The Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot also aimed at extending their area by incorporating large chunk of Vietnam. The war and refugee influx disrupted Vietnam’s rice bowl region that caused a serious food problem in Vietnam. Vietnam absorbed hundreds of thousands of Kampuchean and ethnic Vietnamese refugees. The policies of Khmer Rouge led to exodus of refugees to Vietnam, Laos and Thailand but Vietnam had the largest number. By the spring of 1978 nearly 1.70 million of Kampuchea’s population had succumbed to hunger, hunger-related diseases and extermination at the hands of Pol Pot’s clique. The Pol Pot regime was isolated from the outside world with the exception of Chinese and North Korean advisors, who numbered around 10,000. The regime’s ideology and tactics were so extreme that it targeted almost all aspects and segments of Cambodian society for destruction, and was ultimately responsible for the deaths of an estimated two million of the country’s seven million people. Those who refused “re-education” were killed in the fields surrounding the commune or at the notorious prison camp Tuol Sleng Centre, known as S-21. People were divided into categories that reflected the trust that the Khmer Rouge had for them the most trustworthy were called “old citizens.” The pro-West and city dwellers began as “new citizens” and could move up to “deportees,” then “candidates” and finally “full rights citizens” however, most citizens never moved up. In an effort to create ‘a society without competition’, in which people worked for ‘the common good’, the Khmer Rouge placed people in collective living arrangements - or communes - and enacted “re-education” programs to encourage the commune lifestyle. ![]() The Khmer Rouge adopted the policy of forced unpaid agricultural labour for all, and brutal persecution of Buddhist monks and ethnic minorities: Chinese, Vietnamese, Cham Muslim, and Thai. ![]() They closed schools, destroyed libraries and temples, and banished religion. The purges spread to the mass of the peasantry as well as to the persecuted urban evacuees. In 1977, Pol Pot intensified the process to finish-off all dissident communists and other moderates. The Khmer Rouge’s polices were guided by its belief that the citizens of Cambodia had been tainted by exposure to outside ideas, especially by the capitalist West. He forced the people to leave villages and cities, abandon their homes and move into countryside. Pol Pot aimed at exterminating anything that was urban or modern in an attempt to establish utopian agrarian communist society. Christian, Buddhist and Muslim citizens also were specifically targeted. They persecuted the educated - such as doctors, lawyers, and current or former military and police. The Khmer Rouge established ‘a reign of terror’ and their mass atrocities and mass brutalities were unparalleled. By April 1975, Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, seized control of Cambodia, renaming the country as Democratic Kampuchea. Lon Nol government fell after the US left. The Khmer Rouge used the United States’ bombing to recruit followers and as an excuse for the brutal policies they exercised when in power. Between 19, during the Vietnam War, the United States bombed much of the countryside of Cambodia like Northern Vietnam and manipulated Cambodian politics to support the rise of pro-West Lon Nol as the leader of Cambodia. The civil war had existed in Cambodia since 1970, when Sihanouk was ousted by Lon Nol. A French colony from the late 1800s to the 1950s, occupied during World War II by Japan, and then bombed by American forces during the Vietnam War, Cambodia experienced its bloodiest years during the reign of the Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime from 1975 to 1978- the worst period in its history. MOREĬambodia endured long years of turmoil and outright horror. ![]() His publications include two books and several articles. In the JIC/National Security Council secretariat, he was closely involved with the preparation of the reports of the Kargil Review Committee and the Group of Ministers on national security as also with the implementation of their recommendations. The ministry of defence had utilized his services for the preparation of official accounts of the 1971 war and the counterinsurgency operations in the northeast. He was also a visiting professor at the University of Illinois, US, in the department of arms control and disarmament studies. He has taught at the departments of defence studies and history at the Punjabi University, Patiala. He was chairman of the Task Force on Intelligence Mechanism (2008-2010), which was constituted to review the functioning of the intelligence agencies. He has also been the country's deputy national security adviser. S D Pradhan has served as chairman of India's Joint Intelligence Committee.
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