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Vietnam invaded Cambodia in late 1978 and established the People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) led by Khmer Rouge defectors. [10] [11] Vietnam's invasion was motivated by repeated cross-border attacks by the Khmer Rouge that targeted Vietnamese civilians, including the Ba Chúc massacre—in which the Khmer Rouge systematically killed the entire population of a Vietnamese village of over 3,000 ...
The Cambodian conflict, also known as the Khmer Rouge insurgency, [5] was an armed conflict that began in 1979 when the Khmer Rouge government of Democratic Kampuchea was deposed during the Cambodian-Vietnamese War. The war concluded in 1999 when remaining Khmer Rouge forces surrendered.
The Khmer Rouge then fled to Thailand, whose government saw them as a buffer force against the Communist Party of Vietnam. The Khmer Rouge continued to fight against the Vietnamese and the government of the new People's Republic of Kampuchea until the end of the war in 1989.
When the United States Congress suspended military aid to the Lon Nol government in 1973, the Khmer Rouge made sweeping gains in the country, completely overwhelming the Khmer National Armed Forces. On 17 April 1975, the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh and overthrew the Khmer Republic, executing all its officers.
Khmer Rouge forces, which had been reorganized at an Indochinese summit held in Guangzhou, China in April 1970, would grow from 12 to 15,000 in 1970 to 35–40,000 by 1972, when the so-called "Khmerization" of the conflict took place and combat operations against the Republic were handed over completely to the insurgents.
Despite this, the Khmer Republic did not survive the 1975 dry season offensive. The Khmer Rouge had by this point surrounded the capital, whose population had been vastly increased by refugees from the fighting; Lon Nol, who was extremely superstitious, ordered that consecrated sand be spread around the city from helicopters to protect it.
The New York Times reported in June 1987 that "the Khmer Rouge army is believed to be having some success in its recruitment, not only among the refugees in its camps but within the Vietnamese controlled People's Republic of Kampuchea." The NADK did not make personnel figures public, but estimates by military observers and by journalists ...
The People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) [a] was a partially-recognised state in Southeast Asia which existed from 1979 to 1989. It was a satellite 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 ...