The Khmer Rouge National Army: Order of Battle, January 1976

Ben Kiernan
Yale University

This set of tables from the archives of the Santebal, the Khmer Rouge national-level security forces, reveals the order of battle of the national Khmer Rouge army, the Revolutionary Army of Kampuchea. The first table reveals that the total number of Khmer Rouge regular forces was 72,248 troops, in nine divisions [kong pul] and four regiments [kong voreachsena thom]. The commanders of each division and regiment are named along with commanders of other units. (For a summary of the Democratic Kampuchea military chain of command, see Ben Kiernan, Genocide and Democracy in Cambodia, p. 15, Table 2.) The second table shows the amount of rice estimated to be harvested in 1976 by the soldiers of each of a number of the army's divisions. Note that the "Chinese comrades" are estimated to harvest 5000 thang of rice, approximately 125 tons.

It is important to remember that these forces are only the regular troops [thoap sruoch] under the direct command of the Khmer Rouge national general staff. Each of the seven Zones of Democratic Kampuchea also had its own general staff. The Zone military commands, their thirty or more component Regions, and over one hundred districts, commanded additional, regional forces [thoap damban]. There were also militia units [chhlop] in each of the country's sub-districts and also in each village.

The final tables describe the January 1976 order of battle and internal structure of the 170th Division, which was to be decimated by Santebal purges in the months that followed. The 170th was the former 1st Eastern Zone Division, commanded by Chan Chakrey (alias Mean) until 1975. It came under direct Center control in July of that year. On 9 October 1975, Pol Pot had remarked to a secret meeting of the Standing committee of the ruling Communist Party of Kampuchea that Chakrey's 170th Division was "the strongest of all" but that Chakrey owed his rank to Vietnam: "We must pay attention to what he says, to see [whether] he is a traitor who will deprive himself of any future." With Chakrey's deputy, Phan, too, "we must be totally silent. . . . We must watch their activities." Pol Pot removed Chakrey from his division command and brought him under close Center supervision as deputy chief of the general staff. (For sources on the purge of Chakrey, see Ben Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime, pp. 101, 321-5.) The January 1976 report to the Santebal on the Division's order of battle was part of its process of planning a purge. Chakrey was demoted in April and arrested on May 19th, 1976, his wife on September 19th. By November, 241 serving and former members of the 170th had been sent to Tuol Sleng prison.

The author of these documents, Ke San alias Sok, who replaced Chakrey as the 170th Division's political commissar, was himself arrested by the Santebal on March 4th 1978.

DCCAM ARCHIVES:

Documentation Center of Cambodia Archives number N0001069 (02 bbk)
Title: Rice Consumption Plan, 1976

Documentation Center of Cambodia Archives number N0001070 (02 bbk)
Title: Amount of rice harvest, 1976 ------ Number Unit number Estimate of rice harvest

Documentation Center of Cambodia Archives number N0001075 (02 bbk)
Title: 170th Division

To the staff committee with respect,

[I’d] like to report the weapons and forces and bases, as noted in the table below:

1. Table of weapons required [for combat readiness], from sections up to divisions.

2. Weapons that [we] have for combat readiness, shortages, and spares.

3. Table of plans to establish bases and to work.

- Total: 6,627 people.
- Able to work: 5,556 people.
- Cannot work: 1,071 people.
- Do easy work: study, cham pa lo (dredge ponds), absent, in training = 379 people.
- Cannot work: sick, injured, in hospital = 732 people.

Best wishes for success
Written on 6-1-76
(Signature)
Comrade Sok

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Comments on that aspect of the Pre-trial Chamber's ruling regarding the "nexus-to-armed conflict" issue:

Regarding the Pre-trial Chamber’s determination that the “nexus-to-armed-conflict” criteria for the prosecution of crimes against humanity would be applied to Trial 02.

Two related arguments have been put forth in support for the contention that the bulk of the Khmer Rouge regime’s atrocities against Cambodians cannot be held to have been connected with war crimes perpetrated by the regime in its international conflicts with neighboring Vietnam and, at least arguably, Thailand. These arguments are that the atrocities in question were committed prior to the commencement of Cambodia’s armed conflict with Vietnam, and/or were committed in places too far removed geographically from that conflict to be considered as having been connected with it. A careful reading of documentary evidence does not support either of these arguments.

Rather, as I attempted to demonstrate in a paper prepared for the Documentation Center of Cambodia in 1999, documentary evidence strongly supports the conclusion that the Khmer Rouge regime’s internal war against political opponents throughout Cambodia was both intimately connected in theory and practice with its international war of aggression against external enemies, and that the international armed conflict(s) in question, including cross-border raids resulting in the razing of entire villages and the slaughter of their populations, were ongoing from nearly the inception of Democratic Kampuchea.

Document after document routinely prepared within the Khmer Rouge political-military hierarchy set forth the regime’s standard operating procedure of identifying and targeting “internal enemies” as agents of Vietnam and Thailand. Numerous documents show clearly that the destruction of these “internal enemies” was an integral part of the Khmer Rouge leadership’s planning and execution of its armed conflicts with Vietnam, and arguably with Thailand, in which conflicts war crimes were routinely committed against foreign civilian populations. Even without a finding that the Khmer Rouge regime had been engaged in an ongoing conflict with Thailand, the documents demonstrate that executions of “internal enemies” and other crimes against humanity committed far from the Vietnam border were an essential aspect of the regime’s strategy to defeat Vietnam.

Furthermore, should the argument be made that this association in the minds of the Khmer Rouge leadership of its “internal enemies” with the regime’s foreign enemies was mere fancy without basis in fact, one need only note that the core of the Cambodian leadership which took power under the post-Khmer Rouge Vietnamese occupation were themselves refugees from Democratic Kampuchea’s war against its internal enemies.

While this is clearly a matter for the ECCC to determine, it is submitted that the required nexus between the Khmer Rouge leadership’s commission of crimes against humanity respecting its own citizens and war crimes committed by the regime in international armed conflict is irrefutable. As such, the “nexus to armed conflict” requirement should present no bar to a prosecution of the Khmer Rouge leadership for their crimes against humanity against the people of Cambodia.

Ray.

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13 January 2011

ECCC PRESS RELEASE

CASE 002 SENT FOR TRIAL

Today, the Pre-Trial Chamber of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) has confirmed and partially amended the indictments against the Accused Persons Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith, Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea. The Pre-Trial Chamber has ordered the Accused Persons to be sent for trial and to continue to be held in provisional detention until they are brought before the Trial Chamber. The indictments include charges of crimes against humanity, genocide, grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions and murder, torture and religious persecution as defined by the 1956 Cambodian Penal Code.

The Co-Investigating Judges issued a Closing Order with the initial indictments of the Accused Persons on 15 September 2010. All four Accused Persons filed appeals against the Closing Order to the Pre-Trial Chamber.

The Pre-Trial Chamber found that the appeal filed by Khieu Samphan was inadmissible, whereas the appeals filed by Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith and Nuon Chea were found to be admissible in part. Of the admissible parts, the Pre-Trial Chamber dismissed all the grounds of appeal with two exceptions. First, the Pre-Trial Chamber ordered that the Closing Order be amended with a specification for the requirement of the existence of a link between the underlying acts of crimes against humanity and an armed conflict.

Secondly, the Pre-Trial Chamber also found that rape did not exist as a crime against humanity in its own right in the period 1975-1979, but that rape could be considered as “other inhumane acts” within the legal definition of crimes against humanity. The Closing Order was amended accordingly. The Pre-Trial Chamber will issue reasoned decisions on the appeals at a later date.

For further information, please contact:
Lars Olsen
Legal Communications Officer, ECCC
Mobile: +855 (0) 12 488 023
Land line: +855 (0) 23 219 814 ext. 6169
Email: olsenl@un.org

Reach Sambath
Chief of Public Affairs, ECCC
Mobile: +855 (0) 12 488 156
Land line: +855 (0) 23 219 814 6064
Email: reach.sambath@eccc.gov.kh

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