The History Project Part V

The Vietnamese Occupation

The Vietnamese invasion on December 25th 1978 marked the beginning of the end for Pol Pot’s regime. In the span of a few short months, most of Democratic Kampuchea’s soldiers were forced to retreat into hiding. They would have disbanded entirely if it were not for the help of the Thai military government, which fed and clothed Khmer Rouge soldiers in the areas just across the border from Cambodia. Arms from Chinese military aid enabled the Khmer rouge to become an effective fighting force by 1982. However, the presence of Vietnamese soldiers in Cambodia prevented them from making any significant military gains possible until 1989 when the Vietnamese withdrew.

In the wake of the invasion, the entire country was thrown into disarray. People moved across the country looking for family members or shelter in the Thai refugee camps located just across the border. The situation in the countryside was disastrous due to starvation and loss of life. Because so many men were killed during the fighting between the different factions or by Pol Pot’s purges, some districts contained families that were mostly headed by widows. While local villagers were once put in charge of their affairs, military officers who had defected to the Vietnamese in 1978 were forming a new government in Phnom Penh. Some of these people included Heng Samrin, Chea Sim, and Hun Sen.

Like the most of the country, the 1980’s were years of slow recovery for the region of Angkor Chum. The most significant event during this time was the birth of the actual district. Until 1987, the area now known as Angkor Chum was a part of the larger Pourk district. District offices were established on the site of the Khmer Rouge prison, a secondary school was also established on the site where the high school now stands.

If the 1980’s were mostly a peaceful time for Angkor Chum, the situation had certainly changed by 1989. With the Vietnamese withdrawal, the Khmer Rouge were becoming more active in making territorial gains. Both the Khmer Rouge and the Phnom Penh government resorted to conscripting soldiers from towns and villages as they saw fit. One schoolteacher vividly remembers what it was like to be thrust into military service.

"I remember when I came to live in Angkor Chum in 1989. I had a gun every night. During the day I was a teacher, but at night I was a soldier. I took the gun and walked around the school and the district. If I didn’t go on guard duty around the district, they would not give me any salary. So I had to teach and guard. It was very difficult to live."

Government service in that time also meant compulsory military service even if the person had no training. Even regular troops were only given the bare minimum needed to be able to function in combat. If conscription was not being practiced at this point in time, it certainly was later on.

Angkor Chum and UNTAC

The period in which the United Nations stepped in to run the 1993 elections in Cambodia was probably a very interesting time for people in Angkor Chum. Not only were they allowed to vote in the first free election in their country’s history, but they were able to witness foreign visitors for the first time. According to local accounts, the UNTAC personnel stationed here included a regiment of soldiers from Bangladesh, as well as smattering of UN workers with different nationalities. What these workers experienced here was probably a frightening experience to say the least. The Khmer Rouge, despite being members of a pact allowing the UN to administer elections, were boycotting the process. They sporadically attacked anyone involved with the UN, regardless of their nationality.

The experience that the UNTAC workers went through is documented in an American newspaper article written by Raymond Whittaker. It describes the UN mission through the eyes of a Norwegian woman named Kathrin Brendel. Much of the work that this woman was involved in was the effort to register voters before the election despite the best efforts of the Khmer Rouge, who frequently fired shells at the town and lay mines on the roads. In the article, Ms. Brendel describes how she frequently had to use the sandbagged bunker dug for her by the Bangladeshi troops stationed at Wat Char Chuk. While these soldiers were prepared to defend themselves, they could not attack the Khmer Rouge because they had signed on to participate in the elections. This meant these soldiers had to simply endure the attacks that the Khmer Rouge launched at the cost of injury or death. One eyewitness describes how this could be so.

I remember when the Khmer Rouge would attack the UNTAC soldiers stationed at the pagoda in the middle of the night, shelling and shooting at each other. There was one soldier who was injured. Roboh jongkah? The shelling came down near him, and blew his face off. Parts of his jaw were on a tree nearby. After the fighting stopped that night, a helicopter came down and took him away.

Despite the threat of violence, Ms. Brendel was brave enough to try to organize a meeting with the Khmer Rouge in an effort to start a dialogue. However, her pleas went unanswered.

Two specific events are of particular interest in this article. The first is the attack on the two UN vehicles, which many people in the town still remember. According to the weekly military info published in December 1992, a civilian police vehicle ran over a mine three kilometers south of the Angkor Chum district center. Two civilian police members were seriously injured. Another car suffered the same fate just ten kilometers away from where the first car was blown up, injuring three Indonesians and one Napalese. Many people in Angkor Chum remember this event including Mr. Chee-Ah Bun Too-An. He recounts what happened as “One mine ‘Boom!’ and a helicopter came down and took one person who was injured. And when the helicopter went up, another car came up from Siem Reap along the road, and that was blown up as well. They were taking pictures of the wreckage and damage caused by the mine.” While many people in the town remember the explosion, few know what happened to the people who were injured in the attack. A 1997 interview with Benny Widyono, who served as the head of UNTAC in Siem Reap, reveals what a harrowing situation it turned out to be:

"At one point, there was a mine incident involving civilian police from Tunisia and Indonesia, on the road to Angkor Chum, in which two police were badly wounded. My decision was whether to have their legs amputated in Siem Reap, where we had an Indian field hospital, or evacuate them to Phnom Penh. The Indonesian was still conscious and he didn't want to be amputated, so I went with him to Phnom Penh. The Indian doctors told me 'If he dies on the helicopter, its your responsibility'. When we arrived in Phnom Penh, the hospital here said the wounds are so bad he has to be evacuated to Bangkok, and finally he was amputated there. So there were some close calls."

Despite all of this violence, the elections seem to have proceeded without any hindrance. In the final week of registration, the voters in Angkor Chum coming forth in unprecedented numbers. People walked from as far away as fifteen miles to register for the election, allowing Ms. Brandal to add 500 names to the list. It is remarkable that under such savage threats of violence from the Khmer Rouge that people in Angkor Chum were willing to register at all. It is truly a testament to their courage.

The Battle of Angkor Chum: 1993 to 1997

For much of the 1990’s, Angkor Chum was the site of many different skirmishes between government soldiers and the Khmer Rouge. It was a period in which the KR disintegrated as a national movement, resulting in mass defections over to government forces. These defections would ultimately weaken the KR as an effective fighting force, and by the end of the decade the fighting would stop. Much of the violence done to the people of Angkor Chum was at the hands of both the Khmer Rouge as well as the government soldiers. Both sides practiced forced conscription, extortion, and destruction of property in an effort to cow the local people into helping them. The violence would ultimately lead many people to leave Angkor Chum in an effort to escape these two forces, with many people resettling in the neiboring district of Pourk. Most of the recorded information about the fighting in Angkor Chum comes from weekly UNTAC military reports as well as the Phnom Penh Post. While much of the information found in these sources is incredibly helpful, it is more than likely that other incidents went unlisted. What is compiled here should be viewed as only a partial account of the fighting in Angkor Chum.

The first recorded battle for the control of the district comes from the weekly UNTAC military report from May 15th to the 21st, 1993. The report states that Angkor Chum was attacked from three different directions on May 16th by both ground forces and artillery fire. The government forces (CPAF) tried to resist the attack, but the Khmer Rouge (NADK) managed to come within 500-700 of the district center. The CPAF ceded control over the main road leading to Siem Reap, and retreated to the district center due to lack of ammunition. The NADK attack continued the next day, in which they managed to capture the nearby Kouk Kbat and Ta Soam villages. The CPAF brought in reinforcements, bringing their total number to 220 soldiers, and launched a counter attack against NADK on May 19th. Using mobile rocket launchers and artillery fire, the CPAF were able to push back the NADK from the captured villages and reestablish control over the road to Varin District.

This pattern of attack and counter attack for the control of territory was repeated several times during the 1990’s. The Phnom Penh Post reported that on 17 August, 1993 CAF (government forces) had massed in the district capital of Angkor Chum in preparation for an attack to recapture the capital of Varin district. Col. Dang Sing and Col. Hou Saron were in charge of planning the attack, and predicted an easy victory. The two leaders estimated only 60 NADK soldiers of the Khmer Rouge division 912 opposed their forces, stating that the rest of the NADK forces had moved south of National Road 6 towards the Tonlé Sap. Col. Saron is quoted to have said, “We have enough resources to take Varin.” Whether this attack was successful or not is unknown.

In September of 1994, the Khmer Rouge launched major offenses in several provinces and captured a few districts in Siem Reap. According to Colonel Yang Vuthy, who was speaking at a press conference on September 28th, both the main army in the province and the neighboring district of Srey Snam were overrun during the attacks. On September 20th, the Khmer Rouge attacked positions 7 km east of Angkor Chum. Government soldiers killed one guerilla and wounded two others in the raid. The Khmer Rouge were reported to have burned down 14 houses in captured villages and killed oxen during the attacks.

These attacks verify what was known about the senior Khmer Rouge leadership at the time. By 1994, the government in Phnom Penh had declared the Khmer Rouge “illegal” and had resumed military operations against them. The Khmer Rouge had also lost foreign support, and were now fighting for their very survival. Citing the need to create a dictatorship of the peasantry, they hoped to lay the groundwork for “victory” and recreate the conditions of the armed struggle against Lon Nol. The movement abandoned their capitalist efforts that fed their existence throughout much of the 1980’s, and in doing so pushed thousands of people out. The prospect of mandatory poverty and renewed socialism encouraged soldiers to defect to the other side.

In the wake of the 1994 attacks, many Khmer Rouge guerrillas defected to the government forces citing exhaustion and a general refusal to carry out the new orders by the KR leadership. In Siem Reap, 275 guerillas under the command of Colonel Phor defected from KR division 912 defected with weapons. The division was commanded by someone named “Kong,” a long time body guard of Pol Pot’s military advisor Ta Mok. Kong was not among those who defected. The soldiers who defected were said to no longer to carry the orders of Ta Mok, who ordered the burning of houses, destruction of crops, and killing. However, it was not clear as to what these soldiers would do now.

By 1995, these defections were becoming increasing effective at reducing the strength of the Khmer Rouge. At the start of the new year on January 1st, a ceremony was held in Angkor Chum in which former members of the Khmer Rouge presented their weapons to the Fourth Military Region commander Gen. Khann Savoern. Most of the defectors looked “bedraggled, hungry, and scared,” stating that they simply wanted to go back to their villages. It also seems that government had an answer as to what the newly defected soldiers would do now. According to Major General Tep Vichet, defectors were being given courses in human rights and freedom in a democratic society.

While KR attacks were sources of danger, the treatment of civilians by government troops proved to be no better. An article dated 10 Febuary 1995 reported that 476 families had left Angkor Chum district, stating that they were fed up with being attacked by the Khmer Rouge and extorted RCAF soldiers supposedly sent to protect them. The article states that a total of 2, 678 villagers made their way to a refugee camp in Pourk district, 13km west of Siem Reap. A village chief named Nong Reum stated that their village was shelled, looted, and burned by KR forces. If this was not enough, government troops in the area demanded 40,000 riel ($20) from the villagers. If they did not have the money, the soldiers would confiscate their rice. An army chief named Hel Sam Ol had come to his village and singled out people they wanted to get money from, claiming that they were KR or KR sympathizers.

Despite efforts by authorities to get these refugees to move back to their homes in Angkor Chum, many decided that the journey from Angkor Chum to Pourk would be an exodus. According to Oem Seh, many of the people who escaped Angkor Chum decided to stay and settle in Pourk. The village chiefs in the area found land for them to build houses, and a large number of them set up stalls in the market. Since the KR had a practice of burning down houses and killing livestock, it is logical to assume that many of the people who left Angkor Chum during this time simply had no home to go back to.

The damage done to Angkor Chum by the mid 1990’s was particularly extensive. The opening sentences of Nate Thayer’s 1995 article describing Angkor Chum are particularly haunting.

"Along this isolated stretch of provincial highway, 19 blown bridges isolate the remnants of villages that were burned to the ground in recent months by Khmer Rouge guerillas. Huge craters in the road explain the carcasses of trucks destroyed recently by anti-tank mines. Dozens of soldiers with protective eye-wear gently expose thousands of land mines laid in rice fields, as truckloads of ragged government troops pass by on the way to nearby front lines. Intermittently, deafening explosions mark another mine detonated in place. The automatic weapons bursts puncturing the quiet have been a regular feature of life in rural Cambodia for more than 25 years."

Thayer’s description goes on, describing a scene in which 552 Khmer Rouge guerillas defected in the previous week. The soldiers, still dressed in Chinese PLA style uniforms, lounged in the markets, flirted with vendors, and provided security against their former comrades. The commander of these forces stated that he refused to carry out the orders for attacking the civilian population, and instead led people into the forest to protect them. When he defected, he also brought with him the military hardware.

" …Tung Yun, 38, who commanded two regiments of 600 guerilla fighters until January. He smiled as a 152 mm artillery parked near his house shook the earth as it fired at his former division commander, who with less than 75 men, had retreated into the jungle a few kilometers away. “Don’t worry, I took all the big weapons with me, they can’t fire back.”

With this major defection, the area was able to achieve a state of security that was previously impossible. This allowed infrastructure projects, such as roads, bridges, dams, and demining, to happen unhindered. Despite the proclamations coming from the Khmer Rouge that the United States, France, and other countries were waging war against Cambodia in collusion with Vietnam, little attention was paid to them. These warnings seemed especially hollow considering that most villagers now saw millions of dollars worth of donor aid coming in to build roads, hospitals, and schools.

With the armistice declared in 1997 and the death of Pol Pot in 1998, the rest of the decade finished peacefully. While fighting was reported briefly between FUNCINPEC and CPP soldiers during the coup of 1997, no written documents seem to suggest that the violence was ongoing. For the first time in almost thirty years, the country was not at war and was allowed to slowly rebuild itself.