Ieng Sary: A Brief Bio

Ieng Sary was a member of the Standing Committee of the Communist Party of Kampuchea and was a deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Democratic Kampuchea between 1975 and 1978. Like Pol Pot and Khieu Samphan, he won a government scholarship to study in France in 1950 and was drawn into communism. A few years after his return from France in the mid-1950s, Ieng Sary was engaged in clandestine revolutionary activities and worked as a schoolteacher. Facing intense crackdown on communists by the Sihanouk regime, in 1963, Ieng Sary, along with Pol Pot, left Phnom Penh for the remote jungle in the Eastern Cambodia.

He escaped to the Thai border after the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1979 and continued to serve as the Khmer Rouge deputy prime minister in charge of foreign affairs. Ieng Sary transferred formal responsibility in foreign affairs to Khieu Samphan after the creation of the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea in 1982. Although he did not hold any formal position within the Khmer Rouge leadership, Ieng Sary was a very powerful figure within the Khmer Rouge as he secured a personal command in Pailin, a gem and timber rich Khmer Rouge stronghold in western Cambodia.

As rifts within the Khmer Rouge intensified as a result of its failure to advance militarily after the signing of the Paris Peace Agreement in 1991 and the drying up of Chinese aid, Ieng Sary defected to the government in 1996 along with the forces he commanded. He was soon pardoned by King Norodom Sihanouk from the death sentenced passed on him in absentia in 1979 by the Vietnamese backed government of the People’s Republic of Kampuchea. Although Ieng Sary holds no official position, he is believed to be the de facto leader of this autonomous region.