CIA/MI-6 Statement on the Khmer Rouge

Party of Democratic Kampuchea #CR0000800
(Also... Some alternate names are aliases, other are names for specific subgroups or
cells).
PDK
Khmer Rouge
Communist Party of Kampuchea
Khmer Communist Party
CPK
National Army of Democratic Kampuchea

Source: CIA, MI-6

Type: Political terrorist organization/Guerrilla insurgency

Scope:
Frequent ambushes, assassinations and other acts of insurgency throughout Cambodia
and Vietnam.

Affiliations:
Khmer Rouge members have received training and equipment from the Chinese
military. Also receive sanctuary with the borders of Thailand.

Personnel: Approximately 8,000 guerrillas.

Operating Since:
1971

Structure:
Military hierarchy, units numbering between ten and one thousand depending on the
operation.

Leaders:
The Standing Committee of the Central Committee of the CPK has consisted of the
same core group for some 25 years. Often called the "Party Center," this group is
comprised of Solath Sar [#LL4109565], (alias Pol Pot), former leader surrendered in
1997, Nuon Chea [#LL4635856], Chhit Chhuon [#LL4861352], (alias Mok), Khieu
Samphan [#LL4756251], leader, Ieng Sary [#LL4854621], Son Sen [#LL4765235], Yun
Yat [#LL4985426], Ieng Thirith [#LL4756528], and Ke Pauk [#LL4851386].

Legitimate Connections:
None.

Resources:
Smallarms, explosives and military weapons supplied by China. Support and Intelligence
supplied by China and Thailand.

Suspected Criminal Activity:
In an exercise of state terror scarcely matched in its scope and brazenness, the Khmer
Rouge initiated a reign of terror and state repression in order to destroy totally pre-
Kampuchean Cambodia and to create their ideal agricultural state. The Khmer Rouge
depopulated the cities of Cambodia, which they renamed Kampuchea, forcing the urban
population into agricultural communes where they were enslaved and brutalized. From
1975 to 1978, the Khmer Rouge systematically overworked and starved the subject
population, selectively executing the educated and killing others even for minor
breaches of rules. Approximately 1 million people perished under Khmer rule. The
Khmer Rouge now is engaged in a low-level insurgency against the Cambodian
Government. Although its victims are mainly Cambodian villagers, the Khmer Rouge
has occasionally kidnapped and killed foreigners traveling in remote rural areas.

Additional Commentary:
"Khmer Rouge" means Red Khmers, and is the name given to the left wing in
Cambodian politics by King Norodom Sihanouk in the 1950s. Since then, the name has
come to be identified with a particular faction of the Cambodian left, formally known
during the 1970s as the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) and during the 1980s
and 90s as the Party of Democratic Kampuchea. Originally founded under Vietnamese
sponsorship in 1951, the Khmer Communist Party is a revolutionary group that sought
to create a socialist state in Cambodia following the Maoist model of guerrilla warfare
and cultural revolution. The Prince Sihanouk himself, alternatively fought and allied
himself with the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot.

On April 17, 1975, a bitter five year civil war was concluded with the Party Center
leading the Khmer Rouge to victory over the US-backed Khmer Republic of General
Lon Nol. Thus arose the Khmer Rouge regime. The Khmer Rogue took the capital of
Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975 and under Pol Pot's leadership, conducted a campaign of
genocide in which more than 1 million people were killed during its four years in power in
the late 1970s.The official tally published by the successor regime to the Khmer Rouge
sets the number of dead at 3.1 million. Several demographic analyses (by the CIA, the
U.S. Bureau of the Census, and the U.N. Population Bureau) have estimated the death
toll to be between 1 million and 2 million. The most competent empirical analyses by
Western scholars of Cambodia place the estimate at between 1.5 and 1.7 million dead
from execution, disease, starvation and overwork.

The Khmer Rouge subsequently established the State of Democratic Kampuchea, and
instituted what was arguably the most radical experiment in social engineering of the
twentieth century. In an effort to "purify" the "Khmer race" and create an absolutely
classless utopian society, the Khmer Rouge began by emptying all Cambodian urban
centers of their population, abolishing banking, finance and currency, outlawing all
religions, reorganizing traditional kinship systems into a communal order, and
eliminating private property so completely that even personal hygiene supplies were
communal.

The North Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge remained tactical allies until the fall of the
pro-U.S. Lon Nol regime in 1975. By 1978 bitter warfare erupted between the Chinese-
backed Khmer Rouge and the Soviet-backed Vietnamese. On 25 December 1978
Vietnamese forces entered Cambodian and within two weeks, on January 7, 1979,
Vietnamese armed forces entered the Cambodian capitol at Phnom Penh and
proclaimed the end of the Khmer Rouge State of Democratic Kampuchea. The actual
conflict between the two armies lasted until 1989, the Khmer Rouge reverted once
again to being a guerrilla army, continuing to terrorize and repress Cambodians in the
regions it controlled. In 1980, Khieu Samphan replaced Pol Pot as leader and the Khmer
Rouge began to receive tacit Thai aid in the form of sanctuary within border areas of
Thailand while China supplied weapons, munitions, radios, and medical equipment. The
Khmer Rouge fielded about 35,000 combatants and often exerted de facto rule within
Cambodian refugee camps within Thailand. Despite the appalling human rights record of
the Khmer Rouge, the United Nations and many of its members, including the United
States, continued to recognize the Khmer Rouge as the legitimate government of
"Democratic Kampuchea" in preference to the puppet regime established there by
Vietnam.

Following withdrawal of Vietnamese forces in 1989, a coalition government was
established in which the Khmer Rouge was invited to participate as the price to be paid
to avert the continuation of civil war. Under the United Nations-sponsored settlement
concluded on 23 October 1991, the Khmer Rouge agreed to formally dissolve their
Khmer Communist Party in December 1991 and to become coalition partners in a
civilian government. Many Cambodians continued to fear that these concessions were
merely short-term tactical accommodations by an unreconstructed Khmer Rouge not
unlike their alliance of convenience with their former enemy Prince Sihanouk. The
National Army of Democratic Kampuchea, as the Khmer Rouge military is known,
continues to wage warfare from jungle redouts in an attempt to regain control of
Cambodia and resume their utopian experiment. In fact throughout 1992 and 1993 the
Khmer Rouge has not ceased its activities as an armed, revolutionary party and has
attacked the militias belonging to other coalition partners as well as firing upon members
of the U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia.