Were the Killing Fields in Cambodia a direct result of The Vietnam War?

Question

or, in other words, How did the Vietnam War directly cause the Killing Fields? ( Terrible massacres by Khmer Rouge in Cambodia)

Answer 1

On April 17th, 1975 the Khmer Rouge, a communist guerrilla group led by Pol Pot, took power in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. They forced all city dwellers into the countryside and to labor camps. During their rule, it is estimated that 2 million Cambodians died by starvation, torture or execution. 2 million Cambodians represented approximately 30% of the Cambodian population during that time.

The Khmer Rouge turned Cambodia to year zero. They banned all institutions, including stores, banks, hospitals, schools, religion, and the family. Everyone was forced to work 12 - 14 hours a day, every day. Children were separated from their parents to work in mobile groups or as soldiers. People were fed one watery bowl of soup with a few grains of rice thrown in. Babies, children, adults and the elderly were killed everywhere. The Khmer Rouge killed people if they didn’t like them, if didn’t work hard enough, if they were educated, if they came from different ethnic groups, or if they showed sympathy when their family members were taken away to be killed. All were killed without reason. Everyone had to pledge total allegiance to Angka, the Khmer Rouge government. It was a campaign based on instilling constant fear and keeping their victims off balance.

After the Vietnamese invaded and liberated the Cambodian people from the Khmer Rouge, 600,000 Cambodians fled to Thai border camps. Ten million landmines were left in the ground, one for every person in Cambodia. The United Nations installed the largest peacekeeping mission in the world in Cambodia in 1991 to ensure free and fair elections after the withdrawal of the Vietnamese troops. Cambodia was turned upside down during the Khmer Rouge years and the country has the daunting task of healing physically, mentally and economically.

Answer 2

Wars like Vietnam and the massacres in Cambodia are a direct result of imperialism. The French used to 'own' Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam as a whole country, they gave Cambodia and Laos independence, but left them with no stable government. They kept hold of Vietnam, but were eventually kicked out in the 1950s, leaving the 'democratic' government that was a puppet of the States, but this was also unstable. After the defeat of America, groups like the Khmer Rouge could see what was done in Vietnam with a few men and a Kalashnikov, and repeated the process, (in a round about way).

Answer 3

Not a direct result, Vietnam was more like a catalyst. The Indochinese Communist Party (ICP), whose members were almost exclusively Vietnamese, before World War II, started a ten-year struggle for independence from the French. A separate Cambodian communist party, the Kampuchean (or Khmer) People's Revolutionary Party (KPRP), was established in 1960 under Vietnamese auspices.

During the 1950s, Khmer students in Paris organized their own communist movement, which had little, if any, connection to the hard-pressed party in their homeland. From their ranks came the men and women who returned home and took command of the party apparatus during the 1960s, including Pol Pot.

In 1968, the Khmer Rouge forces launched a national insurgency across Cambodia. Though North Vietnam had not been informed of the decision, its forces provided shelter and weapons to the Khmer Rouge after the insurgency started.

Operation Menu was the codename for a covert U.S. Seventh Air Force bombing campaign conducted in eastern Cambodia from 18 March 1969 until 26 May 1970, during the Vietnam Conflict. The targets of these attacks were sanctuaries and Base Areas of the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), which utilized them for resupply, training, and resting between campaigns across the border in the Republic of Vietnam (RVN or South Vietnam).

When the U.S. Congress suspended aid to Cambodia in 1973, the Khmer Rouge made sweeping gains in the country. By 1975, with the Lon Nol government running out of ammunition, it was clear that it was only a matter of time before the government would collapse. On April 17, 1975 the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh.

Answer 4

Yes. The americans bombed large areas of Cambodia during the Vietnam war which destabilised Cambodian society and gave the Khmer Rouge the early recriuts they needed.
They persuaded the Cambodian people that the existing government was the friend of the people who were bombing them and became an unstoppable force.
By the time the people found out the true nature of the Khmer Rouge it was too late

Answer 5

One led to the other. Genocide on the scale of Cambodia does not happen in a peaceful country surrounded by other peaceful countries. If you think that the Rwandan genocide happened 'out of nowhere' then you need to understand the effect that the civil war in neighbouring Uganda had on Rwanda. History teaches us lessons, and gauging by some of the responses here (sorry I'm not usually critical) it can tell us that what we believe to be 'the truth' is simply wrong. Sure Pol Pot was (always was likely) a 'fruit-loop', but there's lot's of crazy people in the world. It might be more 'comfortable' to suggest that he was 'personally responsible' for everything that occured, but crazy people don't get to run normal countries unless something has already gone seriously wrong with the place, and the Vietnam War was absolutely the reason that Cambodia became the sort of place that Pol Pot could run amok in.

I'm a little surprised we could get this far with only one mention of Prince Sihanouk. Sihanouk, not Lon Nol was the head of the Cambodian Government at the time of the US 'intervention' in Vietnam and Cambodia. Understanding Sihanouk would take more than anyone's patience here could tolerate, but essentially he trod a relatively effective 'neutral' line with support from China who were keen to have a pro-Chinese, anti-Vietnamese country next door to Vietnam. You need to understand that while China supported North Vietnam during the Vietnam War there was little love lost between the two of them. They'd been at each others throats for nearly a thousand years. In fact they had a short nasty border war with each other shortly after the end of the Vietnam War.

Sihanouk also mistrusted the Chinese, but he was also coming from a country (Cambodia) that had - you guessed it - been at war with Vietnam for nearly a thousand years.

When the 'effectiveness' of Sihanouk's 'neutrality' was 'blown away' by the US bombing of Cambodia in 1969/70, China swung behind Pol Pot, and the US pretty much installed Lon Nol, a character very much after the Saigon model. Instead of Vietnamese Generals collecting paypackets for phantom soldiers, Lon Nol's Generals collected paypackets (essentially from the US) for whole non-existant armies.

Could Sihanouk have continued if the US hadn't bombed? Probably not - he was very popular but always walking a tightrope. But if the US had swung behind Sihanouk instead of Lon Nol then possibly yes. But then if we are revisiting history, Ho Chi Minh (North Vietnam) had asked the US to be his ally against China (and arrange independence from France) in 1945, and despite the CIA giving support locally, Washington decided that it wasn't worth upsetting the French over a small - inconsequential - Asian country. The whole Indochina War was not essentially an American military stuff-up, but a diplomatic failure (for which millions then paid with their lives). And you might say the diplomatic failure was in large degree based on a complete ignorance of the history of the region.

Answer 6

The Khmer Rouge were around way before we (USA) got to Vietnam. Communist rebels were little more than organized criminals and as dangerous as Mao and the leader of North korea, so they would have done unto each other regardless of the war in Vietnam.

Pol Pot was seemingly as crazed as Mao and Kim in their 1940'-60's genocides".

I also feel the Vietnamese saved many thousands by invading
Cambodia.

"The Indochinese Communist Party was founded in 1931, and a separate Cambodian Communist Party was founded in 1951, although later the Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot, insisted that the party was founded in 1960. In its early years the party remained subordinate to the Communist Party of Vietnam".

Answer 7

No connection between the two. the only thing i do remember from the time was that Veitnam invaded combodia and put a stop to the killing. So who knows if American had succeded in the war then the murders and going back to year zero would have continued. The group resposibile still exist and are still trying to get back to power. They were helped in over throwing the government in the first place by the CIA. A certain Rumsfield was the man in charge at the time by the way. so he in my book he has a million peoples blood on his hand already before Iraq.

Answer 8

$9 BILLION dollars of illegal secret bombing by the USAF probably had quite a lot to do with it...no to tmention the secret invasion!

It certainly destabilised the country, making it easier for the Khmer Rouge to take power.

And if there had been no Vietnam War, then there would probably have been no bombing, so while it didn't directly lead to the holocaust in Cambodia, it certainly didn't help.

Answer 9

Yes. The war in Vietnam destabilized the regime of the Prince who ruled Cambodia. As a result the murderous Pol Pot regime were able to take power.
The millions of deaths are down to Nixon and Kissinger...

Answer 10

No.The Khymer Rouge under Pol Pot was already operating.He
continued after Vietnam ended.Great film & book though.