The Killing Fields

 Another week, another cheery episode in late twentieth post colonial history, this time Pol Pots reign of terror in Cambodia. This was one of John Bs periodic polmil committee games, and we'd actually covered the period from the winding down of the Vietnam War to Pol Pots rise (1970 to 75) in a previous game. This stuff is all pretty grim, but we are all (mostly) old enough to remember it well. It all shaped the world we live in now, so worth revisiting.

Always nice to have some period maps, these are the Cambodian Miltary Districts in 1970. We used this map a lot in the previous game as it was very much focussed on the war inside Cambodia. This time Pol Pot in his bizarre alliance with Prince Sihanouk had just taken Phnom Penh in 1975 as Saigon fell around the same time.

Six players represented the main factions - Sihanouk, Pol Pot, Thailand, Vietnam, China and the Soviet Union, while two others took on rolling parts as eg The Gang of Four, Chairman Mao, Kurt Waldheim etc. Unlike last time, the US was completely out of the picture as this was very much the first major foreign policy challenge for the new Vietnamese government. 

I was cast as Yuri Andropov, short lived Soviet premier, but at the time head of the KGB, so my role was very similar to my role as regional CIA chief last time - run interference, promote Soviet interests etc. with special forces and covert support. Specifically I had to topple Pol Pot, support Vietnam and damage Chinese interests in the region while promoting those of the USSR.

Given a lot of the action more concerned the surrounding countries, this map was rather more useful, particular for tracking the regions free of Pots malign influence, location of refugees/insurgents etc.

The action opened with both Russia and China shipping in supplies to their clients, Vietnam in my case and Cambodia for the Chinese. Pol Pot set about his agrarian revolution with steely eyed determination and made no particular bones about its brutality.

A decent turnout with eight players and an umpire. The chat feature in Zoom was very helpful for negotiations between rounds, each of which represented a year. We broke for the evening just as Sihanouk had been rescued by Vietnamese commandos (!), and Chinas 'exercise' along the Vietnam border had fallen into chaos while the world looked on appalled at Pol Pots Maoist fundamentalism.

In 1979 the Vietnamese launched their liberation effort and managed to install Prince Sihanouk in Phnom Penh, but failed to decisively defeat the Khmer Rouge in the region northwest of the capital. China ineffectively tried to ship in ground forces through the ports on the south, and the Vietnamese rather ineffectively tried to stop them with their newly captured navy (over 1,300 ships were captured from the RVN). 1980 ended in something of a stalemate with Pol Pot still active in the countryside but increasingly hemmed in on all sides, the Russians increasingly distracted by Afghanistan and the bellicose attitude of President-elect Reagan while the Vietnamese were stuck with their very own 'Vietnam' in Cambodia. Thailand had never been seriously threatened by communist subversion and was doing rather nicely.

And this ended with a rather worse result than historically as irl the Khmer Rouge were comprehensively smashed by the Vietnamese, and reduced to a long drawn out guerilla war which dragged on until the 90s. China had at least been revealed to be a paper tiger and a considerable portion of the Cambodian population saved from Maoist genocide. I know this stuff isn't for everyone, but it is very unusual to play a game where the KGB are the good guys! Many thanks to John for organiseing such an interesting and informative game.