As nasty as Pol Pot was to his own people, he was just as unpalatable to the Vietnamese. He executed or expelled the minority Vietnamese in Cambodia, and stationed his troops along the Vietnamese border, sparking border conflicts. The Vietnamese wanted desperately to be rid of the Khmer Rouge, but they needed a replacement for him. They got their patsy in Heng Samrin, a defector from the Khmer Rouge army. On December 25, 1978, a force of over 100,000 Vietnamese invaded Cambodia. The invasion took only two weeks. The Khmer Rouge retreated into the jungles.
The Vietnamese decided they liked Cambodia enough to stay, and did so until the late 1980s, using an occupational force of over 200,000. Cambodia, which had been passed from European colonial master to darkness, regained a colonial master by proxy: the Soviet Union, which was strongly aligned with Vietnam, and dictated a great deal of policy in return for aid.
But eventually the Vietnamese burden of carrying Cambodia's poverty grew to be intolerable, especially given the reduced aid from the Soviet Union, which was on the verge of collapse. The Vietnamese announced they wanted out of Cambodia, which allowed parties with a claim to Cambodia to engage in peace talks. In 1991, all sides agreed to demobilize their armies and a hold an election in May 1993, to be observed by the United Nations.
The UN peacekeeping operation (a story for another column in itself) was the largest and most expensive ever. It managed, somehow, to maintain peace enough for elections, despite occasional outbreaks of violence by the Khmer Rouge, still hiding out in the jungle. Sihanouk's son, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, was the big winner. His FUNCINPEC (a French acronym) party won 58 of 120 seats in the National Assembly. But right behind him was Hun Sen and his Cambodian People's Party (CPP), with 51 seats. (Two other minor factions won 10 seats and 1 seat respectively.)
Since neither party won a majority, many feared the nation would be ungovernable. Both Ranariddh and Hun Sen shared this fear, so they entered an agreement to be co-Prime Ministers, with Ranariddh being First Prime Minister, and Hun Sen being Second Prime Minister. This agreement was a blatant re-writing of the Cambodian Constitution, which had been hammered out during the preparations for the elections.
Their compromise worked for a few years. In June 1997, while Ranariddh was out of the country, Hun Sen staged a coup. A brief and bloody conflict ended with many of Ranariddh's top men executed, and Hun Sen in firm control of the nation. The world refused to recognize Hun Sen's rule. The United States and the United Nations maintained their recognition of Ranariddh's government. The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), which was about to initiate Cambodia as a member along with Laos and Myanmar, refused to allow Cambodia to join. Hun Sen sank Cambodia into isolation, again.
