Account for the Khmer Rouge’s rise to power in Cambodia, and explain the nature of Pol Pot’s regime once power was attained.
The Khmer Rouge came to power as a result of a series of decisions by the country’s rulers and by the two sides fighting the Vietnam War. Those decisions had catastrophic consequences for Cambodia, as Pol Pot’s regime imposed its bizarre ideology on the country.
Cambodia became embroiled in the Vietnam War because it provided a relatively safe route for North Vietnamese troops and supplies to reach the South. The nation’s leader,Prince Sihanouk, understood what was happening but did nothing to prevent it, for fear that military action might drag his country into conflict with the VC/NVA. However, following the Tet Offensive, the VC’s presence in Cambodia increased dramatically, and President Nixon became convinced that the communist ‘sanctuaries’ had to be cleared. At first, this took the form of bombing, but that proved ineffective, so Nixon decided on a ground offensive. Because Sihanouk refused to permit such an attack, the USencouraged a coup against him in March 1970. His replacement, General Lon Nol, quickly declared war on the VC, and invited the USto invade.
The operation was a minor success from a military perspective, and the US forces soon returned to South Vietnam. But it had catastrophic consequences for Cambodia. The US incursion drove the VC/NVA deeper inland, giving them control of about half the country by the middle of 1970. Unwilling to divert significant resources to a war outside of Vietnam, the North Vietnamese leaders sought local allies, and chose the Khmer Rouge – an obscure communist guerrilla group that had been fighting Sihanouk’s regime throughout the 1960s. The Khmer Rouge now found themselves armed with Chinese and Russian weapons, supplied from North Vietnam via the Ho Chi Minh trail.
Sihanouk too acted to intensify the conflict, by urging his people to join the communists and fight Lon Nol. By aligning himself with the Khmer Rouge, he gave themthe legitimacy they lacked, allowing them to grow from a rag-tag group of 3,000 fighters to an army of 60,000.
As the war turned against the Cambodia army, the US stepped up the bombing campaign in the areas occupied by the communists. Half a million people – mostly civilians – were killed by American bombs during a six month period in 1973. This only played into the Khmer Rouge leaders’ hands, since they convinced many peasants that the United States was intent on destroying all of Cambodia. Thousands joined the guerrilla forces in response. This allowed the VC/NVA to withdraw in 1973, as part of the Paris Peace Agreement.
With American troops now out of Vietnam, pressure built in the United States for an end to the bombing of Cambodia. In August 1973, Congress ordered a halt, leaving the Khmer Rouge in control of most of the country. By April 1975, their forces had taken the capital, becoming the undisputed rulers of Cambodia.
Pol Pot and his henchmen now set about transformingalmost every aspect of Cambodian life, building the kind of classless society they had advocated for years.
Politically, they replaced all existing parties and institutions with one organization – the so-called ‘Angkar’ – whose leaders exercised virtually unlimited power. Unlike other communist regimes, however, the Khmer Rouge did not create a cult of personality around their leader. Pol Pot, known to his colleagues as ‘Brother Number One’, was largely unknown to the majority of Cambodians.
The economic changes introduced by the Khmer Rougewere even more radical. Cambodia’s new leaders eliminated all vestiges of the free market, replacing them with a system of forced labour and rationing. Factories and financial institutions were closed down, and money eliminated. All forms of private production, ownership and exchange were abolished. Even private vegetable gardens were declared illegal. Everything had to be centralised and shared.
Socially, the Khmer Rouge succeeded in almost completely transformingCambodia. They began by emptying the country’s cities and towns, forcing people to work as farmers or on massive irrigation projects.They also outlawed religion and traditional family structures, and branded all intellectuals and professionalsas class enemies. Anyone with an education or who suffered from ‘memory sickness’ (a longing for the past) could be executed.
The Khmer Rouge ‘experiment’ was a disaster economically and socially. The lack of economic incentives had a devastating effect on agricultural production, meaning that there was little food to share around. In addition, the irrigation projects ordered by the regime were all but useless, as they were planned by people without practical experience in engineering. The result was up to two million deaths from disease and starvation – a similar outcome to War Communism in the USSR, where material incentives were also abandoned.
With the regime in chaos, Pol Pot began looking for scapegoats within the Party, and a bloodbath ensued. At least 170,000 people were put to death in prison camps, many of them loyal members of Party. By 1979, both the country and the Party were on the brink of collapse. It took the Vietnamese just a matter of weeks to put an end to the misery.
The Khmer Rouge were in power for less than four years, but in that time they created one of the strangest and most oppressive regimes in history. Responsibility for their victory in 1975 lies with the United States, North Vietnam and Cambodia’s former leader, Prince Sihanouk. Responsibility for their demise can be slated down to Pol Pot himself, who attacked Vietnam and gave Ho Chi Minh’s successors the pretext to invade Cambodia and remove the shadowy dictator from power.