prohibited advisory and combat tasks until 1975.) The FANK, which until that date had been armed, supplied, and maintained by American advisors and technicians, now faced a new reality in which they had to repair their own equipment and train their troops as best as they could with far less of a budget. Civil War years The creation of the Chinese-sponsored FUNK coalition by Sihanouk and the lending of his popular support to the anti-Republican insurgency gave it greater legitimacy in the eyes of the pro-Sihanoukist Cambodian peasantry, many of whom began to flock into its ranks. This move inadvertently also allowed the Khmer Rouge to recruit peasants from the villages on the rural areas under their control that otherwise would have been uninterested. In addition, many politically moderate Cambodians came to dislike Lon Nol's authoritarian (and unstable) republican regime, due to his corrupt ways and oppressive rule that curbed political and civil rights far more than Sihanouk had done. In the wake of the January 1973 Paris Peace Accords, Lon Nol proved unable to halt the illegal build-up of North Vietnamese forces in the lower Mekong-Bassac area in preparation for a renewed offensive in neighbouring South Vietnam. He also failed to engage in a properly coordinated war effort with either the American CIA or the Southern Vietnamese Nguyen Van Thieu regime. Meanwhile, FANK troops committed numerous Human Rights abuses against civilians, particularly the persecution of ethnic Vietnamese (who were accused of supporting the NVA/VC) and the repression of Khmer peasant villagers who rioted in support of Sihanouk, misguided policies that drove the latter into the arms of Pol Pot. In the remote areas of the country, notably in the highland regions, the FANK proved incapable of restraining the Khmer Rouge's fearsome intimidation campaigns that targeted the peasantry, let alone protecting them. After mid-1971, the Republican government focused on consolidating its hold over the key urban centers, the main garrisons and the lower Mekong-Bassac corridors, thus leaving most of the countryside virtually open to Khmer Rouge recruiting drives. Whilst during the 1967–68 operations waged against the Khmer Rouge's Revolutionary Army of Kampuchea (RAK) strongholds in Battambang Province Lon Nol could rely on the peasantry's loyalty to Prince Sihanouk, he was now alone. His deteriorating army, reduced to a garrison force confined to the main cities, was increasingly regarded as the military wing of the Phnom Penh regime rather than of