"Khmer Issarak Movement: A Case-Study on A Former Issarak Fighter"

A study entitled as "Khmer Issarak Movement: A Case-Study on A Former Issarak Fighter" is made here in order to learn about the struggle style and life of the movement, which were formed to attain Cambodia independence from France, basing on a former Issarak man.

In general, Issarak men were not deserved gratitude from Cambodian people at all. Neither was he, who had sacrified himself for the sake of Cambodia independence when they talk the independence movement.However, they was accused of "Issarochak", bandits of Issarak. Of course, it is partly true because the KIM-(Khmer Issarak Movement) consisted of all kinds of people. They were rightists and leftists, real nationalists, and fake nationalists or opportunists like bandits who did not love independence, but were too clever to steal and rob people when there was chaos in the country. It is also because most Cambodian people did not realize that Issarak men, especially their leaders came from the place of different backgrounds, political philosophies, agendas, and ethnicities. I would like to emphasize that this study is neither made to condemn anyone as bandits or bad Issarak at all, nor I try to persuade Cambodian people and all readers to believe that some particular group of Issarak movements were good or real nationalists.

This study aims to generate real information or events and facts happened to the KIM. Then these events must be processed and honestly revealed to the public. Any judgement or evaluations are their duty, from their own points of view. But I think the best evaluation should be judged basing on the facts. It is an effort for a small study on history of KIM, especially the one of Prince Chantaraingsey's group through a living document. It is Mr. Ny Vanthy who is now already 73 years old (in the year of 2006) and was interviewed to get a lot of facts of KIM. It is the right time to do it because he is so old now and he would bring all the facts with him when he died. And we cannot wait for the big scope of study. Therefore, I decided to study about the KIM basing mainly on only this eyewitness.

The objectives of this study are to find out the struggle life of the KIM, its conflict with opposing groups, its fighting strategies, its internal policies, its relation with external institutions as well as to study the changes they made, its causes and effects. In the process of collecting data, I encountered many difficulties including the lack of documents, though. In addition, what got me into trouble was that our key informant, Ny Vanthy could not remember the dates of some events. For example, he did not remember the date that he was recruited by his commander, Hem Khan, to learn in the school of army at Taniev of Kampong Speu. He only remembers that it was during the time that Son Gnoc Thanh escaped to the Maquis again. In this case, I need to search for the date. It was a difficult, but interesting task to be in this situation because after patiently searched for it, I finally discovered that Son Gnoc Thanh escaped to the Maquis again in June 09, 1952. Therefore, Ny Vanthy studied the military strategies in June 09, 1952. Similarly, physical difficulties came to me, too. Though I took my study time in the class to interview the key informant, there were several times that I missed to do the interview because he had gone away on his own business. In return, this study does teach and guide me greatly. It brings me a realistic experience of research and especially the knowledge as well as the details of leftist and rightist KIM in the Maquis.

Now I believe in many shoolar opinion stated "Research has no end." It depends on two main words, time and space. Anyway, the study I am doing must meaningfully lack and inaccidentally have mistake. That why I am ready to receive your comments to make this book better and more accurate. Finally, I hope it is necessary and contribute to later studies or researches.