FULRO is usually told as the story of one man, Y Bhăm Êñuôl. It was never only his. This page records the others we can name — commanders, interpreters, rivals and the men who were still in the forest in 1992 — with what the published record says about each, and where that record is uncertain.
How to read this page
Most of what is written about these men was written by outsiders — American Special Forces officers, journalists, and a Cham veteran of the movement who became a historian. Where a claim comes from one source only, we say whose it is. Where sources disagree about how someone died, we give both. For Y Bhăm Êñuôl himself, see his own page.
The founders
- Les Kosem (b. 1927 – d. 1976)
- A Cham, trained at the French military academy of Saint-Cyr, an officer in the Royal Cambodian Army and later a brigadier general of the Khmer Republic. He founded the Front for the Liberation of Champa around 1960–61 and coined the word Austrien for a shared identity of the Austronesian and Austroasiatic peoples of the peninsula. He was central to FULRO’s creation and, after 1968, its main internal rival to the Dega leadership: it was his men who seized Camp le Rolland on December 30, 1968, and placed Y Bhăm Êñuôl under house arrest. After the 1970 coup in Phnom Penh he commanded the Khmer Republic’s 5th Brigade, in which Bunong and other highland soldiers with FULRO backgrounds served. He escaped to Malaysia when the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh, and died there in 1976.
- Chau Dara (Um Savuth)
- Leader of the Front for the Liberation of Kampuchea Krom, the Khmer wing of the three-front coalition. The historian William Noseworthy, following FULRO’s own documents, gives him as the movement’s first president at its founding on August 1, 1964, with Les Kosem and Y Bhăm Êñuôl as vice-presidents. The Dega tradition, and most American accounts, name Y Bhăm Êñuôl as president from the start.
- Y Dhơn Adrong
- Vice-president of FULRO, and the man who signed the final accord with the Republic of Vietnam on February 1, 1969, opposite Paul Nưr (see Paul Nưr and Nay Luett). According to William Chickering, his opposition to Y Bhăm Êñuôl created rivalries that later led to his arrest and execution. We have not found a second source for how he died.
The commanders
- Kpa Doh
- Half-Jarai, chief interpreter and effectively the Montagnard commander of the II Corps Mike Force, and its FULRO political officer. At Plei Trap valley on November 8, 1966, he was shot in the neck and went on directing his men. By 1967 he was one of the most powerful highland figures in Pleiku. In April 1975 he took refuge in the French Embassy in Phnom Penh. What happened to him after that is not known: Chickering, who searched for the answer, could not settle whether he was handed over and killed or survived to fight on.
- Y Kdruin Mlô — “Philippe Drouin,
Cowboy” (1936–1968) - A Rhade interpreter for the Americans who became a FULRO colonel commanding a division in Darlac. He was killed in 1968. The American journalist Daniel Ford, who met him in 1964, wrote his biography. Accounts of his death differ: Ford records that he was murdered by rival highland rebels; the veteran Jim Morris, reviewing Chickering, describes a quarrel in Ban Me Thuot that ended with his guards killing a Vietnamese sergeant, after which rivals and the authorities had him killed.
- Y Bun Sur
- A well-educated FULRO leader who left Vietnam after the 1964 revolt and commanded the former Buon Sar Pa strike force as a battalion of the Cambodian army. According to Chickering he was executed when the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh in April 1975.
- Y Bhan Kpor
- A colonel in the Cambodian army by 1975, who had attended the US Army infantry officers’ course at Fort Benning. His family in Phnom Penh was killed by the Khmer Rouge. He survived, lived the rest of his life in Southeast Asia, and died only recently; he was one of the veterans Chickering interviewed.
The last years
- Kok Ksor (1944 or 1945–2019)
- Jarai. Joined BAJARAKA in 1958 and FULRO in 1964; named FULRO chief of staff by Y Bhăm Êñuôl in 1974. He came to the United States, founded the Montagnard Foundation around 1990, and for three decades was the best-known Dega voice abroad, bringing the Dega case to the United Nations and, through the Foundation, to the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization. He died on January 9, 2019.
- Pierre K’briuh
- A former FULRO leader living in the United States by 1992, who urged the last fighters in Mondulkiri to seek asylum rather than go on. In 1993 he was one of three signatories, with Kok Ksor and Nay Rong, of the Dega submission to the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations in Geneva.
- Y Peng Ayun
- Commander-in-chief of what was left of FULRO in 1992, holding the rank of colonel. It was he who met the United Nations in the Mondulkiri forest in September 1992, and he who handed over the movement’s flag and weapons in October. His words to the journalists who found him are recorded in Mondulkiri, 1992.
Further reading
- William H. Chickering, A War of Their Own: FULRO — The Other National Liberation Front, Vietnam 1955–75 (Casemate, 2025) — the source for most of the individual fates above; see also Jim Morris’s review for Special Forces Chapter 78
- William B. Noseworthy, “Lowland Participation in the Irredentist ‘Highlands Liberation Movement’ in Vietnam, 1955–1975,” ASEAS 6:1 (2013) — free PDF; Les Kosem, Chau Dara and the founding
- Catherine Scheer, “Subaltern soldiers: Overshadowed Bunong highlanders in the Khmer Republic’s army, 1970–75,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 53 (2022)
- Daniel Ford, Cowboy: The Interpreter Who Became a Soldier, a Warlord, and One More Casualty of Our War in Vietnam (Warbird Books, 2018) — publisher’s page
- Joe P. Dunn, “Kok Ksor and the Struggle for Cultural Survival,” Athens Journal of History 10:1 (2024) — free PDF
- Po Dharma, Du FLM au FULRO: une lutte des minorités du sud indochinois, 1955–1975 (Les Indes Savantes, 2006) — by a Cham veteran of the movement
- Montagnard/Dega International Human Rights Committee, Human Rights Violations – The People of the Dega Republic, Geneva, July 1993 — the Dega submission signed by Kok Ksor, Pierre K’briuh and Nay Rong
Compiled September 2026. This is the page in the library we most want Dega families to correct. If you are the child or grandchild of anyone named here, or of anyone who should be, please write to us.