The followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea were given the name of the Khmer Rouge. This reign in Cambodia is considered as the worst disasters in modern history.

In 1970, the Khmer Rouge soldiers began an insurgency against the government. They were helped by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops, and used this combined power to gain control over more than two-thirds of the country in a short time. The popularity of the Khmer Rouge is witnessed by the dramatic rise in strength from 3,000 in the year 1970 to 30,000 in 1973. With this, most of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops had withdrawn.

Finally, led by Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge overthrew the Cambodian government in 1975, after which the “Democratic Kampuchea” was established. Literally overnight, the new governance took cruel and drastic measures. Entire cities were evacuated. Property was abolished. Factories were closed. Schools were shut down. Money did not hold any value. Hundreds of thousands of taxi drivers, cooks, factory workers, clerks and everyone else became farmers suddenly. They even assassinated skilled workers and intellectuals, and many others died due to starvation. Records show that at least 2 million people died. Cambodia was reduced to nothing but a nation of slaves.

By the year 1979, tensions with Vietnam increased and Vietnamese troops invaded, helping the rival Communists factions in deposing the new Khmer Rouge government. But the Khmer Rouge continued to have a huge army of 30,000 near the Thai border and was also recognized by the United Nations as the official Cambodian government.

In 1982, this government entered into a coalition with former premier Norodom Sihanouk and Son Sann, who was a non-Communist leader. Leadership also changed hands from Pol Pot to Khieu Samphan, although it was widely believed that the real leader was still Pol Pot. In 1991, all the Cambodian factions signed a treaty asking for UN-supervised elections and in 1992; the UN assumed the administrative functions of the government. It was at this time that the Khmer Rouge disconnected itself from the peace process and started fighting. It also rejected the results of the UN-run elections that saw the beginning of a coalition government in Cambodia.

As is wont to happen, in 1997, due to factional fighting within themselves, Pol Pot was oustered and imprisoned by the Khmer Rouge and he died in 1998. That was the end of the Khmer Rouge, as most of the members were either captured, had surrendered or defected by 1999.

Not many scholars believed the reports of mass killings in Cambodia before 1979; however, when the Khmer Rouge was overtaken by the Vietnamese, the extent of the disaster was clear to all.

The Khmer Rouge even till this day evokes a sense of shock from Cambodians as well as the whole world, not just due to the death toll, which does not reflect the brutalities and tortures they carried out during their regime. The severity of their rule was such that there probably was no other revolution which changed the lives of an entire population.