40th anniversary of Solidarity Front for Development of Cambodian Motherland

CEOCambodiaNews · Post by **CEOCambodiaNews** » Sun Dec 02, 2018 5:34 pm

You may have missed today's anniversary celebrations:

2 hours ago - BREAKING NEWS - 2 December 2018
Officials mark 40th anniversary of the SFDCM founding

Hundred thousands of officials today commemorated the 40th anniversary of the founding of Solidarity Front for Development of Cambodian Motherland in Kratie province’s Snuol district.

National Assembly president Heng Samrin, one of the SFDCM founders, said that Cambodia is full of freedom and live in peace after the Khmer Rouge regime was toppled.

“After liberation on January 7, 1979 Cambodian people were reborn,” Mr Samrin said “Cambodia has challenged a lot of obstacles. With one hand, we built the country and with another hand, we prevented the genocidal regime from returning.”

“We are celebrating this great event as Cambodian people are living in harmony with freedom,” he said “We are proud of achievements we have made after the historical day on December 2, 1978, especially huge victory for Cambodian People’s Party which won the parliamentarian election.”
https://www.khmertimeskh.com/555046/off ... -founding/

Arget · Post by **Arget** » Sun Dec 02, 2018 5:38 pm

The KR where not toppled they were accepted into the government and remain active under the the political Win Win protocol.

John Bingham · Post by **John Bingham** » Sun Dec 02, 2018 11:19 pm

Arget wrote: ↑Sun Dec 02, 2018 5:38 pm The KR where not toppled they were accepted into the government and remain active under the the political Win Win protocol.

That's an extremely misleading and simplistic take which has little basis in reality.
We should be celebrating the foundation of the Solidarity Front which comprised army and civilian refugees from Democratic Kampuchea and also thousands of Cambodians who had supported the Viet Minh and had been in Hanoi since 1954. There were of course plenty of Vietnamese advisors in the early period, as the Salvation Front army basically mopped up the areas behind the PAVN led front. Defections from the Khmer Rouge were at times encouraged but those deemed to have "much blood on their hands" were not. Enemy KR/ KPNLF/ ANS troops when captured were sometimes jailed for years and their families extorted. Others were granted amnesties and given good positions.

k*rm*geddon · Post by **k*rm*geddon** » Mon Dec 03, 2018 12:17 am

John Bingham wrote: ↑Sun Dec 02, 2018 11:19 pm ... There were of course plenty of Vietnamese advisors in the early period ...

What a glorious understatement.

John Bingham · Post by **John Bingham** » Mon Dec 03, 2018 12:39 am

k*rm*geddon wrote: ↑Mon Dec 03, 2018 12:17 am
John Bingham wrote: ↑Sun Dec 02, 2018 11:19 pm ... There were of course plenty of Vietnamese advisors in the early period ...
What a glorious understatement.

Well from what I can figure the advisors didn't have a huge amount of success in their political programs. The Hanoi Khmer were gradually marginalized while some former DK who defected were given good posts, and the educated diaspora were encouraged back in this period, many of whom play prominent roles in politics today. They came from all sorts of backgrounds that spanned many regimes. The mass defections and deals in Pailin and Anlong Veng in the late 90s were a different matter, as they were hard deals which were designed to end the war finally. Matters have to be forgiven and forgotten.

k*rm*geddon · Post by **k*rm*geddon** » Mon Dec 03, 2018 3:30 am

^^^ Those hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese troops involved throughout the decade-long occupation rank as much more than 'plenty of advisors in the early period'.

John Bingham wrote: ↑Sun Dec 02, 2018 11:19 pm ... There were of course plenty of Vietnamese advisors in the early period, as the Salvation Front army basically mopped up the areas behind the PAVN led front ...

And it was so much more than simply a 'PAVN-led front'.
It was an intended permanent PAVN occupation. The 'Solidarity Front' functioned only as a fig-leaf to finalize Hanoi's decades-long intent to subjugate all of Indochina into the Soviet orbit ...
... just exactly as how, much earlier, the Viet Cong had been set-up to justify seizure of South Vietnam … just exactly as how the Pathet Lao had been designated to camouflage the takeover of Laos … and just exactly as how the Khmer Rouge had been created to mask the conquest of Cambodia, except that Pol Pot turned out to be not the pliant minion that Hanoi had hoped for.

Cambodians of the time (1970-75) understood all this exactly, including a huge bulk of those in the countryside trapped under immediate communist control when NV troops swept through in 1970.
Just prior to my evacuation in April 1975, the Khmer Rouge defectors I lived with in Phnom Penh told me "You will see. First the Khmer Rouge will kill. Then the Vietnamese will come and take our country."

Then, throughout the subsequent Vietnamese occupation, Cambodians also understood everything exactly.
*********************************************************************************************************************************************************
Having followed in real time every snippet of news out of Cambodia through the Pol Pot regime and then through the Vietnamese occupation, I can assure that all during the 1980s there were repeated statements out of Hanoi that its presence in Cambodia post-1979 was 'irreversible'. The Vietnamese were here to stay.
It was only the economic collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s which led to the Vietnamese withdrawal. Moscow had simply run out of roubles with which to keep funding Hanoi's Cambodian quagmire.

Felgerkarb · Post by **Felgerkarb** » Mon Dec 03, 2018 7:51 am

k*rm*geddon wrote: ↑Mon Dec 03, 2018 3:30 am ^^^ Those hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese troops involved throughout the decade-long occupation rank as much more than 'plenty of advisors in the early period'.

John Bingham wrote: ↑Sun Dec 02, 2018 11:19 pm ... There were of course plenty of Vietnamese advisors in the early period, as the Salvation Front army basically mopped up the areas behind the PAVN led front ...
And it was so much more than simply a 'PAVN-led front'.
It was an intended permanent PAVN occupation. The 'Solidarity Front' functioned only as a fig-leaf to finalize Hanoi's decades-long intent to subjugate all of Indochina into the Soviet orbit ...
... just exactly as how, much earlier, the Viet Cong had been set-up to justify seizure of South Vietnam … just exactly as how the Pathet Lao had been designated to camouflage the takeover of Laos … and just exactly as how the Khmer Rouge had been created to mask the conquest of Cambodia, except that Pol Pot turned out to be not the pliant minion that Hanoi had hoped for.

Cambodians of the time (1970-75) understood all this exactly, including a huge bulk of those in the countryside trapped under immediate communist control when NV troops swept through in 1970.
Just prior to my evacuation in April 1975, the Khmer Rouge defectors I lived with in Phnom Penh told me "You will see. First the Khmer Rouge will kill. Then the Vietnamese will come and take our country."

Then, throughout the subsequent Vietnamese occupation, Cambodians also understood everything exactly.
*********************************************************************************************************************************************************
Having followed in real time every snippet of news out of Cambodia through the Pol Pot regime and then through the Vietnamese occupation, I can assure that all during the 1980s there were repeated statements out of Hanoi that its presence in Cambodia post-1979 was 'irreversible'. The Vietnamese were here to stay.
It was only the economic collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s which led to the Vietnamese withdrawal. Moscow had simply run out of roubles with which to keep funding Hanoi's Cambodian quagmire.

Yup.

John Bingham · Post by **John Bingham** » Mon Dec 03, 2018 8:27 pm

k*rm*geddon wrote: ↑Mon Dec 03, 2018 3:30 am ^^^ Those hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese troops involved throughout the decade-long occupation rank as much more than 'plenty of advisors in the early period'.

John Bingham wrote: ↑Sun Dec 02, 2018 11:19 pm ... There were of course plenty of Vietnamese advisors in the early period, as the Salvation Front army basically mopped up the areas behind the PAVN led front ...
And it was so much more than simply a 'PAVN-led front'.
It was an intended permanent PAVN occupation. The 'Solidarity Front' functioned only as a fig-leaf to finalize Hanoi's decades-long intent to subjugate all of Indochina into the Soviet orbit ...
... just exactly as how, much earlier, the Viet Cong had been set-up to justify seizure of South Vietnam … just exactly as how the Pathet Lao had been designated to camouflage the takeover of Laos … and just exactly as how the Khmer Rouge had been created to mask the conquest of Cambodia, except that Pol Pot turned out to be not the pliant minion that Hanoi had hoped for.

Cambodians of the time (1970-75) understood all this exactly, including a huge bulk of those in the countryside trapped under immediate communist control when NV troops swept through in 1970.
Just prior to my evacuation in April 1975, the Khmer Rouge defectors I lived with in Phnom Penh told me "You will see. First the Khmer Rouge will kill. Then the Vietnamese will come and take our country."

Then, throughout the subsequent Vietnamese occupation, Cambodians also understood everything exactly.
*********************************************************************************************************************************************************
Having followed in real time every snippet of news out of Cambodia through the Pol Pot regime and then through the Vietnamese occupation, I can assure that all during the 1980s there were repeated statements out of Hanoi that its presence in Cambodia post-1979 was 'irreversible'. The Vietnamese were here to stay.
It was only the economic collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s which led to the Vietnamese withdrawal. Moscow had simply run out of roubles with which to keep funding Hanoi's Cambodian quagmire.

The problem I have with that take on history is that it makes out that the Cambodians were just victims of outside powers and had no meaningful part in what happened. The Vietnamese Communist Party (formerly Indochina Communist Party) certainly did seem to aim for hegemony in the states of the former French Indochina, but problems developed early on because Khmers generally weren't willing to be subjugated to their historic enemy. The Khmer Minh who fought along with the Viet Minh in the First Indochina War were a disparate bunch. Many had come from Issarak backgrounds, they opposed the French but also the Vietnamese, many were just plain bandits. By the late 1940s various Khmer factions were massacring Vietnamese civilians and Viet Minh were massacring ethnic Khmers. So when the war concluded in 1954 many of these combatants decided to stay in newly independent Cambodia, but about 5000 went to Hanoi where most remained until 1979. Some came earlier in the 1970s but the locally based rebels resented them and they were all purged by 1973.
The attempts at controlling and influencing the Khmers by the Viets/Soviets, US, Chinese all ultimately failed.

The Salvation Front was, as I mentioned already, composed mainly of Khmer Rouge army deserters, civilian Khmer refugees and these Hanoi Khmer. There were loads of Vietnamese advisors at the time, both as liaison and training, and indoctrination. This was where it fell apart. The mandatory political training classes were a complete failure. Nobody was interested and many didn't seem to understand theories of dialectical materialism etc for some reason. Eventually the programs were abandoned. Meanwhile the "Hanoi Khmer" were gradually sidelined in favor of Khmers who had stayed in Cambodia and understood the local ways. Even Khmers who had lived abroad in France were more welcome than the Hanoi faction.

Although very much an authoritarian, police state, the PRK allowed a lot of free movement and trade. This was done partly so the state would not be seen as so draconian as the Pol Pot regime. The net result of this was that a market economy boomed and slowly all those sack of rice per month benefits of working in a socialist system eroded people's belief in the Vietnamese Communist Party bullshit. The place was a lost cause for the Vietnamese long before Glasnost had any effects here. It basically went back to the old system that had existed for centuries, and that's how it still is.

Always interesting to hear your take on things though Karmageddon.

k*rm*geddon · Post by **k*rm*geddon** » Tue Dec 04, 2018 4:24 am

John Bingham wrote: ↑Mon Dec 03, 2018 8:27 pm The problem I have with that take on history is that it makes out that the Cambodians were just victims of outside powers and had no meaningful part in what happened ...

What I wrote was not a take. It was what actually happened.
The Viet Cong-NLF were used, abused, and then ultimately betrayed by Hanoi.
The Pathet Lao too were conned. It's why 40,000 Vietnamese troops occupied Laos after 1975. They weren't there to rescue the locals from some Laotian Pol Pot and nor were they there in response to cross-border raid into Vietnam. They were there to prevent insurrection by any Pathet Lao who finally understood that the French colonialism of yore had merely been replaced by Hanoi's imperialism. I recall a Laotian who fled to Thailand in 1977 raging "Yes, the North Vietnamese liberated us. They liberated us of our crops, of our prettiest women, and even of our country."
And in Cambodia the KR were lined up by Hanoi as similar 'useful idiots', except that they weren't.

John Bingham · Post by **John Bingham** » Tue Dec 04, 2018 8:04 am

Your arrogance is astounding.

40th anniversary of Solidarity Front for Development of Cambodian Motherland

40th anniversary of Solidarity Front for Development of Cambodian Motherland

Re: 40th anniversary of Solidarity Front for Development of Cambodian Motherland

Re: 40th anniversary of Solidarity Front for Development of Cambodian Motherland

Re: 40th anniversary of Solidarity Front for Development of Cambodian Motherland

Re: 40th anniversary of Solidarity Front for Development of Cambodian Motherland

Re: 40th anniversary of Solidarity Front for Development of Cambodian Motherland

Re: 40th anniversary of Solidarity Front for Development of Cambodian Motherland

Re: 40th anniversary of Solidarity Front for Development of Cambodian Motherland

Re: 40th anniversary of Solidarity Front for Development of Cambodian Motherland

Re: 40th anniversary of Solidarity Front for Development of Cambodian Motherland

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