dominance over the party and had his own separate encampment, staff, and guards. No outsider was allowed to meet him without an escort. He took over from Sary as the Secretary of the North East Zone. In November 1969, Sâr trekked to Hanoi to persuade the North Vietnamese government to provide direct military assistance. They refused, urging him to revert to a political struggle. In January 1970 he flew to Beijing. There, his wife began showing early signs of the chronic paranoid schizophrenia she would later be diagnosed with. Against Lon Nol Collaboration with Sihanouk: 1970–1971 In March 1970, while Sâr was in Beijing, Cambodian parliamentarians led by Lon Nol deposed Sihanouk when he was out of the country. Sihanouk also flew to Beijing, where the Chinese and North Vietnamese Communist Parties urged him to form an alliance with the Khmer Rouge to overthrow Lon Nol's right-wing government. Sihanouk agreed. On Zhou Enlai's advice, Sâr also agreed, although his dominant role in the CPK was concealed from Sihanouk. Sihanouk then formed his own government-in-exile in Beijing and launched the National United Front of Kampuchea to rally Lon Nol's opponents. Sihanouk's support for the Khmer Rouge helped greatly in recruitment, with Khmer Rouge undergoing a massive expansion in size. Many of the new recruits for the Khmer Rouge were apolitical peasants who fought in support of the King, not for communism, of which they had little understanding. In April 1970, Sâr flew to Hanoi. He stressed to Lê Duẩn that while he wanted the Vietnamese to supply the Khmer Rouge with weapons, he did not want troops: the Cambodians needed to oust Lon Nol themselves. North Vietnamese armies, in collaboration with the Viet Cong, nevertheless invaded Cambodia to attack Lon Nol's forces; in turn, South Vietnam and the United States sent troops to the country to bolster his government. This pulled Cambodia into the Second Indochina War already raging across Vietnam. The U.S. dropped three times as many bombs on Cambodia during the conflict as they had on Japan during World War II. Although targeting Viet Cong and Khmer Rouge encampments, the bombing primarily affected civilians. This helped fuel recruitment to the Khmer Rouge, which had an estimated 12,000 regular soldiers at the end of 1970 and four times that number by 1972. In June 1970, Sâr left Vietnam and reached his K-5 base. In July he headed south; it was