base at Phnom Malai in the Cardamom Mountains. Resistance military forces, however, were largely undamaged. In the 1984-85 dry season offensive, the Vietnamese again attacked base camps of all three resistance groups. Despite stiff resistance from the guerrillas, the Vietnamese succeeded in eliminating the camps in Cambodia and drove both the guerrillas and civilian refugees into neighboring Thailand. The Vietnamese concentrated on consolidating their gains during the 1985-86 dry season, including an attempt to seal guerrilla infiltration routes into the country by forcing Cambodian laborers to construct trenches, wire fences, and minefields along virtually the entire Thai-Cambodian border.
The Khmer Rouge had also mobilized their guerrillas the same way. They cut down giant trees to block roads in the thick jungle along the Thai-Cambodian border to prevent the Vietnamese tanks and armoured trucks from passing through. The Khmer Rouge laid down mines and subterfuge which forced the Vietnamese to employ guerilla warfare as one of their tactics as well. However, the Vietnamese suffered damaging casualties, and momentum shifted. The Khmer Rouge gained confidence that they could keep swiping away Vietnamese armies, and the Vietnamese found out how easy it is to become the prey rather than the predator. In fact some books have called this "Vietnam's Vietnam War".
Within Cambodia, Vietnam had only limited success in establishing its client Heng Samrin's regime, which was dependent on Vietnamese advisers at all levels. Security in some rural areas was tenuous, and major transportation routes were subject to interdiction by resistance forces. The presence of Vietnamese throughout the country and their intrusion into nearly all aspects of Cambodian life alienated much of the populace. The settlement of Vietnamese nationals, both former residents and new immigrants, further exacerbated anti-Vietnamese sentiment. Reports of the numbers involved vary widely with some estimates as high as 1 million. By the end of this decade, Khmer nationalism began to reassert itself against the traditional Vietnamese enemy.
In 1986, Hanoi claimed to have begun withdrawing part of its occupation forces. At the same time, Vietnam continued efforts to strengthen its client regime, the PRK, and its military arm, the Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Armed Forces (KPRAF). These withdrawals continued over the next 2 years, although actual numbers were difficult to verify. Vietnam's proposal to withdraw its remaining occupation forces in 1989-90--the result of ongoing international pressure--forced the PRK to begin economic and constitutional reforms in an attempt to ensure future political dominance. In April 1989, Hanoi and Phnom Penh announced that final withdrawal would take place by the end of September 1989.
The military organizations of Prince Sihanouk (ANS) and of former Prime Minister Son Sann (KPNLAF) underwent significant military improvement during the 1988-89 period and both expanded their presence in Cambodia's interior. These organizations provide a political alternative to the Vietnamese-supported People's Republic of Kampuchea [PRK] and the murderous Khmer Rouge. The last Vietnamese troops left Cambodia in 26 September 1989 but probably not until 1990 [1].
[edit] Constitution
The Constitution of the PRK, promulgated on 27 June 1981, defines Cambodia as "a democratic state...gradually advancing toward socialism." The transition to socialism was to take place under the leadership of the Kampuchean (or Khmer) People's Revolutionary Party (KPRP--see Appendix B), a Marxist-Leninist party founded in June 1951 (see The Emergence of Nationalism , ch. 1). The Constitution explicitly defines the country's position in international relations. It places Cambodia within the Soviet Union's orbit. The country's primary enemies, according to the Constitution, are "the Chinese expansionists and hegemonists in Beijing, acting in collusion with United States imperialism and other powers."
The Constitution guarantees a broad range of civil liberties and fundamental rights. Citizens are to be equal before the law and are entitled to enjoy the same rights and duties regardless of sex, religion, or race. They have the right to participate in the political, economic, social, and cultural life of the country and to be paid according to the amount and quality of work they perform. Men and women are entitled to equal pay for equal work. All individuals--including monks and soldiers--over the age of eighteen may vote, and citizens over twenty-one may run for election. The Constitution also guarantees the inviolability of people and of their homes; privacy of correspondence; freedom from illegal search and arrest; the right to claim reparation for damages caused by illegal actions of the state, social organizations, and their personnel; and freedom of speech, of the press, and of assembly. The exercise of fundamental rights, however, is subject to certain restrictions. For example, an act may not injure the honor of other persons, nor should it adversely affect the mores and customs of society, or public order, or national security. In line with the principle of socialist collectivism, citizens are obligated to carry out "the state's political line and defend collective property."
The Constitution also addresses principles governing culture, education, social welfare, and public health. Development of language, literature, the arts, and science and technology is stressed, along with the need for cultural preservation, tourist promotion, and cultural cooperation with foreign countries.
Provisions for state organs are in the constitutional chapters dealing with the National Assembly, the Council of State, the Council of Ministers, the local people's revolutionary committees, and the judiciary. Fundamental to the operation of all public bodies is the principle that the KPRP serves as the most important political institution of the state. Intermediary linkages between the state bureaucracy and grass-roots activities are provided by numerous organizations affiliated with the KUFNCD (see The Kampuchean (or Khmer) United Front for National Construction and Defense , this ch.).
[edit] Government structure
An administrative infrastructure, functioning under the KPRC, was more or less in place between 1979 and 1980. With the promulgation of the Constitution in June 1981, new organs, such as the National Assembly, the Council of State, and the Council of Ministers, assumed KPRC functions (see fig. 11). These new bodies evolved slowly. It was not until February 1982 that the National Assembly enacted specific law for these bodies.
[edit] The National Assembly
The "supreme organ of state power" is the National Assembly, whose deputies are directly elected for five-year terms. The assembly's 117 seats were filled on 1 May 1981, the date of the PRK's first elections. (The KNUFNS had nominated 148 candidates.) The voter turnout was reported as 99.17 percent of the electorate, which was divided into 20 electoral districts.
During its first session, held from 20 June to 32 June, the assembly adopted the new Constitution and elected members of the state organs set up under the Constitution. The assembly had been empowered to adopt or to amend the Constitution and the laws and to oversee their implementation; to determine domestic and foreign policies; to adopt economic and cultural programs and the state budget; and to elect or to remove its own officers and members of the Council of State and of the Council of Ministers. The assembly also was authorized to levy, revise, or abolish taxes; to decide on amnesties; and to ratify or to abrogate international treaties. As in other socialist states, the assembly's real function is to endorse the legislative and administrative measures initiated by the Council of State and by the Council of Ministers, both of which serve as agents of the ruling KPRP.
The National Assembly meets twice a year and may hold additional sessions if needed. During the periods between its sessions, legislative functions are handled by the Council of State. Bills are introduced by the Council of State, the Council of Ministers, the assembly's several commissions (legislative committees), chairman of the KUFNCD, and heads of other organizations. Individual deputies are not entitled to introduce bills.
Once bills, state plans and budgets, and other measures are introduced, they are studied first by the assembly's commissions, which deal with legislation, economic planning, budgetary matters, and cultural and social affairs. Then they go to the assembly for adoption. Ordinary bills are passed by a simple majority (by a show of hands). Constitutional amendments require a two-thirds majority. The Council of State must promulgate an adopted bill within thirty days of its passage. Another function of the assembly is to oversee the affairs of the Council of Ministers, which functions as the cabinet. Assembly members may make inquiries of cabinet officials, but they are not entitled to call for votes of confidence in the cabinet. Conversely, the Council of Ministers is not empowered to dissolve the National Assembly.
The Constitution states that in case of war or under "other exceptional circumstances," the five-year life of the Assembly may be extended by decree. In 1986 the assembly's term was extended for another five years, until 1991.
[edit] The Council of State
The National Assembly elects seven of its members to the Council of State. After the assembly's five-year term, council members remain in office until a new assembly elects a new council. The chairman of the council serves as the head of state, but the power to serve as ex officio supreme commander of the armed forces was deleted from the final draft of the Constitution.
The council's seven members are among the most influential leaders of the PRK. Between sessions of the National Assembly, the Council of State carries out the assembly's duties. It may appoint or remove--on the recommendation of the Council of Ministers-- cabinet ministers, ambassadors, and envoys accredited to foreign governments. In addition, the Council of State organizes elections to the National Assembly, convenes regular and special sessions of the assembly, promulgates and interprets the Constitution and the laws, reviews judicial decisions, rules on pardons and on commutations of sentences, and ratifies or abrogates treaties. Foreign diplomatic envoys present their letters of accreditation to the Council of State.
[edit] The Council of Ministers
The government's top executive organ is the Council of Ministers, or cabinet, which in late 1987 was headed by Hun Sen (as it had been since January 1985). Apart from the prime minister (formally called chairman), the Council of Ministers has two deputy prime ministers (vice chairmen) and twenty ministers. The National Assembly elects the council's ministers for five-year terms. They are responsible collectively to the assembly. When the assembly is not in session, they are responsible to the Council of State. The prime minister must be a member of the assembly; other council members, however, need not be. The council's five-year term continues without hiatus until a new cabinet is formed after general elections.
The Council of Ministers meets weekly in an executive session, which is attended by the prime minister, the deputy prime ministers, and a chief of staff who is called the Minister in Charge of the Office of the Council of Ministers. The executive group prepares an agenda for deliberation and adoption by the council's monthly plenary session. (A secretary general of the Council of Ministers provides administrative support for the cabinet.) The executive group also addresses measures for implementing the plenary session's decisions, and it reviews and coordinates the work of government agencies at all levels. Decisions made in the executive sessions are "collective," whereas those in the plenary sessions are by a majority. Representatives of KUFNCD and other mass organizations, to which all citizens may belong, may be invited to attend plenary sessions of the council "when [it is] discussing important issues." These representatives may express their views but they are not allowed to vote.
Government ministries are in charge of agriculture; communications, transport, and posts; education; finance; foreign affairs; health; home and foreign trade; industry; information and culture; interior; justice; national defense; planning; and social affairs and invalids. In addition, the cabinet includes a minister for agricultural affairs and rubber plantations, who is attached to the Office of the Council of Ministers; a minister in charge of the Office of the Council of Ministers; a secretary general of the Office of the Council of Ministers, who is also in charge of transport and of Khmer-Thai border defense networks; a director of the State Affairs Inspectorate; and the president-director general of the People's National Bank of Kampuchea.
The Office of the Council of Ministers serves as the administrative nerve center of the government. Directed by its cabinet-rank minister, this office is supposed "to prepare, facilitate, coordinate, unify, and guide all activities of individual ministries and localities." Fiscal inspection of public institutions is the responsibility of the State Affairs Inspectorate, which has branch offices in all provinces.
[edit] The Judiciary
The restoration of law and order has been one of the more pressing tasks of the Heng Samrin regime. Since 1979 the administration of justice has been in the hands of people's revolutionary courts that were set up hastily in Phnom Penh and in other major provincial cities. A new law dealing with the organization of courts and with the Office of Public Prosecutor was promulgated in February 1982. Under this law, the People's Supreme Court became the highest court of the land.






















The judicial system comprises the people's revolutionary courts, the military tribunals, and the public prosecutors' offices. The Council of State may establish additional courts to deal with special cases. The Council of Ministers, on the recommendations of local administrative bodies called people's revolutionary committees, appoints judges and public prosecutors. Two or three people's councillors (the equivalents of jurors or of assessors) assist the judges, and they have the same power as the judges in passing sentence (see Protection Under the Law , ch. 5).
[edit] Local People's Revolutionary Committees
In late 1987, the country was divided into eighteen provinces (khet) and two special municipalities (krong), Phnom Penh and Kampong Saom, which are under direct central government control. The provinces were subdivided into about 122 districts (srok), 1,325 communes (khum), and 9,386 villages (phum). The subdivisions of the municipalities were wards (sangkat).
An elective body, consisting of a chairman (president), one or more vice chairmen, and a number of committee members, runs each people's revolutionary committee. These elective bodies are chosen by representatives of the next lower level people's revolutionary committees at the provincial and district levels. At the provincial and district levels, where the term of office is five years, committee members need the additional endorsement of officials representing the KUFNCD and other affiliated mass organizations. At the commune and ward level, the members of the people's revolutionary committees are elected directly by local inhabitants for a three-year term.
Before the first local elections, which were held in February and March 1981, the central government appointed local committee officials. In late 1987, it was unclear whether the chairpersons of the local revolutionary committees reported to the Office of the Council of Ministers or to the Ministry of Interior.
Modern Cambodia
After the fall of the Pol Pot regime (Democratic Kampuchea), Cambodia was under Vietnamese occupation and in a civil war during the 1980s. Vietnam ruled through former Khmer Rouge heading the Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Party, fighting the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea, composed of their Maoist ex-comrades, the republican conservative KPNLF and the royalists of FUNCINPEC. Peace efforts intensified in 1989 and 1991 with two international conferences in Paris, and a UN peacekeeping mission helped maintain a cease-fire. As a part of the peace effort, UN-sponsored elections were held in 1993 helped restore some semblance of normality as did the rapid diminishment of the Khmer Rouge in the mid-1990s. Norodom Sihanouk was reinstated as King. A coalition government, formed after national elections in 1998, brought renewed political stability and the surrender of remaining Khmer Rouge forces in 1998. Compared to its recent past, the 1993–2003 period has been one of relative stability for Cambodia. However, political violence continues to be a problem.
Contents
[hide]
• 1 Peace efforts and the free elections
• 2 Recent developments
• 3 See also
• 4 Notes
• 5 References

[edit] Peace efforts and the free elections
From July 30 to August 30, 1989, representatives of 18 countries, the four Cambodian parties, and the UN Secretary General met in Paris in an effort to negotiate a comprehensive settlement. They hoped to achieve those objectives seen as crucial to the future of post-occupation Cambodia: a verified withdrawal of the remaining Vietnamese occupation troops and genuine self-determination for the Cambodian people.
On October 23, 1991, the Paris Conference convened to sign a comprehensive settlement giving the UN full authority to supervise a ceasefire, repatriate the displaced Khmer along the border with Thailand, disarm and demobilize the factional armies, and to prepare the country for free and fair elections.
Prince Sihanouk, President of the Supreme National Council of Cambodia (SNC), and other members of the SNC returned to Phnom Penh in November, 1991, to begin the resettlement process in Cambodia. The UN Advance Mission for Cambodia (UNAMIC) was deployed at the same time to maintain liaison among the factions and begin demining operations to expedite the repatriation of approximately 370,000 Cambodians from Thailand.

On March 16, 1992, the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), under UNSYG Special Representative Yasushi Akashi and Lt. General John Sanderson, arrived in Cambodia to begin implementation of the UN Settlement Plan. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees began full-scale repatriation in March, 1992. UNTAC grew into a 22,000 strong civilian and military peacekeeping force to conduct free and fair elections for a constituent assembly.
Over four million Cambodians (about 90% of eligible voters) participated in the May 1993 elections, although the Khmer Rouge or Party of Democratic Kampuchea (PDK), whose forces were never actually disarmed or demobilized, barred some people from participating in the 10-15 percent of the country (holding six percent of the population) it then controlled.
Prince Norodom Ranariddh's FUNCINPEC Party was the top vote recipient with 45.5% vote followed by Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party and the Buddhist Liberal Democratic Party, respectively. FUNCINPEC then entered into a coalition with the other parties that had participated in the election.ce
The parties represented in the 120-member Assembly proceeded to draft and approve a new Constitution, which was promulgated September 24. It established a multiparty liberal democracy in the framework of a constitutional monarchy, with the former Prince Sihanouk elevated to King. Prince Ranariddh and Hun Sen became First and Second Prime Ministers, respectively, in the Royal Cambodian Government (RCG). The Constitution provides for a wide range of internationally recognized human rights.
[edit] Recent developments
In 1997, factional fighting between supporters of Prince Norodom Ranariddh and Hun Sen broke out, resulting in more than 100 FUNCINPEC deaths and a few CPP casualties. Hun Sen staged a coup and took power and summarily executed dozens of FUNCINPEC officials [1], including two ministers, arresting hundreds of others and driving Prince Ranariddh into exile. His actions nullified the Paris peace accords and destroyed what remained of the UN's multi-billion-dollar effort to impose 'democracy' on Cambodia. Some FUNCINPEC leaders were forced to flee the country, and Hun Sen took over as Prime Minister.
FUNCINPEC leaders returned to Cambodia shortly before the 1998 National Assembly elections. In those elections, the CPP received 41% of the vote, FUNCINPEC 32%, and the Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) 13%. Due to political violence, intimidation, and lack of media access, many international observers judged the elections to have been seriously flawed. The CPP and FUNCINPEC formed another coalition government, with CPP the senior partner.
Cambodia's first commune elections were held in February 2002. These elections to select chiefs and members of 1,621 commune (municipality) councils also were marred by political violence and fell short of being free and fair by international standards. The election results were largely acceptable to the major parties, though procedures for the new local councils have not been fully implemented.
A riot occurred in January 2003 in which the Embassy of Thailand and several Thai businesses were damaged. Following the incident, Prime Minister Hun Sen expressed the RGC's regret to the Thai Government and promised compensation. See Anti-Thai Cambodian riots of 2003
On July 27, 2003, elections were held and the Cambodian People's Party of Prime Minister Hun Sen won a majority, but not enough to rule outright. The King has urged the two other parties, Sam Rainsy Party and FUNCINPEC, to accept the incumbent Hun Sen as prime minister. In mid-2004 a coalition government was formed between FUNCINPEC and the CPP.
In 2004, King Sihanouk, still in poor health, announced his abdication of the throne. Prince Norodom Ranariddh was one of the leading candidates to succeed Sihanouk, but the Royal Council of the Throne selected Prince Norodom Sihamoni, as the new king. A sign of Cambodia's modernization is the construction of skyscrapers and Phnom Penh's satellite city, Camko city. As a result of modernization, many problems such as illegal deforestation is occurring. The primary rainforest went from 70% in the 1970s to 3% in today's time.[2]