Cambodian–Vietnamese War
Infighting
Small-scale fighting continued between the two countries throughout 1978, as China tried to mediate peace talks between the two sides. However, the two governments could not reach a compromise. By the end of 1978, Vietnamese leaders decided to remove the Khmer Rouge-dominated government of Democratic Kampuchea, perceiving it as being pro-Chinese and hostile towards Vietnam. On 25 December 1978, 150,000 Vietnamese troops invaded Democratic Kampuchea and overran the Kampuchean Revolutionary Army in just two weeks, thereby ending Pol Pot's government, which had been responsible for the deaths of almost a quarter of all Cambodians between 1975 and December 1978 during the Cambodian genocide. Vietnamese military intervention, and the occupying forces' subsequent facilitation of international food aid to mitigate the massive famine, ended the genocide.
Establishment of the PRK
On 8 January 1979 the pro-Vietnamese People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) was established in Phnom Penh, marking the beginning of a ten-year Vietnamese occupation. During that period, the Khmer Rouge's Democratic Kampuchea continued to be recognised by the United Nations as the legitimate government of Kampuchea, as several armed resistance groups were formed to fight the Vietnamese occupation. Throughout the conflict, these groups received training in Thailand from the British Army's Special Air Service. Behind the scenes, Prime Minister Hun Sen of the PRK government approached factions of the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (CGDK) to begin peace talks. Under diplomatic and economic pressure from the international community, the Vietnamese government implemented a series of economic and foreign policy reforms, and withdrew from Kampuchea in September 1989.
Establishment of the PRK
At the Third Jakarta Informal Meeting in 1990, under the Australian-sponsored Cambodian Peace Plan, representatives of the CGDK and the PRK agreed to a power-sharing arrangement by forming a unity government known as the Supreme National Council (SNC). The SNC's role was to represent Cambodian sovereignty on the international stage, while the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) was tasked with supervising the country's domestic policies until a Cambodian government was elected by the people. Cambodia's pathway to peace proved to be difficult, as Khmer Rouge leaders decided not to participate in the general elections, but instead chose to disrupt the electoral process by launching military attacks on UN peacekeepers and killing ethnic Vietnamese migrants. In May 1993, Sihanouk's FUNCINPEC movement defeated the Cambodian People's Party (CPP), formerly the Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Party (KPRP), to win the general elections. However, the CPP leadership refused to accept defeat, and announced that the eastern provinces of Cambodia, where most of the CPP's votes were drawn from, would secede from Cambodia. To avoid such an outcome, Norodom Ranariddh, the leader of FUNCINPEC, agreed to form a coalition government with the CPP. Shortly afterward, the constitutional monarchy was restored and the Khmer Rouge was outlawed by the newly formed Cambodian government.
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