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The Cambodian Civil War (Khmer: សង្គ្រាមស៊ីវិលកម្ពុជា, UNGEGN: Sângkréam Sivĭl Kâmpŭchéa) was a civil war in Cambodia fought between the forces of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (known as the Khmer Rouge, supported by North Vietnam and the Viet Cong) against the government forces of the Kingdom of Cambodia and, after October 1970, the Khmer Republic, which had succeeded the kingdom (both supported by the United States and South Vietnam).
The struggle was complicated by the influence and actions of the allies of the two warring sides. North Vietnam's People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) involvement was designed to protect its Base Areas and sanctuaries in eastern Cambodia, without which it would have been harder to pursue its military effort in South Vietnam. Their presence was at first tolerated by Prince Sihanouk, the Cambodian head of state, but domestic resistance combined with China and North Vietnam continuing to provide aid to the anti-government Khmer Rouge alarmed Sihanouk and caused him to go to Moscow to request the Soviets rein in the behavior of North Vietnam.[6] The deposition of Sihanouk by the Cambodian National Assembly in March 1970, following wide scale protests in the capital against the presence of PAVN troops in the country, put a pro-American government in power (later declared the Khmer Republic) which demanded that the PAVN leave Cambodia. The PAVN refused and, at the request of the Khmer Rouge, promptly invaded Cambodia in force.
Between March and June 1970, the North Vietnamese captured most of the northeastern third of the country in engagements with the Cambodian army. The North Vietnamese turned over some of their conquests and provided other assistance to the Khmer Rouge, thus empowering what was at the time a small guerrilla movement.[7] The Cambodian government hastened to expand its army to combat the North Vietnamese and the growing power of the Khmer Rouge.[8]
The U.S. was motivated by the desire to buy time for its withdrawal from Southeast Asia, to protect its ally in South Vietnam, and to prevent the spread of communism to Cambodia. American, South Vietnamese, and North Vietnamese forces directly participated in the fighting. The U.S. assisted the central government with massive U.S. aerial bombing campaigns and direct material and financial aid, while the North Vietnamese kept soldiers on the lands that they had previously occupied and occasionally engaged the Khmer Republic army in ground combat.
After five years of savage fighting, the Republican government was defeated on 17 April 1975 when the victorious Khmer Rouge proclaimed the establishment of Democratic Kampuchea. The war caused a refugee crisis in Cambodia with two million people—more than 25 percent of the population—displaced from rural areas into the cities, especially Phnom Penh which grew from about 600,000 in 1970 to an estimated population of nearly 2 million by 1975.
Children were often being persuaded or forced to commit atrocities during the war.[9] The Cambodian government estimated that more than 20 percent of the property in the country had been destroyed during the war.[10] In total, an estimated 275,000–310,000 people were killed as a result of the war.
The conflict was part of the Second Indochina War (1955–1975) which also consumed the neighboring Laos, South Vietnam, and North Vietnam individually referred to as the Laotian Civil War and the Vietnam War respectively. The Cambodian civil war led to the Cambodian genocide, one of the bloodiest in history.
- ^ a b c d e f Spencer C. Tucker (2011). The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History. ABC-CLIO. p. 376. ISBN 978-1-85109-960-3. Archived from the original on 12 April 2018. Retrieved 5 December 2017.
- ^ Sarah Streed (2002). Leaving the house of ghosts: Cambodian refugees in the American Midwest. McFarland. p. 10. ISBN 0-7864-1354-9. Archived from the original on 12 April 2018. Retrieved 5 December 2017.
- ^ Heuveline, Patrick (2001). "The Demographic Analysis of Mortality Crises: The Case of Cambodia, 1970–1979". Forced Migration and Mortality. National Academies Press. pp. 103–104. ISBN 9780309073349.
Subsequent reevaluations of the demographic data situated the death toll for the [civil war] in the order of 300,000 or less.
cf. "Cambodia: U.S. bombing, civil war, & Khmer Rouge". World Peace Foundation. 7 August 2015.On the higher end of estimates, journalist Elizabeth Becker writes that 'officially, more than half a million Cambodians died on the Lon Nol side of the war; another 600,000 were said to have died in the Khmer Rouge zones.' However, it is not clear how these numbers were calculated or whether they disaggregate civilian and soldier deaths. Others' attempts to verify the numbers suggest a lower number. Demographer Patrick Heuveline has produced evidence suggesting a range of 150,000 to 300,000 violent deaths from 1970 to 1975. In an article reviewing different sources about civilian deaths during the civil war, Bruce Sharp argues that the total number is likely to be around 250,000 violent deaths. ... [Heuveline]'s conclusion is that an average of 2.52 million people (range of 1.17–3.42 million) died as a result of regime actions between 1970 and 1979, with an average estimate of 1.4 million (range of 1.09–2.16 million) directly violent deaths.
- ^ Banister, Judith; Johnson, E. Paige (1993). "After the Nightmare: The Population of Cambodia". Genocide and Democracy in Cambodia: The Khmer Rouge, the United Nations and the International Community. Yale University Southeast Asia Studies. p. 87. ISBN 9780938692492.
An estimated 275,000 excess deaths. We have modeled the highest mortality that we can justify for the early 1970s.
- ^ Sliwinski, Marek (1995). Le Génocide Khmer Rouge: Une Analyse Démographique. Paris: L'Harmattan. pp. 42–43, 48. ISBN 978-2-738-43525-5.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
Isaacs, Hardy and Brown, p. 90was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ "Cambodia: U.S. Invasion, 1970s". Global Security. Archived from the original on 31 October 2014. Retrieved 2 April 2014.
- ^ Dmitry Mosyakov, "The Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese Communists: A History of Their Relations as Told in the Soviet Archives," in Susan E. Cook, ed., Genocide in Cambodia and Rwanda (Yale Genocide Studies Program Monograph Series No. 1, 2004), p54ff. Available online at: www.yale.edu/gsp/publications/Mosyakov.doc "In April–May 1970, many North Vietnamese forces entered Cambodia in response to the call for help addressed to Vietnam not by Pol Pot, but by his deputy Nuon Chea. Nguyen Co Thach recalls: "Nuon Chea has asked for help and we have liberated five provinces of Cambodia in ten days.""
- ^ Southerland, D (20 July 2006). "Cambodia Diary 6: Child Soldiers – Driven by Fear and Hate". Archived from the original on 20 March 2018.
- ^ Shawcross, William, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979, p. 222