The Geneva settlement, concluded in July, provided for the partition of Vietnam at the seventeenth parallel until after national elections and for regroupment areas in Laos for Lao resistance fighters. Those who had fought with the Viet Minh in southern Vietnam could either disarm and reenter civilian life or regroup to the north. For Cambodian fighters, there was no regroupment zone inside Cambodia or any provision for regrouping guerrillas elsewhere. Most of them welcomed independence and chose to return home, but more than one thousand others were evacuated to northern Vietnam. Among those evacuated were such important Khmer Communists as Keo Moni, Sieu Heng, Tou Samouth, and Son Ngoc Minh, as well as three of Sar’s friends from Paris, Sien An, Rath Samoeun, and Yun Soeurn. A handful of these Khmer, including Tou Samouth and Sieu Heng, came home in 1955-1956. The rest remained in Vietnam for many years. Other former guerrillas, including Sok Knol and Saloth Sar, were sent to Phnom Penh to work for the Indochina Communist party. Sok Thuok arrived in the capital in October 1954, after Saloth Sar.8

For Cambodia, the Geneva agreements stipulated that elections for a National Assembly would be held sometime in 1955. They were to be overseen by an international control group composed of delegates from Poland, India, and Canada. It was hoped that former resistance fighters would thereby be integrated into society by joining political parties or competing with them for people’s votes.

Unlike his counterparts in Vietnam and Laos, however, King Sihanouk had become an important political actor. He believed that he had won independence for Cambodia singlehandedly. He wanted to play a larger role in Cambodia than the one allotted him by the constitution, and since he had never respected the National Assembly, he now sought some way of governing unopposed. From his point of view, the elections stipulated at Geneva constituted an obstacle and an opportunity.

The Democrats, still enjoying widespread national support, were eager to campaign. Before Geneva, Keng Vannsak, Ea Shichau, and several others had worked to push the party toward a more radical, anti-American position. Having absorbed anti-American ideas while in France, these men feared that the U.S. “imperialists” would step in to replace the French and that Sihanouk would seek an American alliance or join the anticommunist Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO) formed at U.S. insistence in the aftermath of Geneva.