Phnom Malai

Today it is a remote and sparsely populated border area with scattered settlements mostly made up of former rebels.

It was supported by the United States government, who took a dim view of the existing pro-Vietnamese Cambodian regime, as well as countries like Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore, whose representative exhorted the disoriented refugees to "go back and fight.

"[2] By 1981 Phnom Malai was not self-sufficient, the Khmer Rouge uniforms and weapons came from China, channeled through the Thai military, and the food from markets across the border in Thailand.

By mid-1980s, with the cooperation of the West and China, the Khmer Rouge had grown to about 35 to 50 thousand troops and committed cadres.

[3] Pol Pot lived in the Phnom Malai area, giving interviews in the early 1980s accusing all those who opposed him of being traitors and "puppets" of the Vietnamese until he disappeared from public view.