Royal Government of the National Union of Kampuchea
108-455: The Khmer Serei ( Khmer : ខ្មែរសេរី [kʰmae seːrəj] ; "Free Khmer") were an anti-communist and anti- monarchist guerrilla force founded by Cambodian nationalist Son Ngoc Thanh . In 1959, he published 'The Manifesto of the Khmer Serei' claiming that Sihanouk was supporting the 'communization' of Kampuchea. In the 1960s, the Khmer Serei were growing in numbers, hoping to become
216-502: A guerrillera ( [geriˈʎeɾa] ) if female. Arthur Wellesley adopted the term "guerrilla" into English from Spanish usage in 1809, to refer to the individual fighters (e.g., "I have recommended to set the Guerrillas to work"), and also (as in Spanish) to denote a group or band of such fighters. However, in most languages guerrilla still denotes a specific style of warfare. The use of
324-646: A minor (fully unstressed) syllable. Such words have been described as sesquisyllabic (i.e. as having one-and-a-half syllables). There are also some disyllabic words in which the first syllable does not behave as a minor syllable, but takes secondary stress . Most such words are compounds , but some are single morphemes (generally loanwords). An example is ភាសា ('language'), pronounced [ˌpʰiəˈsaː] . Words with three or more syllables, if they are not compounds, are mostly loanwords, usually derived from Pali, Sanskrit, or more recently, French. They are nonetheless adapted to Khmer stress patterns. Primary stress falls on
432-522: A minor syllable . The language has been written in the Khmer script , an abugida descended from the Brahmi script via the southern Indian Pallava script , since at least the 7th century. The script's form and use has evolved over the centuries; its modern features include subscripted versions of consonants used to write clusters and a division of consonants into two series with different inherent vowels . Khmer
540-673: A Khmer Krom monk named Samouk Sen, sought Khmer Krom independence and regularly clashed with the Viet Cong : it expanded in the 1960s and later became affiliated to FULRO , a paramilitary organisation for Vietnamese minority groups. Members of both the Khmer Kampuchea Krom and the Khmer Serei were trained by the US military for clandestine operations during the Second Indochina War as part of MIKE Force , and were partly financed and armed by
648-469: A dialect. Western Khmer , also called Cardamom Khmer or Chanthaburi Khmer, is spoken by a very small, isolated population in the Cardamom mountain range extending from western Cambodia into eastern Central Thailand . Although little studied, this variety is unique in that it maintains a definite system of vocal register that has all but disappeared in other dialects of modern Khmer. Phnom Penh Khmer
756-654: A final consonant. All consonant sounds except /b/, /d/, /r/, /s/ and the aspirates can appear as the coda (although final /r/ is heard in some dialects, most notably in Northern Khmer ). A minor syllable (unstressed syllable preceding the main syllable of a word) has a structure of CV-, CrV-, CVN- or CrVN- (where C is a consonant, V a vowel, and N a nasal consonant). The vowels in such syllables are usually short; in conversation they may be reduced to [ə] , although in careful or formal speech, including on television and radio, they are clearly articulated. An example of such
864-525: A major political and fighting force. The primary objective of the Khmer Serei was to destabilize the existing powers held by the then-Cambodian leader, King Norodom Sihanouk and to overthrow his reign – and to become a permanent part of the Cambodian body politic. The Khmer Serei's relative lack of resources, poor timing, and lack of support relative to the Khmer Rouge majority and King Sihanouk led to
972-567: A newspaper whose rhetoric angered Sihanouk and his French advisers, thereby risking imprisonment. In order to avoid arrest, Thanh fled to the Cambodian jungles and took refuge with the Khmer Issarak. During this period, the Khmer Issarak was believed to be about three thousand strong with a substantial percentage with access to military arms. From 1952 to 1954, the Khmer Issarak carried out small-scale attacks against local police and initiated audio broadcasts of anti-Sihanouk propaganda messages along
1080-467: A number of the remaining Khmer Serei groups has become ‘little more than black marketeers or bands of extortionists’ who preyed on the defenseless in the border refugee camps. Other reports informed of internal fighting between different Khmer Serei groups and were not longer a ‘united cohesive force’ against the forces of Heng Samrin. In the words of Turkoly-Joczik, "like many dissident movements in Cambodia,
1188-511: A target and then disappeared into civilian crowds frustrated the British enemy. The best example of this occurred on Bloody Sunday (21 November 1920), when Collins's assassination unit, known as "The Squad" , wiped out a group of British intelligence agents ("the Cairo Gang ") early in the morning (14 were killed, six were wounded) – some regular officers were also killed in the purge. That afternoon,
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#17328483589121296-492: A typical Khmer declarative phrase is a steady rise throughout followed by an abrupt drop on the last syllable. Other intonation contours signify a different type of phrase such as the "full doubt" interrogative, similar to yes–no questions in English. Full doubt interrogatives remain fairly even in tone throughout, but rise sharply towards the end. Exclamatory phrases follow the typical steadily rising pattern, but rise sharply on
1404-448: A word is មនុស្ស mɔnuh, mɔnɨh, mĕəʾnuh ('person'), pronounced [mɔˈnuh] , or more casually [məˈnuh] . Stress in Khmer falls on the final syllable of a word. Because of this predictable pattern, stress is non- phonemic in Khmer (it does not distinguish different meanings). Most Khmer words consist of either one or two syllables. In most native disyllabic words, the first syllable is
1512-429: Is a zero copula language, instead preferring predicative adjectives (and even predicative nouns) unless using a copula for emphasis or to avoid ambiguity in more complex sentences. Basic word order is subject–verb–object (SVO), although subjects are often dropped ; prepositions are used rather than postpositions. Topic-Comment constructions are common and the language is generally head-initial (modifiers follow
1620-580: Is a classification scheme showing the development of the modern Khmer dialects. Standard Khmer , or Central Khmer , the language as taught in Cambodian schools and used by the media, is based on the dialect spoken throughout the Central Plain , a region encompassed by the northwest and central provinces. Northern Khmer (called Khmer Surin in Khmer) refers to the dialects spoken by many in several border provinces of present-day northeast Thailand. After
1728-444: Is a form of unconventional warfare in which small groups of irregular military , such as rebels, partisans , paramilitary personnel or armed civilians including recruited children , use ambushes , sabotage , terrorism , raids , petty warfare or hit-and-run tactics in a rebellion , in a violent conflict , in a war or in a civil war to fight against regular military , police or rival insurgent forces. Although
1836-517: Is a member of the Austroasiatic language family, the autochthonous family in an area that stretches from the Malay Peninsula through Southeast Asia to East India. Austroasiatic, which also includes Mon , Vietnamese and Munda , has been studied since 1856 and was first proposed as a language family in 1907. Despite the amount of research, there is still doubt about the internal relationship of
1944-576: Is also a type of irregular warfare : that is, it aims not simply to defeat an invading enemy, but to win popular support and political influence, to the enemy's cost. Accordingly, guerrilla strategy aims to magnify the impact of a small, mobile force on a larger, more cumbersome one. If successful, guerrillas weaken their enemy by attrition , eventually forcing them to withdraw. Tactically, guerrillas usually avoid confrontation with large units and formations of enemy troops but seek and attack small groups of enemy personnel and resources to gradually deplete
2052-549: Is also widely spoken by Khmer people in Eastern Thailand and Isan , Thailand , also in Southeast and Mekong Delta of Vietnam . Khmer has been influenced considerably by Sanskrit and Pali especially in the royal and religious registers , through Hinduism and Buddhism , due to Old Khmer being the language of the historical empires of Chenla and Angkor . The vast majority of Khmer speakers speak Central Khmer ,
2160-416: Is common, and the perceived social relation between participants determines which sets of vocabulary, such as pronouns and honorifics, are proper. Khmer differs from neighboring languages such as Burmese , Thai , Lao , and Vietnamese in that it is not a tonal language . Words are stressed on the final syllable, hence many words conform to the typical Mon–Khmer pattern of a stressed syllable preceded by
2268-423: Is contrastive before a vowel. However, the aspirated sounds in that position may be analyzed as sequences of two phonemes : /ph/, /th/, /ch/, /kh/ . This analysis is supported by the fact that infixes can be inserted between the stop and the aspiration; for example [tʰom] ('big') becomes [tumhum] ('size') with a nominalizing infix. When one of these plosives occurs initially before another consonant, aspiration
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#17328483589122376-586: Is no longer contrastive and can be regarded as mere phonetic detail: slight aspiration is expected when the following consonant is not one of /ʔ/, /b/, /d/, /r/, /s/, /h/ (or /ŋ/ if the initial plosive is /k/ ). The voiced plosives are pronounced as implosives [ɓ, ɗ] by most speakers, but this feature is weak in educated speech, where they become [b, d] . In syllable-final position, /h/ and /ʋ/ approach [ç] and [w] respectively. The stops /p/, /t/, /c/, /k/ are unaspirated and have no audible release when occurring as syllable finals. In addition,
2484-460: Is primarily an analytic , isolating language . There are no inflections , conjugations or case endings. Instead, particles and auxiliary words are used to indicate grammatical relationships. General word order is subject–verb–object , and modifiers follow the word they modify. Classifiers appear after numbers when used to count nouns, though not always so consistently as in languages like Chinese . In spoken Khmer, topic-comment structure
2592-566: Is spoken in the Se San , Srepok and Sekong river valleys of Sesan and Siem Pang districts in Stung Treng Province . Following the decline of Angkor, the Khmer abandoned their northern territories, which the Lao then settled. In the 17th century, Chey Chetha XI led a Khmer force into Stung Treng to retake the area. The Khmer Khe living in this area of Stung Treng in modern times are presumed to be
2700-421: Is spoken in the capital and surrounding areas. This dialect is characterized by merging or complete elision of syllables, which speakers from other regions consider a "relaxed" pronunciation. For instance, "Phnom Penh" is sometimes shortened to "m'Penh". Another characteristic of Phnom Penh speech is observed in words with an "r" either as an initial consonant or as the second member of a consonant cluster (as in
2808-454: Is that vanguardism by cadres of small, fast-moving paramilitary groups can provide a focus for popular discontent against a sitting regime, and thereby lead a general insurrection . Although the original approach was to mobilize and launch attacks from rural areas, many foco ideas were adapted into urban guerrilla warfare movements. Guerrilla warfare is a type of asymmetric warfare : competition between opponents of unequal strength. It
2916-590: Is today called the Fabian strategy , and in China Peng Yue is also often regarded as the inventor of guerrilla warfare. Guerrilla warfare has been used by various factions throughout history and is particularly associated with revolutionary movements and popular resistance against invading or occupying armies. Guerrilla tactics focus on avoiding head-on confrontations with enemy armies, typically due to inferior arms or forces, and instead engage in limited skirmishes with
3024-546: The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). At their peak in 1968, the Khmer Serei and related forces were thought to number up to 8000 men. The Khmer Serei participated in a number of general intelligence gathering missions. It is believed that they assisted Project GAMMA , an intelligence gathering mission on the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) bases in Cambodia, as well as providing support to Cambodia against
3132-581: The Crossbarry Ambush in March 1921 are the most famous examples of Barry's flying columns causing large casualties to enemy forces. The Algerian Revolution of 1954 started with a handful of Algerian guerrillas. Primitively armed, the guerrillas fought the French for over eight years. This remains a prototype for modern insurgency and counterinsurgency, terrorism, torture, and asymmetric warfare prevalent throughout
3240-537: The Khmer Empire . The Northern Khmer dialect is spoken by over a million Khmers in the southern regions of Northeast Thailand and is treated by some linguists as a separate language. Khmer Krom, or Southern Khmer, is the first language of the Khmer of Vietnam , while the Khmer living in the remote Cardamom Mountains speak a very conservative dialect that still displays features of the Middle Khmer language. Khmer
3348-814: The Maratha Kingdom , pioneered the Shiva sutra or Ganimi Kava (Guerrilla Tactics) to defeat the many times larger and more powerful armies of the Mughal Empire . Kerala Varma (Pazhassi Raja) (1753–1805) used guerrilla techniques chiefly centred in mountain forests in the Cotiote War against the British East India Company in India between 1793 and 1806. Arthur Wellesley (in India 1797–1805) had commanded forces assigned to defeat Pazhassi's techniques but failed. It
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3456-777: The Rif War in 1920. For the first time in history, tunnel warfare was used alongside modern guerrilla tactics, which caused considerable damage to both the colonial armies in Morocco. In the early 20th century Michael Collins and Tom Barry both developed many tactical features of guerrilla warfare during the guerrilla phase of the 1919–1921 Irish War of Independence . Collins developed mainly urban guerrilla warfare tactics in Dublin City (the Irish capital). Operations in which small Irish Republican Army (IRA) units (3 to 6 guerrillas) quickly attacked
3564-920: The Royal Irish Constabulary force consisting of both regular RIC personnel and the Auxiliary Division took revenge, shooting into a crowd at a football match in Croke Park , killing fourteen civilians and injuring 60 others. In West County Cork , Tom Barry was the commander of the IRA West Cork brigade . Fighting in west Cork was rural, and the IRA fought in much larger units than their fellows in urban areas. These units, called " flying columns ", engaged British forces in large battles, usually for between 10 – 30 minutes. The Kilmichael Ambush in November 1920 and
3672-470: The [r] is dropped and the vowel begins by dipping much lower in tone than standard speech and then rises, effectively doubling its length. Another example is the word រៀន [riən] ('study'), which is pronounced [ʀiən] , with the uvular "r" and the same intonation described above. Khmer Krom or Southern Khmer is spoken by the indigenous Khmer population of the Mekong Delta , formerly controlled by
3780-425: The diminutive evokes the differences in number, scale, and scope between the guerrilla army and the formal, professional army of the state. Prehistoric tribal warriors presumably employed guerrilla-style tactics against enemy tribes: Primitive (and guerrilla) warfare consists of war stripped to its essentials: the murder of enemies; the theft or destruction of their sustenance, wealth, and essential resources; and
3888-421: The elision of /r/ . Intonation often conveys semantic context in Khmer, as in distinguishing declarative statements , questions and exclamations. The available grammatical means of making such distinctions are not always used, or may be ambiguous; for example, the final interrogative particle ទេ /teː/ can also serve as an emphasizing (or in some cases negating) particle. The intonation pattern of
3996-532: The 19th century: ...our troops should...fight while protected by the terrain...using small, mobile guerrilla units to exhaust the enemy...denying them rest so that they only control the terrain under their feet. More recently, Mao Zedong's On Guerrilla Warfare , Che Guevara 's Guerrilla Warfare , and Lenin's Guerrilla warfare , were all written after the successful revolutions carried out by them in China, Cuba and Russia, respectively. Those texts characterized
4104-451: The 9th century until the 13th century. The following centuries saw changes in morphology , phonology and lexicon . The language of this transition period, from about the 14th to 18th centuries, is referred to as Middle Khmer and saw borrowings from Thai in the literary register. Modern Khmer is dated from the 19th century to today. The following table shows the conventionally accepted historical stages of Khmer. Just as modern Khmer
4212-682: The Bangladesh Forces, was the guerrilla resistance movement consisting of the Bangladeshi military, paramilitary and civilians during the Bangladesh Liberation War that transformed East Pakistan into Bangladesh in 1971. An earlier name Mukti Fauj was also used. The growth of guerrilla warfare was inspired in part by theoretical works on guerrilla warfare, starting with the Manual de Guerra de Guerrillas by Matías Ramón Mella written in
4320-530: The CIDG were more regular and higher than what they previously obtained and therefore many were recruited; secondly, the Khmer Serei was able to maintain its identity and building itself as a single cohesive force. Although there is no official documentation that shows the organisational working structure and functional responsibilities of the Khmer Serei movement, there is one cited source derived from personal observation: The movement's military organisation coincided with
4428-528: The Cambodian forces and subvert Sihanouk's government; the second was that the defectors were actually employed by the CIA in order to reinforce Lon Nol and his forces when they made their move to depose Sihanouk. The rationale to these defections were never explained by the CIA or Thanh; however, these defectors did support Lon Nol's government to fight against the North Vietnamese forces based in Cambodia. Therefore,
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4536-507: The English word "bread"). The "r", trilled or flapped in other dialects, is either pronounced as a uvular trill or not pronounced at all. This alters the quality of any preceding consonant, causing a harder, more emphasized pronunciation. Another unique result is that the syllable is spoken with a low-rising or "dipping" tone much like the "hỏi" tone in Vietnamese . For example, some people pronounce ត្រី [trəj] ('fish') as [tʰəj] :
4644-563: The Fabian choice. The Roman general Quintus Sertorius is also noted for his skillful use of guerrilla warfare during his revolt against the Roman Senate . In China, Han dynasty general Peng Yue is often regarded as the inventor of guerrilla warfare due to his use of irregular warfare in the Chu-Han contention to attack Chu convoys and supplies. In the medieval Roman Empire , guerrilla warfare
4752-591: The Khmer Empire but part of Vietnam since 1698. Khmers are persecuted by the Vietnamese government for using their native language and, since the 1950s, have been forced to take Vietnamese names. Consequently, very little research has been published regarding this dialect. It has been generally influenced by Vietnamese for three centuries and accordingly displays a pronounced accent, tendency toward monosyllabic words and lexical differences from Standard Khmer. Khmer Khe
4860-511: The Khmer Rouge, Khmer Serei and the lesser-known White Khmers. By the 1960s, the Khmer Serei continued to recruit new members from the Khmer Krom . With the experiences gained during the last decade, they had become conditioned into a well-trained force, both disciplined and well-armed. During this time, Sihanouk's increasing unpredictability resulted in a trickle of young men and women fading into
4968-450: The Khmer Serei has become an aberration, a political anomaly that haunts the Cambodian hinterlands as a specter of lost hope and a promise unfulfilled." Khmer language Khmer ( / k ə ˈ m ɛər / kə- MAIR ; ខ្មែរ , UNGEGN : Khmêr [kʰmae] ) is an Austroasiatic language spoken natively by the Khmer people . This language is an official language and national language of Cambodia . The language
5076-749: The Khmer Serei or groups identifying themselves as Khmer Serei became a source of disruption along the Thai-Cambodian border. The Khmer Serei had become highly fractionized and seemingly without an overall leader. During this period, the Khmer Serei had been reduced to 'a collection of petty warlord movements' that operated along the Thai-Kampuchean frontier. At various intervals during the 1980s, these groups composed of Khmer Rouge and various pro-Sihanouk or pro-Son Sann factions conducted sporadic military activities against President Heng Samrin ’s Vietnamese-sponsored People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK). Son Sann
5184-631: The Mekong Delta. In 1936, Thanh founded a newspaper to carry out his anti-French and pro-independence views and was involved in anti-French demonstrations. Thanh fled to Japan to escape possible imprisonment by the French and joined the Imperial Japanese Army as a commissioned officer. Thanh returned to Cambodia and, with support from Japan, started his political career. Thanh eventually held positions of Foreign Minister and later on as Prime Minister of Cambodia. However, his position as Prime Minister
5292-474: The Mekong Delta. It is estimated that at least fifty percent of all Khmer Krom CIDG soldiers were also members of the Khmer Serei. The Khmer Serei also had loose links with the US-backed Front de Lutte du Kampuchea Krom militia, or "White Scarves" ( Khmer : Kangsaing Sar ; Khmer Krom and Khmer Leu: khmer , lit. 'Khmer Krom and Khmer Leu'), of Southern Vietnam. This group, founded by
5400-545: The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong , one of these activities from Project Gamma was Operation Cherry. It was also suggested that the Khmer Serei were involved in making liaison with unnamed units in Cambodia as part of intelligence gathering on the North Vietnamese Army's dispositions and to develop a strategy for the Cambodian Army movements. The Khmer knew the terrain and language well and therefore were invaluable to
5508-469: The North Vietnamese presence. The information provided would have been crucial to the success of any plan for a military incursion into Cambodia, and it gives an indication of the importance of the Khmer Serei's role in Operation Cherry. The Khmer Serei were generally viewed as a minor irritant by the media but Sihanouk was infuriated by its existence and by its clandestine radio broadcast emanating from
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#17328483589125616-614: The Standard Khmer system and that of the Battambang dialect on which the standard is based. In addition, some diphthongs and triphthongs are analyzed as a vowel nucleus plus a semivowel ( /j/ or /w/ ) coda because they cannot be followed by a final consonant. These include: (with short monophthongs) /ɨw/ , /əw/ , /aj/ , /aw/ , /uj/ ; (with long monophthongs) /əːj/ , /aːj/ ; (with long diphthongs) /iəj/ , /iəw/ , /ɨəj/ , /aoj/ , /aəj/ and /uəj/ . The independent vowels are
5724-536: The Thai and South Vietnamese borders, which made scurrilous attacks on him and the royal family. Therefore, the Cambodian leadership took serious and active measures to stop them. To Sihanouk, the rebels were 'traitors to the constitution and the nation'. Sihanouk saw the Khmer Serei as a genuine threat and therefore the Cambodian regime viewed the insurgency seriously: allegations later surfaced that Sihanouk had executed as many as 1000 Khmer Serei suspects during his rule. This
5832-543: The Thai-Cambodian border. Strategically, they operated mainly from bases on the Thai and Vietnamese borders, recruiting from the Khmer Krom minority of the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. However, things were not going as planned for Thanh. By 1955, Sihanouk had put a dent in the Khmer Issarak forces by offering amnesty to those who would return to the "national" fold. Clearly Thanh had underestimated Sihanouk's influence and large numbers of Khmer Issarak had put down their arms. Realizing
5940-414: The clusters consisting of a plosive followed by /ʔ/, /b/, /d/ , in those beginning /ʔ/, /m/, /l/ , and in the cluster /kŋ-/ . After the initial consonant or consonant cluster comes the syllabic nucleus , which is one of the vowels listed above. This vowel may end the syllable or may be followed by a coda , which is a single consonant. If the syllable is stressed and the vowel is short, there must be
6048-527: The consonants /ɡ/ , /f/ , /ʃ/ and /z/ occur occasionally in recent loan words in the speech of Cambodians familiar with French and other languages. Various authors have proposed slightly different analyses of the Khmer vowel system. This may be in part because of the wide degree of variation in pronunciation between individual speakers, even within a dialectal region. The description below follows Huffman (1970). The number of vowel nuclei and their values vary between dialects; differences exist even between
6156-542: The defeat of their regular armies, the Spanish and Portuguese people successfully rose against the Napoleonic troops and defeated a highly superior army using the guerrilla strategy in combination with a scorched earth policy and people's war (see also attrition warfare against Napoleon ). In correct Spanish usage, a person who is a member of a guerrilla unit is a guerrillero ( [geriˈʎeɾo] ) if male, or
6264-474: The defection of five hundred soldiers should be viewed as a military action that deserves merit. They were effectively used by Lon Nol to reinforce his own forces and later used to strengthen the Cambodian Army in its battle against the North Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge. However, in the same year, Thanh formally announced the dissolution of the Khmer Serei organisation and pledged support to the Lon Nol government, and
6372-463: The descendants of this group. Their dialect is thought to resemble that of pre-modern Siem Reap. Linguistic study of the Khmer language divides its history into four periods one of which, the Old Khmer period, is subdivided into pre-Angkorian and Angkorian. Pre-Angkorian Khmer is the Old Khmer language from 600 CE through 800. Angkorian Khmer is the language as it was spoken in the Khmer Empire from
6480-635: The dialect of the central plain where the Khmer are most heavily concentrated. Within Cambodia, regional accents exist in remote areas but these are regarded as varieties of Central Khmer. Two exceptions are the speech of the capital, Phnom Penh , and that of the Khmer Khe in Stung Treng province , both of which differ sufficiently enough from Central Khmer to be considered separate dialects of Khmer. Outside of Cambodia, three distinct dialects are spoken by ethnic Khmers native to areas that were historically part of
6588-481: The direct control of Lon Nol. Many of their leading members were arrested or killed. Following the 1975 Khmer Rouge victory and the proclamation of Democratic Kampuchea , the few remaining "Free Khmer" operating in the north-west, in the area of the Dangrek Mountains , found themselves mostly in refugee camps along the Thai-Cambodian border, such as Nong Chan and Nong Samet . After the fall of Cambodia in 1975,
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#17328483589126696-536: The earliest to propose the use of guerrilla warfare. This inspired developments in modern guerrilla warfare. In the 3rd century BC, Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus , used elements of guerrilla warfare, such as the evasion of battle, the attempt to wear down the enemy, to attack small detachments in an ambush and devised the Fabian strategy , which the Roman Republic used to great effect against Hannibal 's army, see also His Excellency : George Washington :
6804-409: The elite Khmer Serei troops as a political threat and inserted them into the worst 'meat-grinder' battles and few Khmer Serei soldiers survived these 'suicide missions'. After the war, Khmer Serei forces remain stunted and underdeveloped. Their efforts to achieve political and economic breakthroughs after the coup proved to be disastrous – instead of political freedom, they found themselves under
6912-603: The enemy retreats, we pursue." At least one author credits the ancient Chinese work The Art of War with inspiring Mao's tactics. In the 20th century, other communist leaders, including North Vietnamese Ho Chi Minh , often used and developed guerrilla warfare tactics, which provided a model for their use elsewhere, leading to the Cuban " foco " theory and the anti- Soviet Mujahadeen in Afghanistan . Guerrilla groups may use improvised explosive devices and logistical support by
7020-454: The error, Thanh attempted to reconcile with Sihanouk but was not successful in doing so. Therefore, in 1956, with aid from American, he created the Khmer Serei movement – uniting the remaining Issarak factions. While Thanh and his forces were receiving aid from the Americans, it was believed that these actions led to the tarnishing of his image among Cambodians. Between 1955 and 1959, Thanh
7128-414: The eventual decline of the group. According to Turkoly-Joczik's essay, the beginnings of the Khmer Serei's dissidences date back to periods before the Second Indochina War , tracing its origins back to Vietnam 's Mekong Delta , in the town of Tra Vinh , Vinh Binh Province , the birthplace of Son Ngoc Thanh. In examining the political ambitions of Son Ngoc Thanh, we will better understand the reasons for
7236-689: The eventual formation of the Khmer Serei and their activities. Son Ngoc Thanh did his studies in France. When he returned to Vietnam, he attempted to join the French Colonial Service but was declined. He then moved to Cambodia in the early 1930s, and secured a secretarial position in the Cambodian Buddhist Institute . While at the institute, he took the opportunity of his position as secretary and empowered patriotic monks to spread Buddhist and nationalistic sermons throughout Cambodia and into
7344-566: The fall of the Khmer Empire in the early 15th century, the Dongrek Mountains served as a natural border leaving the Khmer north of the mountains under the sphere of influence of the Kingdom of Lan Xang . The conquests of Cambodia by Naresuan the Great for Ayutthaya furthered their political and economic isolation from Cambodia proper, leading to a dialect that developed relatively independently from
7452-561: The family. Khmer is spoken by some 13 million people in Cambodia , where it is the official language. It is also a second language for most of the minority groups and indigenous hill tribes there. Additionally there are a million speakers of Khmer native to southern Vietnam (1999 census) and 1.4 million in northeast Thailand (2006). Khmer dialects , although mutually intelligible, are sometimes quite marked. Notable variations are found in speakers from Phnom Penh (Cambodia's capital city),
7560-400: The final syllable, with secondary stress on every second syllable from the end. Thus in a three-syllable word, the first syllable has secondary stress; in a four-syllable word, the second syllable has secondary stress; in a five-syllable word, the first and third syllables have secondary stress, and so on. Long polysyllables are not often used in conversation. Compounds, however, preserve
7668-432: The forest, joining Thanh's cause, possibly causing the Khmer Serei numbers to swell. In 1961, Sihanouk severed diplomatic relations with Bangkok over the 'Thai support' provided to the Khmer Serei. By 1963, Thanh strategically moved the Khmer Serei moved back to South Vietnam for financial and material support from the Saigon government. Moving back to the Mekong Delta area gave Thanh the potential to recruit new members from
7776-602: The future. The Normans often made many forays into Wales, where the Welsh used the mountainous region, which the Normans were unfamiliar with, to spring surprise attacks upon them. Since the Enlightenment , ideologies such as nationalism , liberalism , socialism , and religious fundamentalism have played an important role in shaping insurgencies and guerrilla warfare. In the 17th century, Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj , founder of
7884-437: The goal of exhausting adversaries and forcing them to withdraw (see also attrition warfare ). Organized guerrilla groups often depend on the support of either the local population or foreign backers who sympathize with the guerrilla group's efforts. The Spanish word guerrilla is the diminutive form of guerra ("war"); hence, "little war". The term became popular during the early-19th century Peninsular War , when, after
7992-404: The government sponsored Cultural Committee to define and standardize the modern language, they championed Khmerization, purging of foreign elements, reviving affixation, and the use of Old Khmer roots and historical Pali and Sanskrit to coin new words for modern ideas. Opponents, led by Keng Vannsak , who embraced "total Khmerization" by denouncing the reversion to classical languages and favoring
8100-524: The inducement in them of insecurity and terror. It conducts the basic business of war without recourse to ponderous formations or equipment, complicated maneuvers, strict chains of command, calculated strategies, timetables, or other civilized embellishments. Evidence of conventional warfare , on the other hand, did not emerge until 3100 BC in Egypt and Mesopotamia. The Chinese general and strategist Sun Tzu , in his The Art of War (6th century BC), became one of
8208-416: The language of higher education and the intellectual class. By 1907, the French had wrested over half of modern-day Cambodia, including the north and northwest where Thai had been the prestige language, back from Thai control and reintegrated it into the country. Many native scholars in the early 20th century, led by a monk named Chuon Nath , resisted the French and Thai influences on their language. Forming
8316-554: The languages of Austroasiatic. Diffloth places Khmer in an eastern branch of the Mon-Khmer languages . In these classification schemes Khmer's closest genetic relatives are the Bahnaric and Pearic languages . More recent classifications doubt the validity of the Mon-Khmer sub-grouping and place the Khmer language as its own branch of Austroasiatic equidistant from the other 12 branches of
8424-468: The large populations of Khmer Kroms living there. In addition, the U.S. Special Forces and its Civilian Irregular Defense Group (CIDG) would become its allies, and recruited the Khmer Serei into its ranks. The recruited members maintained their membership to Khmer Serei and were also obligated to bear arms for the Saigon government. This was beneficial on two fronts: firstly, the monetary rewards from joining
8532-511: The last syllable instead of falling. Khmer is primarily an analytic language with no inflection . Syntactic relations are mainly determined by word order. Old and Middle Khmer used particles to mark grammatical categories and many of these have survived in Modern Khmer but are used sparingly, mostly in literary or formal language. Khmer makes extensive use of auxiliary verbs , "directionals" and serial verb construction . Colloquial Khmer
8640-540: The later French colonial period. The armed struggles with the French caused serious disruption to the Cambodian economy in 1946–1947. Thanh's political supporters gained control of the Democratic Party and won the national election of September 1951. Facing mounting political pressure, Sihanouk was forced to request Thanh's release from house arrest. Thanh was eventually released the next month. Upon his return to Cambodia, Thanh resumed his political activities and founded
8748-521: The latter of which had recolonized the country 17 years after its independence. The war resulted in the withdrawal of Spanish forces and the establishment of a second republic in the Dominican Republic. The Moroccan military leader Abd el-Krim ( c. 1883 – 1963) and his father unified the Moroccan tribes under their control and took up arms against the Spanish and French occupiers during
8856-593: The local population. The opposing army may come at last to suspect all civilians as potential guerrilla backers. The guerrillas might get political support from foreign backers and many guerrilla groups are adept at public persuasion through propaganda and use of force. Some guerrilla movements today also rely heavily on children as combatants, scouts, porters, spies, informants, and in other roles. Many governments and states also recruit children within their armed forces. No commonly accepted definition of "terrorism" has attained clear consensus. The term "terrorism"
8964-402: The memories of Cambodians for many years. In early 1969, five hundred Khmer Serei soldiers defected from South Vietnam to Cambodia. The defectors were welcomed back to Cambodia and were integrated into the Cambodian armed forces. There were two suggested theories about these defections: the first was that Son Ngoc Thanh had order five hundred men to defect so that the Khmer Serei could infiltrate
9072-558: The midpoint of the Middle Khmer period. This has resulted in a distinct accent influenced by the surrounding tonal languages Lao and Thai , lexical differences, and phonemic differences in both vowels and distribution of consonants. Syllable-final /r/ , which has become silent in other dialects of Khmer, is still pronounced in Northern Khmer. Some linguists classify Northern Khmer as a separate but closely related language rather than
9180-466: The mission. According to one U.S. Army commander, the Khmer Serei were good soldiers: They knew the border area, could communicate with the local populations, and could get intelligence about the Viet Cong and what they were doing in their sanctuaries across the border. In addition, member of the Khmer Serei has anti-communist contacts in the Cambodian Army who were sympathetic to any plan to rid Cambodia of
9288-491: The modern Khmer language dictionary that is still in use today, helping preserve Khmer during the French colonial period. The phonological system described here is the inventory of sounds of the standard spoken language, represented using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). The voiceless plosives /p/, /t/, /c/, /k/ may occur with or without aspiration (as [p] vs. [pʰ] , etc.); this difference
9396-468: The opposing force while minimizing their own losses. The guerrilla prizes mobility, secrecy, and surprise, organizing in small units and taking advantage of terrain that is difficult for larger units to use. For example, Mao Zedong summarized basic guerrilla tactics at the beginning of the Chinese Civil War as: "The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack;
9504-512: The people against their oppressors, and that he fights in order to change the social system that keeps all his unarmed brothers in ignominy and misery. In the 1960s, the Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara developed the foco (Spanish: foquismo ) theory of revolution in his book Guerrilla Warfare , based on his experiences during the 1959 Cuban Revolution . This theory was later formalized as "focal-ism" by Régis Debray . Its central principle
9612-565: The rural Battambang area, the areas of Northeast Thailand adjacent to Cambodia such as Surin province , the Cardamom Mountains , and southern Vietnam. The dialects form a continuum running roughly north to south. Standard Cambodian Khmer is mutually intelligible with the others but a Khmer Krom speaker from Vietnam, for instance, may have great difficulty communicating with a Khmer native of Sisaket Province in Thailand. The following
9720-417: The start of a syllable are /str/, /skr/ , and (with aspirated consonants analyzed as two-consonant sequences) /sth/, /lkh/ . There are 85 possible two-consonant clusters (including [pʰ] etc. analyzed as /ph/ etc.). All the clusters are shown in the following table, phonetically, i.e. superscript ʰ can mark either contrastive or non-contrastive aspiration (see above ). Slight vowel epenthesis occurs in
9828-628: The stress patterns of the constituent words. Thus សំបុកចាប , the name of a kind of cookie (literally 'bird's nest'), is pronounced [sɑmˌbok ˈcaːp] , with secondary stress on the second rather than the first syllable, because it is composed of the words [sɑmˈbok] ('nest') and [caːp] ('bird'). Khmer once had a phonation distinction in its vowels, but this now survives only in the most archaic dialect ( Western Khmer ). The distinction arose historically when vowels after Old Khmer voiced consonants became breathy voiced and diphthongized; for example *kaa, *ɡaa became *kaa, *ɡe̤a . When consonant voicing
9936-414: The structure of the CIDG, that is, the Khmer Serei were organised into platoons, companies and battalions. Whether this was coincidental, or to accommodate the CIDG, is unknown. Therefore, it was possible that their leader, Thanh had indeed maintain tight control over the group but it was structurally led by junior leaders in their respective military units. According to sources, the Khmer Serei headquarters
10044-406: The tactic of guerrilla warfare as, according to Che Guevara 's text, being "used by the side which is supported by a majority but which possesses a much smaller number of arms for use in defense against oppression". Why does the guerrilla fighter fight? We must come to the inevitable conclusion that the guerrilla fighter is a social reformer, that he takes up arms responding to the angry protest of
10152-526: The term "guerrilla warfare" was coined in the context of the Peninsular War in the 19th century, the tactical methods of guerrilla warfare have long been in use. In the 6th century BC , Sun Tzu proposed the use of guerrilla-style tactics in The Art of War . The 3rd century BC Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus is also credited with inventing many of the tactics of guerrilla warfare through what
10260-463: The use of contemporary colloquial Khmer for neologisms, and Ieu Koeus , who favored borrowing from Thai, were also influential. Koeus later joined the Cultural Committee and supported Nath. Nath's views and prolific work won out and he is credited with cultivating modern Khmer-language identity and culture, overseeing the translation of the entire Pali Buddhist canon into Khmer. He also created
10368-470: The vowels that can exist without a preceding or trailing consonant. The independent vowels may be used as monosyllabic words, or as the initial syllables in longer words. Khmer words never begin with regular vowels; they can, however, begin with independent vowels. Example: ឰដ៏, ឧទាហរណ៍, ឧត្តម, ឱកាស...។ A Khmer syllable begins with a single consonant, or else with a cluster of two, or rarely three, consonants. The only possible clusters of three consonants at
10476-425: The words they modify). Some grammatical processes are still not fully understood by western scholars. For example, it is not clear if certain features of Khmer grammar, such as actor nominalization , should be treated as a morphological process or a purely syntactic device, and some derivational morphology seems "purely decorative" and performs no known syntactic work. Guerrilla warfare Guerrilla warfare
10584-550: The world today. In South Africa , African National Congress (ANC) members studied the Algerian War, prior to the release and apotheosis of Nelson Mandela ; in their intifada against Israel, Palestinian fighters have sought to emulate it. Additionally, the tactics of Al-Qaeda closely resemble those of the Algerians. The Mukti Bahini (Bengali: মুক্তিবাহিনী, translates as "freedom fighters", or liberation army), also known as
10692-438: Was emerging from the transitional period represented by Middle Khmer, Cambodia fell under the influence of French colonialism . Thailand, which had for centuries claimed suzerainty over Cambodia and controlled succession to the Cambodian throne, began losing its influence on the language. In 1887 Cambodia was fully integrated into French Indochina , which brought in a French -speaking aristocracy. This led to French becoming
10800-537: Was evident in the events which led to the 1963 arrest, public caging and subsequent execution of Preap In , a Khmer Serei activist who had offered to go to the National Assembly to negotiate directly with Sihanouk, was a prominent example of the Sangkum 's repression of the Khmer Serei. The execution of In, a former member of the Democratic Party, was filmed and shown in all cinemas for a month, an event which remained in
10908-565: Was frequently practiced between the eighth through tenth centuries along the eastern frontier with the Umayyad and then Abbasid caliphates. Tactics involved a heavy emphasis on reconnaissance and intelligence, shadowing the enemy, evacuating threatened population centres, and attacking when the enemy dispersed to raid. In the later tenth century this form of warfare was codified in a military manual known by its later Latin name as De velitatione bellica ('On Skirmishing') so it would not be forgotten in
11016-588: Was located at the Cambodian Buddhist compound and supported by field headquarters on the Cambodian border at the South Vietnamese village of Tinh Bien, in close proximity to the Seven Mountains region of the border. With exception of the independent Khmer Serei units along the border, virtually all of the other Khmer Serei personnel were associated with the U.S. Army Special Forces’ activities conducted in
11124-407: Was lost, the distinction was maintained by the vowel ( *kaa, *ke̤a ); later the phonation disappeared as well ( [kaː], [kiə] ). These processes explain the origin of what are now called a-series and o-series consonants in the Khmer script . Although most Cambodian dialects are not tonal , the colloquial Phnom Penh dialect has developed a tonal contrast (level versus peaking tone) as a by-product of
11232-477: Was made special councilor to Lon Nol and later as Prime Minister of Cambodia. After the Cambodian coup of 1970, the Khmer Serei participated in the Second Indochina War . It was believed that at least three battalions, consisting approximately 1500 Khmer Serei troops re-enforced the US-supported Vietnamese troops in Cambodia. The troops were ready and could be inserted by air into Phnom Penh. Lon Nol saw
11340-578: Was short-lived. Thanh was arrested and put on trial for treason . After the trial, he was put on house arrest in France. While on house arrest, a group of his supporters with military support were recruiting and establishing themselves near the border provinces of Thailand , Cambodia and South Vietnam . These militant supporters of Thanh were known as the Khmer Issarak (“independent” Khmer), who shared Thanh's pro-independence goals. The Khmer Issarak were armed bands active within Cambodian borders during
11448-541: Was the longest war waged by East India Company during their military campaigns on the Indian subcontinent. It was one of the bloodiest and hardest wars waged by East India Company in India with Presidency army regiments that suffered losses as high as eighty percent in 10 years of warfare. The Dominican Restoration War was a guerrilla war between 1863 and 1865 in the Dominican Republic between nationalists and Spain ,
11556-467: Was to remain in the forest to organise guerrilla warfare and propaganda activities against Sihanouk. The Khmer Serei continued to be a source of disturbance to the Sihanouk government, organizing dissident activities along the border provinces of Cambodia. More significantly, many of these Issarak leaders would become key actors in the events of late 1960s and 1970s, as the old Issarak divisions re-formed as
11664-474: Was to use some of these former Khmer Serei supporters as the basis of the Khmer People's National Liberation Front movement, formed in 1979. Without Son Ngoc Thanh, the movement lacked a central command to coordinate its combat operation, public information, and recruitment. As a consequence, those calling themselves Khmer Serei had become no more than groups of independent free agents. It was also reported that
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