Abstract
Civil war recurred in Cambodia during the era of Democratic Kampuchea (1975-79). The preceding war and subsequent communist rule had devastated society, as evidenced in the loss of human life, the destruction of physical infrastructure, the disruption of services, increased antagonism and distrust toward the state, massive changes in economy, population displacement, the breakdown of social institutions, poor security, and extreme physical hardship and psychological trauma.1 The Khmer Rouge had destroyed traditional norms, culture, religion, organizations, networks, and families. After the collapse of Democratic Kampuchea in 1979, the Heng Samrin administration began reconstructing society through collectivist cooperatives, a means by which the Khmer Rouge had also attempted to transform the economy even more radically.
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Notes
Michael Vickery, Cambodia 1975–1982 (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 1984), 215–216.
Michael Clodfelter, Vietnam in Military Statistics: A History of the Indochina Wars, 1772–1991 (Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 1995), 281.
TimothyCarney, “The Heng Samrin Armed Forces and the Military Balance in Cambodia,” in David A. Ablin and Marlowe Hood (eds.), The Cambodian Agony (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1990), 180–212, especially 202–204 and 207.
Justus M. van der Kroef, “Cambodia: From ‘Democratic Kampuchea’ to ‘People’s Republic,’” Asian Survey, 19 (7) (1979): 731–750, especially 732–733.
Michael Leifer, “Kampuchea in 1980: The Politics of Attrition,” Asian Survey, 21 (1) (1981): 93–101, especially 93–94.
Timothy Carney, “Kampuchea in 1981: Fragile Stalemate,” Asian Survey, 22 (1) (1982): 78–87, especially 78–79.
Timothy Carney, “Kampuchea in 1982: Political and Military Escalation,” Asian Survey, 23 (1) (1983): 73–83, especially 74–75.
Margaret Slocomb, “The K5 Gamble: National Defense and Nation Building under the People’s Republic of Kampuchea,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 32 (1) (2001): 195–210, especially 200.
Justus M. van der Kroef, “Kampuchea: Protracted Conflict, Suspended Compromise,” Asian Survey, 24 (3) (1984): 314–334, especially 315. For details about refugee camps,
see also Justus M. van der Kroef, “Refugees and Rebels: Dimensions of the Thai-Kampuchean Border Conflict,” Asian Affairs, 10 (1) (1983): 19–36.
Michael Eiland, “Kampuchea in 1984: Yet Further from Peace,” Asian Survey, 25 (1) (1985): 106–113, especially 106–109; Short, Pol Pot, 421.
For instance, the Sihanoukist rebels insisted that about 10,000 troops were operating in the interior, and it is also reported that 1,000 KPNLF troops were in the country. Michael Eiland, “Cambodia in 1985: From Stalemate to Ambiguity,” Asian Survey, 26 (1) (1986): 118–125.
Evan Gottesman, Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge: Inside the Politics of Nation Building (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 223–224.
Nayan Chanda, “Cambodia in 1986: Beginning to Tire,” Asian Survey, 27 (1) (1987): 115–124, especially 116–117.
Nayan Chanda, “Cambodia in 1987: Sihanouk on Center Stage,” Asian Survey, 28 (1) (1988): 105–115, especially 105–106. The Khmer Rouge troops numbered 28,000 or fewer. MurrayHiebert, “That Annual Exercise,” Far Eastern Economic Review, December 10 (1987), 23. Chanda argues that only the Sihanoukist force, the Armee Nationale Sihanoukienne (ANS), grew and was effective in 1987, in that it successfully engaged in political propaganda work and the infiltration of the PRK administration. Chanda, “Cambodia in 1987,” 106.
Khatharya Um, “Cambodia in 1988: The Curved Road to Settlement,” Asian Survey, 29 (1) (1989): 73–80, especially 79.
Khatharya Um, “Cambodia in 1989: Still Talking but No Settlement,” Asian Survey, 30 (1) (1990): 96–104, especially 100–101.
Gottesman, Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge, 237, 307, and 308–309; Benny Widyono, Dancing in Shadows: Sihanouk, the Khmer Rouge, and the United Nations in Cambodia (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008), 84–85.
Justus M. van der Kroef, “Cambodia in 1990: The Elusive Peace,” Asian Survey, 31 (1) (1991): 94–102, especially 97–98.
A high percentage of Battambang, Banteay Meanchey, and Siem Reap were under the control of the resistance forces in 1991. Frederick Brown, “Cambodia in 1991: An Uncertain Peace,” Asian Survey, 32 (1) (1992): 88–96, especially 93.
Stephen R. Heder, Kampuchean Occupation and Resistance (Bangkok: Institute of Asian Studies, 1980), 10–12.
Ea Meng-Try, “Kampuchea: A Country Adrift,” Population and Development Review, 7(2) (1981): 209–228, especially 222.
Gottesman, Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge, 41 and 169; Stephen Orlov, “The New Cambodia War,” Economic and Political Weekly, 16 (5) (1981): 145, 147–149, especially 148; Vickery, Cambodia 1975–1982, 221–224. Scholars interpret the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia in different ways. Martin concludes that it was Vietnamese economic and cultural imperialism.
Marie A. Martin, “Vietnamised Cambodia: A Silent Ethnocide,” Indochina Report, 7 (1986): 1–31;
Marie A. Martin, Cambodia: A Shattered Society (M. W. McLeod, Trans.) (Berkeley: University California Press, 1994). Vickery emphasizes the progress achieved by support from the Vietnamese. Vickery, Cambodia 1975–1982; Vickery, Kampuchea: Politics, Economics and Society. The Vietnamese at least acknowledged that there existed misunderstandings between Cambodians and their troops. DouglasPike, PAVN: People’s Army of Vietnam (London: Brassey’s Defense Publishers, 1986), 71.
Amnesty International, Kampuchea: Political Imprisonment and Torture (London, 1987), 22–69 and 70–73.
Elizabeth Becker, “Kampuchea in 1983: Further from Peace,” Asian Survey, 24 (1) (1984): 37–48, especially 44.
Gennady I. Chufrin, “Five Years of the People’s Revolutionary Power in Kampuchea: Results and Conclusions,” Asian Survey, 24 (11) (1984): 1143–1150, especially 1147.
Thomas Clayton, Education and the Politics of Language: Hegemony and Pragmatism in Cambodia, 1979–1989 (Honk Kong: University of Hong Kong, 2000), 83.
See also Eva Mysliwiec, Punishing the Poor: The International Isolation of Kampuchea (Oxford: Oxfam, 1988).
Margaret Slocomb, “Forestry Policy and Practices of the People’s Republic of Kampuchea, 1979–1989,” Asian Survey, 42 (5) (2002): 772–793, especially 786–787.
Leifer, “Kampuchea in 1980,” 99; Orlov, “The New Cambodia War,” 149; WilliamShawcross, The Quality of Mercy: Cambodia, Holocaust and Modern Conscience (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984).
Michael Vickery, “Refugee Politics: The Khmer Camp System in Thailand,” in David A. Ablin and Marlowe Hood (eds.), The Cambodian Agony (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1990), 308.
Although several orphanages were established in Site 2 (KPNLF) by the volunteer agencies, it is commonly known that one of the orphanages was a source for recruits by the resistance. Andrew S. Kanter, “Topics for Our Times: Life in a Refugee Camp—Lessons from Cambodia and Site 2,” American Journal of Public Health, 85 (5) (1995): 620–621.
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© 2013 Yuichi Kubota
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Kubota, Y. (2013). Cambodia, 1979–91. In: Armed Groups in Cambodian Civil War. Asia Today. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137364098_5
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