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The Vietnam War in real life included a third party faction called the "United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races" (FULRO). Most westerners do not know of this.
The entire "South Vietnam" used to not be part of Vietnam. Vietnam was formerly only Northern Vietnam 1,000 years ago. "South Vietnam" used to be inhabited by indigenous natives such as the Cham Muslims and Hindus of the Champa kingdom, the Montagnard Degars of the Central Highlands, and the Khmer Krom (Cambodians) used to inhabit the Mekong Delta and Saigon and those territories belonged to Cambodia.
Vietnam launched a campaign of conquest called "Nam tiến" against them, waging a war to break Champa's power in 1471. Vietnam seized Saigon and the Mekong Delta from Cambodia, crushed the final remnant of Champa in 1832 and waged war against the Cham Muslim leader Katip Suma who declared a Jihad against the Vietnamese invasion, and crushed all Cham Muslim and Cham Hindu resistance. Vietnam annexed the Central Highlands. Vietnam then flooded Champa, the Mekong Delta and Saigon with tens of millions of ethnic Vietnamese Kinh settlers until they swamped and outnumbered the natives.
During the Vietnam war, South Vietnam began flooding the Montagnard Degar lands in the Central Highlands with over a million Vietnamese Kinh settlers. The ethnic minorities then had enough since they were going to go extinct from mass settler colonialism. The Cham Muslims, Cham Hindus, Buddhist Khmer Krom, and Montagnard Degars then united to form the "United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races" (FULRO is its French acronym) to fight against Vietnamese colonization.
The Khmer Krom Buddhist monk Chau Dara led the "Front for the Liberation of Kampuchea Krom" (Front de Liberation du Kampuchea Krom), the Cham Muslim Lieutenant Colonel paratrooper Les Kosem led the "Front for the Liberation of Champa" (Front de Liberation du Champa) and the Montagnard Degar leader Y Bham Enuol led the "Front for the Liberation of the Central Highlands" (Front de Liberation des Hauts Plateaux).
Cambodia under left wing Prince Sihanouk supported FULRO and helped in its foundation, and FULRO declared itself as a leftist, anti-imperialist, anti-America, anti-SEATO anti-western organization during its foundation in Cambodia with Prince Sihanouk and Les Kosem attending its summits.
Cambodian right wing leader Lon Nol who overthrew Sihanouk also supported FULRO, and Lon Nol himself was anti-Vietnamese and plotted to invade South Vietnam, fight against both the South Vietnamese and against the Vietcong, retake the Mekong Delta and Saigon for Cambodia, and liberate Champa and install Les Kosem as the new Champa head of state. Lon Nol had new maps printed showing Champa as an independent state and the Mekong Delta back inside Cambodia. Lon Nol killed hundreds of Vietnamese in Cambodia in his coup and wanted to bathe South Vietnam in blood. Both the left and right wings in Cambodia were anti-Vietnam and it didn't make any difference. Lon Nol was supposed to be pro-America but he hated the South Vietnamese AND the North Vietnamese.
The Chams, Khmer Krom, and Montagnard Degars then launched their first strike. FULRO initiated its first attack in 1964 against South Vietnamese and American special forces in the Central Highlands. They killed dozens of South Vietnamese troops, seized American special forces troops as hostages and overran and captured their positions.
(American Special forces had earlier set up the pro-American " Civilian Irregular Defense Groups", CIDG made out of pro-America Montagnard Degars to fight against the Viet Cong. CIDG and FULRO are NOT the same group nor were allied, they were two different organizations. FULRO started as an enemy of America. What happened was, some CIDG members defected to FULRO in 1964 during the first attack, because CIDG Degar Montagnards were being treated like crap by the South Vietnamese. So some people mistakenly think FULRO is CIDG and that FULRO was founded by American advisors, which it was not.)
FULRO proceeded to battle against South Vietnamese American backed forces. From 1964-1970 FULRO was an opponent of America. FULRO forces fought against both the South Vietnamese and the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese. The FULRO Cham leader Po Dharma led protests against the North Vietnamese embassy. Po Dharma fought against the South Vietnamese army, and he then ran right into an American patrol in the middle of the battlefield and was arrested by the Americans as an enemy combatant. The Cambodian leader Lon Nol, who was backing FULRO, got Po Dharma released. After 1970 when Lon Nol took power from Sihanouk, America had to tone down their anti-FULRO moves because of Lon Nol's support for the movement, and cease fighting against their members.
Po Dharma then fought against Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces. He was severely wounded during a battle against the Viet Cong and taken out of action to a hospital. FULRO then took him out of the battlefield and assigned him to their political arm in France to advocate for the Cham cause against the Vietnamese.
FULRO fought against the South Vietnamese up to the fall of Saigon in 1975, and then continued to fight against the North Vietnamese Communist forces and then against the united Communist Vietnam up until 1992. FULRO raided and attacked Vietnamese police stations in the Central Highlands in the 1980s from their bases in the Cambodian province of Mondulkiri. Besides Cambodia, China also sent some support to FULRO via Thailand which sent the weapons on to them.
Lon Nol's government was toppled by the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge sought to dismantle and destroy FULRO after taking power in Cambodia in 1975. The Khmer Rouge had executed the Montagnard Degar FULRO leader Y Bham Enoul and 150 other FULRO leaders after forcing them out of the French Embassy. The Cham FULRO leader Les Kosem fled abroad to Malaysia. The Khmer Rouge did not care about liberating the Montagnard Degar Central Highlands and Champa from Vietnam and only wanted the Mekong Delta back.
FULRO fighters continued to fight against the Vietnamese after the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia. They led guerilla warfare against Vietnam in Cambodia and in the Central Highlands.
Besides FULRO, three other groups fought against the Vietnamese. Right-wing anti-Communist Lon Nol remnants (Khmer People's National Liberation Front) KPNLF. Cambodian royalists loyal to Sihanouk FUNCINPEC. Khmer Rouge
Hassan A. Kasem was a Cham Muslim Helicopter pilot in Lon Nol's government. He was put into a Khmer Rouge death camp and escaped, and then Hassan fought against the Vietnamese Communists when they invaded Cambodia. He then fled the country and says that Vietnam is still interfering in Cambodia's affairs, stealing Cambodian territory and has a secret military base in the country.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_ ... 91013.html
https://archive.is/20140217053736/http: ... -s-impasse
Then a western journalist visited the FULRO bases in Mondulkiri province in 1992, and informed the FULRO fighters that their leaders were all dead or fled abroad (like Po Dharma). FULRO fighters then decided to turn over their weapons to the United Nations office in Cambodia and surrender to the United Nations.
Pretty much all Montagnard Degar CIDG members had defected to Montagnard Degar component in FULRO by 1975 because FULRO was the only organization left fighting against the Vietnamese, since CIDG was abandoned by its American allies.
Many of those CIDG defectors were among the FULRO remnants in 1992, so they got airlifted to America since the American special forces remembered they essentially got shafted back in 1975. The CIDG fighters skills were praised by American special forces and they advocated for former CIDG veterans.
FULRO was founded a leftist anti-imperialist and anti-America organization while CIDG was founded as a pro-America organization, and the FULRO absorption of defected CIDG fighters creates the confusion I mentioned. Les Kosem and Po Dharma were around during the original anti-American part when they declared their hostility against SEATO and America, and during FULRO and America's hostile period from 1964-1970 where FULRO fighters fought in combat against American troops. Po Dharma is still alive today and advocates for the Cham people.
Former FULRO Cham and Montagnard Degar fighters live in western countries like America and France. Cham activists living in the United States run an organization called "International Office of Champa" while Montagnard Degar activists in the United States run an organization called "Montagnard Foundation" and I believed they changed their name to "Degar Foundation". They have their own websites. Musa Porome and his daughter Khaleelah Porome are Cham Muslim activists living in the United States. They tried lobbying the United States government and especially Congress, but all of their attempts are basically ignored due to capitalist, imperialist interests like Clinton and Podesta's lobbying to sell arms to the Vietnamese government, and Obama's pro-Vietnam "Pivot".
In 2001 and 2004, massive protests were helped by the Montagnard Degars in the Central Highlands against the majority ethnic Kinh Vietnamese colonization of their homeland, and Vietnamese capitalist interests seizing their lands for use as plantations to grow cash crops and mine minerals. The protests were brutally crushed by the Vietnamese military. The capitalist TPP pact spearheaded by Obama and Clinton would have benefited the Western and Kinh Vietnamese capitalist interests exploiting the Central Highlands for cash crops like coffee on land stolen and seized from Montagnard Degars.
One of the sick parts of this story is that the media and Võ Nguyên Giáp did protest against Bauxite mining in the Central Highlands - but NOT out of concern for the Montagnard Degars or their indigenous land rights. Instead they were concerned over the safety of Kinh Vietnamese plantations growing cash crops like coffee on stolen Montagnard Degar lands. The bauxite mining was going to ruin the plantations, they said. They were feigning environmental concern in order to benefit the plantation owners and said nothing about land seized from Montagnard Degars.
