Cambodia-MD

= = =Cambodia=

by Matthew D.
During the Vietnam War, the United States instigated a coup in the Southeast Asian nation of Cambodia. Unfortunately, the new government soon proved unpopular amongst the people, and a revolution followed which resulted in a new military government. This government executed a terrible genocide that killed one-seventh of the population of Cambodia.

The Sihanouk Regime
For much of Cambodia’s history, monarchial rulers governed it. However, in 1863, King Norodom gave power to the French imperial powers. France maintained control over Cambodia through World War Two. In 1941, they made Prince Norodom Sihanouk the ruler of Cambodia. However, the French remained the colonial rulers of the Indochina region.

King Sihanouk began trying to attain Cambodian independence in 1952. Two years later, at the Geneva Conference, Cambodia was severed from the French Empire. Sihanouk could not be president of the new nation, though, because he was merely a ceremonial ruler. Therefore, in 1955, he ended his kingship and ran for president. He was able to win, partially due to the fact that Cambodian peasants thought him to be divine.

During Sihanouk’s regime, he was able to keep Cambodia neutral on both the domestic and international scenes. While remaining uninvolved in the Vietnamese conflict, he kept Cambodian communists peaceful. Some of these communists fled to Vietnam, some hid within Cambodia, and some joined the government. Sihanouk’s foreign policy consisted of efforts to make China, the United States, and Vietnam fight each other so that Cambodia remained peaceful.

In 1958, Ngo Dinh Diem, the South Vietnamese ruler, invaded Cambodia while following Vietnamese communist forces. The United States supported this maneuver; however, Sihanouk did not, and he remained a believer in eventual North Vietnamese victory. Sihanouk had also been interacting with members of the People’s Republic of China. In November 1963, he ended US aid to Cambodia, which helped the Cambodian army, but angered Defense Minister Lon Nol. In 1965, Sihanouk ended most diplomatic relations. However, he allowed North Vietnam to have camps in Cambodia. These camps become the basis for the Ho Chi Minh Trail. As he commitedhis seemingly pro-Communist actions, Sihanouk became afraid that he would lose power.

Sihanouk began to make the Cambodian government right-wing in 1966. For example, he quickly subdued a peasant riot in Battambang, an area in northwest Cambodia. His defense minister, Lon Nol, led the government response against the rebellion. President Sihanouk thought that some members of his government were involved in the Battambang incident. As a result, he persecuted government leftists, who in turn fled to the communists in the forest. These communists, who Sihanouk called the “Khmer Rouge,” thought that the time was ripe for revolution.

The Regime of Lon Nol and Sirik Matak
Resulting National Liberation Front (also Viet Cong or NLF) and Khmer Rouge attacks made Sihanouk request American help. Instead, the US initiated the 1969 MENU bombings of NLF bases in Cambodia. This action angered various peasants, who supported the Khmer Rouge. In fact, so many peasants joined the Khmer Rouge that it grew from 4,000 members before the MENU bombings to 80,000 members afterwards, an increase of about 2,000 percent. Then, seeing that the bombing campaign was not working, General Creighton Adams and the United States decided to invade Cambodia. They knew that this action would anger Sihanouk; therefore, the CIA supported a coup led by Prime Minister Lon Nol and Sirik Matak while Sihanouk was ill in Paris.

The new leaders launched a firm anti-communist movement. Lon Nol attacked Vietnamese natives living in Cambodia in order to unite Cambodians. While his unifying efforts were successful with the citizens of Phnom Penh, peasants continued to support the Khmer Rouge, which became more of a threat to the Nol-Matak regime when ex-President Sihanouk, at the suggestion of Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai, became a leader and figurehead of the Khmer Rouge. However, even though he seemed to have much power in the Khmer Rouge hierarchy, the real leaders of the Cambodian communists were Pol Pot and a secretive council.

April 1970 saw the United States and South Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia. They progressed thirty miles into the nation, but they failed to accomplish much of anything; North Vietnamese forces, or the People’s Army of North Vietnam, continued to find refuge in Cambodia. In addition, the North Vietnamese murdered Cambodian civilians because of Lon Nol's anti-Vietnamese attacks. US and South Vietnamese forces retreated to South Vietnam in May, with nothing good to show for their month in Cambodia. However, the People’s Army of North Vietnam (PAVN) traveled further into Cambodia, causing general anger against the US-backed Lon Nol government and support of the Khmer Rouge.

The United States was still directly involved after their invasion, though. From 1970 to 1973, the US led an air campaign to stop a Khmer Rouge advance toward Phnom Penh. Launching planes from South Vietnam, United States forces destroyed 20% of all property in the bombing region, caused two million refugees to go to Phnom Penh (which grew in population from 600,000 people in 1970 to 1.2 million people in 1975), launched 539,000 tons of bombs, and instigated more support for the Khmer Rouge.

The Khmer Rouge Regime
Finally, in April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge invaded Phnom Penh. Following the invasion, the Khmer Rouge ordered the migration of all citizens to leave their homes and travel to trains, where they were carried to work camps called “liberated zones.” While leaving their homes at the orders of the Khmer Rouge, many people died of sickness or hunger. When they arrived at their destinations, they found that the “liberated zones” were merely a collection of various camps within Cambodia. In these camps, people worked all day and traded their possessions for morsels of rice. While working, many people died of hunger or sickness (especially malaria). Also, the Khmer Rouge tortured and killed ex-government workers, military officers, teachers, doctors, or engineers because they were not thought capable of being “educated” in the ways and policies of the Khmer Rouge as the other Cambodians were.

The Khmer Rouge policies consisted of intense fear of foreigners and fierce nationalism. In fact, they took their beliefs to such an extreme that they decided to supply all Cambodians with food through an in-country rice-growing program. The new Khmer Rouge-led Cambodia cut all international ties (except with the People’s Republic of China) and began the rice-growing campaign. However, bad planning and corruption within the Khmer Rouge resulted in disastrous failure of the project, which in turn led to nationwide famine. Hundreds of thousands died because of malnutrition or malaria. Also, the Khmer Rouge’s adamant refusal to use modern medicine caused multiple sickness-related deaths that could have been prevented.

In addition to the threats of starvation and sickness, Cambodians in work camps were afraid of being taken by Khmer Rouge guards and killed. Work camp members were under constant supervision by teenage guards, and various children would report illegal actions to the teenagers, resulting in the beating of the perpetrators. People who used to live in Phnom Penh thought that the Khmer Rouge guards hated them because it was thought that the people of Phnom Penh had lived western lives while the Khmer Rouge participated in a revolution. People were often taken and secretly killed (often by stabbing) because they were thought to have associated with the Lon Nol government. Children and women were not excluded from this fate. Also, village leaders often killed thousands of people because they were thought to be “enemies” of the nation. By 1978, about one million Cambodians (one-seventh of the entire population) had died of murder, starvation, or disease.

As people were migrating to the work camps, the Khmer Rouge leaders renamed their country as Democratic Kampuchea. They called the year Zero (instead of 1975), as well. When Norodom Sihanouk resigned as the Khmer Rouge’s Head of State in 1976, he was placed under house arrest. However, he was not going to remain in his house for his entire life, nor was the Khmer Rouge going to control Cambodia for much longer.

The Fall of the Khmer Rouge
After the Khmer Rouge had successful established their rule over Democratic Kampuchea, the People’s Republic of China influenced them to participate in skirmishes along the Kampuchea-Vietnam border. In addition, the Khmer Rouge and the Pol Pot government resisted Vietnamese efforts to control Cambodia. Therefore, in January 1979, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam invaded Phnom Penh. They put Cambodian communists, who had lived in Vietnam since 1954, in power. The Khmer Rouge fled to the forests of Cambodia, and they fought the new government with two other forces, one of which led by Sihanouk.

In 1993, after fifteen years of communist control, the Cambodians held a UN- supervised election. During this time, Sihanouk reclaimed his position as King of Cambodia, as well. In 1994, the Khmer Rouge became illegal in Cambodia. However, they continued to control parts of the rural areas of the nation.



The Sihanouk, Khmer Rouge, and Cambodian-Communist regimes were short-lived, yet highly significant to the history of Cambodia. Horrific genocide, terrible corruption, and numerous revolutions have scarred the Cambodian population, and they will leave a mark for years to come. Hopefully, though, the worst is over for Cambodia, and the people there will continue to build a flourishing, wealthy country.