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165-475: CPAF may refer to: Cambodian People's Armed Forces ; the official name of the Cambodian pro-Hanoi "Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Armed Forces" (KPRAF) during the transitional times that led to the restoration of the monarchy (1989 - 1993) Christian Performing Artists' Fellowship Cost Plus Award Fee , a type of cost-plus contract Topics referred to by

330-585: A ballet teacher. When Sâr was six years old, he and an older brother were sent to live with Meak in Phnom Penh ; informal adoptions by wealthier relatives were then common in Cambodia. In Phnom Penh, he spent 18 months as a novice monk in the city's Vat Botum Vaddei monastery, learning Buddhist teachings and to read and write the Khmer language . In summer 1935, Sâr went to live with his brother Suong and

495-464: A de facto one-party state extinguished hopes that the Cambodian left could take power electorally. North Vietnam's government nevertheless urged the Khmer Party not to restart the armed struggle; the former was focused on undermining South Vietnam and had little desire to destabilize Sihanouk's regime given that it had—conveniently for them—remained internationally un-aligned rather than following

660-730: A July military parade Pol Pot announced the formal integration of all troops into a national Revolutionary Army, to be headed by Son Sen . Although a new Cambodian currency had been printed in China during the civil war, the Khmer Rouge decided not to introduce it. At the Central Committee Plenum held in Phnom Penh in September, they agreed that currency would lead to corruption and undermine their efforts to establish

825-474: A cause of factionalism in the KPRAF for the time being. The ground forces clearly were the dominant service both by size and by seniority. The coastal/riverine naval force and the air force were newly established; very small in numbers, they were not in a position to challenge the primacy of the larger service, despite the possibility of some elitism engendered by their more technical orientation. The composition of

990-602: A cell that met on the rue Lacepède; his cell comrades included Hou Yuon, Sien Ary, and Sok Knaol. He helped to duplicate the Cercle's newspaper, Reaksmei ("The Spark"), named after a former Russian paper . In October 1951, Yuon was elected head of the Khmer Student Association (AEK; l'Association des Etudiants Khmers ), establishing close links between the organisation and the leftist Union Nationale des Étudiants de France . The Cercle Marxiste manipulated

1155-513: A close training and coordinating relationship with their Laotian counterparts as a result of Hanoi's military presence in the country. In Cambodia, Vietnam had been a mainstay for Khmer communist factions since 1954. The Vietnamese army also had helped train Pol Pot 's RAK and its successor, the CPNLAF, following the coup that deposed Sihanouk in 1970. More recently, Hanoi had helped raise and train

1320-405: A counter-insurgency like the one in Cambodia, provincial forces also could have had an advantage because of their greater knowledge of the area of operations and of local conditions, both friendly and hostile. An early goal of the government in Phnom Penh was to raise two battalions of provincial forces per province. Given the manpower limitations of the nation, a more realistic goal would have been

1485-569: A degree. Sâr arrived in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) on 13 January 1953, the same day on which Sihanouk disbanded the Democratic -controlled National Assembly , began ruling by decree , and imprisoned Democratic members of parliament without trial. Amid the broader First Indochina War in neighboring French Indochina , Cambodia was in a civil war, with civilian massacres and other atrocities carried out by all sides. Sâr spent several months at

1650-441: A departing US Navy ship just twelve days later. Within the city, Khmer Rouge militia under the control of different Zone commanders clashed with one another, partly as a result of turf wars and partly due to the difficulty of establishing who was a group member and who was not. The Khmer Rouge had long viewed Phnom Penh's population with mistrust, particularly as the city's numbers had been swelled by peasant refugees who had fled

1815-458: A few, probably battalion-sized, regiments of Khmer troops that had fought alongside the Vietnamese during the invasion of Cambodia. With further Vietnamese tutelage, these Khmer units became the nucleus of a national army. From such ad hoc beginnings, the KPRAF grew as a military force and eventually gained its position as an instrument of both the party and the state. This development, however,

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1980-571: A figure of 10,000 personnel may have been realistic. The connections among the provincial forces and the Ministry of National Defense and the KPRAF General Staff were unclear. At subordinate echelons, however, provincial units were responsible to a local military committee. This committee was composed of the chairman, the military commander and his deputy, and a small staff headed by a chief of staff. The military committee reported to

2145-703: A four-man General Affair Committee leading the party. Its existence was to be kept secret from non-members. The Kampuchean Labour Party's conference, held clandestinely from September to October 1960 in Phnom Penh, saw Samouth become party secretary and Nuon Chea his deputy, while Sâr took the third senior position and Ieng Sary the fourth. Sihanouk spoke out against the Cambodian Khmer communists; he also warned of its totalitarian character and its suppression of personal liberty. In January 1962, Sihanouk's security services cracked down further on Cambodia's socialists, incarcerating Pracheachon's leaders and leaving

2310-554: A four-month journey along the Ho Chi Minh Trail to reach the Cambodian's new base at Loc Ninh . In October 1966, he and other Cambodian party leaders made several key decisions. They renamed their organisation the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), a decision initially kept secret. Sihanouk began referring to its members as the " Khmer Rouge " ('Red Cambodians'), but they did not adopt this term themselves. It

2475-635: A good teacher. He courted society belle Soeung Son Maly before entering a relationship with fellow communist revolutionary Khieu Ponnary , the sister of Sary's wife Thirith. They were married in a Buddhist ceremony on 14 July 1956. According to Philip Short, Sâr had chosen this date in order to coincide with the symbolic Bastille Day All correspondence between the Democratic Party and the Pracheachon went through him, as did most communication with underground elements. Sihanouk cracked down on

2640-507: A great deal of support, both domestically and internationally. In 1975, the troops defending Phnom Penh began discussing surrender, eventually doing so and allowing the Khmer Rouge to enter the city on 17 April. There, Khmer Rouge soldiers executed between 700 and 800 senior government, military, and police figures. Other senior figures escaped; Lon Nol fled into exile in the US. He left Saukham Khoy as acting president, although he too fled aboard

2805-561: A massive expansion in size. Many of the new recruits for the Khmer Rouge were apolitical peasants who fought in support of the King, not for communism, of which they had little understanding. In April 1970, Sâr flew to Hanoi. He stressed to Lê Duẩn that while he wanted the Vietnamese to supply the Khmer Rouge with weapons, he did not want troops: the Cambodians needed to oust Lon Nol themselves. North Vietnamese armies, in collaboration with

2970-732: A month-long training course for CPK cadres in the Northern Zone headquarters. This was followed by the CPK's Third Congress, attended by around 60 delegates, where Pol Pot was confirmed as the Secretary of the Central Committee and Chairman of its Military Commission. In early 1972, Pol Pot embarked on his first tour of the Marxist-controlled areas across Cambodia. In these areas, called "liberated zones", corruption

3135-677: A new revolutionary culture must replace it starting from scratch. “Year Zero" was announced by the Khmer Rouge on April 17, 1975 , where everything before that date must be purged. The Khmer Rouge emptied the cities, frogmarched Cambodians to labor camps and relocated the urban population to collective farms , where mass executions, abuse, torture, malnutrition and disease were rampant. At the Killing Fields more than 1.3 million people were executed and buried in mass graves. Pursuing complete egalitarianism , money, religion, and private property were abolished and all citizens were forced to wear

3300-547: A political struggle. In January 1970 he flew to Beijing. There, his wife began showing early signs of the chronic paranoid schizophrenia she would later be diagnosed with. In March 1970, while Sâr was in Beijing, Cambodian parliamentarians led by Lon Nol deposed Sihanouk when he was out of the country. Sihanouk also flew to Beijing, where the Chinese and North Vietnamese Communist Parties urged him to form an alliance with

3465-460: A population against a foreign invader or against a real or fancied, but easily understood, external threat. It worked less well when used to rally indigenous support for a foreign occupier, as the Phnom Penh regime had to do for Vietnam. Hanoi, therefore, incessantly evoked the specter of the return of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge to induce the Cambodian population to join the KPRAF, and through active personal involvement, to render unflinching support to

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3630-587: A programme and statutes for a new party that would be allied with but not subordinate to the Vietnamese. They established party cells, emphasising the recruitment of small numbers of dedicated members, and organized political seminars in safe houses. At a 1959 conference, the movement's leadership established the Kampuchean Labour Party, based on the Marxist–Leninist model of democratic centralism . Sâr, Tou Samouth and Nuon Chea were part of

3795-583: A provincial tour in a bus to raise money for a trip to Angkor Wat . In 1947, he left the school. That year, he passed exams that admitted him into the Lycée Sisowath , meanwhile living with Suong and his new wife. In summer 1948, he sat the brevet entry examinations for the upper classes of the Lycée, but failed. Unlike several of his friends, he could not continue on at the school for a baccalauréat . Instead, he enrolled in 1948 to study carpentry at

3960-458: A quota of three tons of paddy, or unmilled rice, per hectare, an increase on what was previously the average yield. There he also announced that manufacturing should focus on the production of basic agricultural machinery and light industrial goods such as bicycles. From 1975 onward, all of those Cambodians who were living in rural co-operatives, meaning the vast majority of Cambodia's population, were reclassified as members of one of three groups:

4125-810: A rallying point for opposition and thus was better brought into the Khmer government itself; he also hoped to take advantage of Sihanouk's stature in the Non-Aligned Movement . Once home, Sihanouk settled into his palace and was well treated. Sihanouk was allowed to travel abroad, in October addressing the UN General Assembly to promote the new Cambodian government and in November embarking on an international tour. The Khmer Rouge's military forces remained divided into differing zones and at

4290-475: A single battalion per province. In 1987 Western analysts believed that the latter goal had been achieved and had even been exceeded in some provinces on the Thai border, where the insurgent threat was greatest. It continued to be impossible to gauge the overall strength of the provincial forces with any accuracy, but based on an estimate of 1 battalion per province in general, with 2 to 4 battalions per border province,

4455-473: A socialist society and launch a secret campaign to oppose Sihanouk's influence. In September 1974, a Central Committee meeting was held at Meakk in Prek Kok commune. There the Khmer Rouge agreed that it would expel the populations of Cambodia's cities to rural villages. They thought this was necessary to dismantle capitalism which they associated with the urban culture. By 1974, Lon Nol's government had lost

4620-599: A socialist society. Thus, there were no wages in Democratic Kampuchea. The population were expected to do whatever the Khmer Rouge commanded of them, without pay. If they refused, they faced punishment, sometimes execution. For this reason, Short characterised Pol Pot's Cambodia as a "slave state", with its people effectively forced into slavery by working without pay. At the September Plenum, Pol Pot announced that all farmers were expected to meet

4785-484: A substantial external menace as well that consisted of the numerically superior Royal Thai Army, supplied by China, the United States, and Thailand, which played host to legions of Khmer guerrillas who crossed the border to prey on KPRAF units and on PRK assets at will. To what extent this perception was realistic was a disputable point. Bangkok did acquiesce to the presence on Thai soil of Khmer refugee camps, which

4950-541: A text outlining a framework for carrying out a revolution in colonial and semi-colonial, semi-feudal societies . Alongside these texts, Sâr read the anarchist Peter Kropotkin 's book on the French Revolution , The Great Revolution . From Kropotkin he took the idea that an alliance between intellectuals and the peasantry was necessary for revolution; that a revolution had to be carried out without compromise to its conclusion to succeed; and that egalitarianism

5115-544: A villa in the south of the city for his own. To give his government a greater appearance of legitimacy, Pol Pot organised a parliamentary election, although there was only one candidate in every constituency except in Phnom Penh. The parliament then met for only three hours. Although Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge remained the de facto government, initially the formal government was the GRUNK coalition, although its nominal head, Penn Nouth , remained in Beijing. Throughout 1975,

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5280-419: A younger generation of junior officers and of men without political antecedents. Although it could not be proved by outside observers, it could be inferred that factions in the KPRAF might have coalesced around such shared former political loyalties, affiliations, or backgrounds. If this were the case, such coalescence could take several forms in the future: either there could be a hardening of factional lines as

5445-529: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Kampuchean People%27s Revolutionary Armed Forces The KPRAF were renamed the Cambodian People's Armed Forces ( CPAF ) in 1989, preserving their main structure, but changing insignias and symbols. In 1993 the CPAF were absorbed into the newly re-established Royal Cambodian Armed Forces . The KPRAF

5610-481: The 1946 general election . According to historian David Chandler, Sâr and Sary worked for the party during its successful election campaign; conversely, Short maintains that Sâr had no contact with the party. Sihanouk opposed the party's left-leaning reforms and in 1948 dissolved the National Assembly, instead ruling by decree . The Việt Minh attempted to establish a nascent communist movement, but it

5775-545: The Cham ethnic group before being rolled out across other communities. Pol Pot also dressed in this fashion. CPK members were expected to attend regular (sometimes daily) "lifestyle meetings" in which they engaged in criticism and self-criticism. These cultivated an atmosphere of perpetual vigilance and suspicion within the movement. Pol Pot and Nuon Chea led such sessions at their headquarters, although they were exempt from criticism themselves. By early 1972, relations between

5940-801: The Chinese Civil War and the French Communist Party was one of the country's largest, attracting the votes of around 25% of the French electorate. Sâr found many of Karl Marx 's denser texts difficult, later saying he "didn't really understand" them. But he became familiar with the writings of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin , including The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) . Sâr also read Mao's work, especially On New Democracy ,

6105-519: The Communist Party of Kampuchea from 1963 to 1981 and his rule converted Cambodia into a one-party communist state . He perpetrated the Cambodian genocide of which from 1975 to 1979 between 1.5 and 2 million people died , approximately a quarter of Cambodia's entire population. His iron rule ended when Vietnam invaded Cambodia in December 1978, occupying the whole country in two weeks, ending

6270-529: The Khmer Viet Minh organisation and its guerrilla war against King Norodom Sihanouk 's newly independent government. Following the Khmer Viet Minh's 1954 retreat into North Vietnam , Pol Pot returned to Phnom Penh , working as a teacher while remaining a central member of Cambodia's Marxist–Leninist movement. In 1959, he helped formalise the movement into the Kampuchean Labour Party, which

6435-601: The Second World War , Nazi Germany invaded France, and in 1941 the Japanese ousted the French from Cambodia, with Sihanouk proclaiming his country's independence. After the war ended, France reasserted its control over Cambodia in 1946, but allowed for the creation of a new constitution and the establishment of various political parties. The most successful of these was the Democratic Party , which won

6600-522: The Viet Cong militia and North Vietnamese troops , Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge forces advanced and controlled all of Cambodia by 1975. Pol Pot transformed Cambodia into a one-party state that he called Democratic Kampuchea. Seeking to create an agrarian socialist society that he believed would evolve into a communist one . Year Zero was an idea put into practice by Pol Pot where he believed that all cultures and traditions must be completely destroyed and

6765-608: The École française de radioélectricité to study radio electronics . He took a room in the Cité Universitaire 's Indochinese Pavilion, then lodgings on the rue Amyot, and eventually a bedsit on the corner of the rue de Commerce and the rue Letellier. Sâr earned good marks during his first year. He failed his first end-of-year exams but was allowed to retake them and narrowly passed, enabling him to continue his studies. Sâr spent three years in Paris. In summer 1950, he

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6930-454: The "peaceful transition" to socialism espoused by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev , accusing him of being a revisionist . In contrast to Khrushchev's interpretation of Marxism–Leninism, Sâr and his comrades sought to develop their own, explicitly Cambodian variant of the ideology. Their interpretation moved away from the orthodox Marxist focus on the urban proletariat as the forces of a revolution to build socialism, giving that role instead to

7095-405: The "socialist revolution" in Cambodia, and on increasing membership in all military units. In late 1984, party goals were to establish a committee in each regiment of the provincial forces, as well as a party cell or chapter in each battalion and in each company at the district level. This endeavor reportedly had achieved partial success by mid-1985. In a relentless effort to build party membership in

7260-484: The 1979 to 1980 period, when directives by the party and the newly proclaimed government mandated the raising of a militia in each village and subdistrict. This objective coincided with the desire of the Vietnamese military authorities to create small local force units in the rural communities along the Thai-Cambodian border, thereby transforming these frontier settlements into combat hamlets that would help to keep

7425-727: The AEK and its successor organisations for the next 19 years. Several months after the Cercle Marxiste's formation, Sâr and Sary joined the French Communist Party (PCF). Sâr attended party meetings, including those of its Cambodian group, and read its magazine, Les Cahiers Internationaux . To many young people in France and Cambodia, communism seemed to be the future; the Chinese Communist Party won

7590-470: The Bay Damran army post south of Battambang . Further attacks targeted police and soldiers and seized weaponry. The government responded with scorched-earth policies, aerially bombarding areas where rebels were active. The army's brutality aided the insurgents' cause; as the uprising spread, over 100,000 villagers joined them. In the summer, Sâr relocated his base 48 kilometres (30 mi) north to

7755-410: The Communist Party's control over Cambodia was kept secret. At a special National Congress meeting from 25 to 27 April, the Khmer Rouge agreed to make Sihanouk the nominal head of state , a status he retained throughout 1975. Sihanouk had been dividing his time between Beijing and Pyongyang but in September was allowed to return to Cambodia. Pol Pot was aware that if left abroad, Sihanouk could become

7920-469: The Constitution acknowledges the existence of the KPRAF and notes that its obligation is "to defend the fatherland and the revolutionary power, safeguard the revolutionary gains and the peaceful life of the people and join with the latter in national construction." The Constitution also imposes a reciprocal obligation on the people, declaring that it is their "supreme duty and honor" to "build and defend

8085-462: The Constitution omitted this key passage. Its omission provoked speculation about the true locus of authority over the KPRAF and fueled suspicions that the deletion could have been related to the relief, under murky circumstances, of then-chairman and armed forces head Pen Sovan. In 1987, however, supreme command of the KPRAF was vested once again in the chairmanship of the Council of State. The KPRAF

8250-500: The Constitution. Foremost were the duties to defend the nation from foreign aggression, to safeguard the gains of the Marxist revolution in Cambodia, and to ensure domestic security by engaging in combat against insurgents and against domestic foes as determined by the government and the party. In addition to the combat role that was part of their internal security responsibilities, the KPRAF also engaged in propaganda activity on behalf of

8415-617: The Democratic Party to win. Sihanouk feared a Democratic Party government and in March 1955 abdicated the throne in favor of his father, Norodom Suramarit . This allowed him to legally establish a political party, the Sangkum Reastr Niyum , with which to contest the election. The September election witnessed widespread voter intimidation and electoral fraud, resulting in Sangkum winning all 91 seats. Sihanouk's establishment of

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8580-731: The Ecole Technique in Russey Keo , in Phnom Penh's northern suburbs. This drop from an academic education to a vocational one likely came as a shock. His fellow students were generally of a lower class than those at the Lycée Sisowath, though they were not peasants. At the Ecole Technique, he met Ieng Sary , who became a close friend and later a member of his government. In summer 1949, Sâr passed his brevet and secured one of five scholarships allowing him to travel to France to study at one of its engineering schools. During

8745-833: The French Army in large numbers and the French government relented, rather than risk a costly, protracted war to retain control. In November, Sihanouk declared Cambodia's independence. The civil conflict then intensified, with France backing Sihanouk's war against the rebels. Following the Geneva Conference held to end the First Indochina War, Sihanouk secured an agreement from the North Vietnamese that they would withdraw Khmer Việt Minh forces from Cambodian territory. The last Khmer Việt Minh units left Cambodia for North Vietnam in October 1954. Sâr

8910-511: The General Staff was the second echelon concerned with defense and security matters in the PRK. It was one of the earliest KPRAF organs to be established and was already in place by mid-1979. In 1986 it was headed by a chief of general staff, with a secretariat and four deputies, all of whose responsibilities remained obscure. The General Staff exercised jurisdiction over the three components of

9075-443: The KPRAF developed its own military doctrine. Although not available in written form to Western observers, this doctrine could be inferred from the Constitution, from the circumstances in Cambodia, and from the dynamics of the Vietnamese military establishment which had acted as mentor and as role model for the KPRAF from its inception. In both the KPRAF and the Vietnamese army there was no doctrinal dichotomy between civilian society and

9240-409: The KPRAF itself becomes more entrenched as an institution of the PRK, or as stated at the outset, Vietnam, in its role of mentor to the armed forces of the Phnom Penh government, could keep a tight rein on the KPRAF and could forcibly prevent its polarization around internal factions. In the late 1980s, the KPRAF had several missions. Some were implicit in Cambodia's situation; others were prescribed in

9405-421: The KPRAF officer corps also militated against the rise of factionalism. As members of a comparatively small armed force, the officers were relatively few in number and were subject to a system of rotational assignments, which bred familiarity with a variety duties. The consequent personnel interchangeability presumably prevented the creation of warlord fiefs and the development of inordinate personal loyalties within

9570-654: The KPRAF, and there they could unload arms and supplies for the insurgents. In 1987 this threat was not decisive, but it had the potential to become so, if the network of obstacles and minefields emplaced on the Cambodian border proved to be an unexpectedly effective barrier in impeding the flow of Chinese supplies to the Khmer guerrillas. Along its northeastern and eastern borders with Laos and with Vietnam, Cambodia faced no noteworthy external security threat. As long as friendly communist governments remained in power in Vientiane, Phnom Penh, and Hanoi, their interests in protecting

9735-434: The KPRAF, cadres at all echelons over the years have been urged to spot capable military personnel with potential and to induct them quickly into the party. Such appeals hinted that for KPRAF members, the trial or waiting period for party acceptance was waived, and that even the act of joining may not have been completely voluntary. KPRP officials also sought to expand membership by junior officers and by KPRAF rank and file in

9900-763: The KPRAF, the four brigades were upgraded to infantry divisions, and two additional divisions were founded. In spite of such apparent progress in force development, however, all units remained chronically understrength, according to Western observers. In the mid-to-late-1980s, KPRAF authorities deployed much of their main force strength semipermanently in western Cambodia, and division headquarters were reported to have been established in Batdambang City, in Treng, and in Sisophon in Batdambang Province. There

10065-766: The KPRAF: the ground force (army), and the embryonic coastal/riverine naval force and air force. It probably oversaw administratively the country's military regions and certain specialized commands, such as the Signals and Special Warfare Command. It may have exercised operational control over some KPRAF tactical formations as well, especially those operating autonomously, apart from Vietnamese forces. The lines of authority delimiting General Staff responsibilities from Ministry of National Defense responsibilities appeared to be more blurred than in some contemporary armies. This may not have caused jurisdictional disputes, however, because, with

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10230-454: The Kampong Thom monastery. Despite his family's relatively prosperous origins, in an interview with Yugoslav television in 1977, Pol Pot claimed that he was born into a "poor, peasant family". At the time, Cambodia was a monarchy but the French colonial regime held effective political control of the country. Sâr's family had connections to the Cambodian royalty: his cousin Meak was a consort of King Sisowath Monivong and later worked as

10395-439: The Khmer Rouge and its Vietnamese Marxist allies were becoming strained and some violent clashes had broken out. That year, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong main-force divisions began pulling out of Cambodia primarily for the offensive against Saigon. As it became more dominant, the CPK imposed increasing numbers of controls over Vietnamese troops active in Cambodia. In 1972, Pol Pot suggested that Sihanouk leave Beijing and tour

10560-455: The Khmer Rouge and the North Vietnamese remained strained. After the latter temporarily reduced the flow of arms to the Khmer Rouge, in July 1973 the CPK Central Committee agreed that the North Vietnamese should be considered "a friend with a conflict". Pol Pot ordered the internment of many of the Khmer Rouge who had spent time in North Vietnam and were considered too sympathetic to them. Most of these people were later executed. In summer 1973,

10725-423: The Khmer Rouge greater control over the food supply, ensuring that farmers did not provision government forces. Many villagers resented the collectivisation and slaughtered their livestock to prevent it from becoming collective property. Over the following six months, about 60,000 Cambodians fled from areas under Khmer Rouge control. The Khmer Rouge introduced conscription to bolster its forces. Relations between

10890-468: The Khmer Rouge launched its first major assault on Phnom Penh, but was forced back amid heavy losses. Later that year, it began bombarding the city with artillery. In the autumn, Pol Pot traveled to a base at Chrok Sdêch on the eastern foothills of the Cardamom Mountains . By winter, he was back at the Chinit Riber base where he conferred with Sary and Chea. He concluded that the Khmer Rouge should start talking openly about its commitment to making Cambodia

11055-435: The Khmer Rouge to overthrow Lon Nol's right-wing government. Sihanouk agreed. On Zhou Enlai 's advice, Sâr also agreed, although his dominant role in the CPK was concealed from Sihanouk. Sihanouk then formed his own government-in-exile in Beijing and launched the National United Front of Kampuchea to rally Lon Nol's opponents. Sihanouk's support for the Khmer Rouge helped greatly in recruitment, with Khmer Rouge undergoing

11220-445: The Khmer Rouge's advance and were considered to be traitors. Shortly after taking the city, the Khmer Rouge announced that its inhabitants had to evacuate to escape a forthcoming US bombing raid; the group falsely claimed that the population would be allowed to return after three days. This evacuation entailed moving over 2.5 million people out of the city with very little preparation; between 15,000 and 20,000 of these were removed from

11385-464: The PRK. The KPRAF probably was also subject to other doctrinal influences from the military establishments of Vietnam and, ultimately, the Soviet Union, which maintained a substantial advisory presence with the Vietnamese armed forces and a smaller one with the KPRAF. The relevance of the military doctrine of the large armies of the Soviet Union and of Vietnam to the small, questionably trained and equipped KPRAF remained speculative, however, especially in

11550-573: The People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN—see Appendix B). In the mid-1980s they were renumbered to present, at least, the illusion, of their autonomy from the Vietnamese armed forces. Little was known conclusively about the functions of the military regions, especially about the operational control exercised by their headquarters over KPRAF tactical units and missions. It was possible that their responsibilities were restricted to administrative tasks, such as conscription, training, economic production, and coordination with Vietnamese military units and advisers. Below

11715-436: The People's Revolutionary Youth Union of Kampuchea (PRYUK—see Appendix B). As the party's mass organization to which all young people could belong, the PRYUK was in a strong institutional position to accept all applicants, and it could make deeper inroads into the KPRAF than the more elitist party. In an exhortatory message in early 1987, defense officials proudly noted the existence of PRYUK "structures" in more than 80 percent of

11880-417: The Phnom Penh government a certain degree of urgency in regard to developing an effective force. The establishment of a legal and a bureaucratic structure for the armed forces was concurrent with the founding of the KPRAF. The legal basis was found in the Constitution of the PRK, which went through several versions before being adopted by the National Assembly in 1981 (see The Constitution, ch. 4). Article 9 of

12045-428: The Phnom Penh government. They were capable, however, of keeping Cambodia in a permanent state of insecurity; they raised the cost to Hanoi of its large military presence in the country; and, backed by China, they offered a persistent obstacle to the coalescence of an Hanoi-dominated Indochinese federation. In addition to the Khmer insurgents in Cambodia itself, the KPRAF and the Phnom Penh government felt that they faced

12210-445: The Sangkum government, called new elections, and produced a list of 34 left-leaning Cambodians, demanding that they meet him to establish a new administration. Sâr was on the list, perhaps because of his role as a teacher, but refused to meet with Sihanouk. He and Ieng Sary left Phnom Penh for a Viet Cong encampment near Thboung Khmum in the jungle along Cambodia's border with South Vietnam. According to Chandler, "from this point on he

12375-531: The South Vietnamese side of the border. The Viet Cong allowed his actions to be officially separate from its own, but still wielded significant control over his camp. At a plenum of the party's Central Committee, it was agreed that they should re-emphasize their independence from Vietnamese control and endorse armed struggle against Sihanouk. The Central Committee met again in January 1965 to denounce

12540-417: The South Vietnamese supported a failed coup against Sihanouk, relations between the countries deteriorated and the United States initiated an economic blockade of Cambodia in 1956. After Sihanouk's father died in 1960, Sihanouk introduced a constitutional amendment allowing himself to become head of state for life. In February 1962, anti-government student protests turned into riots, at which Sihanouk dismissed

12705-564: The South-Western and Eastern Zones. You have a lot of experience. It's better than ours. We don't have the right to criticise you   ... Basically you are right. Have you made mistakes or not? I don't know. Certainly you have. So rectify yourselves; do rectification !   ... The road is tortuous. — Mao's advice to Pol Pot, 1975 In May, Pol Pot adopted the Silver Pagoda as his main residence. He then relocated to

12870-566: The Thai and South Vietnamese governments in allying with the anti-communist United States . Sâr rented a house in the Boeng Keng Kang area of Phnom Penh. Although not qualified to teach at a state school, he gained employment teaching history, geography, French literature, and morals at a private school, the Chamraon Vichea ("Progressive Knowledge"); his pupils, who included the later novelist Soth Polin , described him as

13035-412: The Thai border — through large-scale operations supported by indirect fire — in the dry season offensive of 1984 and 1985, may have unwittingly imparted to their Cambodian understudies a predilection for this tactical doctrine. Cambodia was divided geographically into four KPRAF military regions (see fig. 15). These regions originally bore numbers assigned by the Vietnamese to conform to the system used by

13200-561: The Viet Cong, nevertheless invaded Cambodia to attack Lon Nol's forces; in turn, South Vietnam and the United States sent troops to the country to bolster his government. This pulled Cambodia into the Second Indochina War already raging across Vietnam. The U.S. dropped three times as many bombs on Cambodia during the conflict as they had on Japan during World War II. Although targeting Viet Cong and Khmer Rouge encampments,

13365-413: The Vietnamese army was not to have to shoulder indefinitely its internal security mission in Cambodia, it would need to develop a Khmer military force that could be put in place as a surrogate for Vietnamese troops. Raising such an indigenous force presented no insurmountable obstacle for Hanoi at the time because several precedents already had been established. In Laos, the Vietnamese armed forces maintained

13530-678: The Việt Minh and thus the international movement made it the best group for the Cercle Marxiste to support. The Cercle members in Paris took his recommendation. In August 1953, Sâr and Rath Samoeun travelled to Krabao, the headquarters of the Việt Minh Eastern Zone. Over the following nine months, around 12 other Cercle members joined them there. They found that the Khmer Việt Minh was run and numerically dominated by Vietnamese guerrillas, with Khmer recruits largely given menial tasks; Sâr

13695-538: The age of 18. He continued to visit Meak at the king's palace, and it was there that he had some of his earliest sexual experiences with some of the king's concubines. While Sâr was at the school, King Monivong died. In 1941, the French authorities appointed Norodom Sihanouk as his replacement. A new junior middle school, the Collége Pream Sihanouk, was established in Kampong Cham, and Sâr

13860-410: The anti-Vietnamese insurgents, which had policies of welcoming KRAF defectors. If they exercised this option, they had an additional choice: they could join the communist NADK, the nationalist KPNLAF, or the royalist ANS. For the armed forces of the Phnom Penh government, this range of options meant that those personnel who remained in the KPRAF did so voluntarily because of common purpose and loyalty to

14025-413: The areas of Cambodia under CPK control. When Sihanouk did so, he met with senior CPK figures, including Pol Pot, although the latter's identity was concealed from the king. In May 1973, Pol Pot ordered the collectivisation of villages in territory that the Khmer Rouge controlled. This move was both ideological, in that it built a socialist society void of private property, and tactical, in that it allowed

14190-584: The armed forces also was exercised by the assignment of senior officers to top-echelon military and party positions with, for example, key Ministry of National Defense or General Staff officers also serving on the KPRP Central Committee. At the national level, supervision of party work in the armed forces was entrusted to the General Political Department of the Ministry of National Defense. Incomplete evidence suggested

14355-516: The armed forces, and they acknowledged a debt of gratitude to the mass organization for occupying the forefront of a national effort to induce Khmer youth to serve in the KPRAF. When considering the dynamics of the KPRAF, the possibility of factionalism should at least be considered. In some armies, this factionalism may take the form of interservice rivalry, of the coalescence of groups around certain leaders, or of shared commonalities, such as military schooling, unit affiliation, or combat experience. In

14520-422: The battalions were reorganized into four brigades, each one posted to one of the four Cambodian provinces of Battambang , Siem Reap - Oddar Meanchey , Kampong Speu , and Kampong Cham . In these areas the brigades performed static defense tasks and they occasionally participated with Vietnamese forces in joint operations against the insurgents. As conscription and voluntary enlistments brought more personnel into

14685-405: The bombing primarily affected civilians. This helped fuel recruitment to the Khmer Rouge, which had an estimated 12,000 regular soldiers at the end of 1970 and four times that number by 1972. In June 1970, Sâr left Vietnam and reached his K-5 base. In July he headed south; it was at this point that he began referring to himself as "Pol", a name he later lengthened to "Pol Pot". By September, he

14850-418: The case of the KPRAF, it is unlikely that such factionalism existed. Vietnamese advisers, for example, present at all KPRAF echelons, would have detected such activity at an early stage and would have suppressed it promptly, because it would have detracted from the building of an effective Khmer fighting force, which it was the Vietnamese army's mission to develop. Interservice rivalry also could be dismissed as

15015-429: The city's hospitals and forced to march. Checkpoints were erected along the roads out of the city where Khmer Rouge cadres searched marchers and removed many of their belongings. The march took place in the hottest month of the year and an estimated 20,000 people died along the route. For the Khmer Rouge, emptying Phnom Penh was considered as demolishing not just capitalism in Cambodia, but also Sihanouk's power base and

15180-473: The city's tallest structure, the 1960s-built Bank Buildings, which became known as "K1". Several other senior government figures—Nuon Chea, Sary, and Vorn Vet—also lived there. Pol Pot's wife, whose schizophrenia had worsened, was sent to live in a house in Boeung Keng Kâng . Later in 1975, Pol Pot also took Ponnary's old family home in the rue Docteur Hahn as a residence, and subsequently also took

15345-560: The counterinsurgency environment of Cambodia. Soviet advisers, directly or through Vietnamese counterparts, may have relayed their experiences in Afghanistan and they may have advised on measures for countering Chinese or Western equipment and weapons, on methods of controlling or suborning the population, and on means of employing weapons and weapons systems—such as artillery, helicopters, and land mines. Vietnamese advisers, focusing on their army's neutralization of insurgent base camps on

15510-461: The country were with Ieng Sary, who had joined him there, Thiounn Mumm and Keng Vannsak . He was a member of Vannsak's discussion circle, whose ideologically diverse membership discussed ways to achieve Cambodian independence. In Paris, Ieng Sary and two others established the Cercle Marxiste ("Marxist Circle"), an organisation arranged in a clandestine cell system . The cells met to read Marxist texts and hold self-criticism sessions. Sâr joined

15675-452: The disputed Wai Island , Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, and Ieng Sary travelled secretly to Hanoi in May, where they proposed a Friendship Treaty between the two countries. In the short term, this successfully eased tensions. After Hanoi, Pol Pot proceeded to Beijing, again in secret. There he met with Mao and then Deng. Although communication with Mao was hindered by the reliance on translators, Mao warned

15840-404: The downfall of the Khmer Rouge, two reasons for the necessity of such forces became apparent to the PRK's Vietnamese mentors when they installed the new Cambodian government in early 1979. First, if the new administration in Phnom Penh was to project internationally the image of being a legitimate sovereign state, it would need a national army of its own apart from the Vietnamese forces. Second, if

16005-609: The end of 1972, all families living in the Marxist-controlled areas possessed an equal amount of land. The poorest strata of Cambodian society benefited from these reforms. From 1972, the Khmer Rouge began trying to refashion all of Cambodia in the image of the poor peasantry, whose rural, isolated, and self-sufficient lives were regarded as worthy of emulation. As of May 1972, the group began ordering all of those living under its control to dress like poor peasants, with black clothes, red-and-white krama scarves, and sandals made from car tyres. These restrictions were initially imposed on

16170-506: The existence of factions in the KPRAF, the case is not entirely one-sided. It could be noted, after all, that Cambodia since 1970 has been subjected to cataclysmic events that have produced deep cleavages within Khmer society and that may well have been reflected in the armed forces themselves. In the KPRAF, even among personnel who had chosen not to join the insurgents, it was possible to note a variety of backgrounds; there were ex-Khmer Rouge turncoats, Vietnamese supporters, former royalists, and

16335-481: The fatherland", and that all citizens without respect to gender "must serve in the armed forces as prescribed by law". In an early draft, the Constitution had specified that the chairman of the Council of State was concurrently the supreme commander of the armed forces and the chairman of the National Defense Council. In a curious deviation from the initial draft, however, the definitive version of

16500-484: The former Finance Ministry building. The party leadership soon held a meeting at the Silver Pagoda , where they agreed that raising agricultural production should be their government's top priority. Pol Pot declared that "agriculture is key both to nation-building and to national defence"; he believed that unless Cambodia could develop swiftly then it would be vulnerable to Vietnamese domination, as it had been in

16665-452: The full-rights members, the candidates, and the depositees. The full-rights members, most of whom were poor or lower-middle peasants, were entitled to full rations, and able to hold political posts in the co-operatives and join both the army and the Communist Party. Candidates could still hold low-level administrative positions. The application of this tripartite system was uneven and it was introduced to different areas at different times. On

16830-551: The genocide, toppling the Khmer Rouge and establishing a new Cambodian government . Born to a prosperous farmer in Prek Sbauv , French Cambodia , Pol Pot was educated at some of Cambodia's most elite schools. Arriving in Paris in October 1949 on an academic scholarship, he later joined the French Communist Party in 1951 while studying at École française de radioélectricité . Returning to Cambodia in 1953, he involved himself in

16995-541: The government, performed various civic action tasks, and participated in economic production. Because of the poverty of the country, and because the defense budget was not sufficient to meet KPRAF's needs, the KPRAF had to help pay its own way by generating income. In the 1980s, its efforts were limited to growing vegetables and raising poultry and livestock for military use, but, in the future, they could include manufacturing commodities and processing raw materials in military-owned factories. To accomplish its combat missions,

17160-435: The ground, the basic societal division remained between the "base" people and the "new" people. It was never Pol Pot and the party's intention to exterminate all "new" people although the latter were usually treated harshly and this led some commentators to believe extermination was the government's desire. Pol Pot instead wanted to double or triple the country's population, hoping it could reach between 15 and 20 million within

17325-618: The headquarters of Prince Norodom Chantaraingsey —the leader of one faction—in Trapeng Kroloeung , before moving to Phnom Penh, where he met with fellow Cercle member Ping Say to discuss the situation. Sâr regarded the Khmer Việt Minh , a mixed Vietnamese and Cambodian guerrilla subgroup of the North Vietnam-based Việt Minh, as the most promising resistance group. He believed the Khmer Việt Minh's relationship to

17490-480: The height of global communism's impact, Pol Pot proved to be divisive to the international communist movement. Many claimed that he deviated from orthodox Marxism–Leninism, but China and the US supported his government as a bulwark against Soviet influence in Southeast Asia . He was widely denounced internationally for his role in the Cambodian genocide and he was also regarded as a totalitarian dictator who

17655-448: The institution or the regime. Although in the short term this dynamic may have had a purgative effect on the KPRAF, ensuring its ideological purity, it was based on Khmer acquiescence to the continued Vietnamese domination of the PRK and of its armed forces. Whether or not continued acceptance of this domination would long prevail in the face of Khmer nationalism among military personnel remained debatable. Although logic might argue against

17820-513: The insurgents at bay. Pol Pot Pol Pot (born Saloth Sâr ; 19 May 1925 – 15 April 1998) was a Cambodian communist revolutionary , politician and dictator who ruled Cambodia as Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea between 1976 and 1979. Ideologically a Maoist and a Khmer ethnonationalist , he was a leading member of Cambodia’s communist movement the Khmer Rouge , from 1963 to 1997. He served as General Secretary of

17985-436: The insurgents continued to be unable to mass large units. In the performance of their political mission, the provincial forces were expected by the government to play an important role because they were closer to the people than were the regular forces. This role included both propaganda work and psychological warfare. The third echelon in the KPRAF consisted of the village militia, or local forces. This armed force originated in

18150-431: The insurgents used for rest and recuperation. The Thai Army, however, was neither massed nor deployed in an especially threatening posture along the border with Cambodia; moreover, the resistance that the Thai could have offered to a hypothetical Vietnamese offensive into Thailand was the subject of legitimate speculation. Phnom Penh's denunciations of alleged Thai bellicosity were made with such regularity, however, that it

18315-434: The intervention of the KPRAF or of Vietnamese main forces. The capability of the KPRAF to meet the threats, real or perceived, arrayed against it in 1987 was open to question. Western observers, in consensus, rated the forces of the Phnom Penh government as generally ineffectual, possessed of only a limited capability for any combat mission. In their view, the KPRAF was overstretched and understaffed and could neither cope with

18480-427: The inviolability of their common frontiers converged. In spite of this, however, government control in the upland border areas of all three states probably was tenuous, and insurgent (or bandit) groups, if not too large, could pass back and forth unhindered. The security threat posed by such bands was vexatious but minor, and, in the case of Cambodia, it could probably be contained by the provincial units without requiring

18645-470: The journey, he contracted malaria and required a respite in a Viet Cong medical base near Mount Ngork. By December, plans for armed conflict were complete, with the war to begin in the North-West Zone and then spread to other regions. As communication across Cambodia was slow, each Zone would have to operate independently much of the time. In January 1968, the war was launched with an attack on

18810-495: The latter's wife and child. That year, he began an education at a Roman Catholic primary school, the École Miche, with Meak paying the tuition fees. Most of his classmates were the children of French bureaucrats and Catholic Vietnamese . He became literate in French and familiar with Christianity . Sâr was not academically gifted and was held back two years, receiving his Certificat d'Etudes Primaires Complémentaires in 1943 at

18975-528: The level of military region headquarters, the KPRAF was composed of three types of units: main or regular forces, provincial or regional forces, and village militia or local forces. Official strength figures were lacking in 1987, but the main and provincial forces together may have numbered more than 40,000 troops. It was the intention of the KPRAF's Vietnamese mentors to build a reliable Khmer force of between 30,000 and 50,000 personnel, presumably by about 1990, by which date Vietnamese units were to be withdrawn. In

19140-412: The mid-to-late 1980s, KPRAF regular or main force units consisted of seven understrength infantry divisions, several independent infantry brigades and regiments, as many as four tank battalions, and combat support formations, such as engineer battalions. The forerunners of all these units were several Khmer battalions raised by Hanoi in 1978 as it prepared for the invasion of Cambodia. In approximately 1980,

19305-466: The military establishment as there is in most Western nations. Everyone was potentially a member of the armed forces; in Cambodia as in Vietnam, there were total mobilization of the population and total dedication of whatever resources the nation could muster in order to achieve the military goals the government or the party wished to formulate. The total involvement of the Cambodian population in warfare

19470-450: The military establishment. As is true of the military elite in other small, undeveloped countries, KPRAF officers were personally known to one another, and they were thoroughly acquainted with one another's family and political antecedents. This network of personal and family relationships, always important in Asia, may have fostered a spirit of cooperation rather than competitiveness; moreover,

19635-424: The minister of national defense was assisted by four deputies who oversaw, in 1987, the work of at least nine departments (see fig. 14). The incomplete evidence available in 1987 suggested that functions such as administration, operations, and logistics, normally reserved for general staff sections in some armed forces, were carried out at the Ministry of National Defense level. Below the Ministry of National Defense,

19800-611: The more mountainous Naga's Tail, to avoid encroaching government troops. At this base, called K-5, he increased his dominance over the party and had his own separate encampment, staff, and guards. No outsider was allowed to meet him without an escort. He took over from Sary as the Secretary of the North East Zone. In November 1969, Sâr trekked to Hanoi to persuade the North Vietnamese government to provide direct military assistance. They refused, urging him to revert to

19965-410: The movement, whose membership had halved since the end of the civil war. Links with the North Vietnamese communists declined, something Sâr later portrayed as a good thing as "it gave us the chance to be independent and develop ourselves". He and other members increasingly regarded Cambodians as too deferential to their Vietnamese counterparts; to deal with this, Sâr, Tou Samouth, and Nuon Chea drafted

20130-503: The name Saloth Phem, was a prosperous farmer who owned nine hectares of rice land and several draft cattle. Loth's house was one of the largest in the village and at transplanting and harvest time he hired poorer neighbors to carry out much of the agricultural labour. Sâr's mother, Sok Nem, was locally respected as a pious Buddhist. Sâr was the eighth of nine children (two girls and seven boys), three of whom died young. They were raised as Theravada Buddhists , and on festivals travelled to

20295-456: The name of the "People's Republic of Kampuchea" had been officially changed to "State of Cambodia" (SOC), the KPRAF were renamed the "Cambodian People's Armed Forces" (CPAF). Following the 1993 elections the CPAF were absorbed into a new national army of Royalist, Nationalist and CPAF troops. The Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Armed Forces (KPRAF) constituted the regular forces of the pro- Hanoi People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK). Soon after

20460-620: The ongoing Vietnam War and thus did not want Sâr's forces to destabilize Sihanouk's government; the latter's anti-American stance rendered him a de facto ally. In Hanoi, Sâr read through the archives of the Workers' Party of Vietnam , concluding that the Vietnamese Communists were committed to pursuing an Indochinese Federation and that their interests were therefore incompatible with Cambodia's. In November 1965, Saloth Sâr flew from Hanoi to Beijing , where his official host

20625-432: The party largely moribund. In July, Samouth was arrested, tortured and killed. Nuon Chea had also stepped back from his political activities, leaving open Sâr's path to become party leader. As well as facing leftist opposition, Sihanouk's government faced hostility from right-wing opposition centred on Sihanouk's former Minister of State, Sam Sary , who was backed by the United States, Thailand and South Vietnam. After

20790-515: The past. Their goal was to reach 70 to 80% farm mechanisation in five to ten years, and a modern industrial base in fifteen to twenty years. As part of this project, Pol Pot saw it as imperative that they develop means of ensuring that the farming population worked harder than before. The Khmer Rouge wanted to establish Cambodia as a self-sufficient state. They did not reject foreign assistance altogether, although they regarded it as pernicious. While China supplied them with substantial food aid, this

20955-456: The paucity of military leadership, key officers sometimes served concurrently in both bodies. Control of the KPRAF military establishment and its adherence to the political orthodoxy of the Kampuchea (or Khmer) People's Revolutionary Party (KPRP) were ensured by a party network, superimposed upon the national defense structure, that extended downward to units at all echelons. Party control of

21120-433: The presence, among the country's regional military commands, of political officers with small staffs or commissions at their disposal. Logically, such officers would have kept in close contact and would have coordinated party activities in their military jurisdictions with their counterparts in KPRAF tactical units and on party provincial committees. During the 1980s, party activity in the KPRAF focused on building support for

21285-607: The provincial committee of the mass organization of the KPRP, the Kampuchea (or Khmer) United Front for National Construction and Defense (KUFNCD—see Appendix B). The KUFNCD coordinated military affairs with the corresponding party and government committees at each organizational level. It was assumed, although unproved, that the provincial forces, irrespective of intervening committees, kept in close touch with KPRAF main force units and headquarters, and with Vietnamese military garrisons in

21450-796: The provincial forces were merely adjuncts of the Vietnamese occupation forces; they were untrained, and they had few capabilities beyond those needed to provide rudimentary passive defense to their provincial or district administrations. In 1987 little authoritative information was available on the deployment and the total strength of the Cambodian provincial forces. If the KPRAF followed the examples of its Vietnamese and Laotian counterparts, however, troops for provincial units were raised from among local residents and were deployed exclusively in their home provinces. Such practices may have given these forces an edge, in recruitment and in morale, over their main force counterparts because village youths generally preferred to serve their military obligation closer to home. In

21615-560: The rural peasantry, a far larger class in Cambodian society. By 1965, the party regarded Cambodia's small proletariat as full of "enemy agents" and systematically refused them membership. The party's main area of growth was in the rural provinces and by 1965 membership was at 2000. In April 1965, Sâr travelled by foot along the Ho Chi Minh Trail to Hanoi to meet North Vietnamese government figures, among them Ho Chi Minh and Lê Duẩn . The North Vietnamese were preoccupied with

21780-415: The same black clothing. Repeated purges of the CPK generated growing discontent; by 1978 Cambodian soldiers were mounting a rebellion in the east. After several years of violent incursions by the Khmer Rouge on Vietnamese territory resulting in massacres, Vietnam invaded Cambodia in December 1978. By January 1979, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge had been toppled, the surviving Khmer Rouge members retreated to

21945-404: The same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title CPAF . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=CPAF&oldid=515370114 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description

22110-406: The scattered jungles near the Thai border, from where they continued to fight and raid, but were severely weakened and were hunted down by Vietnamese soldiers until their withdrawal in 1989. In declining health, Pol Pot stepped back from many of his roles in the movement. In 1998, the Khmer Rouge commander Ta Mok placed Pol Pot under house arrest and shortly afterward, Pol Pot died. Taking power at

22275-465: The side of the peasantry. At a meeting, the Cercle decided to send someone to Cambodia to assess the situation and determine which rebel group they should support; Sâr volunteered for the role. His decision to leave may also have been because he had failed his second-year exams two years in a row and thus lost his scholarship. In December, he boarded the SS Jamaïque , returning to Cambodia without

22440-484: The space of a few years, of a credible force under such circumstances would have been a daunting task for any government, let alone one so deprived of resources and of leadership and so dependent upon external support. The most conclusive analysis that could be made about the KPRAF was that Hanoi had laid the foundation for an indigenous Cambodian military force and, by its recurrent insistence that Vietnamese units would be withdrawn by 1990, may have imparted to its clients in

22605-462: The spy network of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). This dismantling facilitated Khmer Rouge dominance over the country and enabled driving the urban population toward agricultural production. On 20 April 1975, three days after Phnom Penh fell, Pol Pot secretly arrived in the abandoned city. Along with other Khmer Rouge leaders, he based himself in the railway station, which was easy to defend. In early May, they moved their headquarters to

22770-486: The sustained guerrilla activity of the CGDK insurgents, nor prevent their infiltration into Cambodia from Thailand, nor patrol the country's extended coastline. In the face of such limitations, it was necessary to acknowledge, nevertheless, that the KPRAF had been built literally from nothing in a war-torn and devastated country, the population of which had been decimated previously by a brutal dictatorship. The establishment in

22935-451: The three forces was impossible to gauge with any precision; it may possibly have reached between 55,000 and 75,000 combatants, but it could have been considerably less than that figure. The insurgent forces were incapable of mounting a sustained offensive and of massing for any tactical operation beyond sporadic patrols in companies, because they could not overcome their destructive factional rivalries. Least of all were they able to bring down

23100-623: The ubiquity—the perhaps even suffocating presence—of Vietnamese military advisers also may have been sufficient inducement for Khmer personnel to submerge whatever differences existed among them. The final factor that may have inhibited the rise of factions within the KPRAF was the range of options available to its dissident officers and to its enlisted troops. Unlike the armed forces in other Third World countries, where disaffected military personnel had little choice but to plot coups or to swallow their resentments, KPRAF personnel could (and many did) simply walk away from their military commitments and join

23265-416: The vicinity. The provincial forces had two missions, military and political. In the performance of the former, some Western analysts hypothesized that the provincial units at last might have broken their dependency on their Vietnamese military mentors and have learned to operate by themselves. This premise might hold true if the provincial forces were deployed only in their home provinces, as suspected, and if

23430-433: The younger Cambodian against uncritically imitating the path to socialism pursued by China or any other country, and advised him to avoid repeating the drastic measures that the Khmer Rouge had imposed before. In China, Pol Pot also received medical treatment for his malaria and gastric ailments. Pol Pot then travelled to North Korea, meeting with Kim Il Sung . In mid-July he returned to Cambodia, and spent August touring

23595-702: Was Deng Xiaoping , although most of his meetings were with Peng Zhen . Sâr gained a sympathetic hearing from many in the governing Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—especially Chen Boda , Zhang Chunqiao and Kang Sheng —who shared his negative view of Khrushchev amid the Sino-Soviet split . CCP officials also trained him on topics like dictatorship of the proletariat , class struggles and political purge . In Beijing, Sâr witnessed China's ongoing Cultural Revolution , influencing his later policies. Sâr left Beijing in February 1966, and flew back to Hanoi before

23760-551: Was a full-time revolutionary". Conditions at the Viet Cong camp were basic and food scarce. As Sihanouk's government cracked down on the movement in Phnom Penh, growing numbers of its members fled to join Sâr at his jungle base. In February 1963, at the party's second conference, held in a central Phnom Penh apartment, Sâr was elected party secretary, but soon fled into the jungle to avoid repression by Sihanouk's government. In early 1964, Sâr established his own encampment, Office 100, on

23925-561: Was agreed that they would move their headquarters in Ratanakiri Province , away from the Viet Cong, and that—despite the views of the North Vietnamese—they would command each of the party's zone committees to prepare for the relaunch of armed struggle. North Vietnam refused to assist in this, rejecting their requests for weaponry. In November 1967, Sâr travelled from Tay Ninh to base Office 102 near Kang Lêng. During

24090-500: Was answerable to two organizations below the Council of State, namely, the Ministry of National Defense and the General Staff. The minister of national defense, a position established sometime in 1979, was a member of the Council of Ministers, the executive body empowered by the Constitution "to consolidate and develop the national defense forces; to carry out the mobilization of the armed forces; to order curfews and take other necessary measures for national defense." To carry out his duties,

24255-557: Was based at a camp on the border of Kratie and Kompong Thom , where he convened a meeting of the CPK Standing Committee. Although few senior members could attend, it issued a resolution setting out the principle of "independence-mastery", the idea that Cambodia must be self-reliant and fully independent of other countries. In November, Pol Pot, Ponnary, and their entourage relocated to the K-1 base at Dângkda. His residence

24420-526: Was beset by ethnic tensions between the Khmer and Vietnamese. News of the group was censored from the press, and it is unlikely Sâr was aware of it. Access to further education abroad made Sâr part of a tiny elite in Cambodia. He and the 21 other selected students sailed from Saigon aboard the SS Jamaïque , stopping at Singapore , Colombo , and Djibouti en route to Marseille . Sâr arrived in Paris on 1 October 1949. In January 1950, Sâr enrolled at

24585-420: Was carefully shielded from the scrutiny of outsiders, and much that could be concluded about the armed forces of the PRK was based on analysis rather than incontrovertible hard data. The major impetus for the establishment of the KPRAF was the security threat faced by the government in Phnom Penh. Internally this threat consisted of the armed insurgents belonging to the three CGDK components. The total strength of

24750-423: Was enshrined doctrinally in the constitutional statement that "the people as a whole participate in national defense." Because of the security imperatives faced by the Phnom Penh government in fighting a persistent insurgency, virtually the entire able-bodied population was organized into various military and paramilitary bodies. This doctrinal concept worked well defensively when patriotism could be invoked to rally

24915-639: Was formed initially from militias, former Khmer Rouge members, and conscripts. Most of them were trained and supplied by the Vietnam People's Army . But due to a lack of training, weapons and mass desertions, the KPRAF was not an effective fighting force. Hence the bulk of the fighting against the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (CGDK) forces, of which the Khmer Rouge (renamed the National Army of Democratic Kampuchea )

25080-535: Was guilty of crimes against humanity . Pol Pot was born in the village of Prek Sbauv , outside the city of Kampong Thom . He was named Saloth Sâr, the word sâr ("white, pale") referencing his comparatively light skin complexion. French colonial records placed his birth date on 25 May 1928, but biographer Philip Short argues he was born in March 1925. His family was of mixed Chinese and ethnic Khmer heritage, but did not speak Chinese and lived as though they were fully Khmer. His father Loth, who later took

25245-455: Was held at this base, bringing together 27 delegates to discuss the war. During 1971, Pol Pot and the other senior party members focused on the construction of a regular Khmer Rouge army and administration that could take a central role when the Vietnamese withdrew. Membership of the party was made more selective, permitting only those regarded as "poor peasants", not those seen as "middle peasants" or students. In July and August, Pol Pot oversaw

25410-416: Was later renamed the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). To avoid state repression, in 1962 he relocated to a jungle encampment and in 1963 became the CPK's leader. In 1968, he relaunched the war against Sihanouk's government. After Lon Nol ousted Sihanouk in a 1970 coup , Pol Pot's forces sided with the deposed leader against the new government , which was bolstered by the United States military. Aided by

25575-435: Was little agreement among observers on unit designations or on the movements of main force units below division level within Cambodia, or on the extent to which such Khmer units were able to operate independently of Vietnamese forces. To extend the government presence to the districts, some provincial units were broken down into platoons or squads and were dispatched to accompany newly appointed district officials. At this time,

25740-496: Was not among them, deciding to remain in Cambodia; he trekked, via South Vietnam , to Prey Veng to reach Phnom Penh. He and other Cambodian revolutionaries decided to pursue their aims through electoral means. Cambodia's communists wanted to operate clandestinely but also established a socialist party, Pracheachon , to serve as a front organization through which they could compete in the 1955 election. Although Pracheachon had strong support in some areas, most observers expected

25905-590: Was not publicly acknowledged. Shortly after the taking of Phnom Penh, Ieng Sary travelled to Beijing, negotiating the provision of 13,300 tons of Chinese weaponry to Cambodia. At the National Congress meeting in April, the Khmer Rouge declared that it would not permit any foreign military bases on Cambodian soil, a threat to Vietnam, which still had 20,000 troops in Cambodia. To quell tensions arising from recent territorial clashes with Vietnamese soldiers over

26070-628: Was one of 18 Cambodian students who joined French counterparts in traveling to the FPR Yugoslavia to volunteer in a labour battalion building a motorway in Zagreb . He returned to Yugoslavia the following year for a camping holiday. Sâr made little or no attempt to assimilate into French culture and was never completely at ease in the French language. He nevertheless became familiar with French literature; one of his favorite authors being Jean-Jacques Rousseau . His most significant friendships in

26235-458: Was possible that the KPRAF (and the PRK) stood in some danger of being the victims of their own propaganda concerning Bangkok's aggressive intentions. A lesser, but nevertheless real, threat was posed by the possibility of unauthorized landings along Cambodia's irregular and unprotected coastline. Chinese vessels could exploit this vulnerability by putting in at secluded coves and inlets uncontrolled by

26400-481: Was selected as a boarder at the institution in 1942. This level of education afforded him a privileged position in Cambodian society. He learned to play the violin and took part in school plays. Much of his spare time was spent playing football (soccer) and basketball . Several fellow pupils, among them Hu Nim and Khieu Samphan , later served in his government. During the new year vacation in 1945, Sâr and several friends from his college theatre troupe went on

26565-460: Was set up on the northern side of the Chinit river; entry was strictly controlled. By the end of the year, Marxist forces had a presence in over half of Cambodia; the Khmer Rouge played a restricted role in this, for throughout 1971 and 1972, the majority of fighting against Lon Nol was carried out by Vietnamese or by Cambodians under Vietnamese control. In January 1971, a Central Committee meeting

26730-438: Was stamped out, gambling was banned, and alcohol and extramarital affairs were discouraged. From 1970 to 1971, the Khmer Rouge had generally sought to cultivate good relations with the inhabitants, organising local elections and assemblies. Some people regarded as hostile to the movement were executed, although this was uncommon. Private motor transport was requisitioned. Wealthier peasants had their land redistributed so that by

26895-460: Was tasked with growing cassava and working in the canteen. At Krabao, he gained a rudimentary grasp of Vietnamese , and rose to become secretary and aide to Tou Samouth , the Secretary of the Khmer Việt Minh's Eastern Zone. Sihanouk desired independence from French rule, but after France refused his requests he called for public resistance to its administration in June 1953. Khmer troops deserted

27060-499: Was the basis of a communist society . In Cambodia, growing internal strife resulted in King Sihanouk dismissing the government and declaring himself prime minister. In response, Sâr wrote an article, "Monarchy or Democracy?", published in the student magazine Khmer Nisut under the pseudonym "Khmer daom" ("Original Khmer"). In it, he referred positively to Buddhism , portraying Buddhist monks as an anti-monarchist force on

27225-474: Was the main threat, was left to the Vietnamese armed forces occupying the country. Following the Vietnamese withdrawal in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union , the KPRAF were unable to continue their modest efforts against the CGDK and this in part convinced the Cambodian government to turn to the negotiating table. In 1989 began the transition that culminated in the 1991 Paris Peace Agreement. After

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