Cambodian Civil War

11 Key excerpts on "Cambodian Civil War"

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  The Roots and Consequences of Civil Wars and Revolutions

  Conflicts That Changed World History

  • Spencer C. Tucker(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • ABC-CLIO

    (Publisher)

  Cambodian Civil War (1967–1975) Causes

  The Cambodian Civil War (March 11, 1967–April 17, 1975) accompanied and was heavily influenced by the 1958–1975 Vietnam War (Second Indochina War). The Cambodian Civil War saw the Cambodian communists, known as the Khmer Rouge (Red Khmer), aided by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV, North Vietnam) and South Vietnamese Communists, known as the Viet Cong (VC), fighting the government forces of the Kingdom of Cambodia (after October 1975 the Khmer Republic) supported by the United States and the Republic of Vietnam (RVN, South Vietnam). The civil war devastated Cambodia and led directly to a genocide of historic proportion.

  Wounded government soldiers on the front line during the Cambodian Civil War of 1967–1975. (Patrick Chauvel/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images)

  Present-day Cambodia occupies an area of nearly 70,000 square miles, or about the size of Missouri. It is situated in the southern part of the Indochina peninsula. Cambodia’s 1965 population was estimated to be 6,602 million people. On the map Cambodia resembles a nut held tightly in the jaws of a giant wrench, with Thailand to the north and northeast and Vietnam to the east and southeast. This description of Cambodia at the mercy of Thailand and Vietnam accurately reflects Cambodians’ historic fears of being extinguished by their larger, more powerful, and more vigorous neighbors. Cambodian king Norodom Sihanouk once called the Thai and Vietnamese “Eaters of Khmer earth.” Laos also borders Cambodia to the northeast, while the Gulf of Thailand lies to the south.

  Geographically, Cambodia is characterized by a low-lying central plain surrounded by low mountains and uplands. This includes the Tonle Sap (Great Lake), Southeast Asia’s largest lake, and a number of rivers. For centuries agriculture has been the backbone of the economy. The Khmer people, like the Thai and Lao peoples, originated in Central Asia but were influenced culturally largely by India.

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  Armed Groups in Cambodian Civil War

  Territorial Control, Rivalry, and Recruitment

  • Y. Kubota(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  4 Cambodia, 1970–75 Introduction

  The purpose of this chapter is to explore mobilization of combatants by armed forces in the Cambodian Civil War, 1970–75. Mobilization strategies varied according to armed group and contexts of the civil war. The war allows us to capture the diversity of structural contexts and the groups’ efforts in recruitment. In the civil war, two main armed groups, the Lon Nol government and the Khmer Rouge, competed for popular support and recruits. This chapter examines mobilization strategies of these groups despite recognition that external actors, such as the United States and North Vietnamese forces, gave patronage to Lon Nol and the Khmer Rouge forces respectively.

  Thus, because the aspect in question, in which two major parties competed, remained constant, exploring the structural context in a focused scope is useful to explore the interaction between armed actors and civilians in the war. This chapter uses interview data that offer primary sources about civil-military relations in districts in a specific Cambodian province where I conducted fieldwork. Secondary sources will also be employed to fill a gap between overall civil-military relations during the civil war and interview data.

  It is important to note that competition between the government and the rebels played a significant role in their mobilization strategies. Toward the end of the civil war, the Khmer Rouge was able to maintain influence over the Cambodian population while expanding its control across the country. Its mobilization strategies were aimed at poor peasants and inhabitants of the mountainous and forested regions of the remotest villages. Seeing these civilians as the most neglected by the central authority, rebel leaders used them as their main pool for recruitment.

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  Encyclopedia of Conflicts since World War II

  • James Ciment, Kenneth Hill(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Cambodia Civil Wars, 1968–1998 TYPE OF CONFLICT: People's wars; Coups, left and right PARTICIPANTS: United States; Vietnam (North and South)

  Historical Background

  Until the thirteenth century, Cambodia was the center of the powerful Khmer Empire, which ruled over an area covering modern Cambodia and large parts of Thailand and Vietnam (Khmer is the ethnic label of the vast majority of Cambodians). But after the fourteenth century, the Khmer Empire collapsed, and subsequent Cambodian kingdoms fell under the sway of either the Thais or the Vietnamese. After 1700, Cambodia was at the mercy of its then stronger neighbors (as it would be again in the twentieth century). What Little independence Cambodia had disappeared with the French conquest, largely complete by 1884.

  While maintaining complete control of Cambodia's internal affairs, the French kept the Cambodian monarchy as a useful figurehead to aid in their governance of the country. Cambodia's monarchs cooperated, perhaps realizing that French control had saved Cambodia from a possible division between Thailand and Vietnam. Unlike Vietnam, Cambodia offered only minimal resistance to French rule.

  In 1940, the Japanese occupied all of Indochina, including Cambodia, but left the Vichy French administration in charge of governing the colony until early 1945, when they were replaced by Japanese administrators. When Cambodia's old king, Sisowath Monivong, died in 1941, the French replaced him with his eighteen-year-old grandson Norodom Sihanouk, probably with the hope that he would be a more pliant monarch—a hope that turned out to be misplaced.

  Sihanouk

  Although for most of his life he led a playboy lifestyle—enjoying such pastimes as leading a jazz band and directing his own films— Sihanouk gradually grew to be a canny politician. He was vain and imperious, allowing no criticism, and jailing those who opposed him, but he was also genuinely popular among Cambodia's peasantry, who liked his sudden trips into the countryside where he would hand out food and clothing and exchange bawdy jokes with village leaders. He was less popular among Cambodia's intelligentsia, left and right, who resented his arrogance and erratic style of leadership.

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  Wars in the Third World Since 1945

  • Guy Arnold(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  Then, in a volte-face, the Indonesian army co-operated with Malaysian forces across the border in Sarawak to track down Communist bands then operating along the Sarawak-Kalimantan border. Once confrontation had been brought to an end, it became easier for Britain to accelerate its military withdrawal from east of Suez. KAMPUCHEA/CAMBODIA: BORDER WAR, CIVIL WAR, VIETNAM INVASION Introduction The history of Cambodia (which has changed its name several times) has been deeply troubled ever since the Japanese invasion of 1941. The country, inevitably, was drawn into the war in Vietnam (see Part II, pp. 142-153) so that by 1970 it was suffering from border incursions by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong, and bombing by the Americans. In the mid-1970s it was rent by civil war and the 262 Asia: Kampuchea/Cambodia victors, under their Prime Minister Pol Pot, imposed on the entire people one of the most brutal and murderous regimes to be found anywhere in the world. This miserable period was only brought to an end in 1979 following a full-scale invasion and occupation by Vietnam, although the Vietnamese occupation was deeply resented and resisted by the Khmer Rouge and other non-Communist groups, while the world community refused to give legitimacy to the Vietnam-supported government in Phnom Penh. Despite this, Vietnamese withdrawal in 1989 appeared to have sparked off yet another period of civil war. Cambodia was incorporated in the French Indo-Chinese Empire in 1864, and the French retained the Khmer monarchy. Strong anti-French nationalism devel-oped during the 1930s, in part as a protest against the clear preference which the French demonstrated for the Vietnamese. In 1941 Prince Norodom Sihanouk came to the throne under French colonial auspices, but later in the year the whole peninsula was invaded and occupied by the Japanese. They were content to leave King Sihanouk as the nominal ruler of Cambodia.

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  Violence and the Civilising Process in Cambodia

  • Roderic Broadhurst, Thierry Bouhours, Brigitte Bouhours(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  7 Criminal states and civil wars: 1967–1975 The year 1967 marked the beginning of exponential levels of mass and state violence foreshadowing that perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge after 1975. Kier- nan (2004) called the period from 1967 until the 1970 coup against Sihanouk ‘the first civil war’ and the postcoup period between 1970 and 1975 ‘the sec- ond civil war’. The first was waged by Sihanouk and Lon Nol against those Sihanouk called the Khmers rouges. However, it led to the massacres of many peasants who were angry about their plight but little acquainted with the Khmer communists. The second was waged by the ‘unholy’ alliance of Sihanouk and his supporters with the Khmer and Vietnamese communists against Lon Nol’s Khmer Republic ‘supported’ 1 by South Vietnam and the USA. During the first civil war, the number of homicides caused by the conflict can be estimated at nine per day and escalated to between 313 and 522 during the second. While the carnage of the civil wars raged in the provinces, paranoia, repression, waste, corruption, and ordinary crime soared in Phnom Penh in the late 1960s. We found little quantitative data on ordinary crime, and this chapter deals for the most part with the mass violence created by the civil wars and the violence inflicted not only by Cambodian governments but also by the USA and its allies, the Viet Minh and Vietcong combatants, and Khmer Rouge revolutionaries. Crime wave and corruption We do not have primary sources that allow us to estimate the level of ‘street crime’ during this period, but secondary sources all point to a rise in crime in Phnom Penh and the provinces. Although somewhat romanticising the past, Meyer (1971) described how a crime wave hit urban Cambodia: The noble traditions of Cambodian banditry are almost gone today, but because of the hooliganism that is developing in the cities and the exactions committed in the coun- tryside by armed ‘people’ in uniform we will end up missing them [the bandits] .

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  Conflict and Change in Cambodia

  • Ben Kiernan, Caroline Hughes(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  INTRODUCTION Conflict in Cambodia, 1945-2006 BEN KIERNAN E IGHT DIFFERENT REGIMES have governed Cambodia since 1944. Yet, before World War II, Cambodia was a heavily taxed, relatively quiet corner of the French empire. Its population was 80 percent Khmer, 80 percent Buddhist, and 80 percent rice-growing peasants. Up to a fifth of the population were ethnic and religious minorities: Vietnamese, Chinese, and Muslim Chams worked mostly in rubber plantations or as clerks, shopkeepers, and fisherfolk, while a score of small ethnolinguistic groups, such as the Jarai, Tampuan, and Kreung, populated the upland northeast. After Japan’s defeat in World War II, the reimposition by force of French colonial control of Indochina provoked armed nationalist resistance by both Viet Minh and Khmer Issarak (“independence”) forces. Protracted anticolonial conflict in both Vietnam and Cambodia fostered the emergence by 1951 of a Vietnamese-sponsored Cambodian communist movement, the Khmer People’s Revolutionary Party (KPRP), which won increasing though not unchallenged preeminence among Issarak nationalists contesting French control of their country. 1 KPRP members, led by former Buddhist monks, slowly gained leadership of the nationwide Khmer Issarak Association, which adopted for its flag a silhouette of Angkor Wat’s five towers on a red background. One faction of the independence movement initially called itself “Democratic Kampuchea” — the title later used by the Pol Pot regime as the official name of its Khmer Rouge state. 2 An anti-KPRP grouping used for its flag a three-towered motif of Angkor, the future flag of Democratic Kampuchea. Members of another anticommunist splinter group carried out racist massacres of ethnic Vietnamese in 1949, and of Chams in 1952. 3 Saloth Sar, then a student in Paris calling himself the “Original Khmer,” returned home in 1953 and briefly served in the communist-led Issarak ranks

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  A Clash of Cultures

  Civil-Military Relations during the Vietnam War

  • Orrin Schwab(Author)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  1 The Context of Civil-Military Relations The Vietnam War in American political and military history remains an extraordinarily complex phenomenon. This book will attempt to provide the reader with a coherent examination of the context and evolution of U.S. civil-military relations during the era of the Vietnam War (1961–1975). The general idea guiding this exposition will be the devel- opment of a comprehensive view of the military’s role and function within the national security system as well as the larger social and politi- cal environment of the United States. The premise for this overarching concept will be an understanding of the military as an institution and cultural system connected organically to civilian institutions and culture. In sum, how Vietnam affected American military culture and institutions also had a mutual and interactive influence on American society. 1 LEGACIES To truly understand the Vietnam War, we must have in-depth knowl- edge of the historical and geopolitical environment that created it. The larger Cold War, between the liberal Western states of the North Atlantic community, and the socialist states of the international communist move- ment, established the political, strategic and psycho-cultural framework for the war. The Vietnam War was part of a succession of low intensity military conflicts that engaged communist and anticommunist forces in Indochina. From February 1950, when Secretary of State Dean Acheson urged recognition of the French Indochina states premised on the goal of containment, to the spring of 1975 when Henry Kissinger and Gerald Ford watched the fall of Indochina helpless to stop it, the United States worked unsuccessfully to prevent the victory of communist armies. 2 Nonetheless, despite the commitment of several million troops over more than a decade of active intervention, the United States lost its military en- gagement in South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

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  Intervention and Change in Cambodia

  Towards Democracy?

  • Sorpong Peou(Author)
  • 2000(Publication Date)
  • ISEAS Publishing

    (Publisher)

  62. 25. L. Summers, The Cambodian Civil War, Current History, December 1972, p. 262. 26. J. Corfield, Khmers Stand Up!pp. 75-76. 27. M. Osborne, Power and Politics in Cambodia, p. 55. 28. J. Corfield, Khmers Stand Up! p. 33. 29. S. Thion, Wcttching Cambodia, pp. 101-2. 30. Somboon S., Buddhism, Political Authority, and Legitimacy in Thailand and Cambodia'', in Buddhist Trends in Southeast Asia, p. 138. 31. M. Osborne, Sihanouk: Prince of Light, Prince of Darkness, p. 83. 32. C. Raymond, Political Implications of Stagnant Agricultural Productivity in Cam-bodia, journal of Contemporary Asia 26, no. 3 (1996): 367. 33. S. Ear, Cambodia's Economic Development in Historical Perspective, mimeographed (August 1995), chap. 3. 34. Quoted in W Shawcross, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cam-bodia, p. 392. 35. BunchanM., CharetKhmer,pp. 150-51,156. 36. B. Kiernan and C. Boua, eds., Peasants and Politics in Kampuchea: 1')42-1')81, p. 262. 37. P. Poole, Cambodia: The Cost of Survival, Asian Survq 12, no. 2 (February 1972): 152. 38. Far Eastern Economic Rez 1 iew, 12 March 1973, p. 12. 39. W.J. Duiker, Vietnam: Revolution in Transition, pp. 74-75. 40. Sak S., The Khmer Republic at War and the Final Collapse, mimeogophed, p. 153. 110 part one: democratic seed on thorny soil, 1955-90 41. J. Corfield, Khmers Stand Up!pp. 192-93. 42. B. Kiernan, Pol Pot and the Kampuchean Communist Movement, in Peasants and Politics in Kampuchea, 1940-1981, p. 280; G. Hildebrand and G. Porter, Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution, p. 109. 43. Sak S., The Khmer Republic at War and the Final Collapse, mimeographed, p. 168. 44. M. Vickery, Kampuchea: Politics, Economics and Society, p. 45. 45. To this day, Pen Sovann has bitterly held Hun Sen responsible for his political demise. From my conversation with one CPP general, Pen Sovann misbehaved. His conduct was inappropriate and perhaps got him into trouble (private conver-sation, November 1998).

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  Conjunctures and Continuities in Southeast Asian Politics

  • N. Ganesan(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • ISEAS Publishing

    (Publisher)

  Undoubtedly, the DK years caused the most profound trauma in Cambodian society. The Vietnamese military intervention in 1978–79 brought about an end to the Cambodia’s Historical Conjunctures and their Significance 115 DK policies. The military conflict with groups opposing the Vietnamese presence continued unabated through the 1980s and the Cambodian conflict became a conflict situation with domestic, regional, and global dimensions and ramifications. The pattern of developments affecting Cambodia suggests that the developments that followed the 1970, the 1975 and the 1978–79 historical conjunctures eventually led to the subsequent conjunctures. The overthrow of Prince Norodom Sihanouk in 1970 led to the political and military developments that made possible the rise to power of the CPK through military victory over the Khmer Republic. The fall of Phnom Penh and the takeover by the CPK led to the introduction of the radical domestic policies during the DK-years resulting in the large number of deaths within the Cambodian population. It also led to the gradual radicalization of the foreign policy conducted by DK with an increasingly anti-Vietnamese foreign policy from early 1997. The foreign policy towards Vietnam also became more assertive leading to a militarized conflict. This conflict would eventually lead to the Vietnamese military intervention in late 1978 and the removal of the PDK from power, symbolized by the capture of Phnom Penh in early January 1979. The Vietnamese military intervention in 1978–79 did bring back some normalcy to Cambodian society, but the overthrown government with other groups resisted militarily and the negative international reaction denied the PRK international recognition. In fact, the Cambodian Conflict had internal, regional and global dimensions.

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  International Multiparty Mediation and Conflict Management

  Challenges of Cooperation and Coordination

  • Sinisa Vukovic(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  5  Cambodia 1

  Civil war in Cambodia involved four different Khmer factions and each one had an outside sponsor state (Solomon 1999). Despite its reputation from the war in Vietnam and the bipolar constraints of the Cold War, the US was seen as the most ‘neutral’ member of the Security Council, “with the political influence and resources to help structure the settlement” (Solomon 2000, 4). At the moment the US-led peace talks took place in the final months of 1989, the government in Phnom Penh was headed by Hun Sen, whose faction assumed power thanks to a Vietnamese military incursion into Cambodia in December 1978 which overthrew the Khmer Rouge regime (Hampson and Zartman 2012, 4). The pro-Vietnamese government, named the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK), was backed only by the USSR and its allies and did not enjoy the support of the West. Also, it certainly did not have good relations with the authorities in Beijing. China was concerned about Vietnamese expansionist policies, interpreting them as Soviet efforts to contain Chinese influence in South-East Asia. Once dethroned, the Khmer Rouge fled to the jungles along the border with Thailand and thanks to Chinese support, started an insurgency campaign against Vietnam’s client regime (Solomon 1999, 284).

  Given its experience with Vietnam and the positioning of the Soviet Union in the matter, the United States chose China as its partner. It was clear to the US that China was interested in improving its international reputation after the June 1989 events at Tiananmen Square and thus that it would be more willing to cooperate with the US even at the cost of distancing themselves from the Khmer Rouge (Hampson and Zartman 2012, 6). The two sides managed to reach initial convergence of interests in supporting a future coalition government led by Prince Sihanouk, who had governed Cambodia in its first decade as an independent state, only to be toppled by Khmer Rouge forces in 1963. Ironically, Chinese acceptance of Sihanouk was coupled with a request to allow for the Khmer Rouge to be included in the future power-sharing arrangement. The US did not object to this, as it wanted to keep the Khmer Rouge engaged in the peace process, fearing that they might otherwise act as spoilers. At the same time, the US was confident that if the Khmer Rouge agreed to participate in the future political life of Cambodia, its unpopularity with local people would certainly not allow them to gain power through elections.

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  The Tragedy of Cambodian History

  • Benjamin McArthur(Author)
  • 1986(Publication Date)
  • Yale University Press

    (Publisher)

  I have so numerous stories to cover. I feel rather trembling. Do not know how to file out stories. How quiet the streets. Every minute changes. At 1300 local my wife came and saying that [Red Khmer] threatened my family out of the house. . . . Appreciate instructions. I, with a small typewriter, shuttle between the post office and home. May be last cable today and forever. 123 seven Revolution in Cambodia, 1975-1979 The revolution that swept through Cambodia between 1975 and 1979 left over a million Cambodians dead and half a million more exiled in Thailand and else-where. Many of the survivors were scarred physically and psychologically by what they had gone through. T understand what happened and why, one must regard the revolution both in terms of its relations with Cam-bodia's past and in terms of its horrifying uniqueness; not only that, one must view it against the background of revolutions elsewhere in order to determine what may have been characteristically Cambodian about it. Government spokesmen in DK frequently boasted that on April 17, 1975, more than two thousand years of Cambodian history came to an end. The final assault on Phnom Penh, which had begun on January 1, was timed to coincide with the Buddhist New Year in April to stress this new beginning. 1 Characteristically, revolutions fracture continuity. At the same time, many continuities persist from pre-revolutionary to revolutionary regimes. In the Cambo-dian case, continuities of context and behavior com bined with external factors made the revolution itself by 1978 a failure for its leaders and a disaster for nearly everyone else. Partly, this was the fault of the harsh, erratic behavior of the revolutionaries themselves. Af-ter the end of 1976, failure sprang from the leader-ship's fixations with Vietnam and treachery within their ranks. 2 The failure can also be traced to the refusal of mil-lions of Cambodians to pay attention to revolutionary promises and ideas.

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