K5 Plan

Protected by the Thai state, and with powerful foreign connections, Pol Pot's virtually intact militia of about 30,000 to 35,000 troops regrouped and reorganized in forested and mountainous zones behind the Thai-Cambodian border.

During the early 1980s Khmer Rouge forces showed their strength in Thailand, inside the refugee camps near the border, and were able to receive a steady and abundant supply of military equipment.

The new republic's rule was tenuous in the border areas owing to persistent sabotage by the Khmer Rouge of the provincial administrative system through constant guerrilla warfare.

[5] It became a gigantic effort that included clearing long patches of tropical forest by felling a great number of trees, as well as slashing and uprooting tall vegetation.

[6] From the environmental viewpoint the massive felling of trees was an ecological disaster, contributing to acute deforestation, the endangerment of species, and leaving behind a vast degraded area.

[7] The K5 Plan was counterproductive for the image of the PRK, as a republic bent on reconstructing what the rule of Pol Pot and his Communist Party of Kampuchea had destroyed in Cambodia.

Thousands of Cambodian peasants, who despite the Vietnamese invasion had welcomed their release from the Khmer Rouge's interference in traditional farming and the absence of taxes under the PRK government,[2] became disgruntled.