Military Review English Edition September-October 2014 | Page 55

AFGHANISTAN ENDGAME

Cambodian Armed Forces (FANK)
Leadership, Logistics, and Airpower
Capabilities
Operationally, the condition of officer leadership,
logistics, and airpower within the FANK led to disastrous consequences—themes that are similar to the
current criticism of the ANSF. The insurgent Khmer
Communist force had a much higher quality of combat leadership than the FANK. The Khmer peasant
soldiers fighting for the communists were sturdy individuals who performed well and even heroically when
properly led. In contrast, poor officer leadership, low
morale, and high levels of troop desertion hampered
the FANK’s combat performance. Additionally, the
officer corps was corrupt and cronyism endemic to the
force.11 Furthermore, differences in the effectiveness
between territorial and intervention battalions plagued
combat readiness.12
While the FANK’s performance was certainly
disconcerting, the few U.S. military personnel assigned
did make some progress in training them. However,
the shortage of advisors precluded significant improvements in FANK capabilities. While the U.S. Congress
MILITARY REVIEW  September-October 2014

AP Photo/Zaheeruddin Abdullah

of 31,000 U.S. and 43,000 South Vietnamese troops
into Cambodia quickly stripped the Lon Nol regime of
its neutralist veneer.7 The initial consequences of the
Cambodian incursion were favorable. Overall enemy
offensive plans were set back, Cambodian supply lines
were denied to Hanoi, and Phnom Penh and the Lon
Nol regime appeared safe for the time being.8 Yet, while
the NVA retreated, abandoned huge base areas, and
decreased its pressure on the FANK, the success was
short-lived.
Fearing further widening of U.S. involvement in the
Southeast Asian conflict, the U.S. Congress refused to
authorize retaining U.S. ground forces in Cambodia,
forbade the use of combat advisors, limited U.S. military aid, and in 1972 placed severe restrictions on the
number of U.S. in-country military personnel.9 The
Khmer Republic had become, by the completion of the
Peace Accords in neighboring Vietnam in 1973, a sickly
dependent of the United States. In 1974, U.S. financial
aid exceeded the total Cambodian national budget
for 1969.10 Unfortunately, this policy did not permit
sufficient U.S. personnel to ensure the money would be
well spent.
Taliban fighters with Russian AK-47 assault rifles in the frontline
village of Shakardara 15 miles (25 km) north of Kabul, 9 August
1997. The Taliban at that time controlled the southern two-thirds
of Afghanistan and were battling a northern-based opposition
coalition led by ousted defense chief Ahmed Shah Massood and
Uzbek Malik Pahlawan.

was relatively generous with military advisors to the
U.S. defense attaché in Saigon, it provided few advisors
for Cambodia. The organization known as the Military
Equipment Delivery Team, Cambodia, was limited to
74 advisory and program personnel in Cambodia and
15 in Thailand. The defense attaché in Phnom Penh
supplemented this effort with 17 personnel. These were
meager numbers to improve a Cambodian army that
had 224,000 personnel.13
By mid-1972, U.S. aid to the Cambodian military
had reached about $400 million–equal to $2,000 for
every soldier, if the official personnel counts were accurate. Nonetheless, the support had done little apparent
good.14 Logistical support continued to be hampered by
inefficiencies in the FANK system and by insufficient
advising. By 1975, despite $1 billion in U.S. aid and the
efforts of the few U.S. military officers attached to the
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