Cambodia´s War: Factions, Policies and Prospects

Abstract

Two rival governments, each backed by their own armed forces and mass movement style "national front" organisations, as well as by foreign supporters, are contending for control of Cambodia. One faction is the government of "Democratic Kampuchea", headed by Pol Pot as premier and secretary of the "Kampuchea Communist Party", which seized power with its capture of the capital city of Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975, deposing the US backed government of Lon Nol. The other faction is the "Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Government", headed by Heng Samrin, a former Kampuchea Communist Party provincial executive committee member in Eastern Cambodia. Heng Samrin proclaimed his government when his followers, heavily backed by several tens of thousands of invading Vietnamese troops captured Phnom Penh on January 8, 1979. Both factions have their national front groups, Pol Pot's being called the "Democratic and Patriotic Front for National Unity", and Heng Samrin's bearing the name of "Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation". Pol Pot's regime has been reduced to an underground guerilla movement which continues to be officially recognized by People's China and most non-Communist Southeast Asian governments, among whom suspicion of Hanoi's control over Cambodia is quite marked. Chinese military supplies reportedly are reaching Pol Pot's guerillas through the small Thai ports and maze of islands off the Gulf of Siam. Heng Samrin's government not only has the backing of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, but of the USSR and most of the Soviet bloc nations, with the exception of Rumania. The Chinese invasion of Vietnam on February 16, 1979, intended as a punitive "lesson" has not resulted in a Vietnamese withdrawal from Cambodia, however. On February 20, 1979 the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the "Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Government" of Heng Samrin signed a friendship treaty which regulates Phnom Penh's satellite status in relation to Hanoi. It is unlikely, however, that People's China will indefinitely acquiesce in continued Vietnamese dominance of Cambodia.