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231-599: The Cambodian genocide was the systematic persecution and killing of Cambodian citizens by the Khmer Rouge under the leadership of Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea , Pol Pot . It resulted in the deaths of 1.5 to 2 million people from 1975 to 1979, nearly 25% of Cambodia's population in 1975 ( c. 7.8 million). Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were supported for many years by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its chairman, Mao Zedong ; it

462-540: A United Nations-backed court which found them guilty of crimes against humanity for their roles in the Khmer Rouge's genocidal campaign. The term Khmers rouges , French for red Khmers , was coined by King Norodom Sihanouk and it was later adopted by English speakers (in the form of the corrupted version Khmer Rouge). It was used to refer to a succession of communist parties in Cambodia which evolved into

693-523: A "convenient anti-communist perspective". Its leaders and theorists, most of whom had been exposed to the heavily Stalinist outlook of the French Communist Party during the 1950s, developed a distinctive and eclectic "post-Leninist" ideology that drew on elements of Stalinism, Maoism and the postcolonial theory of Frantz Fanon . In the early 1970s, the Khmer Rouge looked to the model of Enver Hoxha 's Albania which they believed

924-608: A 2004 article, Robert R. Tomes spoke of four elements that "typically encompass an insurgency": Tomes' is an example of a definition that does not cover all insurgencies. For example, the French Revolution had no cell system, and in the American Revolution , little to no attempt was made to terrorize civilians. In consecutive coups in 1977 and 1999 in Pakistan, the initial actions focused internally on

1155-412: A British Secret Intelligence Service definition as "a generalized intention to ( emphasis added ) " overthrow or undermine parliamentary democracy by political, industrial or violent means." While insurgents do not necessarily use terror, it is hard to imagine any insurgency meeting its goals without undermining aspects of the legitimacy or power of the government or faction it opposes. Rosenau mentions

1386-566: A Cham who served as the deputy minister of agriculture under the People's Republic of Kampuchea , stated that Khmer Rouge troops had perpetrated a number of massacres in Cham villages in the Central and Eastern zones where the residents had refused to give up Islamic customs. While François Ponchaud stated that Christians were invariably taken away and killed with the accusation of having links with

1617-460: A basic part of his first part of the three phases of revolutionary warfare. Several insurgency models recognize that completed acts of terrorism widen the security gap ; the Marxist guerrilla theoretician Carlos Marighella specifically recommended acts of terror, as a means of accomplishing something that fits the concept of opening the security gap. Mao considered terrorism to be part of forming

1848-670: A campaign developed in balance along three "pillars": security, political, and economical. "Obviously enough, you cannot command what you do not control. Therefore, unity of command (between agencies or among government and non-government actors) means little in this environment." Unity of command is one of the axioms of military doctrine that change with the use of swarming:. In Edwards' swarming model, as in Kilcullen's mode, unity of command becomes " unity of effort at best, and collaboration or deconfliction at least." As in swarming, in Kilcullen's view unity of effort "depends less on

2079-565: A central role in the regime of Democratic Kampuchea. At some time between 1949 and 1951, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary joined the French Communist Party. In 1951, the two men went to East Berlin to participate in a youth festival. This experience is considered to have been a turning point in their ideological development. Meeting with Khmers who were fighting with the Viet Minh (but subsequently judged them to be too subservient to

2310-518: A centralized and bureaucratic effort which was undertaken by the Khmer Rouge regime, according to documents which were recently published by the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) as a result of the discovery of Khmer Rouge internal security documents which instructed the killings across Cambodia. However there were also instances of "indiscipline and spontaneity in the mass killings." On top of that, Etcheson has also proven that as

2541-541: A clear advantage over rebels in coercive capacity." In this kind of conflicts, rebel groups can reintegrate into the civilian population after an attack if the civilians are willing to silently accept them. Some of the most recent examples include the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. As the European countries intervenes in the conflicts, creating asymmetry between the government forces and rebels, asymmetric conflict

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2772-526: A common structure for 9 contemporary insurgent wars, supported on statistical data of more than 50,000 insurgent attacks. The model explains the recurrent statistical pattern found in the distribution of deaths in insurgent and terrorist events. Kilcullen describes a framework for counterinsurgency. He gives a visual overview of the actors in his model of conflicts, which he represents as a box containing an "ecosystem" defined by geographic, ethnic, economic, social, cultural, and religious characteristics. Inside

3003-546: A country. The Iraq insurgency is one example of a recognized government versus multiple groups of insurgents. Other historic insurgencies, such as the Russian Civil War , have been multipolar rather than a straightforward model made up of two sides. During the Angolan Civil War there were two main sides: MPLA and UNITA . At the same time, there was another separatist movement for the independence of

3234-902: A degree, but according to Jesuit priest Father François Ponchaud he acquired a taste for the classics of French literature as well as an interest in the writings of Karl Marx. Another member of the Paris student group was Ieng Sary, a Chinese-Khmer from South Vietnam. He attended the elite Lycée Sisowath in Phnom Penh before beginning courses in commerce and politics at the Paris Institute of Political Science (more widely known as Sciences Po ) in France. Khieu Samphan specialized in economics and politics during his time in Paris. Hou Yuon studied economics and law; Son Sen studied education and literature; and Hu Nim studied law. Two members of

3465-441: A guerrilla movement. While not every insurgency involves terror, most involve an equally hard to define tactic, subversion. "When a country is being subverted it is not being outfought; it is being out-administered. Subversion is literally administration with a minus sign in front." The exceptional cases of insurgency without subversion are those where there is no accepted government that is providing administrative services. While

3696-614: A legal political party, the Pracheachon Party, which participated in the 1955 and the 1958 National Assembly elections. In the September 1955 election, it won about 4% of the vote but did not secure a seat in the legislature. Members of the Pracheachon were subject to harassment and arrests because the party remained outside Sihanouk's political organization, Sangkum . Government attacks prevented it from participating in

3927-475: A more recent definition that suggests subversion includes measures short of violence, which still serve the purposes of insurgents. Rarely, subversion alone can change a government; this arguably happened in the liberalization of Eastern Europe. To the Communist government of Poland , Solidarity appeared subversive but not violent. In arguing against the term Global War on Terror , Francis Fukuyama said

4158-695: A new Cambodia. In June 1975, Pol Pot and other Khmer Rouge officials met with Mao Zedong in Beijing, where Mao lectured Pol Pot on his "Theory of Continuing Revolution under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat (无产阶级专政下继续革命理论)", recommending two articles which were written by Yao Wenyuan and sending Pol Pot over 30 books which were authored by Karl Marx , Friedrich Engels , Vladimir Lenin , and Joseph Stalin as gifts. During this meeting, Mao said to Pol Pot: We agree with you! Much of your experience

4389-611: A new group, the Khmer Students Union. Inside, the group was still run by the Cercle Marxiste. The doctoral dissertations which were written by Hou Yuon and Khieu Samphan express basic themes that would later become the cornerstones of the policy that was adopted by Democratic Kampuchea. The central role of the peasants in national development was espoused by Hou Yuon in his 1955 thesis, The Cambodian Peasants and Their Prospects for Modernization , which challenged

4620-432: A political or ideological (whether secular or religious) purpose. Terrorism is a criminal act, but it is more than mere criminality. To overcome the problem of terrorism it is necessary to understand its political nature as well as its basic criminality and psychology. The United Nations needs to address both sides of this equation. Yet another conflict of definitions involves insurgency versus terrorism. The winning essay of

4851-432: A process which the party characterised as a "Super Great Leap Forward". The party's General Secretary Pol Pot strongly influenced the propagation of the policy of autarky . He was reportedly impressed with the self-sufficient manner in which the mountain tribes of Cambodia lived, which the party believed was a form of primitive communism . Khmer Rouge theory developed the concept that the nation should take "agriculture as

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5082-405: A rationalist explanation behind them, which explains why leaders prefer to gamble in wars and avoid peaceful bargains. Fearon states that intermediate bargains can be a problem because countries cannot easily trade territories with the spread of nationalism. Furthermore, wars can take the form of civil wars . In her article Why Bad Governance Leads to Civil Wars, Barbara F. Walter has presented

5313-522: A rebellion by the Cham in Region 21 of the Eastern Zone had broken out against the Khmer Rouge after community leaders were arrested. The rebellion was forcefully repressed by the regime and no records of casualties were documented. As much as there are records of these restrictions, resistance, and repressions, there are also accounts by members of the Cham community which deny the oppression which it

5544-647: A reputation in Phnom Penh's small academic circle. The following year, the government closed the paper, and Sihanouk's police publicly humiliated Samphan by beating, undressing and photographing him in public; as Shawcross notes, "not the sort of humiliation that men forgive or forget". Yet the experience did not prevent Samphan from advocating cooperation with Sihanouk in order to promote a united front against United States activities in South Vietnam. Khieu Samphan, Hou Yuon and Hu Nim were forced to "work through

5775-484: A result of the systematic and mass killings which were based on political affiliations, ethnicity, religion, and citizenship, a third of Cambodia's population perished, so the Khmer Rouge is effectively guilty of committing genocide. David Chandler has argued that, even though ethnic minorities fell victim to the Khmer Rouge regime, they were not specifically targeted by it because of their ethnic backgrounds, instead, they were targeted because they were considered enemies of

6006-526: A result, they call the Khmer Rouge the Pol Pot-Ieng Sary clique ( Vietnamese : Tập đoàn Pol Pot-Ieng Sary ) or the Pol Pot-Ieng Sary reactionary clique ( Vietnamese : Tập đoàn phản động Pol Pot-Ieng Sary ). The movement's ideology was shaped by a power struggle during 1976 in which the so-called Party Centre led by Pol Pot defeated other regional elements of its leadership. The Party Centre's ideology combined elements of Communism with

6237-670: A revolt takes the form of armed rebellion, it may not be viewed as an insurgency if a state of belligerency exists between one or more sovereign states and rebel forces. For example, during the American Civil War , the Confederate States of America was not recognized as a sovereign state, but it was recognized as a belligerent power, and thus Confederate warships were given the same rights as United States warships in foreign ports. Sometimes there may be two or more simultaneous insurgencies (multipolar) occurring in

6468-616: A scale comparable to the genocide of the Roma (25% of the Roma population of Europe, or 130,000 to 500,000 people) and the genocide of Serbians (300,000 to 500,000 people) during the Holocaust . Ethnic Vietnamese , ethnic Thai , ethnic Chinese , ethnic Cham , Cambodian Christians , and other minorities were also targeted for persecution and genocide. The Khmer Rouge forcibly relocated minority groups and banned their languages . By decree,

6699-658: A second outflow of refugees , many of whom escaped to neighboring Thailand and, to a lesser extent, Vietnam. In 2003, by agreement between the Cambodian government and the United Nations, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia ( Khmer Rouge Tribunal ) were established to try the members of the Khmer Rouge leadership responsible for the Cambodian genocide. Trials began in 2009. On 26 July 2010,

6930-695: A separate Cambodian communist party, the Kampuchean (or Khmer) People's Revolutionary Party (KPRP), was established under Vietnamese auspices; the period following the Second Party Congress of the KPRP in 1960, when Saloth Sar gained control of its apparatus; the revolutionary struggle from the initiation of the Khmer Rouge insurgency in 1967–1968 to the fall of the Lon Nol government in April 1975;

7161-555: A shared command and control hierarchy, and more on a shared diagnosis of the problem (i.e., the distributed knowledge of swarms), platforms for collaboration, information sharing and deconfliction. Each player must understand the others' strengths, weaknesses, capabilities and objectives, and inter-agency teams must be structured for versatility (the ability to perform a wide variety of tasks) and agility (the ability to transition rapidly and smoothly between tasks)." Insurgencies, according to Stuart Eizenstat grow out of "gaps". To be viable,

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7392-427: A state must be able to close three "gaps", of which the first is most important: Note the similarity between Eizenstat's gaps and Kilcullen's three pillars. In the table below, do not assume that a problematic state is unable to assist less developed states while closing its own gaps. McCormick's model is designed as a tool for counterinsurgency (COIN), but develops a symmetrical view of the required actions for both

7623-431: A strongly xenophobic form of Khmer nationalism . Partly because of its secrecy and changes in how it presented itself, academic interpretations of its political position vary widely, ranging from interpreting it as the "purest" Marxist–Leninist movement to characterising it as an anti-Marxist "peasant revolution". The first interpretation has been criticized by historian Ben Kiernan , who asserts that it comes from

7854-502: A theory that explains the role of strong institutions in preventing insurgencies that can result in civil wars. Walter believes that institutions can contribute to four goals. Institutions are responsible for checking the government, creating multiple peaceful routes to help the government solve problems, making the government committed to political terms that entails preserving peace, and creating an atmosphere where rebels do not need to form militias. Furthermore, Walter adds that if there

8085-558: A two-year transitionary period that ended with the appointment of Deng Xiaoping as its new paramount leader in December of 1978. During the transition period, Pol Pot made an official visit to China in July 1977 and he was welcomed by chairman Hua Guofeng and other high-ranking CCP officials, with the People's Daily calling him the "Comrade from Cambodia" ( 柬埔寨战友 ). Pot also toured around

8316-401: A war not specifically on the tactic of terror but in co-ordination among multiple national or regional insurgencies. It may be politically infeasible to refer to a conflict as an "insurgency" rather than by some more charged term, but military analysts, when concepts associated with insurgency fit, should not ignore those ideas in their planning. Additionally, the recommendations can be applied to

8547-480: A way to get rid of French colonialism and transform the feudal society. Another interpretation, as proposed by historian Michael Vickery, is that of a bottom-up, left-wing peasant revolution with the Khmer Rouge as the revolutionaries. The Khmer Rouge was an intellectual group with a middle-class background and a romanticised sympathy for rural poor people but with little to no awareness that their radical policies would lead to such violence; according to this view,

8778-435: A worldwide view of terror: Social scientists, soldiers, and sources of change have been modeling insurgency for nearly a century if one starts with Mao. Counterinsurgency models, not mutually exclusive from one another, come from Kilcullen, McCormick, Barnett and Eizenstat. Kilcullen describes the "pillars" of a stable society, while Eizenstat addresses the "gaps" that form cracks in societal stability. McCormick's model shows

9009-410: Is a conflict between the government and the insurgents in the form of a civil war, that can bring about a new government that is accountable to a wider range of people, who have to commit to a compromise in political bargains. According to Walter, the presence of strong influential institutions can be beneficial to prevent the repetition of civil wars, but autocratic governments are less likely to accept

9240-401: Is better than ours. China is not qualified to criticize you. We committed errors of the political routes for ten times in fifty years—some are national, some are local…Thus I say China has no qualification to criticize you but to applaud you. You are basically correct…During the transition from the democratic revolution to adopting a socialist path, there exist two possibilities: one is socialism,

9471-406: Is disputed and difficult to disentangle from the broader Cambodian Civil War . Estimates range from 30,000 to 500,000. Sliwinski estimates that approximately 17% of total civil war deaths can be attributed to U.S. bombing, noting that this is far behind the leading causes of death, as the U.S. bombing was concentrated in underpopulated border areas. Ben Kiernan attributes 50,000 to 150,000 deaths to

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9702-520: Is estimated that at least 90% of the foreign aid to Khmer Rouge came from China, with 1975 alone seeing US$ 1 billion in interest-free economic and military aid and US$ 20 million gift, which was "the biggest aid ever given to any one country by China". In June 1975, Pol Pot and other officials of Khmer Rouge met with Mao Zedong in Beijing , receiving Mao's approval and advice; in addition, Mao also taught Pot his "Theory of Continuing Revolution under

9933-779: Is estimated that at least 90% of the foreign aid which the Khmer Rouge received came from China, including at least US$ 1 billion in interest-free economic and military aid in 1975 alone. After it seized power in April 1975, the Khmer Rouge wanted to turn the country into an agrarian socialist republic , founded on the policies of ultra- Maoism and influenced by the Cultural Revolution . Pol Pot and other Khmer Rouge officials met with Mao in Beijing in June 1975, receiving approval and advice, while high-ranking CCP officials such as Politburo Standing Committee member Zhang Chunqiao later visited Cambodia to offer help. To fulfill its goals,

10164-605: Is limited to the period from 17 April 1975 to 6 January 1979 https://www.eccc.gov.kh/sites/default/files/legal-documents/KR_Law_as_amended_27_Oct_2004_Eng.pdf In 1975, upon the victory of the Khmer Rouge over the Khmer Republic's forces, two brothers of Cham descent who had joined the Khmer Rouge as soldiers returned home to Region 21 within the Kampong Cham Province , where the largest Cham Muslim community could be found. The brothers told their father about

10395-652: Is significant. By calling itself a workers' party, the Cambodian movement claimed equal status with the Vietnam Workers' Party. The pro-Vietnamese regime of the People's Republic of Kampuchea implied in the 1980s that the September 1960 meeting was nothing more than the second congress of the KPRP. On 20 July 1962, Tou Samouth was murdered by the Cambodian government. At the WPK's second congress in February 1963, Pol Pot

10626-963: Is the most common form of subnational conflicts and the most civil conflicts where the western countries are likely to be involved. Such interventions and their impacts can be seen in the NATO operation in Libya in 2011 and the French-led intervention in Mali in 2013 . Berman and Matanock suggested an information-centric framework to describe asymmetric conflicts on a local level. Three parties are involved in framework: government forces, rebels and civilians. Government forces and rebels attack each other and may inadvertently harm civilians whereas civilians can anonymously share local information with government forces, which would allow government forces to effectively use their asymmetric advantage to target rebels. Taking

10857-447: Is well to understand that counterterrorism, as used by Cordesman, does not mean using terrorism against the terrorism, but an entire spectrum of activities, nonviolent and violent, to disrupt an opposing terrorist organization. The French general, Joseph Gallieni, observed, while a colonial administrator in 1898, A country is not conquered and pacified when a military operation has decimated its inhabitants and made all heads bow in terror;

11088-881: The Cabinda region headed up by FLEC . Multipolarity extends the definition of insurgency to situations where there is no recognized authority, as in the Somali Civil War , especially the period from 1998 to 2006 , where it broke into quasi-autonomous smaller states, fighting among one another in changing alliances. James Fearon and David Laitin define insurgency as "a technology of military conflict characterized by small, lightly armed bands practicing guerrilla warfare from rural base areas." Austin Long defines insurgency as "the use of political and military means by irregular forces to change an existing political order. These forces typically mingle with civilians in order to hide from

11319-543: The Cambodian Civil War when they captured the Cambodian capital and overthrew the Khmer Republic in 1975. Following their victory, the Khmer Rouge, who were led by Pol Pot , Nuon Chea , Ieng Sary , Son Sen , and Khieu Samphan , immediately set about forcibly evacuating the country's major cities. In 1976, they renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea. The Khmer Rouge regime was highly autocratic , totalitarian , and repressive . Many deaths resulted from

11550-548: The Cambodian Civil War , where the United States had supported the opposing regime of Lon Nol and heavily bombed Cambodia, primarily targeting communist Vietnamese troops who were allied to the Khmer Rouge, but it gave the Khmer Rouge's leadership a justification to eliminate the pro-Vietnamese faction within the group. The Cambodian genocide was stopped with the Khmer Rouge's overthrow in 1979 by Communist Vietnam. There have been allegations of United States support for

11781-628: The Cham minority and even their partially Khmer offspring. The same attitude extended to the party's own ranks, as senior CPK figures of non-Khmer ethnicity were removed from the leadership despite extensive revolutionary experience and were often killed. A Vietnamese official called the Khmer Rouge leaders "Hitlerite-fascists", while the General Secretary of the Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Party , Pen Sovan , referred to

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12012-792: The Communist Party of Kampuchea and later the Party of Democratic Kampuchea . Its military was known successively as the Kampuchean Revolutionary Army and the National Army of Democratic Kampuchea . Since the deterioration in relations between the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and Democratic Kampuchea , the Vietnamese government no longer recognize the legitimacy of the Khmer Rouge, and as

12243-477: The Communist Party of Vietnam . The Khmer Rouge continued to fight against the Vietnamese and the government of the new People's Republic of Kampuchea until the end of the war in 1989. The Cambodian governments-in-exile (including the Khmer Rouge) held onto Cambodia's United Nations seat (with considerable international support) until 1993, when the monarchy was restored and the name of the Cambodian state

12474-723: The Great Chinese Famine . Kenneth M. Quinn , the author of a doctoral dissertation about the "origins of the radical Pol Pot regime" is "widely acknowledged as the first person to report on the genocidal policies of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge." While he was employed as a Foreign Service Officer for the U.S. State Department in Southeast Asia, Quinn was stationed at the South Vietnamese border for nine months between 1973 and 1974. While there, Quinn "interviewed countless Cambodian refugees who had escaped

12705-634: The Late Middle Period of Cambodia (1431–1863) with an existential fear for the survival of the Cambodian state, which had historically been liquidated during periods of Vietnamese and Siamese intervention. The spillover of Vietnamese fighters from the Vietnamese–American War further aggravated anti-Vietnamese sentiments: the Khmer Republic under Lon Nol , overthrown by the Khmer Rouge, had promoted Mon-Khmer nationalism and

12936-589: The National United Front of Kampuchea . In 1970 alone, the Chinese reportedly gave the United Front 400 tons of military aid. In April 1974, Sihanouk and Khmer Rouge leaders Ieng Sary and Khieu Samphan met with Mao in Beijing; Mao supported many of the policies proposed by the Khmer Rouge, but he did not want the Khmer Rouge to marginalize Sihanouk after they won the civil war and established

13167-523: The Pathet Lao , and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Although it originally fought against Sihanouk, the Khmer Rouge changed its position and supported Sihanouk following the CCP's advice after he was overthrown in a 1970 coup d'état by Lon Nol who established the pro-American Khmer Republic . Despite a massive American bombing campaign ( Operation Freedom Deal ) against them, the Khmer Rouge won

13398-499: The Third World on the economic domination of the industrialized nations. After returning to Cambodia in 1953, Pol Pot threw himself into party work. At first, he went to join with forces allied to the Viet Minh operating in the rural areas of Kampong Cham Province . After the end of the war, he moved to Phnom Penh under Tou Samouth's "urban committee", where he became an important point of contact between above-ground parties of

13629-525: The US South ran high risks of bodily harm in challenging the long-standing practices of racial exclusion in Mississippi ." There are many selective incentives that encourage insurgency and violent movements against autocratic political regimes. For example, the supply of safety as a material good can be provided by the insurgents, which abolishes the exploitation of the government and thus forms one of

13860-576: The Vietnam Workers' Party , the Lao Issara , and the Kampuchean or Khmer People's Revolutionary Party (KPRP). According to a document issued after the reorganization, the Vietnam Workers' Party would continue to "supervise" the smaller Laotian and Cambodian movements. Most KPRP leaders and rank-and-file seem to have been either Khmer Krom or ethnic Vietnamese living in Cambodia. According to Democratic Kampuchea's perspective of party history,

14091-522: The communist revolution in China , class conflicts , Communist International , etc. Pol Pot also met with other officials, including Deng Xiaoping and Peng Zhen . He was particularly impressed by Kang Sheng 's lecture on how to conduct a political purge . In 1970, Lon Nol overthrew Sihanouk, who fled to Beijing, where Pol Pot was also visiting. On the advice of the CCP, the Khmer Rouge changed its position, and in order to support Sihanouk, it established

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14322-438: The genocide . Pol Pot was influenced by Marxism–Leninism and he wanted to transform Cambodia into an entirely self-sufficient agrarian socialist society that would be free from foreign influences. Stalin's works have been described as a "crucial formative influence" on his thought. Mao's works were also heavily influential, particularly influential was Mao's booklet which was titled On New Democracy . Jean-Jacques Rousseau

14553-400: The sarong ; farmers were forced to wear rudimentary dark or black clothing; religious activities like the recitation of the mandatory daily prayers were forbidden. Vickery notes that the Cambodian Cham were discriminated against by the Khmer before the beginning of the war "in some localities", partly because the Cham were stereotyped as being practitioners of black magic. In other localities,

14784-470: The 1950s on, Pol Pot had made frequent visits to the People's Republic of China, receiving political and military training—especially on the theory of dictatorship of the proletariat —from the personnel of the CCP. From November 1965 to February 1966, Pol Pot received training from high-ranking CCP officials such as Chen Boda and Zhang Chunqiao , on topics such as the communist revolution in China , class conflicts , and Communist International . Pol Pot

15015-580: The 1962 election and drove it underground. Sihanouk habitually labelled local leftists the Khmer Rouge, a term that later came to signify the party and the state headed by Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, Khieu Samphan and their associates. During the mid-1950s, KPRP factions, the "urban committee" (headed by Tou Samouth) and the "rural committee" (headed by Sieu Heng), emerged. In very general terms, these groups espoused divergent revolutionary lines. The prevalent "urban" line endorsed by North Vietnam recognized that Sihanouk by virtue of his success in winning independence from

15246-444: The 24th Annual United States Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Strategic Essay Contest, by Michael F. Morris, said [A pure terrorist group] "may pursue political, even revolutionary, goals, but their violence replaces rather than complements a political program." Morris made the point that the use, or non-use, of terrorism does not define insurgency, "but that organizational traits have traditionally provided another means to tell

15477-456: The CPK described itself as the "number 1 Communist state" once it was in power, some communist regimes, such as Vietnam, saw it as a Maoist deviation from orthodox Marxism . According to author Rebecca Gidley, the Khmer Rouge "almost immediately erred by implementing a Maoist doctrine rather than following the Marxist–Leninist prescriptions." The Maoist and Khmer Rouge belief that human willpower could overcome material and historical conditions

15708-405: The CPK ruled Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. The name was coined in the 1960s by Norodom Sihanouk to describe his country's heterogeneous, communist-led dissidents, with whom he allied after the 1970 Cambodian coup d'état . The Kampuchea Revolutionary Army was slowly built up in the forests of eastern Cambodia during the late 1960s, supported by the People's Army of Vietnam , the Viet Cong ,

15939-496: The Cambodian Civil War and the years afterward. In 1970 alone, the Chinese reportedly gave 400 tons of military aid to the National United Front of Kampuchea formed by Sihanouk and the Khmer Rouge. In April 1975, the Khmer Rouge seized power in Cambodia, and in January 1976, Democratic Kampuchea was established. During the Cambodian genocide , the CCP was the main international patron of the Khmer Rouge, supplying "more than 15,000 military advisers" and most of its external aid. It

16170-606: The Cambodian Civil War vary widely. Sihanouk used a figure of 600,000 civil war deaths, while Elizabeth Becker reported over a million civil war deaths, military and civilian included. Other researchers were unable to corroborate such high estimates. Marek Sliwinski notes that many estimates of the dead are open to question and may have been used for propaganda, suggesting that the true number lies between 240,000 and 310,000. Judith Banister and E. Paige Johnson described 275,000 war deaths as "the highest mortality that we can justify". Patrick Heuveline states that "Subsequent reevaluations of

16401-446: The Cambodian army. Documents which were uncovered from the Soviet Union 's archives reveal that the invasion was launched at the Khmer Rouge's explicit request after negotiations were held with Nuon Chea. A North Vietnamese force quickly overran large parts of eastern Cambodia, reaching within 15 miles (24 km) of Phnom Penh before being pushed back. By June, three months after Sihanouk's removal, they had swept government forces from

16632-488: The Cambodian issue. As a result of Chinese and Western opposition to the Vietnamese invasion of 1978 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge continued to hold Cambodia's United Nations (UN) seat until 1982, after which the seat was filled by a Khmer Rouge-dominated coalition which was known as the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (CGDK). Owing to support from China, Thailand, other South East Asian countries,

16863-563: The Cercle Marxiste (Marxist circle). The organization was composed of cells of three to six members with most members knowing nothing about the overall structure of the organization. In 1952, Pol Pot, Hou Yuon, Ieng Sary and other leftists gained notoriety by sending an open letter to Sihanouk calling him the "strangler of infant democracy". A year later, the French authorities closed down the KSA, but Hou Yuon and Khieu Samphan helped to establish in 1956

17094-481: The Cham people to participate in the revolution. Sos Man's Islamic Movement was also tolerated by the Khmer Rouge's leadership between 1970 and 1975. The Chams were gradually forced to abandon their faith and their distinct practices, a campaign which was launched in the Southwest as early as 1972. Ten Cham villages were taken over by the Khmer Rouge in 1972–1973, where new Cham leaders were installed, and they forced

17325-556: The Cham were renamed "Islamic Khmers" in an attempt to disassociate them from their ancestral heritage and ethnicity and force them to assimilate into the larger and Khmer-dominated Democratic Kampuchea. The Khmer Rouge believed that the Cham would jeopardize their attempts to establish close-knit communities where everyone could be easily monitored. As a result, the regime decided to disperse the Cham by deporting them from their respective localities and forcing them to work as peasants across Cambodia, hence forcing them to directly contribute to

17556-511: The Cham were well-assimilated within the host communities, speaking the Khmer language and marrying Khmers, Vietnamese, and Chinese. Between 1972 and 1974, the Khmer Rouge intensified the enforcement of the restrictions which they imposed on the Cham because they believed that the Cham were a threat to their communist agenda due to the existence of their unique language, their culture, their beliefs, and their independent communal system. Additionally,

17787-431: The Cham. The Khmer Rouge officially blamed minority groups, particularly the Cham and the Vietnamese, for the country's ills. The regime initially ordered the expulsion of ethnic Vietnamese from Cambodia but then conducted large scale massacres of large numbers of Vietnamese civilians who were being deported out of Cambodia. The regime then prevented the remaining 20,000 ethnic Vietnamese from fleeing, and much of this group

18018-545: The Chinese reportedly gave 400 tons of military aid to the United Front. Although thoroughly aware of the weakness of Lon Nol's forces and loath to commit American military force to the new conflict in any form other than air power, the Nixon administration supported the newly proclaimed Khmer Republic. On 29 March 1970, the North Vietnamese launched an offensive against the Cambodian army. Documents uncovered from

18249-663: The Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) have not prosecuted any Khmer Rouge members who perpetrated atrocities during the pre-1975 period, the period before Pol Pot consolidated his power. As a result, the accounts of those Cham who experienced the repressions prior to 1975 were not considered parts of the genocide, mainly because according to the Article 1 of the Law on the Establishment of the Extraordinary Chambers, jurisdiction ratione temporis

18480-673: The Democratic Kampuchea regime from April 1975 to January 1979; and the period following the Third Party Congress of the KPRP in January 1979, when Hanoi effectively assumed control over Cambodia's government and communist party. In 1930, Ho Chi Minh founded the Communist Party of Vietnam by unifying three smaller communist movements that had emerged in northern, central and southern Vietnam during

18711-564: The Dictatorship of the Proletariat" ( 无产阶级专政下继续革命理论 ). High-ranking CCP officials such as Zhang Chunqiao later visited Cambodia to offer help. Democratic Kampuchea was overthrown by the Vietnamese army in January 1979, and the Khmer Rouge fled to Thailand . However, to counter the power of the Soviet Union and Vietnam, a group of countries including China, the United States, Thailand as well as some Western countries supported

18942-401: The Eastern Zone demonstrated their displeasure with the Khmer Rouge's restrictions by beating their drums—they traditionally beat their drums in order to inform locals that it is time to recite the daily prayers—at local mosques . This act of communal defiance prompted the blanket arrest of many Cham Muslim leaders and religious teachers. In February 1974, the Cham who lived in Region 31, which

19173-465: The French was a genuine national leader whose neutralism and deep distrust of the United States made him a valuable asset in Hanoi's struggle to "liberate" South Vietnam. Advocates of this line hoped that the prince could be persuaded to distance himself from the right-wing and to adopt leftist policies. The other line, supported for the most part by rural cadres who were familiar with the harsh realities of

19404-487: The Geneva Conventions, and genocide of the Vietnamese ethnic, national and racial group. The Chamber additionally convicted Nuon Chea of genocide of the Cham ethnic and religious group under the doctrine of superior responsibility . Both Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan were sentenced to terms of life imprisonment. In 1968, the Khmer Rouge officially launched a nation-wide insurgency across Cambodia. Even though

19635-503: The Insurgent and COIN forces to achieve success. In this way the counterinsurgency model can demonstrate how both the insurgent and COIN forces succeed or fail. The model's strategies and principle apply to both forces, therefore the degree the forces follow the model should have a direct correlation to the success or failure of either the Insurgent or COIN force. The model depicts four key elements or players: All of these interact, and

19866-683: The Khmer Rouge following their overthrow and the United Nations General Assembly voted to continue recognising Pol Pot's Democratic Kampuchea. Communism in South East Asia was deeply divided, as China supported the Khmer Rouge, while the Soviet Union and Vietnam opposed it. There are three interpretations of the Khmer Rouge: totalitarianism , revisionism, and postrevisionism. Historian Ben Kiernan describes their rule as totalitarian but places it within

20097-603: The Khmer Rouge a "chauvinist" regime, due to its anti-Vietnam and anti-religion policies. Stephen Heder also believed that the Khmer Rouge were not guilty of genocide, stating that the atrocities of the regime were not motivated by racism . Ben Kiernan makes the argument that it was indeed a genocide and he disagrees with these three scholars, by bringing forth examples from the history of the Cham people in Cambodia, as did an international tribunal finding Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan guilty of 92 and 87 counts of said crime respectively. Genocide scholar Gregory Stanton concluded that

20328-430: The Khmer Rouge among the Cambodian peasantry. According to Ben Kiernan, the Khmer Rouge "would not have won power without U.S. economic and military destabilization of Cambodia. ... It used the bombing's devastation and massacre of civilians as recruitment propaganda and as an excuse for its brutal, radical policies and its purge of moderate communists and Sihanoukists." Pol Pot biographer David P. Chandler writes that

20559-427: The Khmer Rouge among the Cambodian peasantry. According to Ben Kiernan, the Khmer Rouge "would not have won power without U.S. economic and military destabilization of Cambodia. ... It used the bombing's devastation and massacre of civilians as recruitment propaganda and as an excuse for its brutal, radical policies and its purge of moderate communists and Sihanoukists." Pol Pot biographer David P. Chandler writes that

20790-429: The Khmer Rouge as a "draconian, dictatorial and fascist regime". The Khmer Rouge's economic policy, which was largely based on the plans of Khieu Samphan , focused on the achievement of national self-reliance through an initial phase of agricultural collectivism . This would then be used as a route to achieve rapid social transformation and industrial and technological development without assistance from foreign powers,

21021-471: The Khmer Rouge banned the existence of more than 20 minority groups, which constituted 15% of Cambodia's population. While Cambodians in general were victims of the Khmer Rouge regime, the persecution, torture, and killings committed by the Khmer Rouge are considered an act of genocide according to the United Nations as ethnic and religious minorities were systematically targeted by Pol Pot and his regime. Scholars and historians have varying opinions on whether

21252-421: The Khmer Rouge but disputed that it was a primary cause of the Khmer Rouge victory. William Shawcross writes that the United States bombing and ground incursion plunged Cambodia into the chaos that Sihanouk had worked for years to avoid. By 1973, Vietnamese support of the Khmer Rouge had largely disappeared. On the other hand, the CCP largely "armed and trained" the Khmer Rouge, including Pol Pot, both during

21483-402: The Khmer Rouge displayed these characteristics in a more extreme form. Additionally, non-Khmers, who comprised a significant part of the supposedly favored segment of the peasantry, were singled out because of their race. According to Ben Kiernan, this was "neither a communist proletarian revolution that privileged the working class, nor a peasant revolution that favored all farmers". While

21714-435: The Khmer Rouge emptied the cities and frogmarched Cambodians to labor camps in the countryside, where mass executions, forced labor , physical abuse, torture, malnutrition , and disease were rampant. In 1976, the Khmer Rouge renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea . The massacres ended when the Vietnamese military invaded in 1978 and toppled the Khmer Rouge regime. By January 1979, 1.5 to 2 million people had died due to

21945-427: The Khmer Rouge under the justification that they "used to exploit the Cambodian people". The Chinese were stereotyped as traders and moneylenders associated with capitalism, while historically the group attracted resentment due to their lighter skin color and cultural differences. Hundreds of Cham, Chinese and Khmer families were rounded up in 1978 and told that they were to be resettled, but were actually executed. At

22176-510: The Khmer Rouge was increased as a result of the situation created by the removal of Sihanouk as head of state in 1970 . Premier Lon Nol deposed Sihanouk with the support of the National Assembly . Sihanouk, who was in exile in Beijing, made an alliance with the Khmer Rouge on the advice of CCP, and became the nominal head of a Khmer Rouge–dominated government-in-exile (known by its French acronym GRUNK ) backed by China. In 1970 alone,

22407-493: The Khmer Rouge was not able to win over, but were mainly motivated to tear down the old one and violence became an end in itself. The history of the communist movement in Cambodia can be divided into six phases, namely the emergence before World War II of the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP), whose members were almost exclusively Vietnamese; the 10-year struggle for independence from the French, when

22638-465: The Khmer Rouge's new recruits were apolitical peasants who fought in support of the King, rather than for communism , of which they had little understanding. By 1975, with Lon Nol's government running out of ammunition due to its loss of support from the U.S., it was clear that its collapse was imminent. On 17 April 1975, the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh and ended the civil war. Mortality estimates for

22869-451: The Khmer Rouge's peasant supporters as removing the source of their debts. Democratic Kampuchea was an atheist state , although its constitution stated that everyone had freedom of religion, or not to hold a religion. However, it specified that what it termed "reactionary religion" would not be permitted. While in practice religious activity was not tolerated, the relationship of the CPK to

23100-619: The Khmer Rouge's policies, including 200,000–300,000 Chinese Cambodians , 90,000–500,000 Cambodian Cham (who are mostly Muslim ), and 20,000 Vietnamese Cambodians . 20,000 people passed through the Security Prison 21 , one of the 196 prisons the Khmer Rouge operated, and only seven adults survived. The prisoners were taken to the Killing Fields , where they were executed (often with pickaxes , to save bullets) and buried in mass graves . Abduction and indoctrination of children

23331-482: The Khmer Rouge's revolutionary ruralism and its evacuation of city residents to farms. The government of the People's Republic of China did not protest against the killings of ethnic Chinese in Cambodia, despite its awareness of the atrocities and its simultaneous condemnation of the Vietnamese government's mistreatment of ethnic Chinese who lived in Vietnam. According to Ben Kiernan, the "fiercest extermination campaign

23562-410: The Khmer Rouge's rise to power. Vickery—erroneously, as has been proven by the research which was more recently conducted by Ben Kiernan —argued that the number of Cham victims who were killed during the Khmer Rouge's rule of Cambodia was around 20,000 which would still be a substantial part of the Cham group and would thus constitute the crime of genocide by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. The killings were

23793-636: The Khmer Rouge-dominated Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea to continue holding Cambodia's seat in the United Nations, which was held until 1993, after the Cold War had ended. In 2009, China defended its past ties with previous Cambodian governments, including that of Democratic Kampuchea or Khmer Rouge, which at the time had a legal seat at the United Nations and foreign relations with more than 70 countries. The governing structure of Democratic Kampuchea

24024-542: The Khmer Rouge. As a result, Pol Pot has been described as "a genocidal tyrant" by journalists and historians such as William Branigin. The British sociologist Martin Shaw described the Cambodian genocide as "the purest genocide of the Cold War era". The attempt to purify Cambodian society along racial, social and political lines led to purges of Cambodia's previous military and political leadership, along with business leaders, journalists, students, doctors, and lawyers. Due to

24255-467: The Khmer language, and even inter-marrying with the majority Khmers as well as with the minority Chinese and Vietnamese. The diverse ethnic and cultural practices of Cambodians began to deteriorate during the rise of the Khmer Rouge in 1972, when the Cham were prohibited from practising their faith and culture: Cham women were required to keep their hair short like the Khmers; Cham men were not allowed to wear

24486-482: The Lon Nol government running out of ammunition, it was clear that it was only a matter of time before the government would collapse. On 17 April 1975, there was the Fall of Phnom Penh , as the Khmer Rouge captured the capital. During the civil war, unparalleled atrocities were executed on both sides. While the civil war was brutal, its estimated death toll has been revised downwards over time. The relationship between

24717-660: The Policy Working Group on the United Nations and Terrorism. Reporting to the Secretary-General in 2002, the Working Group stated the following: Without attempting a comprehensive definition of terrorism, it would be useful to delineate some broad characteristics of the phenomenon. Terrorism is, in most cases, essentially a political act. It is meant to inflict dramatic and deadly injury on civilians and to create an atmosphere of fear, generally for

24948-429: The Soviet Union archives revealed that the invasion was launched at the explicit request of the Khmer Rouge following negotiations with Nuon Chea. A force of North Vietnamese quickly overran large parts of eastern Cambodia reaching to within 15 miles (24 km) of Phnom Penh before being pushed back. By June, three months after the removal of Sihanouk, they had swept government forces from the entire northeastern third of

25179-518: The Trial Chamber convicted Kang Kek Iew for crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions. The Supreme Court Chamber increased his sentence to life imprisonment. Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan were tried and convicted in 2014 of crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. On 28 March 2019, the Trial Chamber found Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan guilty of crimes against humanity, grave breaches of

25410-449: The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency , at least some cadres appear to have regarded it as preferable to the "feudal" class-based Buddhism. Nevertheless, it remained deeply suspect to the regime thanks to its close links to French colonialism ; Phnom Penh cathedral was razed along with other places of worship. In analysing the Khmer Rouge regime, scholars place it within historical context. The Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975 through

25641-423: The U.S. bombing. The relationship between the United States' massive bombing of Cambodia and the growth of the Khmer Rouge in recruitment and popular support has been a matter of interest to historians. Some scholars, including Michael Ignatieff , Adam Jones and Greg Grandin , have cited the United States intervention and bombing campaign from 1965 to 1973 as a significant factor that led to increased support for

25872-562: The U.S., and some Western countries, the CGDK held Cambodia's UN seat until 1993, long after the Cold War ended. China trained Khmer Rouge soldiers on its soil from 1979 to at least 1986, "stationed military advisers with Khmer Rouge troops as late as 1990", and "supplied at least $ 1 billion in military aid" during the 1980s. There are allegations of United States support for the Khmer Rouge , because they wished to weaken Vietnam's influence in Southeast Asia. The UK has also been accused of helping

26103-492: The US and its allies need to focus on specific radical groups rather than clash with global Islam. Fukuyama argued that political means, rather than direct military measures, are the most effective ways to defeat that insurgency. David Kilcullen wrote "We must distinguish Al Qa'eda and the broader militant movements it symbolises – entities that use terrorism – from the tactic of terrorism itself." There may be utility in examining

26334-560: The United States was not fighting terrorism generically, as in Chechnya or Palestine . Rather, he said the slogan "war on terror" is directed at "radical Islamism, a movement that makes use of culture for political objectives." He suggested it might be deeper than the ideological conflict of the Cold War, but it should not be confused with Samuel Huntington 's "clash of civilizations." Addressing Huntington's thesis, Fukuyama stressed that

26565-453: The Viet Minh's failure to negotiate a political role for the KPRP at the 1954 Geneva Conference represented a betrayal of the Cambodian movement, which still controlled large areas of the countryside, and which commanded at least 5,000 armed men. Following the conference, about 1,000 members of the KPRP, including Son Ngoc Minh, made a Long March into North Vietnam , where they remained in exile. In late 1954, those who stayed in Cambodia founded

26796-417: The Vietnamese invasion and continued its material support to the Khmer Rouge. In early 1979, China launched an invasion of Vietnam to retaliate against Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia. Deng was convinced by a conversation with Singapore's prime minister Lee Kuan Yew to limit the scale and duration of the war. Following the one-month war, Singapore attempted to serve as a mediator between Vietnam and China on

27027-557: The Vietnamese), they became convinced that only a tightly disciplined party organization and a readiness for armed struggle could achieve revolution. They transformed the Khmer Students Association (KSA), to which most of the 200 or so Khmer students in Paris belonged, into an organization for nationalist and leftist ideas. Inside the KSA and its successor organizations, there was a secret organization known as

27258-445: The [insurgents' intended] overthrow of the established authority in a country and its replacement by another regime." Steven Metz observes that past models of insurgency do not perfectly fit modern insurgency, in that current instances are far more likely to have a multinational or transnational character than those of the past. Several insurgencies may belong to more complex conflicts, involving "third forces (armed groups which affect

27489-410: The advanced and the backward, even when Communism is realized. Today we cannot explain it completely. Pol Pot replied: "The issue of lines of struggle raised by Chairman Mao is an important strategic issue. We will follow your words in the future. I have read and learned various works of Chairman Mao since I was young, especially the theory on people's war . Your works have guided our entire party." On

27720-441: The adventures which they had experienced as participants in the revolution, adventures which included the killing of Khmers and the consumption of pork, in the hope that they would be able to convince their father to join the communist cause. The father, who remained silent, was clearly not impressed by the accounts which were given by his sons. Instead, he grabbed a cleaver, killed his sons, and told his fellow villagers that he killed

27951-482: The agrarian self-sufficiency of the area's isolated tribes—while the Khmer Rouge gained power. Attempts to implement these goals (formed upon the observations of small, rural communes) into a larger society were key factors in the ensuing genocide. One Khmer Rouge leader said that the killings were meant for the "purification of the populace." The Khmer Rouge virtually forced Cambodia's entire population to divide itself into mobile work teams. Michael Hunt has written that it

28182-458: The agricultural production model of Dazhai , a product of Mao's era. Chen Yonggui , Vice Premier of China and the leader of Dazhai, visited Cambodia in December 1977, commending the achievement of its movement towards communism. In 1978, Son Sen , a Khmer Rouge leader and the Minister of National Defense of Democratic Kampuchea , visited China and obtained its approval for military aid. In

28413-511: The applicability of genocide is rejected and the violence was an unintentional consequence that was beyond the Khmer Rouge's control. For Vickery, communist ideology does not explain the violence any more than those closer to the peasants', such as agrarianism, populism , and nationalism . Vickery wrote of communisms, as different communist factions were opposed to each other and fought against each other, resulting in further escalation of violence. A synthesis of both interpretations rejects

28644-470: The area with heavy weapons, and they surrounded the village, killing every single villager in it. Similarly, in June or July 1975, the Khmer Rouge authorities in Region 21 of the Eastern Zone tried to confiscate all copies of the Qur'an from the people, and at the same time, they tried to impose a mandatory short haircut on Cham women. The authorities encountered a mass demonstration which was staged by members of

28875-420: The basic factor and use the fruits of agriculture to build industry". In 1975, Khmer Rouge representatives to China said that Pol Pot's belief was that the collectivisation of agriculture was capable of "[creating] a complete communist society without wasting time on the intermediate steps". Society was accordingly classified into peasant "base people" ( ប្រជាជនមូលដ្ឋាន prâchéachôn mulôdthan ), who would be

29106-452: The beginning of the rule of the Khmer Rouge regime in 1975, there were 425,000 ethnic Chinese in Cambodia. By the end of 1979, there were just 200,000, most of them were stuck in Thai refugee camps and the rest of them were stuck in Cambodia. 170,000 Chinese fled from Cambodia and moved to Vietnam, and others were repatriated. The Chinese were predominantly city-dwellers, making them vulnerable to

29337-543: The blending of insurgents with the civilian population, insurgencies tend to involve considerable violence against civilians (by the state and the insurgents). State attempts to quell insurgencies frequently lead to the infliction of indiscriminate violence, whereas rebel control of territory frequently involves violence against the civilian population. Insurgency sets itself apart from terrorism by aiming for political control rather than resorting to indiscriminate violence, however, it may incorporate terrorist tactics. Where

29568-463: The bombing "had the effect the Americans wanted – it broke the Communist encirclement of Phnom Penh", but it also accelerated the collapse of rural society and increased social polarization. Peter Rodman and Michael Lind claim that the United States intervention saved the Lon Nol regime from collapse in 1970 and 1973. Craig Etcheson acknowledged that U.S. intervention increased recruitment for

29799-445: The bombing "had the effect the Americans wanted—it broke the Communist encirclement of Phnom Penh", but also accelerated the collapse of rural society and increased social polarization. Craig Etcheson agrees that U.S. intervention increased recruitment for the Khmer Rouge but disputes that it was a primary cause of the Khmer Rouge victory. According to William Shawcross , the United States bombing and ground incursion plunged Cambodia into

30030-599: The border and entered the village, slaughtering 3,157 Vietnamese civilians. This caused an urgent response from the Vietnamese government, precipitating the Cambodian–Vietnamese War in which the Khmer Rouge was ultimately defeated. The state of the Chinese Cambodians during the rule of the Khmer Rouge regime was alleged to be "the worst disaster ever to befall any ethnic Chinese community in Southeast Asia." Cambodians of Chinese descent were massacred by

30261-399: The box are, among others, governments, counterinsurgent forces, insurgent leaders, insurgent forces, and the general population, which is made up of three groups: Often, but not always, states or groups that aid one side or the other are outside the box. Outside-the-box intervention has dynamics of its own. The counterinsurgency strategy can be described as efforts to end the insurgency by

30492-535: The brutal clutches of the Khmer Rouge." Based upon the compiled interviews and the atrocities he witnessed firsthand, Quinn wrote "a 40-page report about it, which was submitted throughout the U.S. government." In the report, he wrote that the Khmer Rouge had "much in common with those of totalitarian regimes in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union ." Quinn has written of the Khmer Rouge that "[w]hat emerges as

30723-408: The bulwark of the transformation; and urban "new people" ( ប្រជាជនថ្មី prâchéachôn thmei ), who were to be reeducated or liquidated. The focus of the Khmer Rouge leadership on the peasantry as the base of the revolution was according to Michael Vickery a product of their status as " petty-bourgeois radicals who had been overcome by peasantist romanticism ". The opposition of the peasantry and

30954-485: The central committee left Phnom Penh to establish an insurgent base in Ratanakiri Province in the northeast. Pol Pot had shortly before been put on a list of 34 leftists who were summoned by Sihanouk to join the government and sign statements saying Sihanouk was the only possible leader for the country. Pol Pot and Chou Chet were the only people on the list who escaped. All the others agreed to cooperate with

31185-425: The chaos that Sihanouk had worked for years to avoid. Since the 1950s, Pol Pot made frequent visits to the People's Republic of China , where he received political and military training—especially on the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat —from the personnel of the CCP. From November 1965 to February 1966, high-ranking CCP officials such as Chen Boda and Zhang Chunqiao trained him on topics such as

31416-645: The communists as early as the 1950s, with a Cham elder, Sos Man joining the Indochina Communist Party and rising through the ranks to become a major in the Party's forces. He then returned home to the Eastern Zone in 1970 and joined the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), and he co-established the Eastern Zone Islamic Movement with his son, Mat Ly. Together, they became the mouthpiece of the Khmer Rouge and they encouraged

31647-402: The context of "xenophobic European nationalism ", from which came their agrarianism and the establishment of a Great Cambodia, rather than communism or Marxism . Pol Pot's biographers David P. Chandler and Philip Short place more emphasis on their ideological heritage of communism; it was not easy to apply Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin 's ideas to Cambodia, and communism was chosen as

31878-523: The conventional view that urbanization and industrialization are necessary precursors of development. The major argument in Khieu Samphan's 1959 thesis, Cambodia's Economy and Industrial Development , was that the country had to become self-reliant and end its economic dependency on the developed world . In its general contours, Samphan's work reflected the influence of a branch of the dependency theory school which blamed lack of development in

32109-439: The country. After defeating those forces, the North Vietnamese turned the newly won territories over to the local insurgents. The Khmer Rouge also established "liberated" areas in the south and the southwestern parts of the country, where they operated independently of the North Vietnamese. After Sihanouk showed his support for the Khmer Rouge by visiting them in the field, their ranks swelled from 6,000 to 50,000 fighters. Many of

32340-505: The countryside, advocated an immediate struggle to overthrow the " feudalist " Sihanouk. During the 1950s, Khmer students in Paris organized their own communist movement which had little, if any, connection to the hard-pressed party in their homeland. From their ranks came the men and women who returned home and took command of the party apparatus during the 1960s, led an effective insurgency against Lon Nol from 1968 until 1975 and established

32571-494: The creation and maintenance of the new Cambodian economy. This move was undertaken in an attempt to ensure that the Cham would not congregate in an attempt to form their own community again, which would have undermined the regime's plan to establish centralized economic cooperatives. Slowly, those Cham who defied the restrictions which the Khmer Rouge imposed on them were arrested by the regime. Hence, in October 1973, Cham Muslims in

32802-567: The cultural underpinnings of the Khmer civilization and to impose a new society through purges, executions, and violence." Ben Kiernan has compared the Cambodian genocide to the Armenian genocide which was perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire during World War I and the Holocaust which was perpetrated by Nazi Germany during World War II . While each genocide was unique, certain features were common in all three genocides, and racism

33033-438: The decision, its forces provided shelter and weapons to the Khmer Rouge after the insurgency started. Vietnamese support for the insurgency made it impossible for the Cambodian military to effectively counter it. For the next two years, the insurgency grew as Sihanouk did very little to stop it. As the insurgency grew stronger, the party finally openly declared itself to be the Communist Party of Kampuchea. The political appeal of

33264-452: The demographic data situated the death toll for the [civil war] in the order of 300,000 or less". From 1970 to 1973, a massive United States bombing campaign against the Khmer Rouge devastated rural Cambodia. An earlier U.S. bombing campaign of Cambodia began on 18 March 1969 with Operation Breakfast , but U.S. bombing in Cambodia had commenced years before that. The number of Cambodian civilian and Khmer Rouge deaths caused by U.S. bombing

33495-495: The different elements have to assess their best options in a set of actions: In Thomas Barnett's paradigm, the world is divided into a "connected core" of nations enjoying a high level of communications among their organizations and individuals, and those nations that are disconnected internally and externally. In a reasonably peaceful situation, he describes a "system administrator" force, often multinational, which does what some call "nation-building", but, most importantly, connects

33726-419: The discussion of failed states below.) Metz suggests that contemporary insurgencies have far more complex and shifting participation than traditional wars, where discrete belligerents seek a clear strategic victory. Many insurgencies include terrorism. While there is no accepted definition of terrorism in international law, United Nations -sponsored working definitions include one drafted by Alex P. Schmid for

33957-491: The effects of the Khmer Rouge's pre-1975 rule differently; some communities experienced the repressions and restrictions but other communities did not. When Pol Pot consolidated his power by the end of 1975, the persecution became more severe, and it indiscriminately affected all of the Cham people. This could well be one of the simpler reasons as to why the Cambodian government and the Extraordinary Chambers in

34188-459: The emergence of strong institutions because of their resulting constraint of governmental corruption and privileges. In her book, Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in Salvador , Elisabeth Jean Wood explains that participants in high-risk activism are very aware of the costs and benefits of engaging in civil wars. Wood suggests that "participants in the 1964 Freedom Summer campaign in

34419-412: The enemy. When the villagers pointed out that he murdered his own sons, he recounted the stories which his sons had previously told to him, citing the Khmer Rouge's hatred for Islam and the Cham people. This event prompted the villagers to make a unanimous agreement, that night, they would kill all Khmer Rouge soldiers who were stationed in the area. The next morning, more Khmer Rouge soldiers descended upon

34650-464: The entire northeastern third of the country. After defeating those forces, the Vietnamese turned the newly won territories over to the local insurgents. The Khmer Rouge also established "liberated" areas in the southern and southwestern parts of the country, where they operated independently of the Vietnamese. After Sihanouk demonstrated his support for the Khmer Rouge by visiting them in the field, their ranks swelled from 6,000 to 50,000 fighters. Many of

34881-438: The explanation for the terror and violence that swept Cambodia during the 1970s is that a small group of alienated intellectuals, enraged by their perception of a corrupt society and imbued with a Maoist plan to create a pure socialist order in the shortest possible time, recruited extremely young, poor, and envious cadres, instructed them in harsh and brutal methods learned from Stalinist mentors, and used them to destroy physically

35112-411: The fact that the perpetrators and the victims of the mass murder were largely members of the same ethnic group, the term autogenocide was coined to describe the unique character of the genocide. According to Samuel Totten , 25% of the urban Khmer population or 500,000 people perished under the rule of the Khmer Rouge , along with 16% of the rural Khmer population or 825,000 people putting the killing at

35343-462: The ferments of revolt will germinate in the mass and the rancours accumulated by the brutal action of force will make them grow again Both Kilcullen and Eizenstat define a more abstract goal than does Cordesman. Kilcullen's security pillar is roughly equivalent to Eizenstat's security gap: This pillar most engages military commanders' attention, but of course military means are applied across

35574-443: The forces defending the political order." According to Matthew Adam Kocher, Thomas Pepinsky and Stathis Kalyvas, a central objective in insurgencies is to achieve control over civilians. To exercise control armed groups apply a variety of practices, including different types of violence, dispute resolution, taxation, regulation of movement, access to aid and services, and social strictures. According to James D. Fearon , wars have

35805-465: The former Cambodian government along with anyone whom it suspected of having connections with foreign governments, as well as professionals, intellectuals, the Buddhist monkhood , and ethnic minorities. Even those people who were stereotypically thought of as having intellectual qualities, such as wearing glasses or speaking multiple languages , were executed out of fear that they would rebel against

36036-506: The formulae learned by young monks during their training. Some cadres who had previously been monks interpreted their change of vocation as a simple movement from a lower to a higher religion, mirroring attitudes around the growth of Cao Dai in the 1920s. Buddhist laity seem not to have been singled out for persecution, although traditional belief in the tutelary spirits , or neak ta , rapidly eroded as people were forcibly moved from their home areas. The position with Buddhist monks

36267-454: The full-scale mass killing of the Cham people. American professor Samuel Totten and Australian professor Paul R. Bartrop estimate that these efforts would have completely wiped out the Cham population were it not for the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge in 1979. In a Khmer Rouge official meeting took place in Sector 41, Kampong Cham province in 1977, a plan was proclaimed up to "smash enemies of

36498-467: The genocide of Cambodian minorities. Summary executions and torture were carried out by its cadres against perceived subversive elements, or during genocidal purges of its own ranks between 1975 and 1978. Ultimately, the Cambodian genocide which took place under the Khmer Rouge regime led to the deaths of 1.5 to 2 million people, around 25% of Cambodia's population. In the 1970s, the Khmer Rouge

36729-557: The genocide, China was the largest military and economic supporter of the Khmer Rouge, supplying "more than 15,000 military advisers" and most of its external aid. It is estimated that at least 90% of foreign aid to Khmer Rouge came from China, with 1975 alone seeing US$ 1 billion in interest-free economic and military aid, "the biggest aid ever given to any one country by China". A series of internal crises in 1976 prevented Beijing from exerting substantial influence over Khmer Rouge policies. After Mao's death in September 1976, China underwent

36960-479: The government and were afterward under 24-hour watch by the police. The region where Pol Pot and the others moved to was inhabited by tribal minorities, the Khmer Loeu , whose rough treatment (including resettlement and forced assimilation ) at the hands of the central government made them willing recruits for a guerrilla struggle. In 1965, Pol Pot made a visit of several months to North Vietnam and China. From

37191-405: The government of North Vietnam were not informed about the Khmer Rouge's decision, its forces provided shelter and weapons to the Khmer Rouge after the insurgency began. North Vietnamese support for the Khmer Rouge's insurgency made it impossible for the Cambodian military to effectively counter it. For the next two years, the insurgency grew because Norodom Sihanouk did very little to stop it. As

37422-478: The government rather than on seeking broad support. While Tomes' definition fits well with Mao's Phase I, it does not deal well with larger civil wars. Mao does assume terrorism is usually part of the early phases, but it is not always present in revolutionary insurgency. Tomes offers an indirect definition of insurgency, drawn from Trinquier 's definition of counterinsurgency: "an interlocking system of actions—political, economic, psychological, military—that aims at

37653-560: The group as the SAS trained non Khmer Rouge soldiers of the CGDK coalition from 1985 to 1989 in Thailand. After the 1991 Paris Peace Accords , Thailand continued to allow the Khmer Rouge "to trade and move across the Thai border to sustain their activities ... although international criticism, particularly from the United States and Australia ... caused it to disavow passing any direct military support." Ideology played an important role in

37884-599: The group, Khieu Samphan and Hou Yuon, earned doctorates from the University of Paris while Hu Nim obtained his degree from the University of Phnom Penh in 1965. Most came from landowner or civil servant families. Pol Pot and Hou Yuon may have been related to the royal family as an older sister of Pol Pot had been a concubine at the court of King Monivong . Pol Pot and Ieng Sary married Khieu Ponnary and Khieu Thirith, also known as Ieng Thirith , purportedly relatives of Khieu Samphan. These two well-educated women also played

38115-768: The groupings in Samuel P. Huntington 's idea of the clash of civilizations , but, rather assuming the civilizations must clash, these civilizations simply can be recognized as actors in a multinational world. In the case of Iraq, Cordesman observes that the burden is on the Islamic civilization, not unilaterally the West, if for no other reason that the civilization to which the problematic nation belongs will have cultural and linguistic context that Western civilization cannot hope to equal. The heart of strengthening weak nations must come from within, and that heart will fail if they deny that

38346-400: The insurgency grew in strength, the party openly declared itself to be the Communist Party of Kampuchea. Sihanouk was deposed in 1970 by Premier Lon Nol , with the support of the National Assembly , establishing the pro-United States Khmer Republic . On the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)'s advice, Sihanouk, who was in exile in Beijing , formed an alliance with the Khmer Rouge, and became

38577-539: The interplay among the actors: insurgents, government, population and external organizations. Barnett discusses the relationship of the country with the outside world, and Cordesman focuses on the specifics of providing security. Recent studies have tried to model the conceptual architecture of insurgent warfare using computational and mathematical modelling. A recent study by Juan Camilo Bohorquez, Sean Gourley, Alexander R. Dixon, Michael Spagat, and Neil F. Johnson entitled "Common Ecology Quantifies Human Insurgency", suggests

38808-432: The killings were "largely the result of the spontaneous excesses of a vengeful, undisciplined peasant army." This point of view was also supported by Alexander Hinton , who cited an account by a former Khmer Rouge cadre who claimed that the killings were acts of retribution for the atrocities which were perpetrated by Lon Nol's soldiers when they killed people who were known to be former Viet Minh agents before Pol Pot and

39039-550: The late 1920s. The party was renamed the Indochinese Communist Party, ostensibly so it could include revolutionaries from Cambodia and Laos. Almost without exception, all of the earliest party members were Vietnamese. By the end of World War II, a handful of Cambodians had joined its ranks, but their influence on the Indochinese communist movement as well as their influence on developments within Cambodia

39270-529: The left and the underground secret communist movement. His comrades Ieng Sary and Hou Yuon became teachers at a new private high school, the Lycée Kambuboth, which Hou Yuon helped to establish. Khieu Samphan returned from Paris in 1959, taught as a member of the law faculty of the University of Phnom Penh, and started a left-wing French-language publication, L'Observateur . The paper soon acquired

39501-523: The local Cham community who were shot at by the regime's soldiers. The Cham forcefully retaliated with swords and blades, killing a few soldiers, only to be retaliated against by the regime's military reinforcements, which annihilated the villagers and their property. In another account which was given by Cham refugees in Malaysia, thirteen leading figures within the Cham Muslim community were killed by

39732-438: The main incentives. The revolutionary power can help manifest a social-political network that in return provides access to political opportunities to diverse candidates, who share a collective identity and cultural homogeneity. Also, civil wars and insurgencies can provide employment and access to services and resources that were once taken over by the autocratic regimes. Insurgencies differ in their use of tactics and methods. In

39963-466: The majority Cambodian Theravada Buddhism was complex; several key figures in its history such as Tou Samouth and Ta Mok were former monks, along with many lower level cadres, who often proved some of the strictest disciplinarians. While there was extreme harassment of Buddhist institutions, there was a tendency for the CPK regime to internalise and reconfigure the symbolism and language of Cambodian Buddhism so that many revolutionary slogans mimicked

40194-477: The mass killings and starvation by the Khmer Rouge did constitute genocide, both as defined in the Genocide Convention and in the broader definition of Raphael Lemkin, which includes destruction of political, social, and economic groups. The crimes were genocide under the Genocide Convention because they included the intentional destruction of a significant part of two ethnic groups, the Vietnamese and

40425-410: The massive carpet bombing of Cambodia by the United States and the growth of the Khmer Rouge, in terms of recruitment and popular support, has been a matter of interest to historians. Some scholars, including Michael Ignatieff , Adam Jones and Greg Grandin , have cited the United States intervention and bombing campaign (spanning 1965–1973) as a significant factor which led to increased support for

40656-621: The members of the Pol Pot clique, particularly So Phim and Nhim Ros, both of whom were vice presidents of the state presidium and members of the Politburo and Central Committee respectively. A possible military coup attempt was made in May 1976, and its leader was a senior Eastern Zone cadre named Chan Chakrey, who had been appointed deputy secretary of the army's General Staff. A reorganisation that occurred in September 1976, during which Pol Pot

40887-541: The mid-1990s. Its leaders were mostly from middle-class families and had been educated at French universities. The second significant faction was made up of men who had been active in the pre-1960 party and had stronger links to Vietnam as a result; government documents show that there were several major shifts in power between factions during the period in which the regime was in control. In 1975–1976, there were several powerful regional Khmer Rouge leaders who maintained their own armies and had different party backgrounds than

41118-480: The model, not just in the security domain, while civilian activity is critically important in the security pillar also ... all three pillars must develop in parallel and stay in balance, while being firmly based in an effective information campaign. Anthony Cordesman, while speaking of the specific situation in Iraq, makes some points that can be generalized to other nations in turmoil. Cordesman recognizes some value in

41349-405: The nation to the core and empowers the natives to communicate—that communication can be likened to swarm coordination. If the state is occupied, or in civil war, another paradigm comes into play: the leviathan, a first-world military force that takes down the opposition regular forces. Leviathan is not constituted to fight local insurgencies, but major forces. Leviathan may use extensive swarming at

41580-418: 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. Sihanouk's popular support in rural Cambodia allowed the Khmer Rouge to extend its power and influence to the point that by 1973 it exercised de facto control over the majority of Cambodian territory, although only a minority of its population. By 1975, with

41811-529: The new state grew." Analysis of existing mortality estimates show that men accounted for 81% of all violent deaths and 67% of all excess deaths in this period. The killing of about 50–70% of Cambodia's working-age men led to a shift in norms regarding the sexual division of labor and correlates with present-day indicators of women's economic advancements and increased representation in local-level elected office. The Khmer Rouge regime frequently arrested and executed anyone whom it suspected of having connections with

42042-420: The nominal head of a Khmer Rouge–dominated government-in-exile (known by its French acronym, GRUNK ) backed by China. Although thoroughly aware of the weakness of Lon Nol's forces and loath to commit American military force to the new conflict in any form other than air power, the Nixon administration announced its support for the new Khmer Republic. On 29 March 1970, North Vietnam launched an offensive against

42273-523: The other hand, during another meeting in August 1975, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai warned Sihanouk as well as Khmer Rouge leaders including Khieu Samphan and Ieng Sary of the danger of radical movement towards communism, citing the mistakes in China's own Great Leap Forward . Zhou urged them not to repeat the mistakes that had caused havoc. Sihanouk later recalled that Khieu Samphan and Ieng Thirith responded only with "an incredulous and superior smile". During

42504-422: The other is capitalism. Our situation now is like this. Fifty years from now, or one hundred years from now, the struggle between two lines will exist. Even ten thousand years from now, the struggle between two lines will still exist. When Communism is realized, the struggle between two lines will still be there. Otherwise, you are not a Marxist. This is unity existing among opposites. If one mentions only one side of

42735-402: The outcome, such as militias) and fourth forces (unarmed groups which affect the outcome, such as international media), who may be distinct from the core insurgents and the recognized government. While overt state sponsorship becomes less common, sponsorship by transnational groups is more common. "The nesting of insurgency within complex conflicts associated with state weakness or failure..." (See

42966-421: The party was a closely guarded secret. Lower ranking members of the party and even the Vietnamese were not told of it and neither was the membership until many years later. The party leadership endorsed armed struggle against the government, then led by Sihanouk. In 1968, the Khmer Rouge was officially formed, and its forces launched a national insurgency across Cambodia. Though North Vietnam had not been informed of

43197-402: The persecution and killings which occurred during the rule of the Khmer Rouge should be considered genocide. These conflicting opinions exist because scholars who conducted research in Cambodia immediately after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979 claimed that the victims could have been killed due to the circumstances which they were living under. For instance, Michael Vickery opined that

43428-488: The real issue is the future of their civilization, if they tolerate religious, cultural or separatist violence and terrorism when it strikes at unpopular targets, or if they continue to try to export the blame for their own failures to other nations, religions, and cultures. Asymmetric conflicts (or irregular conflicts ), as the emerging type of insurgencies in recent history, is described by Berman and Matanock in their review as conflicts where "the government forces have

43659-503: The regime in June 1975. The supposed reason for the killings was because some of them were "leading prayers instead of attending a CPK meeting", while the others were purportedly "petitioning for the permission on marriage ceremonies." Khmer Rouge The Khmer Rouge is the name that was popularly given to members of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) and by extension to the Democratic Kampuchea through which

43890-407: The regime of Democratic Kampuchea. Pol Pot, who rose to the leadership of the communist movement in the 1960s, attended a technical high school in the capital and then went to Paris in 1949 to study radio electronics (other sources say he attended a school for fax machines and also studied civil engineering). Described by one source as a "determined, rather plodding organizer", Pol Pot failed to obtain

44121-590: The regime's social engineering policies and the "Moha Lout Plaoh", an imitation of China's Great Leap Forward which had caused the Great Chinese Famine . The Khmer Rouge's attempts at agricultural reform through collectivization similarly led to widespread famine, while its insistence on absolute self-sufficiency, including the supply of medicine, led to the death of many thousands from treatable diseases such as malaria . The Khmer Rouge regime murdered hundreds of thousands of their perceived political opponents, and its racist emphasis on national purity resulted in

44352-424: The regime. Chandler also rejects the use of the terms "chauvinism" and "genocide" just to avoid drawing possible parallels to Hitler. This indicates that Chandler does not believe in the argument of charging the Khmer Rouge regime with the crime of genocide. Similarly, Michael Vickery holds a similar position to Chandler's, and refuses to acknowledge the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge regime as genocide; Vickery regarded

44583-465: The revolution", stating that "the enemies of the revolution are many, but our biggest enemy are Cham. So the Plan calls for the destruction of all the Cham people before 1980." In fact, more telegrams were sent from Pol Pot to local governments between 1978 and 1979 than usual hastily ordered the total eradication of the Cham must be achieved before 1980. The Cham began to rise in prominence when they joined

44814-682: The role of civilians in this framework into consideration, the government and rebels will divert resources to provide services to civilians so as to influence their decision about sharing information with the government. The framework is based on several assumptions: This framework leads to five major implications for counterinsurgency strategies: These implications are tested by empirical evidences from conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and several other subnational conflicts. Further research on governance , rule of law , attitudes, dynamics and agency between allies are needed to better understand asymmetric conflicts and to have better informed decisions made at

45045-581: The same year, high-ranking CCP officials such as Wang Dongxing and Deng Yingchao visited Cambodia to offer support. Soon after Deng became the Paramount Leader of China , the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia and ended the genocide by defeating the Khmer Rouge in January 1979. The People's Republic of Kampuchea was then established. In order to counter the power of the Soviet Union and Vietnam in Southeast Asia , China officially condemned

45276-495: The security gap begins with training, sometimes in specialized areas such as intelligence. More direct, but still noncombat support, includes intelligence, planning, logistics and communications. Anthony Cordesman notes that security requirements differ by region and state in region. Writing on the Middle East, he identified different security needs for specific areas, as well as the US interest in security in those areas. It

45507-415: The status of lay peasantry as the agricultural work they were allocated to involved regular breaches of monastic rules. While there is evidence of widespread vandalism of Buddhist monasteries, many more than were initially thought survived the Khmer Rouge years in fair condition, as did most Khmer historical monuments, and it is possible that stories of their near-total destruction were propaganda issued by

45738-415: The strategic campaign, even if it is politically unfeasible to use precise terminology. Insurgent groups often struggle to maintain coherency and authority due to their decentralized nature, and thus rely heavily upon ethnic, religious, or ideological bounds to avoid splintering. While it may be reasonable to consider transnational insurgency, Anthony Cordesman points out some of the myths in trying to have

45969-424: The successor People's Republic of Kampuchea. Nevertheless, it has been estimated that nearly 25,000 Buddhist monks were killed by the regime. The repression of Islam (practised by the country's Cham minority) was extensive. Islamic religious leaders were executed, although some Cham Muslims appear to have been told they could continue devotions in private as long as it did not interfere with work quotas. Mat Ly,

46200-545: The system" by joining the Sangkum and by accepting posts in the prince's government. In late September 1960, twenty-one leaders of the KPRP held a secret congress in a vacant room of the Phnom Penh railroad station. This pivotal event remains shrouded in mystery because its outcome has become an object of contention and considerable historical rewriting between pro-Vietnamese and anti-Vietnamese Khmer communist factions. The question of cooperation with, or resistance to, Sihanouk

46431-399: The tactical level, but its dispatch is a strategic decision that may be made unilaterally, or by an established group of the core such as NATO or ASEAN . Other than brief "Leviathan" takedowns, security building appears to need to be regional, with logistical and other technical support from more developed countries and alliances (e.g., ASEAN, NATO). Noncombat military assistance in closing

46662-743: The tactical, strategic and public policy levels. Before one counters an insurgency, one must understand what one is countering. Typically the most successful counter-insurgencies have been the British in the Malay Emergency and the Filipino government's countering of the Huk Rebellion . In the Philippine–American War , U.S. forces successfully quelled the Filipino insurgents by 1902, albeit with tactics considered unacceptable by

46893-426: The term "subversion" is less commonly used by current U.S. spokesmen, that may be due to the hyperbolic way it was used in the past, in a specifically anticommunist context. U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk did in April 1962, when he declared that urgent action was required before the "enemy's subversive politico-military teams find fertile spawning grounds for their fish eggs." In a Western context, Rosenau cites

47124-440: The totalitarian theory in favor of a bottom-up perspective, which emphasises that the peasants did not have revolutionary ambitions. According to this perspective, the Khmer Rouge was able to effectively manipulate the peasants to mobilise them towards collective goals that they did not understand, or where the revolutionaries had no desire to create a new society, which would require a certain level of support and understanding that

47355-457: The two apart. Insurgencies normally field fighting forces orders of magnitude larger than those of terrorist organizations." Insurgencies have a political purpose, and may provide social services and have an overt, even legal, political wing. Their covert wing carries out attacks on military forces with tactics such as raids and ambushes , as well as acts of terror such as attacks that cause deliberate civilian casualties. Mao considered terrorism

47586-405: The two, this is metaphysics. I believe in what Marx and Lenin have said, that the path [of advance] would be tortuous ... Our state now is, as Lenin said, a capitalist state without capitalists. This state protects capitalist rights, and the wages are not equal. Under the slogan of equality, a system of inequality has been introduced. There will exist a struggle between two lines, the struggle between

47817-410: The urban population in Khmer Rouge ideology was heightened by the structure of the Cambodian rural economy , where small farmers and peasants had historically suffered from indebtedness to urban money-lenders rather than suffering from indebtedness to landlords. The policy of evacuating major towns, as well as providing a reserve of easily exploitable agricultural labour, was likely viewed positively by

48048-498: The village communities which assisted the locals by providing food and provisions to them, and there were no bans on local cultures or religions; even if restrictions were imposed, the consequences of them were not harsh. Many regarded the Khmer Rouge as heroes because they believed that the Khmer Rouge supported the peasantry during its war against the United States backed government. Because the Cham communities could be found across Cambodia, various Cham communities might have experienced

48279-439: The villagers to work in the fields which were located away from their hometowns. A witness who was interviewed by Kiernan asserts that at that time, they were well-treated by the Khmer Rouge, and in 1974, they were allowed to return to their homes. Moreover, the Cham were classified as "depositee base people", making them vulnerable to persecution. Despite their plight, the Cham and the locals live side by side in many areas, speaking

48510-541: The way of their own military resources, accomplished their seizure of power by forming an alliance with Southwestern Zone leader Ta Mok and Pok, head of the North Zone's troops. Both men were of a purely peasant background and were therefore natural allies of the strongly peasant ideology of the Pol Pot faction. Insurgency An insurgency can be fought via counter-insurgency warfare, as well as other political, economic and social actions of various kinds. Due to

48741-517: Was Son Ngoc Minh , and a third of its leadership consisted of members of the ICP. According to the historian David P. Chandler, the leftist Issarak groups aided by the Viet Minh occupied a sixth of Cambodia's territory by 1952, and on the eve of the Geneva Conference in 1954, they controlled as much as one half of the country. In 1951, the ICP was reorganized into three national units, namely

48972-406: Was "an experiment in social mobilization unmatched in twentieth-century revolutions." The Khmer Rouge used a forced labor regime, starvation, forced resettlement , land collectivization , and state terror to keep the population in line. The Khmer Rouge's economic plan was named the "Maha Lout Ploh", a direct allusion to the " Great Leap Forward " of China that caused tens of millions of deaths in

49203-403: Was a major part of the ideology of all three regimes. All three regimes targeted religious minorities and they also tried to use force in order to expand their rule into what they believed were their historic heartlands (the Khmer Empire, Turkestan , and Lebensraum , respectively), and all three regimes "idealized their ethnic peasantry as the true 'national' class, the ethnic soil from which

49434-409: Was also executed. The Khmer Rouge also used the media to support their goals of genocide. Radio Phnom Penh called on Cambodians to "exterminate the 50 million Vietnamese." Additionally, the Khmer Rouge conducted many cross-border raids into Vietnam, where they slaughtered an estimated 30,000 Vietnamese civilians. Most notably, during the Ba Chúc massacre in April 1978, the Khmer Rouge military crossed

49665-511: Was changed to the Kingdom of Cambodia. A year later, thousands of Khmer Rouge guerrillas surrendered themselves in a government amnesty. In 1996, a new political party called the Democratic National Union Movement was formed by Ieng Sary, who was granted amnesty for his role as the deputy leader of the Khmer Rouge. The organisation was largely dissolved by the mid-1990s and finally surrendered completely in 1999. In 2014, two Khmer Rouge leaders, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan, were jailed for life by

49896-400: Was chosen to succeed Tou Samouth as the party's general secretary. Samouth's allies Nuon Chea and Keo Meas were removed from the Central Committee and replaced by Son Sen and Vorn Vet . From then on, Pol Pot and loyal comrades from his Paris student days controlled the party centre, edging out older veterans whom they considered excessively pro-Vietnamese. In July 1963, Pol Pot and most of

50127-443: Was demoted in the state presidium, was later presented as an attempted pro-Vietnamese coup by the Party Center. Over the next two years, So Phim, Nhim Ros, Vorn Vet and many other figures who had been associated with the pre-1960 party were arrested and executed. Phim's execution was followed by that of the majority of the cadres and much of the population of the Eastern Zone that he had controlled. The Party Centre, lacking much in

50358-416: Was directed against the ethnic Chams , Cambodia's Muslim minority." Islam was seen as an "alien" and "foreign" culture that did not belong in the new Communist system. Initially, the Khmer Rouge aimed for the " forced assimilation " of Chams through population dispersal. Pol Pot then began using intimidation efforts against the Chams that included the assassination of village elders, but he ultimately ordered

50589-418: Was largely supported and funded by the Chinese Communist Party, receiving approval from Mao Zedong ; it is estimated that at least 90% of the foreign aid which was provided to the Khmer Rouge came from China. The regime was removed from power in 1979 when Vietnam invaded Cambodia and quickly destroyed most of its forces. The Khmer Rouge then fled to Thailand, whose government saw them as a buffer force against

50820-501: Was located in the Western Zone, protested against the Khmer Rouge's policy which required fishermen to register their daily catch with the local cooperative and sell it to the cooperative at a low price. At the same time, the locals were also forced to buy those fish from the cooperative at a higher price. This policy prompted the locals to confront the cooperative to express their discontent, the locals were shot at, "killing and wounding more than 100", as one account put it. By December 1974,

51051-615: Was more complicated: as with Islam , many religious leaders were killed whereas many ordinary monks were sent to remote monasteries where they were subjected to hard physical labour. The same division between rural and urban populations was seen in the regime's treatment of monks. For instance, those from urban monasteries were classified as "new monks" and sent to rural areas to live alongside "base monks" of peasant background, who were classified as "proper and revolutionary". Monks were not ordered to defrock until as late as 1977 in Kratié Province , where many monks found that they reverted to

51282-424: Was negligible. Viet Minh units occasionally made forays into Cambodian bases during their war against the French and in conjunction with the leftist government that ruled Thailand until 1947. The Viet Minh encouraged the formation of armed, left-wing Khmer Issarak bands. On 17 April 1950, the first nationwide congress of the Khmer Issarak groups convened, and the United Issarak Front was established. Its leader

51513-633: Was one of Pol Pot's favorite authors, according to historian David Chandler. In the mid-1960s, Pol Pot reformulated his ideas about Marxism–Leninism to suit the Cambodian situation by advocating goals such as bringing Cambodia back to an alleged and mythical past of the powerful Khmer Empire , eradicating influences which he viewed as "corrupting", such as foreign aid and Western culture , as well as restoring Cambodia's agrarian society . Pol Pot's strong belief that Cambodia needed to be transformed into an agrarian utopia stemmed from his experience in Cambodia's rural northeast—where he developed an affinity for

51744-404: Was particularly impressed by the lecture on political purge by Kang Sheng . This experience had enhanced his prestige when he returned to the WPK's "liberated areas". Despite friendly relations between Sihanouk and the Chinese, the latter kept Pol Pot's visit a secret from Sihanouk. In September 1966, the WPK changed its name to the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). The change in the name of

51975-415: Was responsible for several anti-Vietnamese pogroms during the 1970s. Some historians such as Ben Kiernan have stated that the importance the regime gave to race overshadowed its conceptions of class. The Khmer Rouge targeted particular groups of people, among them Buddhist monks , ethnic minorities, and educated elites. Once in power, the Khmer Rouge explicitly targeted the Chinese , the Vietnamese ,

52206-404: Was split between the state presidium headed by Khieu Samphan, the cabinet headed by Pol Pot (who was also Democratic Kampuchea's prime minister) and the party's own Politburo and Central Committee. All were complicated by a number of political factions which existed in 1975. The leadership of the Party Centre, the faction which was headed by Pol Pot, remained largely unchanged from the early 1960s to

52437-433: Was strongly at odds with mainstream Marxism, which emphasised historical materialism and the idea of history as inevitable progression toward communism. In 1981, following the Cambodian–Vietnamese War, in an attempt to get foreign support, the Khmer Rouge officially renounced communism. One of the regime's main characteristics was its Khmer nationalism, which combined an idealisation of the Angkor Empire (802–1431) and

52668-418: Was subjected to by the regime between 1970 and early 1975. While restrictions on certain activities like trade and travel were imposed during that period, they were understood to be the by-products of the ongoing civil war. Moreover, some Cham had also joined the revolution as soldiers and members of the Khmer Rouge. According to some local accounts, people had confidence in the Khmer Rouge when they first came to

52899-503: Was the most advanced communist state then in existence. Many of the regime's characteristics—such as its focus on the rural peasantry rather than the urban proletariat as the bulwark of revolution, its emphasis on Great Leap Forward -type initiatives, its desire to abolish personal interest in human behaviour, its promotion of communal living and eating, and its focus on perceived common sense over technical knowledge—appear to have been heavily influenced by Maoist ideology; however,

53130-418: Was thoroughly discussed. Tou Samouth, who advocated a policy of cooperation, was elected general secretary of the KPRP that was renamed the Workers' Party of Kampuchea (WPK). His ally Nuon Chea , also known as Long Reth, became deputy general secretary, but Pol Pot and Ieng Sary were named to the Political Bureau to occupy the third and the fifth highest positions in the renamed party's hierarchy. The name change

53361-399: Was widespread, and many were persuaded or forced to commit atrocities. As of 2009, the Documentation Center of Cambodia has mapped 23,745 mass graves containing approximately 1.3 million suspected victims of execution. Direct execution is believed to account for up to 60% of the genocide's death toll, with other victims succumbing to starvation, exhaustion, or disease. The genocide triggered

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