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Subaltern soldiers: Overshadowed Bunong highlanders in the Khmer Republic's army, 1970–75
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 June 2022
Abstract
Little is known about Cambodia's highland minorities during the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese communists were infiltrating their homelands on the ground and American bombers attacking them from the sky. When inhabitants of the northeastern regions are mentioned in histories about the Khmer Rouge's coming to power, it is mainly as bodyguards of Pol Pot, who represented them as remnants of an uncorrupted ‘primitive democracy’. However, stories heard in the highlands raise different narratives, notably those of Bunong men and their families who left Mondulkiri province for Phnom Penh, where they enlisted in the weak pro-American Khmer Republic's army. These stories, told by the few who survived the mission and by the many who lost relatives to it, complicate the history of this convoluted period by bringing to light the Bunongs’ previously unmentioned involvement within the Forces Armées Nationales Khmères. Neither visceral rebels, nor unconditional allies, these Cambodian highlanders were and still are complex actors, whose engagements constitute a much-needed disturbance of dominant (historical) records.
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- Copyright © The National University of Singapore, 2022
Footnotes
I wish to thank my Bunong interlocutors, especially Mieng Reeb, Mbech Mbreujn, P'lan Ngre’, Breen Yeut, Breen Reut, and Breen Weut, who took the time to share stories of loss and hardship with me, as well as Rlayang Bubong and Pö Ngit, whose support in gathering accounts on this period was greatly helpful. I could not have engaged in these conversations without the invaluable support of Neth Prak, who led the early interviews, as well as of Vannara Riem, and Sochea Kim, who assisted me in later conversations. I am grateful for the highly enriching exchanges with Jean-Pierre Chazal, William Chickering and Sara Colm, whose research has been precious for my navigation of this obscure history. Critical feedback from Mathieu Guérin, Sina Emde, and Rich Garella and Lucie Labbé was very helpful for restructuring this article. Delon Madavan's cartographic expertise was key to giving shape to the maps and my thanks also to Lucie Labbé for her skilful reproduction of a historical badge. Of course, all flaws fall squarely on my shoulders. I benefited from a French government PhD grant for the early part of this research and was funded by the EFEO for the more recent field and archive work. This article is dedicated to the numerous still unnamed Bunong who did not return from this military venture.
References
1 Bunong (or Mnong) is an Austro-Asiatic, Môn-Khmer language spoken by about 37,000 people in Cambodia (2008 national census), most of them living in Mondulkiri province. They are part of the country's estimated 1.4% ‘ethnic indigenous minorities’ (IWGIA, The indigenous world 2020 [Copenhagen: IWGIA, 2020], p. 214). Our interlocutors’ names have been changed to protect their anonymity, but follow a Bunong modality: parents are called mother (mé) or father (pö) of their first child, which is in this case Nok (pseudonym). Pseudonyms that my interlocutors chose as their given names are added where relevant.
2 30,000 American and 40,000 South Vietnamese troops were airlifted into Cambodia shortly after Lon Nol's takeover (Sara Colm, ‘Pol Pot: The secret 60s: Building the people's war among the tribal communities’, Phnom Penh Post, 24 May 1998, p. 15). By 30 June 1970 US president Nixon pulled out the American troops and by 27 July launched another bombing campaign in the border region. Justin J. Corfield, Khmers stand up! A history of the Cambodian government 1970–1975 (Clayton: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University, 1994), p. 101.
3 In addition to the numerous military histories and veteran accounts, there have been rich ethnohistorical studies on Vietnam and Laos. See for example, Gerald C. Hickey, Free in the forest: Ethnohistory of the Vietnamese Central Highlands, 1954–1976 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), Oscar Salemink, The ethnography of Vietnam's Central Highlanders: A historical contextualization, 1850–1990 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2003); Pholsena, Vatthana, ‘Highlanders on the Ho Chi Minh trail: Representations and narratives’, Critical Asian Studies 40, 3 (2008): 445–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baird, Ian, ‘The US Central Intelligence Agency and the Brao: The story of Kong My, a non-communist space in Attapeu province, southern Laos’, Aséanie 25 (2010): 23–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 See for example, François Debré, Cambodge: La révolution de la forêt (Paris: Flammarion, 1976), p. 232; Marie Alexandrine Martin, Le mal cambodgien. Histoire d'une société traditionnelle face à ses leaders politiques, 1946–1987 (Paris: Hachette, 1989), p. 209; Serge Thion, Watching Cambodia (Bangkok: White Lotus, 1993), p. 169; Sacha Sher, Le Kampuchéa des ‘Khmers Rouges’. Essai de compréhension d'une tentative de révolution (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2004), p. 115; Philip Short, Pol Pot: The history of a nightmare (London: John Murray, 2004), p. 212.
5 Sara Colm and Soraya Sim, Khmer Rouge purges in the Mondul Kiri highlands: Region 105 (Phnom Penh: Documentation Center of Cambodia, 2007). See also Bourdier, Frédéric, ‘Les populations du keth de Ratanakiri au Cambodge, éléments d'ethno-histoire des groupes proto-indochinois’, Les Cahiers d’études Franco-Cambodgiennes 8 (1995): 57–81Google Scholar; Mathieu Guérin et al., Des montagnards aux minorités ethniques: Quelle intégration nationale pour les habitants des hautes terres du Viêt Nam et du Cambodge? (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2003).
6 Krisna Uk, Salvage: Cultural resilience among the Jorai of northeast Cambodia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016); Ian G. Baird, Rise of the Brao: Ethnic minorities in northeastern Cambodia during Vietnamese occupation (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2020); Jonathan Padwe, Disturbed forests, fragmented memories: Jarai and other lives in the Cambodian highlands (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2020); Frédéric Bourdier, Temps de guerre, temps de révolte chez les populations autochtones du Cambodge. Première assise populaire khmère rouge à Ratanakiri (1967–1971) (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2020).
7 Unfortunately, there is still a lack of complementary research on the Bunong in Vietnam as it has been difficult to pursue long-term fieldwork on that side of the border.
8 Michèle Barrett, ‘Subalterns at war’, in Can the subaltern speak? Reflections on the history of an idea, ed. Rosalind C. Morris (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), p. 16; Vatthana Pholsena, Post-war Laos: The politics of culture, history and identity (Singapore: ISEAS, 2003), p. 125.
9 Gayatri Spivak, ‘Can the subaltern speak?’, in Morris, Can the subaltern speak?, p. 50. As Paul Antze and Michael Lambek point out, these ‘interpretative reconstructions … bear the imprint of local narrative conventions, cultural assumptions, discursive formations and practices, and social contexts of recall and commemoration’. P. Antze and M. Lambek, Tense past: Cultural essays in trauma and memory (New York: Routledge, 1996), p. vii.
10 On the emergence of an indigenous rights discourse in Cambodia see Ian Baird, ‘The construction of indigenous peoples in Cambodia’, in Alterities in Asia: Reflections on identity and regionalism, ed. Leong Yew (London: Routledge, 2011), pp. 155–76.
11 After the initial conversation with Mé and Pö Nok in 2009, we met again with the couple and got in touch with Pö Mon, the third survivor. In 2019–20, we reconvened for a series of long interviews with the three survivors, and discussed this topic in detail with another dozen people who lost parents, husbands, siblings, nieces and nephews, uncles and aunts to this war.
12 This situation strongly differs from that in other parts of Mondulkiri, as well as of neighbouring Ratanakiri, where in 1960 8,000 ha of land were seized to establish the state rubber plantation of Preah Sihanouk, forcing numerous Brao villagers to move, provoking rebellions that were severely repressed. See Jean-Claude Pomonti and Serge Thion, Des courtisans aux partisans. La crise cambodgienne (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), pp. 118–21. See also Padwe, Disturbed forests, pp. 90–109; Bourdier, Temps de guerre, temps de révolte.
13 Colm and Sim, Khmer Rouge purges in the Mondul Kiri highlands, pp. 21–2.
14 Most of the Bunong probably fled during the covert ‘Patio’ bombings (24 Apr.–26 May 1970), part of the Menu campaign, and the Binh Tay III operation (air strikes and ground attacks by American and South Vietnamese forces, 20 May–27 June 1970). See United States Department of Defense, Report on selected air and ground operations in Cambodia and Laos, p. 21, Sept. 1973, box 22, folder 04, Douglas Pike Collection: Unit 02–Military Operations, Vietnam Center and Sam Johnson Vietnam Archive, Texas Tech University [henceforth Vietnam Virtual Archive], https://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/virtualarchive/items.php?item=2132204022 (accessed 6 May 2022); CHECO Report no. 52, Cambodian campaign, 29 Apr.–30 June 1970, 0390102001, Vietnam Virtual Archive, 29 Apri.–30 June 1970, box 01, folder 02, Contemporary Historical Examination of Current Operations (CHECO) Reports of Southeast Asia (1961–75), Vietnam Virtual Archive, https://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/virtualarchive/items.php?item=0390102001 (accessed 6 May 2022); William Shawcross, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the destruction of Cambodia (London: Andre Deutsch, 1979), p. 134. On the US bombing of Cambodia, as early as 1965, see also Taylor Owen and Ben Kiernan, ‘Bombs over Cambodia’, Walrus, 12 Oct. 2006; https://thewalrus.ca/2006-10-history/ (last accessed 10 May 2020).
15 Colm and Sim, Khmer Rouge purges in the Mondul Kiri Highlands, p. 28.
16 Report, Joint Chiefs of Staff: Sensitive Operations in Southeast Asia, 1964–1973, p. 19, 1071313002, 1973, box 13, folder 13, Glenn Helm Collection, Vietnam Virtual Archive, https://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/virtualarchive/items.php?item=1071313002 (accessed 6 May 2022). Punee Soonthornpoct, From freedom to hell: A history of foreign interventions in Cambodian politics and wars (New York: Vantage, 2005), p. 142.
17 See Shawcross, Sideshow, p. 93.
18 Altogether, there would have been ‘8000 Cambodian mountain tribesmen who sought refuge in South Vietnam’ since May–June 1970 (Henry Kamm, ‘Montagnards who fled Cambodia get little aid’, New York Times, 10 Apr. 1971, p. 7). A Le Monde article published at the same time reports over 5,000 Bunong having fled Mondulkiri to take refuge in Quang Duc; see Jean-Claude Pomonti, ‘Des officiers cambodgiens recrutent des soldats dans les minorités ethniques’, Le Monde, 5 Apr. 1971.
19 The CIDG camp in Duc Lap was established in 1966 and the one in Bu Prang (near Bu Bong) in 1969. Both replaced earlier CIDGs that had emerged since 1963 and were moved because of attacks. They were turned over to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) by the end of 1970, which marked the termination of the CIDG programme, with US Special Forces pulling out of the highlands. See Francis J. Kelly, Vietnam Studies: US Army Special Forces 1961–1971 (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 2004 [1973]), p. 185. On the initial establishment of Bu Prang, see also Hickey, Free in the forest, p. 86.
20 Kelly, Vietnam studies, p. 13. See also Salemink, The ethnography of Vietnam's Central Highlanders, pp. 196–203.
21 Kelly, Vietnam studies, p. 34.
22 Ibid., p. 152.
23 For a critical analysis of this strategy, see Salemink, The ethnography of Vietnam's Central Highlanders, pp. 225, 240; Thomas Pearson, Mission and conversions: Creating the Montagnard-Dega refugee community (London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2009), pp. 148–54.
24 On the US government's communications about their bombings of Cambodia, see Shawcross, Sideshow, p. 214.
25 This echoes a complaint expressed in a 1971 newspaper article, reporting that despite US and South Vietnamese funding to support the refugees, only a very small fraction of the aid arrived in the camps. Of the US$120,727 allocated in July 1970 only US$16,488 was ‘spent for rice, dried fish and salt’. Kamm, ‘Montagnards who fled Cambodia get little aid’, p. 7.
26 For a landmark study of Bunong/Mnong exchange see Georges Condominas, L'espace social à propos de l'Asie du Sud-Est (Paris: Les Indes savantes, 2006 [1980]).
27 Pomonti, ‘Des officiers cambodgiens recrutent’. While this newspaper article refers to one recruitment trip in 1971, our Bunong interlocutors mentioned that there had been several between 1970 and 1971, and one in 1972.
28 Details about the units within which the Bunong might have fought follow below. Regarding the number of refugees, if there were in fact 5,000 or even 8,000 Bunong from Cambodia in Quang Duc province's refugee camps, it does not seem impossible that a third or even half of them went on this mission. According to a Bunong man who remained in Bu Bong, two to three batches of people left for Phnom Penh, and a woman who was a refugee in Duc Lap mentioned that had there been another draft ‘nobody would have been left’.
29 According to a man from Kav Khlê, around six large, four-engine aircraft picked people up directly in Duc Lap.
30 Kenneth Conboy, The Cambodian wars: Clashing armies and CIA covert operations (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2013), p. 18; Colm, ‘Pol Pot’, p. 15. See also Ros Chantabrot, La République khmère (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1993).
31 Kamm, ‘Montagnards who fled Cambodia get little aid’, p. 7.
32 Y Bun Sur's mother tongue was Mnong Rlam (a Bunong dialect), but Mé and Pö Nok thought of him as being Rhadé, possibly because he spoke this language, which was much more common within the highland elite in Phnom Penh.
33 Hickey, Free in the forest, p. xviii; Salemink, The ethnography of Vietnam's Central Highlanders, pp. 203–5; Po Dharma, Du FLM au FULRO. Une lutte des minorités du sud indochinois 1955–1975 (Paris: Les Indes savantes, 2006), p. 23.
34 Hickey, Free in the forest, p. 47; Dharma, Du FLM au FULRO, p. 40.
35 The Vietnamese ‘march to the south’ (Nam Tiên) that started in the 15th century resulted in the incorporation of the Cham principalities, in central Vietnam, and of Khmer populations living in the Mekong Delta, in the extreme south. See also Hickey, Free in the forest, pp. 88, 91–2, 94, 98.
36 According to William Chickering, who was with the US Special Forces in South Vietnam from 1966–67, Sihanouk's wish to make the US leave Vietnam would have led him to support FULRO, with Kosem pushing his agenda. William H. Chickering ‘A war of their own’, New York Times, 9 June 2017; https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/09/opinion/a-war-of-their-own.html (last accessed 10 May 2020).
37 Dharma, Du FLM au FULRO, pp. 55–64; Hickey, Free in the forest, pp. 108, 217–18. Meyer considers that the CIA took advantage of the FULRO to subvert the Cambodian chief of staff, a hypothesis that remains unfounded (Meyer, Derrière le sourire khmer, pp. 269–71).
38 While according to Hickey over 2,000 former FULRO fighters took part in a ceremonial rally which took place in February 1969, a former FULRO fighter who himself returned to Vietnam cites a total of 5,789 people. Hickey, Free in the forest, p. 191; Dharma, Du FLM au FULRO, pp. 128–32.
39 Dharma, Du FLM au FULRO, p. 136.
40 Ibid., pp. 136–7.
41 Gerald C. Hickey, ‘The war in Cambodia: Focus on some of the internal forces involved’ (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation Archives, IN-21104, 1970), p. 41.
42 Pers. comm., 28 Nov. 2017. Conboy mentions that 5th Special Brigade was 80% Cham. Ken Conboy, FANK: A history of the Cambodian Armed Forces 1970–1975 (Sheffield: Equinox, 2011), p. 86.
43 Hickey, Free in the forest, p. 220.
44 Ibid.; Kamm, ‘Montagnards who fled Cambodia get little aid’, p. 7.
45 Pomonti, ‘Des officiers cambodgiens recrutent’.
46 Conboy, FANK, p. 110. According to Conboy, by the end of 1970 there began some standardisation of brigade size, most often composed of four battalions. In 1973, a brigade would have 2,200 or 2,476 men (ibid., p. 75). Based on these elements, in 1971, 40 Brigade was possibly composed of four battalions of 550 or 619 men each.
47 Ibid., p. 145.
48 Ibid., p. 110.
49 Ibid.; Chickering, pers. comm., 28 Nov. 2017.
50 Soonthornpoct, Freedom to hell, p. 179.
51 Conboy, FANK, p. 203. In the Khmer Special Forces, an ‘A Detachment’ corresponded to 15 men (ibid.). ‘Khmer Loeu’ refers to all ‘up(land)’ Khmer and is a term that Sihanouk coined along with others, such as ‘Khmer Islam’ for the Cham, to unite all of Cambodia's citizens under an umbrella of Khmerness.
52 Guérin et al., Des montagnards aux minorités ethniques, pp. 55–7.
53 According to Pö Mon, Pö Koan-Mbaay was the head of the army in Mondulkiri province at the end of the Sangkum period.
54 A Bunong man who knew the district chief of O Reang spelt his full name as អ៊ីគឹមថិច or Y Khemthech.
55 Both in Bu Sra and in Dak Dam commune, many of the people I spoke to were from Lumpek and counted at least one soldier among those family members they had lost to this mission.
56 On Ngroong (Krong)'s position in the French colonial administration, see Mathieu Guérin, Paysans de la forêt à l’époque coloniale: La pacification des aborigènes des hautes terres du Cambodge (Rennes: Association d'Histoire des Sociétés Rurales, 2008), p. 138.
57 Colm and Sim, Khmer Rouge purges in the Mondul Kiri highlands, p. 32. On Ratanakiri, see Bourdier, Frédéric, ‘Entre Issarak, Vietminh et Khmers Rouges: Insurrections et manipulations politiques dans la province de Ratanakiri au Cambodge’, Siksacakr: The Journal of Cambodia Research 16 (2021): 161Google Scholar.
58 Dharma, Du FLM au FULRO, pp. 132, 134; Hickey, Free in the forest, p. 220.
59 Pomonti, ‘Des officiers cambodgiens recrutent’.
60 A similar conclusion emerged from interviews with Brao from Cambodia and Laos who fought alongside the American forces. Baird, ‘The US Central Intelligence Agency and the Brao’, pp. 23–51.
61 Ibid.
62 On Khmer Rouge reprisals on border crossers and life in Mondulkiri under their rule, see Colm and Sim, Khmer Rouge purges in the Mondul Kiri highlands.
63 While Mé Nok located the camp at the current site of Prek Leap National Institute of Agriculture, she and her husband mostly referred to the place as Prek Tasek, although this seems to correspond to a more western side of the peninsula.
64 Chickering, pers. comm., 28 Nov. 2017. On the extraordinary life of Y Bun Sur, see Rôih Kra (pseudonym), ‘La mesure de l'homme. Y Bun Sur (10/09/1939–21/04/1975). Vie et mort d'un jeune Mnong Rlam’, Siksacakr 16 (2021): 107–50Google Scholar.
65 Chickering, pers. comm., 28 Nov. 2017. François Ponchaud also considered that Y Bun Sur was the camp's head (pers. comm., 8 Dec. 2009). According to Mé Nok, the province chief's French wife would sometimes come to visit, wearing Bunong clothes and jewellery. Mé and Pö Nok did not know Y Bun Sur's name, and thought he was Rhadé and not Bunong, as they had only heard him speak the former language.
66 Conboy and Bowra, The war in Cambodia, p. 12.
67 Conboy, FANK, p. 204.
68 Ibid., p. 211.
69 The competition itself remains unclear, but Indonesia had accepted 60 FANK soldiers for training, half of them Cham from 5 Brigade (Conboy, FANK, p. 206). These Cham were most probably from FULRO, and possibly part of the movement's training programme that begun in August 1971 to send cadres to military schools abroad, in the United States, Japan (Okinawa) and Indonesia; Dharma, Du FLM au FURLO, p. 139.
70 This fits with Conboy's description of the Third Group Special Forces being in charge of ‘operations around the capital’. Kenneth Conboy, South-East Asian Special Forces (Oxford: Osprey, 1991), p. 292.
71 Shelby L. Stanton, Green Berets at war: U.S. Army Special Forces in Southeast Asia, 1956–75 (New York: Dell, 1985), pp. 311–12, 317. In October 1970, FANK officially requested the US and South Vietnamese governments to provide further support and in 1971 they sent a third group of trainees to Vietnam. By the beginning of 1973, when the last training camp closed as the US army retreated from Vietnam, 85 Cambodian battalions had passed through this instruction, ‘including basic light infantry, airborne, marine, and Khmer Special Forces cadres’. See Conboy, FANK, p. 265; Conboy and Bowra, The war in Cambodia, p.10.
72 Ibid.
73 Stanton, Green Berets at war, pp. 313–14.
74 Chickering numbered the bridges along Highway 6 that the Bunong soldiers were in charge of up to 20. He also specified that in mid 1973, an encampment near Bridge no. 9 was situated in a pagoda (pers. comm., 28. Nov. 2017).
75 Chickering, pers. comm., 19 Dec. 2019.
76 While Pö Nok estimated that there were 500 people in the camp, Ntä’, a Bunong man who lived in Phnom Penh and regularly visited Prek Tasek, considered the figure to be 2,000.
77 Ong, Aihwa, ‘The production of possession: Spirits and the multinational corporation in Malaysia’, American Ethnologist 15, 1 (1988): 38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
78 See Scheer, Catherine, ‘When the spirits get angry, God gains in popularity’, Aséanie 28 (2011): 45–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
79 On the relationships between Protestant missionaries and the American military in the South Vietnamese highlands, see Hickey, Free in the forest, and Salemink, The ethnography of Vietnam's Central Highlanders.
80 Ibid. Ksor Kok, a Jarai FANK officer, FULRO member and Phnom Penh Bible school student, established a connection between the Bunong converts in Prek Tasek camp and C&MA-related Cambodian churches (interview with a Cambodian pastor, Phnom Penh, 2020). The Khmer Republic allowed American Christian organisations in the country a degree of freedom to operate that sharply contrasted with all previous governments’ relative reluctance towards them.
81 François Ponchaud, Cambodge Année Zéro (Paris: Julliard, 1977), p. 29; François Bizot, Le Portail (Paris: La table ronde, 2000), pp. 288–92; Rôih Kra, ‘La mesure de l'homme’, pp. 133–4.
82 Ibid.