History - Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Northern Thailand - page 994

Sideshow: the Civil War in Cambodia
The 1950s were seen as Cambodia's golden years and Sihanouk, now as prime minister,
successfully maintained Cambodia's neutrality into the 1960s. However, with the war in
Vietnam raging across the border, Cambodia was being sucked slowly into the vortex.
By 1969 the conflict between the Cambodian army and leftist rebels had become more
serious, as the Vietnamese sought sanctuary deeper in Cambodia. In March 1970, while Si-
hanouk was on a trip to France, he was overthrown in a coup by General Lon Nol, his army
commander. Sihanouk took up residence in Beijing and formed an alliance with the Cam-
bodian communists, nicknamed the Khmer Rouge (Red Khmer), who exploited this part-
nership to gain new recruits.
On 30 April 1970, US and South Vietnamese forces invaded Cambodia in an effort to
flush out thousands of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops. The Vietnamese commun-
ists withdrew deeper into Cambodia.
For the full story on how Cambodia was sucked into hell, read Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the De-
struction of Cambodia by William Shawcross.
The Secret Bombing
In 1969, the US began a secret program of bombing suspected communist base camps in
Cambodia. For the next four years, until bombing was halted by the US Congress in
August 1973, huge areas of the eastern half of the country were carpet bombed by US
B-52s, killing thousands of civilians and turning hundreds of thousands more into refugees.
Despite massive US military and economic aid, Lon Nol never succeeded in gaining the
initiative against the Khmer Rouge. Large parts of the countryside fell to the rebels and
many provincial capitals were cut off from Phnom Penh. On 17 April 1975, Phnom Penh
surrendered to the Khmer Rouge.