conflict norodom chantaraingsey
Prince Norodom Chantaraingsey ( 1924 or 1926 -- c . 1976 ) was a member of the Cambodian royal family and a Cambodian nationalist . Initially a leader of the guerrilla resistance against the colonial French , he went on to become a prominent general in the Khmer National Armed Forces ( FANK ) during the ___MASK61___ , as well as a businessman and occasional writer . Chantaraingsey is thought to have been killed fighting the Khmer Rouge in either 1975 or 1976 . However , his exact date of death remains unknown . Cambodia ( or Kampuchea ), officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia ( Preh Réachéanachâk Kâmpchéa ), is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia . It is in area , bordered by Thailand to the northwest , Laos to the northeast , ___MASK73___ to the east , and the Gulf of Thailand to the southwest . Khmers rouges ( French for " Red Khmers " " Khmer Kraham "), more commonly known in English as Khmer Rouge , was the name given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea in Cambodia . It was formed in 1968 as an offshoot of the ___MASK73___ People ' s Army from North ___MASK73___ , and allied with North ___MASK73___ , the Viet Cong , and the Pathet Lao during the ___MASK74___ against the anti - communist forces from 1968 to 1975 . The Khmer Rouge emerged victorious in the Cambodian Civil War , overthrew the military dictatorship of the Khmer Republic and installed their own government Democratic Kampuchea in 1975 , led by Pol Pot , Nuon Chea , Ieng Sary , Son Sen , and Khieu Samphan . This was followed by the Cambodian genocide from 1975 until 1979 , when the Khmer Rouge were finally removed from power by ___MASK73___ in the Cambodian  Vietnamese War . The military power of the Khmer Rouge organization was not broken however , and a long era of guerrilla warfare involving large swaths of the Cambodian countryside began . Many different military factions were involved in the guerrilla war era and it ended around 1994 . The Khmer Rouge organization is remembered especially for orchestrating the Cambodian genocide , which resulted from the enforcement of its social engineering policies . Its attempts at agricultural reform led to widespread famine , while its insistence on absolute self - sufficiency , even in the supply of medicine , led to the death of thousands from treatable diseases such as malaria . Arbitrary executions and torture carried out by its cadres against perceived subversive elements , or during purges of its own ranks between 1975 and 1978 , are considered to have constituted genocide . Viet Cong , also known as the National Liberation Front , was a political organization and army that operated in South ___MASK73___ and Cambodia during the ___MASK74___ . It was allied with North ___MASK73___ and fought against the armies of South ___MASK73___ and the United States . It had both guerrilla and regular army units , as well as a network of cadres who organized peasants in the territory it controlled . Many soldiers were recruited in South ___MASK73___ , but others were from the North . During the war , communist leaders and anti - war spokesmen insisted the Viet Cong was an insurgency indigenous to the South , while the U . S . and South Vietnamese governments portrayed the group as a tool of Hanoi . Although the terminology distinguishes southerners from the northerners , the communist forces were under a single command structure set up in 1958 . The ___MASK61___ was a military conflict that pitted the forces of the Communist Party of Kampuchea ( known as the Khmer Rouge ) and their allies the Democratic Republic of Vietnam ( North Vietnam ) and the Viet Cong against the government forces of the Kingdom of Cambodia and , after October 1970 , the Khmer Republic , which were supported by the United States ( U . S .) and the Republic of Vietnam ( South Vietnam ).