The extension of the conflict to Cambodia, the rise of the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot, the fall of Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975, the nature and policies of Democratic Kampuchea, and the impact on Cambodian society

What this dot point is asking

NESA expects you to explain how the Indochina conflict extended into Cambodia, the rise of the Khmer Rouge, the nature of Democratic Kampuchea, and its impact on Cambodian society. Strong answers cover the Sihanouk period, the destabilisation of Cambodia by US bombing and the Lon Nol coup, the civil war of 1970 to 1975, the fall of Phnom Penh, Year Zero, the killing fields, and the toll of around 1.7 million dead.

The answer

Cambodia under Sihanouk

Prince Norodom Sihanouk had ruled Cambodia since 1941 (as king to 1955, then as Head of State). His neutralist foreign policy balanced the US, the PRC, and the DRV. The DRV used eastern Cambodia as sanctuary and supply route along the Trail; Sihanouk tolerated this in return for PRC support and territorial guarantees.

Domestically, Sihanouk presided over the Sangkum Reastr Niyum (Popular Socialist Community) one-party state. He repressed the Khmer Rouge (the Communist Party of Kampuchea, CPK), driving Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, Khieu Samphan, Son Sen, and Nuon Chea into the jungle by 1965 to 1967. The Samlaut peasant rebellion of April 1967, brutally repressed, was the regime's local crisis.

The Khmer Rouge in 1968 was small (around 4,000 fighters) and isolated.

US bombing and the Lon Nol coup

Nixon's Operation Menu, the secret B-52 bombing of PAVN sanctuaries in eastern Cambodia (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Dessert, Snack), ran from 18 March 1969 to 26 May 1970. Around 110,000 tonnes were dropped in the secret phase; Operation Freedom Deal (1970 to 1973) added around 430,000 tonnes openly. Total US tonnage on Cambodia 1965 to 1973: around 2.76 million tonnes (more than the Allies dropped in all of WWII).

Around 50,000 to 150,000 Cambodians died from the bombing (estimates vary widely). Rural Cambodia was destabilised; refugees flooded into Phnom Penh; the Khmer Rouge recruited from displaced peasants. Ben Kiernan's research at Yale links the bombing intensity directly to subsequent Khmer Rouge recruitment areas.

On 18 March 1970, while Sihanouk was abroad in Moscow, General Lon Nol and Prince Sirik Matak organised his deposition by the National Assembly. The Khmer Republic was proclaimed on 9 October 1970. Sihanouk, from Beijing, allied with the Khmer Rouge in a Royal Government of National Union of Kampuchea (GRUNK).

The alliance was the Khmer Rouge's golden gift: Sihanouk's royal legitimacy mobilised the rural population. Khmer Rouge strength grew from 4,000 (1970) to around 30,000 (1973) to around 70,000 (1975).

The Cambodian civil war 1970 to 1975

The Khmer Republic, dependent on US air support and aid, fought a losing five-year war. The US Cambodian incursion of April to June 1970 pushed PAVN deeper into Cambodia, paradoxically extending Khmer Rouge sanctuary. PAVN forces fought alongside the Khmer Rouge until 1972, then withdrew to focus on the south.

Phnom Penh's population grew from around 600,000 (1970) to around 2.5 million (1975) as refugees fled. The Khmer Rouge tightened the siege from 1973. The Mekong was their last supply line; the US-flagged convoys ran the Mekong corridor under Khmer Rouge fire until 1 April 1975.

Lon Nol left Phnom Penh on 1 April 1975. Sirik Matak refused evacuation: "I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion ... I have only committed this mistake of believing in you, the Americans." He was executed by the Khmer Rouge.

The fall of Phnom Penh

The Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh on the morning of 17 April 1975. The population poured into the streets in initial relief. Within hours the regime began the evacuation, claiming a US bombing was imminent. Hospitals were emptied; patients were pushed into the street in beds. The sick, the elderly, the very young died on the road. The same was done to Battambang, Kompong Cham, and the other cities.

Around 2 million people were marched into the countryside. The first wave of deaths from the march was around 20,000. The "New People" (the urban evacuees) were assigned to agricultural communes; the "Old People" (rural peasants) were higher in the regime's caste hierarchy.

Democratic Kampuchea

The regime, formally Democratic Kampuchea from 5 January 1976, was hyper-secretive. Pol Pot (Saloth Sar) became Prime Minister in April 1976 but his identity as party leader was concealed; the regime referred to "Angkar" (the Organisation).

Policy decisions of 1975 to 1976 abolished:

• currency (April 1975, the National Bank was blown up),
• private property,
• religion (around 25,000 Buddhist monks killed; mosques and churches destroyed),
• family meals (replaced by communal eating),
• the postal service, schools, hospitals, universities,
• ethnic identity for the Cham (Muslims), Vietnamese, and Chinese minorities.

The Four-Year Plan (1977 to 1980) demanded the trebling of rice production to fund industrialisation through exports. The targets were impossible; cadres extracted the rice anyway; famine resulted.

S-21, the Tuol Sleng secret prison in Phnom Penh, run by Comrade Duch (Kaing Guek Eav) from 1976, interrogated and killed around 17,000 detainees. Forced confessions named further victims. Successive purges decimated the Khmer Rouge's own ranks: the Eastern Zone purge of 1978 killed perhaps 100,000 cadres.

The killing fields

Mass graves were excavated across Cambodia from 1979 onwards. Choeung Ek, 15 kilometres south of Phnom Penh, held around 17,000 bodies (largely S-21 victims). Around 20,000 mass grave sites have been documented.

Estimates of the total death toll vary; the Documentation Center of Cambodia and Marek Sliwinski settle on around 1.7 million dead between April 1975 and January 1979 (around 21 per cent of the 1975 population of 8 million). Causes: execution (around 30 per cent), starvation (around 40 per cent), disease and overwork (around 30 per cent). Per capita this is one of the worst death tolls of the twentieth century.

Specific minorities suffered disproportionately. Around 50 per cent of the Chinese died, around 36 per cent of the Cham (Muslims), and almost the entire ethnic Vietnamese population was killed or expelled.

International response

Democratic Kampuchea retained the Cambodian seat at the United Nations through 1979 because of Chinese and US support against the Vietnamese-backed regime that replaced it. The PRC supplied around $1 billion in aid to Democratic Kampuchea. The US prioritised opposition to Vietnamese-Soviet influence.

The Khmer Rouge's expulsions of ethnic Vietnamese and cross-border raids into Vietnam from 1977 onwards provoked the Vietnamese invasion of December 1978.

Historiography

Ben Kiernan (The Pol Pot Regime, 1996; How Pol Pot Came to Power, 1985) is the standard.

Philip Short (Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare, 2004) is the standard biography.

David Chandler (Voices from S-21, 1999; A History of Cambodia, 4th ed. 2008) on the prison and the country.

Henri Locard (Pol Pot's Little Red Book, 2004) on the propaganda.

Common exam traps

Treating Cambodia as separate from the Indochina conflict. The US bombing, the Lon Nol coup, and the Khmer Rouge takeover are all part of the dot point.

Misdating the fall of Phnom Penh. 17 April 1975, thirteen days before Saigon.

Treating Pol Pot as a known leader during the regime. His leadership was concealed by Angkar; the regime was hyper-secretive.

In one sentence

The Khmer Rouge rose in Cambodia on the back of US bombing (around 2.76 million tonnes from 1965 to 1973), the Lon Nol coup of 18 March 1970, and the Sihanouk-Khmer Rouge GRUNK alliance, took Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975, evacuated the cities and built Democratic Kampuchea, and through forced labour, famine, the S-21 system, and ethnic purges killed around 1.7 million Cambodians between April 1975 and January 1979 in one of the worst genocides of the twentieth century.