Les Kosem
Les Kosem, also known by the nom de guerre "Po Nagar", was a Cambodian-Cham military officer and a prominent figure in the Second Indochina War and the Cambodian Civil War.
Early career
Kosem, an airborne colonel, was the most senior Cham officer in the Royal Cambodian Army. During the later 1950s, he had been responsible for setting up the FLC which is an organisation seeking greater autonomy for the Chams. In 1964, acting on the advice of a French 'handler', Kosem made overtures to the leadership of BAJARAKA, a group seeking independence for the Degar people of the Vietnamese Central Highlands. Kosem was thought to have been acting as a double agent, working for both the Cambodian secret service and the French SDECE. The link between the FLC, BAJARAKA, and the Khmer Krom "White Scarves" separatist movement was to result in the creation of the guerrilla movement FULRO.In 1968, after internal disagreements within FULRO, Kosem was to surround the movement's headquarters with several battalions of the Royal Cambodian Army, and arrested its president Y Bham Enuol.
Kosem was also heavily involved in directing clandestine shipments of weapons from the port of Sihanoukville in Cambodia to the Viet Cong, in accordance with a secret arrangement between the Cambodian Head of State, Norodom Sihanouk, and the North Vietnamese.