the German government, signed an agreement with Tokyo that permitted the movement of Japanese troops through the transportation hubs of Indochina.
Thailand subsequently sought to take advantage of both its friendship with Tokyo and French military weakness in the region by launching an invasion of C
ambodia's western provinc
es. Although the French suffered a series of land defeats in the skirmishes that followed, a unique twist in the confrontation came from a naval battle that
ensued near the Thai island of Ko Chang. A small French naval force intercepted a Thai battle fleet, en route to attack Saigon, and sank two battleships and other light craft. The Japanese then intervened and arranged a treaty, signed in Tokyo in March 1941, compelling the French to concede to Thailand the provinces of Batdambang, Siemreab, and parts of Kampong Thum and Stoeng Treng. Cambodia thus lost one-third of its territory and nearly half a million citizens.
The Japanese, while leaving the Vichy colonial government nominally in charge throughout Indochina, established in Cambodia a garrison that numbered 8,000 troops by August 1941. Preservation of order on a day-to-day basis, however, continued to be the responsibility of the colonial authorities, who were permitted to retain the constabulary and the light infantry battalion. These forces were sufficient to quell the first stirrings of nationalistic unrest in 1941 and in 1942.
Anti-French agitation assumed a more overt form, in July 1942, when early nationalist leaders Pach Chhoeun and Son Ngoc Thanh organized a demonstration in Phnom Penh over an obscure incident involving Cambodian military personnel. In this occurrence, a monk named Hem Chieu attempted to subvert some Khmer military personnel by involving them in vague coup plotting against the colonial administration. The plot was discovered, and the monk was arrested; Chhoeun and Thanh, believing they had tacit Japanese support, staged a march on the French residency by some 2,000 people, many of them monks. The repressive reaction by the colonial authorities resulted in many injuries and in mass arrests. Although the Japanese failed to support Thanh as he had expected, they spirited him away to Japan, where he was trained for the next three years and was commissioned a captain in the Japanese army. Chhoeun was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment.
On March 9, 1945, Japanese forces in Indochina, including those in Cambodia, overthrew the French colonial administration; and, in a bid to revive the flagging support of local populations for Tokyo's war effort, they encouraged indigenous rulers to proclaim independence. During this period of Japanese-sponsored independence, the fate of the constabulary and of the light infantry battalion remained uncertain. The battalion apparently was demobilized for the most part, while the constabulary remained in place but was reduced to ineffectuality. Presumably both forces were leaderless because their French officers were interned by the Japanese for the remainder of the war.
Tokyo, however, did not plan to leave the Indochinese countries without a military force following the March 9 coup. Plans had been prepared for the creation of 5 volunteer units of 1,000 troops each. There was no thought that such a native force would fight alongside Japanese troops, but rather that it would be used to preserve public order and internal security. It was intended that recruitment of indigenous personnel for the volunteer units would be through physical and written exams. Before the plan could be implemented in Cambodia, however, the war ended, and the concept died without further action.
The conclusion of World War II caused considerable turmoil in Cambodia: a defeated Japanese military contingent waited to be disarmed and repatriated; French nationals newly released from internment sought to resume their prewar existence; diverse Allied military units returned to Phnom Penh to reimpose a colonial administration. In the countryside there were two sources of unrest. On the western fringes of the country, the Khmer Issarak, nationalist insurgents with Thai backing, declared their opposition to a French return to power in Cambodia, proclaimed a government-in-exile, and established a base in Batdambang Province. On the eastern frontier, the Vietnamese communist forces, or Viet Minh infiltrated the Cambodian border provinces, organized a "Khmer People's Liberation Army" (not to be confused with the later Cambodian force, the Kampuchean People's National Liberation Armed Forces, which is sometimes called the Khmer People's National Liberation Army), and began seeking a united front with the Khmer Issarak.
First Indochina War (1945-54)
It was under such exigencies that a Cambodian army was created, primarily by Prince Monireth, the heir to the throne, who earlier had been passed over by the French in favor of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who was considered more pliable. In the fall of 1945, Monireth gained the concurrence of returning French authorities in his plan to raise an indigenous military force to fill the vacuum left by the defeated Japanese and to counter mounting internal disorder. On November 23, in his capacity as defense minister, he made public two decisions concerning this issue. The first was to form the first battalion of a nascent Cambodian army, and he invited former noncommissioned officers (NCOs) of the demobilized colonial light infantry battalion to join the new unit. The second was to open an officer-candidate school, and he extended an invitation to young men between the ages of eighteen and twenty five with a junior high-school education to apply for admission. The school duly opened on January 1, 1946, and part of it was reserved for NCO training.Two important agreements between Phnom Penh and Paris gave the Cambodian military forces a firmer official footing in 1946. The first, the Franco-Cambodian Modus Vivendi of January 7, 1946, for the most part concerned political matters. In military affairs, however, it gave official recognition to the existence of a Cambodian army, although it placed French advisers in the Cambodian Ministry of Defense and declared that French authorities had responsibility for maintaining order in Cambodia.
The second agreement, the Franco-Khmer Military Convention of November 20, 1946, was more significant in Cambodian military history because it established the organization and the mission of the nation's armed forces. The pact affirmed that Cambodia, as an autonomous state within the French Union, would have at its disposal indigenous forces, the missions of which were to uphold the sovereignty of the king, to preserve internal security, and to defend the frontiers of the country. The accord also noted that Cambodia participated in the defense of the French Union by placing its military units at the disposal of the French High Commissioner for Indochina, and that, reciprocally, other French Union forces helped to defend Cambodia. The Cambodian forces were to be composed of units with a territorial responsibility and a mobile reserve. The supreme commander would be the king, who would exercise his powers through a Ministry of Defense assisted by a Franco-Khmer general staff. The Cambodians also were granted the responsibilities of recruiting, of determining obligatory military service, of designating unit tables of organization and equipment, and of deploying troops internally. The stationing of Cambodian units outside the country, however, was to be based on mutual understanding between the king and the French High Commissioner for Indochina (see The Struggle for Independence , ch. 1).
In 1947 the Cambodian government faced a mounting threat from several thousand Khmer Issarak combatants, whose numbers would swell to around 10,000 by 1949. In an effort to keep pace with their domestic adversaries, the Cambodian military forces slowly but inexorably grew in numbers as the months and years passed. In January 1947, the effective strength of the Cambodian military stood at about 4,000 personnel, of which 3,000 served in the constabulary. The remainder were in a mobile reserve of two battalion-sized units (one of them newly formed) named, respectively, the First Cambodian Rifle Battalion and the Second Cambodian Rifle Battalion (Bataillon de Chasseurs Cambodgiens). These first Cambodian military units went into action in 1947 against the Khmer Issarak. During the next two years, two more rifle battalions were added, bringing total strength up to 6,000 personnel, with about half serving in the Garde Nationale and half in the mobile reserve. The latter at this time comprised three rifle battalions (one battalion had been allocated to French Union forces elsewhere in Indochina).
In July 1949, in another military agreement with France, Cambodian forces were granted autonomy within operational sectors in the provinces of Siemreab and Kampong Thum, which had been part of the territory returned to Cambodia by Thailand in early 1947. Under an additional protocol signed in June 1950, provincial governors were assigned the responsibility for the pacification of the territories under their jurisdictions; to accomplish this mission they were each given a counterinsurgency force consisting of one independent infantry company.
The early 1950s were marked by further milestones in the development of the Cambodian military forces. In the fall of 1950, a military assistance agreement between the United States and France provided for an expansion of indigenous forces in Indochina, and by 1952 Cambodian troop strength had reached 13,000 personnel, greater than that of French forces in the country. In the meantime, more rifle battalions were formed, combat-support units were established, and a framework for logistical support was set up. Cambodian units were given wider responsibility: protection of the rubber plantations in the area of the middle Mekong, and, to prevent infiltration by the Viet Minh, surveillance of the coastal areas of the southern provinces and of the eastern frontier with Cochinchina.
In June 1952, Prince Sihanouk--determined to transcend his figurehead role--seized power, staging what was termed a "royal coup d'état." He suspended the constitution "to restore...order and security throughout the country." Taking command of army operations, he led his troops against Son Ngoc Thanh's Khmer Issarak forces in Siemreab Province, where he announced that he had driven "700 red guerrillas" across the border into Thailand. As the year wore on, the French returned to Cambodian control the battalion that had been assigned to the French Union forces since the late 1940s. The unit returned ceremoniously to Phnom Penh in October. In December the Cambodian operational sector of Siemreab was enlarged by the addition of Batdambang Province, and the subsector of Batdambang City came under the command of a previously obscure lieutenant colonel, Lon Nol. The operational sector of Kampong Thum was given its own combat element, the Third Cambodian Rifle Battalion, an elite unit that was subject to the direct orders of the monarch.
In early 1953, Sihanouk embarked on a world tour to publicize his campaign for independence, contending that he could "checkmate communism by opposing it with the force of nationalism." Following his tour, he "retired" to Batdambang Province, which was declared a "free zone of independence" and where he was joined by 30,000 Cambodian troops and police in a show of support and strength. Elsewhere, Cambodian troops under French officers staged slowdowns or refused the commands of their superiors, as a demonstration of solidarity with Sihanouk. Full independence was granted by France in November 1953, and Sihanouk, returning to Phnom Penh, took command of the army of 17,000 troops, which had been renamed the Royal Khmer Armed Forces (Forces Armées Royales Khmères--FARK--see Appendix B).
In March 1954, combined Viet Minh and Khmer Issarak forces launched attacks from Vietnam into northeastern Cambodia. Sihanouk personally directed a sustained counterattack. Conscription was instituted for men between fifteen and thirty-five years of age, and national mobilization was declared. Following the conclusion of the Geneva Conference on Indochina in July, Viet Minh representatives agreed to withdraw their troops from Cambodia. After a brief rebellion by the Khmer Issarak in late 1954, one of its principal leaders, Son Ngoc Thanh, surrendered in response to an amnesty decree, but, upon denial of an audience with Sihanouk, he departed for Thailand. FARK force levels were 47,000, but, with demobilization after Geneva, this dropped to 36,000, the approximate level at which it was to be maintained for the next fifteen years except during periods of emergency.
The Second Indochina War (1954-75)
In May 1955, the United States and Cambodia signed an agreement providing for security assistance and for the establishment of a thirty-person MAAG. During the next eight years, until the assistance program was discontinued at Cambodian request in November 1963, FARK received from the United States supplies and equipment worth approximately US$83.7 million, in addition to military budget support. In the meantime, the French also retained a military training mission in Cambodia that was to remain until 1971. FARK traditions and doctrine remained French, and there was some incompatibility with United States military doctrine and outlook.Although the United States undertook a substantial security- assistance program in Cambodia, and the kingdom was included as a "protocol state" in the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), failure to obtain more concrete assurances of defense assistance motivated Cambodia to adopt a neutralist foreign policy. Subsequently adopted as law, this policy declared that Cambodia would "abstain from military or ideological alliances" but would retain the right to self-defense. Cambodia continued to be aware of the serious threat to its independence posed by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam).
FARK's mission thus became a defensive one, that is, to insure Cambodia's territorial integrity within the framework of neutrality. The FARK high command remained fairly stable, staffed by a limited number of well-trained personnel, many of whom had been educated abroad. Ranking officers, however, became highly politicized, if not subservient, because they were more or less compelled by Sihanouk at his whim to perform active roles in national political life. Throughout the years that followed the Geneva Conference, Sihanouk, supreme commander of FARK, controlled national policies affecting the military establishment, and FARK's operational parameters were circumscribed by his frequent policy vacillations. Because of this, FARK never developed as an effective or viable military organization.
In addition to the Vietnamese threat, the Cambodian government perceived a menace to internal stability from Son Ngoc Thanh's resurgent antimonarchist Khmer Serei (see Appendix B). Although contemporary observers suggested that the Khmer Serei seemed "to be more of a nuisance . . . than a genuine threat," the group's insurgent activities and subversive efforts were viewed with increasing alarm by Phnom Penh.
In March 1959, for example, the provincial governor of Siem Reap, General Dap Chhuon, a former Khmer Issarak leader who once had fought alongside Sihanouk, was implicated in an attempted Khmer Serei uprising (known at the time as the Bankkok Plot) and was executed. Sihanouk believed the United States had been behind the plot, and his proclivity for assuming complicity between Washington and the Khmer Serei became a particularly significant factor a few years later. In approximately 1965 to 1966, the United States Military Assistance Command-- Vietnam (MACV) began recruitment for the Studies and Operations Group and civilian irregular defense groups of Khmer Krom (see Appendix B) living in the Mekong Delta, many of whom were Khmer Serei members. In his public pronouncements regarding Khmer Serei activity, Sihanouk charged that the group had originated in South Vietnam and Thailand, and had the backing of both governments. Over the years, there were countless Khmer Serei incidents, followed by amnesties, surrenders, executions, and acrimonious Cambodian charges against South Vietnam, Thailand, and the United States. After Sihanouk was deposed in 1970, the Lon Nol government pardoned some 500 political prisoners, the majority of whom were Khmer Serei. Charges surfaced in 1987 that during his rule Sihanouk had executed as many as 1,000 Khmer Serei suspects.
In the uneasy peace between the First Indochina War and the Second Indochina War, a number of incidents occurred on Cambodia's border with South Vietnam. In June 1958, two South Vietnamese battalions briefly occupied a village in Stoeng Treng Province, and Sihanouk appealed for United States intervention. Receiving no response that satisfied him, Sihanouk established diplomatic relations with China and announced that this action was a direct consequence of South Vietnam's violation of Cambodian territory. Cambodia was also not silent during the early stages of border violations by North Vietnam. In 1959 Phnom Penh complained that North Vietnamese regulars were using northeastern Cambodia to infiltrate South Vietnam. Cambodia made concerted efforts to demonstrate that it was policing its eastern borders, but, although the incursions were publicly admitted, the existence of base areas was not. By the mid-1960s, sites along Cambodia's eastern borders were serving as bases for North Vietnamese and for South Vietnamese communist, or Viet Cong (see Appendix B) forces fighting the South Vietnamese government. FARK, restrained by Sihanouk's policies, which, in effect, constituted a modus vivendi with the intruders, could do little more than monitor these activities. The continuation of border incidents, and Sihanouk's repeated charges of United States complicity with the Khmer Serei, led to a steady deterioration in Cambodian-American relations.
In November 1963, after the clandestine Khmer Serei radio resumed anti-Sihanouk broadcasts that the Cambodian government alleged were beamed from Thailand and from South Vietnam with transmitters supplied by the United States, Sihanouk terminated the economic and security assistance agreements with Washington. He also demanded the departure from Cambodia of all non-diplomatic United States government personnel. The final rupture in diplomatic relations came two years later, after Cambodia filed a complaint in the UN Security Council against the United States and South Vietnam for their "repeated acts of aggression against Cambodia." Relations were formally terminated May 3, 1965.
Although still receiving French military assistance and training (a program that was to continue until 1972), Cambodia began soliciting and accepting military assistance from communist countries as well, after the termination of United States aid. In 1963 FARK received four Soviet MiG aircraft at the beginning of a program in which China also joined. The inevitable results of a variety of suppliers were mixed equipment inventories.
In 1966 Sihanouk secretly granted access to the deep-water port of Sihanoukville (later called Kampong Saom), in western Kampot Province, to the North Vietnamese. With the complicity of ranking FARK officers, Sihanoukville became a main entrepôt for North Vietnamese military supplies from China and from the Soviet Union. Armaments were then transported to North Vietnamese and Viet Cong sanctuaries on the border with South Vietnam, ironically over the "Friendship Highway" built with United States aid and sometimes in FARK trucks supplied as part of the United States security- assistance program. This effective supply route enabled the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong to stockpile substantial amounts of armaments and equipment for the 1968 Tet Offensive against the Saigon government. FARK profited from armaments pilfered from the Vietnamese shipments, and suborned FARK officers derived personal advantage from the Sihanoukville traffic through fees, bribes, and other special arrangements.
In 1967 a peasant uprising broke out in the Samlot district of Batdambang Province. Its significance was not appreciated immediately. At the time, Sihanouk attributed the attacks, which first occurred in about January, to the ' Khmer Viet Minh'. Sihanouk vacillated in placing the blame for the unrest, however, and later charged the "Thai patriotic front" with being its instigators. Acting on his orders, FARK harshly suppressed the Batdambang insurgents, who had acted spontaneously, and not at Khmer Rouge direction. Although Sihanouk announced two months later that the Batdambang rebellion was "completely at an end," there were subsequent references to continuing Khmer Rouge activity in the countryside.
The Khmer Rouge dated its own founding from January 17, 1968. RAK leaders, including Pol Pot, who had just returned from a prolonged visit to China, retreated to the jungle and mountains of Rotanokiri Province (Ratanakiri) in northeastern Cambodia. There they hoped to exploit the disaffection of the Khmer Loeu (see Appendix B) over the policies of the Phnom Penh government concerning taxation, corvée labor, and the resettlement of lowland Khmers in the Khmer Loeu areas. For the next two and one-half years, the newly formed RAK remained small (estimates varied from 400 to 2,000 personnel), and poorly equipped with captured weapons. The Khmer Rouge found that, in spite of the Samlot rebellion, discontent against the government in Phnom Penh was then insufficient to attract large numbers of people to the rigors of an armed insurgency. As for external support, there was no move on the part of Hanoi to provide military assistance to the Khmer Rouge because such action would have alienated Sihanouk's government and would have imperiled continued North Vietnamese and Viet Cong access to Cambodian territory as well as their use of the port of Sihanoukville.
In 1969 the United States undertook the first of two bombing campaigns against enemy targets in Cambodian territory. Code-named the Menu series, these air operations consisted of tactical strikes against North Vietnamese and Viet Cong base areas on the Cambodian- Vietnamese border. They partially dislodged the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong and drove them more deeply into Cambodia in quest of safer havens. This brought FARK elements into more frequent hostile contact with the communists, and there were reports of FARK forces' being involved in joint operations with South Vietnamese forces against the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong. Sihanouk became increasingly distressed with these developments; his attitude toward the communist Vietnamese changed, and authorization for continued use of Sihanoukville was terminated. In April, speaking in Rotanokiri Province, Sihanouk stated that "to deal with the Viet Cong and Viet Minh," he had ordered General Lon Nol "to give up the defensive spirit and adopt an offensive spirit." Sihanouk announced during a press conference on June 11, 1969 that " . . . at present there is war in Rotanokiri [province] between Cambodia and Vietnam."
Sihanouk left Cambodia for medical treatment in France in January 1970. Citing disagreement over economic and administrative matters, after week-long anticommunist rioting in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian National Assembly on March 18 passed a unanimous vote of nonconfidence in Sihanouk and replaced him as chief of state (see The March 1970 Coup d'État , ch. 1). Although Sihanouk's deposition was nominally a parliamentary action, the leaders of the participants consisted primarily of FARK officers, headed by Lon Nol, who had been the prime minister since the previous August (and who, Sihanouk had once suggested, would be his likeliest successor). The coup was bloodless, although FARK contingents were on the alert in Phnom Penh and took control of key installations, such as the airport and the radio station.
At the time Sihanouk was deposed, FARK, soon to be renamed the Khmer National Armed Forces (Forces Armées Nationales Khmères-- FANK), had 35,000 to 40,000 personnel, organized for the most part as ground forces. The Lon Nol government repeatedly sought negotiations for a peaceful withdrawal of the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong forces from its territory. These overtures were rejected, and in April the Vietnamese communists began moving out of their sanctuaries and deeper into Cambodia, in efforts to preserve their lines of communication and to maintain the corridor to the port of Sihanoukville. President Richard M. Nixon spoke on April 30, 1970 to the American nation, and said that "thousands of their [North Vietnamese and Viet Cong] soldiers are invading the country from the sanctuaries and they are encircling the capital." Lon Nol, in the meantime, had called up military reserves, had requested UN intervention, and, while reiterating Cambodia's position of neutrality, had issued a call for international assistance.
Between April 29 and May 1, 1970, South Vietnamese and United States ground forces drove into Cambodia's border areas in a determined bid to overrun and to destroy North Vietnamese and Viet Cong logistical depots and sanctuaries. There also was hope at United States MACV headquarters that the offensive would result in the capture of the Central Office for South Vietnam, the Viet Cong headquarters for directing the war against the Saigon government. The operation resulted in the capture of vast quantities of enemy matériel and it bought time for Washington and Saigon to proceed with "Vietnamization," the process of turning over the conduct of the war to the South Vietnamese government. For the shaky Lon Nol government in Phnom Penh, however, the results of the incursion were destabilizing and far-reaching. In retreating before United States and South Vietnamese troops, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces penetrated farther west into Cambodian territory, overrunning government outposts as they went. Soon all of northeastern Cambodia had fallen to the North Vietnamese or to the Viet Cong, who then proceeded to turn the captured areas over to the Khmer insurgents and to forge them into a full-fledged revolutionary army.
To help hard-pressed FANK, Nixon laid down guidelines for United States assistance to Cambodia, promising, among other things, to turn over to the government in Phnom Penh equipment captured during the incursion, and to "provide military assistance...in the form of small arms and relatively unsophisticated equipment in types and quantities suitable for their army." Thus began a structured military assistance program, supplementing the ad hoc support begun shortly before the incursion, that was to total US$1.18 billion by the fall of the Lon Nol government in April 1975. Although all United States troops were withdrawn from Cambodian territory, South Vietnamese forces were accorded "automatic authority" to operate in Cambodia in a sixteen- kilometer corridor along the frontier.
The Lon Nol government very shortly afterwards declared martial law and total mobilization, and it began expansion of its army. United States government studies conducted shortly before Sihanouk's deposition had expressed serious reservations about the capabilities of the government forces, noting the "lack of combat experience, equipment deficiencies, . . . . lack of mobility," and citing "incompetent and corrupt officers" as the "greatest shortcoming."
The same officers were, however, retained by FANK and their inadequacy rapidly became apparent as military rosters were padded with non-existent "phantom troops." United States advisers attempting to keep track of FANK's development were constantly hampered by the difficulty of accurately estimating the number of Cambodian troops. (Accurate numbers were important because the United States was then providing assistance for FANK's military pay and allowances.) United States Senate staff investigators reported that United States officials acknowledged in January 1972 that the Khmer Republic's military strength figures were "grossly exaggerated" by at least 10 percent. The Senate report concluded there was "no greater mystery in Cambodia than the size of the Cambodian Government's armed forces." In December 1972, the information minister of the newly proclaimed Khmer Republic announced that 100,000 troops were found to be "nonexistent." According to the United States secretary of state's report to the Congress for the years 1969 and 1970, FANK grew "from under 40,000 in March 1970 to some 200,000 in January 1971." In reality, FANK levels probably never reached such a high number, and many of its new soldiers were youthful and inexperienced.
Limited basic training of the inductees, some of it in Thailand and in South Vietnam, began almost immediately after the introduction of martial law. Such training, however, could not satisfy FANK's pressing need to teach peasant farmers to man the equipment provided by the United States, to fight effectively in sizable units, and to comprehend modern military doctrine.
In spite of a steady infusion of United States security assistance and the influx of new FANK personnel, the government forces were unable to hold their own against their adversaries. Because much of the country remained under North Vietnamese control after the withdrawal of United States and South Vietnamese troops, initial FANK strategy focused on holding the heartland of Cambodia south of a line of demarcation dubbed the "Lon Nol Line." This strategy conceded about half the country to the enemy, but it was the heavily forested, sparsely populated, northern half. If the Lon Nol Line could be held, the government would control the southern half with most of the population and all of the rich, rice-growing areas.
To defend this territory, FANK unleashed its two most ambitious offensives: Chenla I, in August 1970, and Chenla II, in August 1971. Both had as their objectives the reopening of Route 6 to Kampong Thum and the reassertion of government control over this fertile agricultural area. Both operations failed. Chenla I stalled short of its objective in the face of fierce resistance from the North Vietnamese Ninth Division. FANK units were then withdrawn to protect the capital from enemy commando teams. Chenla II was successful in securing its initial goals, and FANK columns from north and south met jubilantly on Route 6 along the way to Kampong Thum. As the government forces celebrated, however, their old nemesis, the North Vietnamese Ninth Division, tore into the extended FANK lines with ferocity, slaughtering many of them and leaving the rest cut off and compelled to fight their way back to their own lines as best they could. Former FANK commander General Sat Sutsakhan noted ruefully about Chenla II after the war that, "In this operation FANK lost some of its best units of infantry as well as a good part of its armor and a great deal of transport, both military and civil."
The North Vietnamese, however, were neither the only, nor the most determined adversary with whom FANK had to deal. A far more lethal threat was soon posed by a revitalized Khmer Rouge-dominated force that had evolved considerably since its days as the ragtag, poorly armed band of irregulars known then as the RAK. The development of the RAK had owed much to the opportunism of the Khmer Rouge leaders, who had been able to transform a forlorn communist insurgency with no chance of succeeding in the late 1960s, into a war of national liberation headed by the country's most eminent nationalist, Sihanouk. From Beijing, where he had been stranded by the coup that deposed him, Sihanouk in 1970 announced the formation of a Royal Government of National Union of Kampuchea (Gouvernement Royal d'Union Nationale du Kampuchéa--GRUNK--see Appendix B). This government, he said, would be under the leadership of a broad umbrella organization, the National United Front of Kampuchea (Front Uni National du Kampuchéa--FUNK). The prestige of Sihanouk's name thus helped the Khmer Rouge in their recruitment effort. Rural peasant volunteers believed they were joining a broad-based national resistance movement, headed by the prince, against an ineffectual puppet regime in Phnom Penh. Several groups also rallied to the broad appeal of the GRUNK/FUNK. Such groups included the pro-Sihanouk Khmer Rumdo (see Appendix B), the Khmer Viet Minh, and the Khmer Loeu.To accommodate the disparate elements that were rallying to the resistance cause, the RAK was renamed the Cambodian People's National Liberation Armed Forces (CPNLAF--see Appendix B). As this force grew in size and in proficiency, it was able to relieve North Vietnamese units of their combat burden in Cambodia. By 1973 there were reportedly no more than 5,000 North Vietnamese combat troops in Cambodia, and of this number only 2,000 to 3,000 were deployed against FANK units. After the Chenla campaigns, FANK was unable to regain the offensive, and its operations became a series of hard-fought defensive actions against an enemy whose momentum could not be stayed. Individual unit valor and fleeting tactical successes did little to relieve the unbroken string of FANK setbacks--overrun outposts, annihilated battalions, cut-off columns, plummeting morale, exhausted supplies, steadily shrinking government territory, and enemy units that were drawing ever closer around Phnom Penh. A harbinger of future trends was discernible as early as November 1972, two-and-one-half years before the final defeat. FANK strategists at that time acknowledged the waning capability of their armed forces and redrew the Lon Nol Line. The new line of demarcation signified a profound strategic realignment because it conceded most of the country, including the rich rice-growing areas around the Tonle Sap, to the enemy. In accordance with the redrawn Lon Nol line, FANK was committed to defend no more than the triangular corner of southeastern Cambodia, which held a majority of the population and was bounded generally by Route 4 from Phnom Penh to Kampong Saom on the west, and by Route 1 from Phnom Penh to the Vietnamese border on the east. The apex of the triangle passed just north of Odongk, the former royal capital that was to be the scene of heavy fighting later in the war. Even this retrenchment, however, turned out to be impractical, as successive engagements failed to dislodge the enemy troops south of the new defense line, and FANK increasingly found itself hard pressed from that direction as well.
By 1973 United States Department of State sources, possibly underestimating, noted that the Khmer Rouge-dominated CPNLAF controlled about 60 percent of Cambodia's territory and 25 percent of the population. Despite a sustained United States bombing campaign that year to blunt the steady advance of the CPNLAF and to relieve pressure on FANK, the Khmer Rouge insurgent forces were able to absorb their losses, to maintain the initiative, and to subject an increasingly demoralized and cornered FANK to unremitting pressure.The denouement for FANK and for the Khmer Republic began on New Year's Day 1975 when the CPNLAF unleashed its final offensive. As winter turned into spring, the enemy battered the defenses of Phnom Penh from every direction. Routes into the city were cut, reopened, and cut again; river convoys were forced to run a gauntlet of hostile fire to reach the beleaguered capital and finally could no longer break through; United States aircraft, in a forlorn attempt to maintain a lifeline into the city, set up an airlift from bases in Thailand. The effort worked briefly, until the airport itself was interdicted by hostile rocket fire. By early April, Phnom Penh was surrounded on all sides, and its defenses were crumbling. FANK attempts to break out of the encircled city stalled in the face of intense Khmer Rouge firepower. Government units were decimated, exhausted, and out of supplies; finally, they were unable to hold out any longer. The fall of the capital on April 17, marked the demise of the Khmer Republic and the total defeat of FANK, which in the end had been totally outclassed and outfought, not by an army of guerrillas--that phenomenon so intensively studied during the period, but by a tough, disciplined, regular force in a conventional war of movement, by fire and by maneuver.
0 comments:
Post a Comment