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Liberation

Thailand provided support to the Khmer Rouge regime because this provided them a protective buffer against Vietnam. This left the United Front for the National Salvation of Kampuchea with no other option than to seek support from Vietnam. Because of the continuing hostilities with the Khmer Rouge, the Hanoi government supported the United Front for the National Salvation of Kampuchea and began a full-scale invasion in December 1978, which rapidly overwhelmed the Khmer Rouge forces and founded the People's Republic of Kampuchea with Heng Samrin as prime minister.

This won the Khmer Rouge the covert support from the US, which saw Pol Pot as a useful Cold War ally. China and Thailand were encouraged to support the regime.

The US funnelled $86 million in support of Pol Pot and his followers from 1980 to 1986 and it applied pressure to the World Food Program to ensure that $12 million worth of food targeted elsewhere in an international rescue effort would be handed over to the Thai army to be passed on to the Khmer Rouge. In addition, Washington set up the Kampuchean Emergency Group, whose unspoken mission was to direct food to Khmer Rouge bases.
The Reagan administration schemed and plotted to have Khmer Rouge representatives occupy Cambodia's UN seat, even though the Khmer Rouge government ceased to exist in 1979. This was a sad effort to grant Pol Pot's followers international legitimacy.

This helped restore the Khmer Rouge as a fighting force based in Thailand, which destabilized Cambodia for more than a decade.

In 1982, the US and China, supported by Singapore, invented the Coalition of the Democratic Government of Kampuchea, which was neither a coalition, nor democratic, nor a government, nor in Kampuchea. Rather, it was what the CIA calls "a master illusion." Cambodia's former ruler, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, was appointed its head; otherwise little changed. The Khmer Rouge dominated the two "non-communist" members, the Sihanoukists and the Khmer People's National Liberation Front. From his office at the UN, Pol Pot's ambassador, the urbane Thaoun Prasith, continued to speak for Cambodia. A close associate of Pol Pot, he had in 1975 called on Khmer expatriates to return home, whereupon many of them "disappeared."

The United Nations was now the instrument of Cambodia's punishment. In all its history, the world body has withheld development aid from only one Third World country: Cambodia. Not only did the UN at US and Chinese insistence deny the government in Phnom Penh a seat, but the major international financial institutions barred Cambodia from all international agreements on trade and communications.

-> Even the World Health Organization refused to aid the country.

By mid-1980, the new Soviet policy and Gorbachev’s initiatives to improve Sino–Soviet relations began to open new avenues for settlement. At the end of 1987, when Prince Sihanouk and PRK Premier Hun Sen held discussions, a series of negotiations among the Cambodian parties was initiated.

In 1989, Vietnam withdrew its forces from Cambodia. This withdrawal set the stage for the international negotiations that ultimately resulted in the signing of the 1991 Paris Peace Accords by all political factions in Cambodia.

On April 29-30 1989, the General Assembly held an extraordinary meeting and changed the name of "People's Republic of Kampuchea" to "State of Cambodia". The National Flag and National Anthem were also changed. This was the historical turning point of Cambodia when it had eliminated capital punishment and reintroduced Buddhism as a national religion. The law on Personal Ownership and Free Market Orientation was passed.

The policy of the party and the State of Cambodia became to negotiate with the other three factions, which were struggling along the Cambodian-Thai border.

In 1991, the Paris Peace accords were signed. The accords created the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) with a mandate to restore order by cantoning troops, depoliticizing the civil service, and holding multiparty elections. UNTAC spent $2 billion but only accomplished the last of these three objectives.

Although the Khmers Rouges had signed the Paris Peace accords of 1991, they did not allow elections in the areas along the Thai border that were still under their control. They also refused UNTAC control on demobilisation, which effectively ended demobilisation efforts in the country.

The World Health Organisation now suddenly discovered the existence of Cambodia. This happened just in time, because the UNTAC troops and officials, taking advantage of the availability of cheap commercial sex, had introduced a new illness in the country that was previously totally absent: HIV. Cambodia became a new epicentre of the epidemic.

The result of the elections was an unstable power-sharing arrangement between First Prime Minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh of the Royalist FUNCINPEC party, son of Prince Sihanouk, and Second Prime Minister Hun Sen of the Cambodia People’s Party (CPP). Prince Sihanouk was elected for a second time king of Cambodia and the "State of Cambodia" now changed into the "Kingdom of Cambodia".

One of the most important results of the Paris Peace Accords was the end of Chinese support for the Khmer Rouge. The organisation continued its terror activities in different areas of the country but its combativeness declined remarkably.

In September 1996 Ieng Sary, foreign minister during the Pol Pot regime, defected with three divisions and control of the timber and gem-rich region around Pailin. After strenuous bargaining between Hun Sen and Ranariddh, Hun Sen won over Ieng Sary, whose followers then received a royal pardon and were allowed to run Pailin as a nearly independent municipality.

A split within the Khmer Rouge further weakened the movement. In June 1997, Pol Pot became convinced that Song Sen, the Khmer Rouge minister for defence and his friend for 40 years, was collaborating with the Cambodian Government and ordered his execution. Sen's wife and children were also killed. Pol Pot was subsequently arrested by Ta Mok, the Khmer Rouge military commander and 'Brother Number Five'. On 25 July 1997 a "peoples' tribunal" sentenced Pol Pot to life imprisonment for Sen's murder. He was reported to be ailing and near death.

Pol Pot died in the evening of 15 April 1998, reportedly from heart failure, although the cause of his death remains unclear - with rumours of involvement of Thai agents. Hours earlier he had learned from a radio broadcast that Ta Mok was willing to hand him over to the government for trial. His body was cremated on a pyre of old car tyres beside a village latrine.

.An important event in the political unrest of this period, was the expulsion of the then finance minister Sam Rainsy from the FUNCINPEC Party in 1995 for his stance against corruption.

Factional fighting in 1997 ended the first coalition government, but a second round of national elections in 1998 led to the formation of another coalition government and renewed political stability.

Cambodia After the Khmer Rouge: Inside the Politics of Nation Building

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