The Khmer People's National Liberation Armed Forces (KPNLAF) was the military component of the Khmer People's National Liberation Front (KPNLF) a political front organized in 1979 in opposition to the Vietnamese-installed People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) regime in Cambodia. The KPNLAF was loyal to Son Sann, a former Prime Minister under Prince Norodom Sihanouk and the founder of the KPNLF political movement.
The KPNLAF was formed in March 1979 from various anti-communist groups that had concentrated on the Thai-Cambodian border and which were opposed to the People's Republic of Kampuchea, the Vietnamese-backed government of Cambodia. [1] [2] Many of these groups were warlord bands, engaging more in smuggling and in internecine fighting than in combat operations. They were brought together by General Dien Del, a former career officer of the Khmer Republic who became chief of the KPNLAF General Staff. By mid-1979 there were 1,600 armed soldiers in the KPNLAF. [3]
The KPNLF was proclaimed on October 9, 1979 at Sok Sann, a camp in the jungles of the Cardamom Mountains that contained barely 2,000 men [4] and was a merger of 13 armed groups, some of them remnants of the Khmer National Armed Forces. The following month the first shipment of 3,000 rifles arrived from Beijing. [5] In 1981 overall command was given to General Sak Sutsakhan, another prominent member of the Republic's former army.
General Dien Del opened an officer's training school at Ampil Refugee Camp (Ban Sangae) in January 1981. [6] The first graduating class of 82 cadet officers, 68 company-level commanders and 76 platoon-level commanders immediately took up posts in the field. This was further helped by the arrival of some 3000 Chinese weapons in March. [7]
Because of Son Sann's non-communist credentials, the KPNLAF offered an alternative to those Cambodians who supported neither Sihanouk, Hanoi nor the Khmer Rouge, and it quickly became the second largest guerrilla force in Thailand, second only to the remnants of the Khmer Rouge. By mid-1981, with about 7,000 personnel under arms, it was able to protect its refugee camps and occasionally to conduct forays into Cambodia.
In June 1982 the KPNLF joined the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea, although military operations between the three partner organizations never achieved any degree of coordination.
Nong Chan Refugee Camp became the KPNLAF's military headquarters at the end of 1982, although Ampil Camp remained the administrative headquarters until it was destroyed in early 1985. Nong Chan housed the KPNLAF's 3rd, 7th and 9th battalions and a Special Forces commando unit, while the 1st Battalion was at Nong Samet Refugee Camp and the 2nd at Ampil. [8] By early 1984 Son Sann claimed that his KPNLF army "…had 12,000 fully armed fighters, with an additional 8,000 trained but still without weapons." [9]
The KPNLAF favored strike-and-retreat guerrilla tactics and tended to operate in small, lightly armed, highly mobile units of 6 to 12 soldiers.
Due to the lack of weapons, many KPNLAF troops carried their own guns, including American M16s which had been supplied by the US military to Khmer National Armed Forces troops prior to 1975. A few soldiers even carried hunting rifles or shotguns. [14]
KPNLAF forces were adept at the use of landmines, particularly blast mines such as the PMN-2 and M14, as well as bounding fragmentation mines such as the M16A2 and the M2A4. [15]
Two developments in the mid-1980s greatly diminished KPNLAF capabilities as a fighting force. The first of these was the Vietnamese dry season offensive of November 1984 to March 1985, which weakened the KPNLAF's numbers and forced them to abandon several fortified border encampments (such as Nong Samet and Nong Chan) on the Thai-Cambodian border. The other insurgent forces, the Khmer Rouge and the Armée Nationale Sihanoukiste, were also affected by this offensive, which reduced the number of camps on the border from 21 to 11. The Government of Thailand and the international community viewed the quartering of KPNLAF troops in civilian camps as a recipe for disaster, and United Nations Border Relief Operation, the UN agency responsible for security on the border, relocated the camps inside Thailand with troops in separate camps from refugees. [16]
The second development, equally harmful to the KPNLAF cause, was the dispute that broke out among the top leaders. [17] Following the loss of the border camps, contemporary reports noted that "open revolt" had broken out among guerrilla commanders over the "dictatorial ways" of Son Sann, who had continued as president of the KPNLF, and his "interference in military matters." [18] The crisis resulted in the virtual paralysis of the KPNLAF until leadership issues were resolved in late 1986. [19]
Partly as a result of leadership disputes that prevented the development of a coordinated military strategy, the KPNLAF turned to sabotage and demolition in order to wage a war of attrition. [20] Starting in 1983 the Special Air Service of the United Kingdom secretly provided training to a 250-man KPNLAF commando battalion. [21] Commandos were trained to operate independently in enemy territory in six-man units that attacked bridges, railways, trains, office buildings, artillery, power lines, transformers, and radar stations, [22] using small group tactics, booby-traps, landmines and improvised explosive devices [23] manufactured from commercial products or conventional ordnance. Students were also trained in tactics, weapons, navigation, first aid, radio communications, and unarmed combat. [24] At least six training courses of six to ten weeks were conducted between 1986 and 1989. The training was provided in Thailand at a Thai military facility near the Burmese border, and in Singapore. [25] [26] Revelation by John Pilger [27] of these activities caused considerable debate in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom in July 1991. [28]
Hostilities involving KPNLAF forces had largely ended by mid-1989, and Vietnam withdrew the bulk of its occupying troops from Cambodia by September 21, 1989. [29] General Dien Del presided over the demobilization of the KPNLAF in February 1992. [30]
The Cambodian–Vietnamese War, known in Vietnam as the Southwestern Border Counter-Offensive, and by Cambodian nationalists as the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, was an armed conflict between Democratic Kampuchea, controlled by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The war began with repeated attacks by the Liberation Army of Kampuchea on the southwestern border of Vietnam, particularly the Ba Chúc massacre which resulted in the deaths of over 3,000 Vietnamese civilians. On 23 December 1978, 10 out of 19 divisions of Khmer Rouge's military divisions opened fire along the shared Southwestern borderline with Vietnam with the goal of invading the Vietnamese provinces of Đồng Tháp, An Giang and Kiên Giang. On 25 December 1978, Vietnam launched a full-scale invasion of Kampuchea, and subsequently occupied the country and removed the government of the Communist Party of Kampuchea from power.
The Khmer People's National Liberation Front was a political front organized in 1979 in opposition to the Vietnamese-installed People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) regime in Cambodia. The 200,000 Vietnamese troops supporting the PRK, as well as Khmer Rouge defectors, had ousted the Democratic Kampuchea regime of Pol Pot, and were initially welcomed by the majority of Cambodians as liberators. Some Khmer, though, recalled the two countries' historical rivalry and feared that the Vietnamese would attempt to subjugate the country, and began to oppose their military presence. Members of the KPNLF supported this view.
The Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea, renamed in 1990 to the National Government of Cambodia, was a coalition government in exile composed of three Cambodian political factions, namely Prince Norodom Sihanouk's FUNCINPEC party, the Party of Democratic Kampuchea and the Khmer People's National Liberation Front (KPNLF) formed in 1982, broadening the de facto deposed Democratic Kampuchea regime. For most of its existence, it was the internationally recognized government of Cambodia.
The MOULINAKA was a pro-Sihanouk military organization formed in August 1979 by an armed group on the Thai-Cambodian border.
Son Sann was a Cambodian politician and anti-communist resistance leader who served as the 22nd Prime Minister of Cambodia (1967–68) and later as President of the National Assembly (1993). A devout Buddhist, he was married and fathered seven children. His full honorary title is "Samdech Borvor Setha Thipadei Son Sann".
The Khmer Serei were an anti-communist and anti-monarchist guerrilla force founded by Cambodian nationalist Son Ngoc Thanh. In 1959, he published 'The Manifesto of the Khmer Serei' claiming that Sihanouk was supporting the 'communization' of Kampuchea. In the 1960s, the Khmer Serei were growing in numbers, hoping to become a major political and fighting force.
The National Army of Democratic Kampuchea (NADK) was a Cambodian guerrilla force. NADK were the armed forces of the Party of Democratic Kampuchea also known as "Khmer Rouge", operating between 1979 and the late 1990s.
The People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) was a partially recognised state in Southeast Asia which existed from 1979 to 1989. It was a client state of Vietnam, founded in Cambodia by the Vietnamese-backed Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation, a group of Cambodian communists who were dissatisfied with the Khmer Rouge due to its oppressive rule and defected from it after the overthrow of Democratic Kampuchea, Pol Pot's government. Brought about by an invasion from Vietnam, which routed the Khmer Rouge armies, it had Vietnam and the Soviet Union as its main allies.
After the 1978 Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and subsequent collapse of Democratic Kampuchea in 1979, the Khmer Rouge fled to the border regions of Thailand, and, with assistance from China, Pol Pot's troops managed to regroup and reorganize in forested and mountainous zones on the Thai-Cambodian border. During the 1980s and early 1990s Khmer Rouge forces operated from inside refugee camps in Thailand, in an attempt to de-stabilize the pro-Hanoi People's Republic of Kampuchea's government, which Thailand refused to recognise. Thailand and Vietnam faced off across the Thai-Cambodian border with frequent Vietnamese incursions and shellings into Thai territory throughout the 1980s in pursuit of Cambodian guerrillas who kept attacking Vietnamese occupation forces.
The earliest traces of armed conflict in the territory that constitutes modern Cambodia date to the Iron Age settlement of Phum Snay in north-western Cambodia.
General Sak Sutsakhan was a Cambodian politician and soldier who had a long career in the country's politics. He was the last Head of State of the Khmer Republic, the regime overthrown by the Khmer Rouge in 1975. Sak Sutsakhan formed a pro-US force known as the Khmer Sâ. As a businessman, Sak Sutsakhan notably owned a Dairy Queen franchise in Anaheim, California.
General Dien Del was a prominent Cambodian military officer and later, politician. He directed combat operations in Cambodia, first as a general in the Army of the Khmer Republic (1970–1975) and then as a leader of Khmer People's National Liberation Front (KPNLF) guerrilla forces fighting against the Vietnamese occupation (1979–1992). Following Vietnam's withdrawal from Cambodia in 1990, he presided over the demobilization of the KPNLF's armed forces in February 1992. In 1998 he was elected to the National Legislative Assembly as a member of FUNCINPEC. He spent the last fifteen years of his career as advisor to the Cambodian government.
Site Two Refugee Camp was the largest refugee camp on the Thai-Cambodian border and, for several years, the largest refugee camp in Southeast Asia. The camp was established in January 1985 during the 1984-1985 Vietnamese dry-season offensive against guerrilla forces opposing Vietnam's occupation of Cambodia.
Nong Samet Refugee Camp, in Nong Samet Village, Khok Sung District, Sa Kaeo Province, Thailand, was a refugee camp on the Thai-Cambodian border and served as a power base for the Khmer People's National Liberation Front (KPNLF) until its destruction by the Vietnamese military in late 1984.
Nong Chan Refugee Camp, in Nong Chan Village, Khok Sung District, Sa Kaeo Province, Thailand, was one of the earliest organized refugee camps on the Thai-Cambodian border, where thousands of Khmer refugees sought food and health care after fleeing the Cambodian-Vietnamese War. It was destroyed by the Vietnamese military in late 1984, after which its population was transferred to Site Two Refugee Camp.
The K5 Plan, K5 Belt or K5 Project, also known as the Bamboo Curtain, was an attempt between 1985 and 1989 by the government of the People's Republic of Kampuchea to seal Khmer Rouge guerrilla infiltration routes into Cambodia by means of trenches, wire fences, and minefields along virtually the entire Cambodia–Thailand border.
The Cambodian humanitarian crisis from 1969 to 1993 consisted of a series of related events which resulted in the death, displacement, or resettlement abroad of millions of Cambodians.
The battle of Pailin also known as the Siege of Pailin is an armed conflict which extended from 1989 to 1997 as the last military act of the Cambodian Civil War which took place in the Northwest of Cambodia in the last military stronghold of the Khmer Rouge.
The Dangrek genocide, also known as the Preah Vihear pushback, is a border incident which took place along the Dangrek Mountain Range on the Thai-Cambodian border which resulted in the death of many mostly Sino-Khmer refugees who were refused asylum by the Kingdom of Thailand in June 1979.
The Cambodian Conflict or Khmer Rouge Insurgency., was an armed conflict that initiated in the Cambodian-Vietnamese War, Vietnam which provoked the deposition of Democratic Kampuchea, between the new Cambodian government and an anti-government coalition led by the Khmer Rouge.
