Khmer Rouge insurgency
armed conflict in Cambodia
The Khmer Rouge insurgency was an armed conflict in Cambodia and eastern border of Thailand that began in 1979 when the Khmer Rouge-ruled government of Democratic Kampuchea was deposed during the Cambodian–Vietnamese War. Between 1979 and the 1991 Paris Peace Agreements, the war was fought between the Vietnam-supported People's Republic of Kampuchea and an opposing coalition. After 1991, the unrecognized Khmer Rouge government and insurgent forces continued to fight against the new government of Cambodia from remote areas until their defeat in 1998. The remaining Khmer Rouge forces surrendered in 1999.
After the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime, Cambodia came under Vietnamese military occupation, and a pro-Hanoi, Soviet government known as the People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) was formed, led by the Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation. The conflict was fought during the 1980s between the People's Republic of Kampuchea and the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (CGDK). The latter was a government-in-exile formed in 1981 that was composed of three Cambodian political factions: the royalist FUNCINPEC party led by Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the Party of Democratic Kampuchea (often referred to as the Khmer Rouge), and the Khmer People's National Liberation Front (KPNLF). The Khmer Rouge representative at the UN, Thiounn Prasith, was maintained.
Throughout the 1980s, the CGDK, supported by China, Thailand, the United States, the United Kingdom, and others, continued to control significant territory and launch operations against
Vietnamese forces and the PRK. Vietnam withdrew from Cambodia in 1989. Peace efforts intensified between 1989 and 1991, with two international conferences in Paris and a UN peacekeeping mission that helped maintain a ceasefire.
“Khmer Rouge insurgency” enters the record as armed conflict in Cambodia. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Khmer, Rouge and insurgency can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2992530. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1979, 1991, 1998 and 1999.
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This entry incorporates text from “Khmer Rouge insurgency” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.