Wednesday, 2 July 2008

Can Cambodia Be Saved?

Pol Pot's Reign Of Terror Was A Terrible Period In The Country's History. But His End Doesn't Begin To Solve Its Problems.

By William Shawcross NEWSWEEK
Jun 30, 1997 Issue

Cambodia Khmer Rouge
Now, the group that was born in the jungle, and spent most of its 40-odd years of life in the jungle, is dying in the jungle. Of course, it's wise to be cautious when assessing the stories of Pol Pot's demise. Nothing in Cambodia is ever certain. Politics, especially revolutionary politics, is always shrouded in lies, feints and subterfuge. Last summer Pol Pot was reliably reported to be dead from malaria. He did not die then, and he may not be handed over for trial now.

But it's clear that the brutal communist movement has been losing strength and splitting apart for years. In 1996 a large faction under the control of Pol Pot's comrade and former foreign minister Ieng Sary defected en masse to the government in Phnom Penh. ""This time it really does look like the end,'' says Steve Heder, one of the world's leading experts on the Khmer Rouge.

It is easy to demonize Pol Pot and to say that all the evil of the Khmer Rouge is embodied in him. In fact, like all communist movements, the Khmer Rouge was a collective organization, and there are at least hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people who share responsibility for appalling crimes. Nonetheless, Pol Pot was known as Brother No. 1, and without him, the Khmer Rouge would not have existed or behaved as they did.

Almost nothing was known of their leaders, their ideology or their ambitions when in April 1975 they defeated the American-backed government and marched into Phnom Penh. Their first astonishing act - emptying Phnom Penh and all other towns at once and at gunpoint - confirmed them as perhaps the most radical and brutal revolutionaries of the century. Over the next three years they attempted to transform Cambodia into a ""pure'' agricultural communist society, utterly cut off from the rest of the world.

Refugees told of a land of blood and tears, of unremitting toil in vast work camps, of no food, no medical care. They said that anyone with glasses risked death as ""an intellectual''; so did anyone suspected of even modest wealth, let alone ties with the old regime. Family life was subsumed into collectives; children were ordered to inform on their parents. Between 1 million and 2 million people died.

And for what reason, to what end? Few knew. Those acquainted with Pol Pot describe him as a mild and even charming man in person. He is calmly persuasive rather than demagogic, they say. Yet there is little doubt that this rather unremarkable man from a wealthy Cambodian farming family authorized much if not all of the terror that engulfed the country and spilled across the border into Vietnam. He is (one hopes) the last of the awful 20th-century dictators whose fantastic bloodshed was inspired by the teachings of Karl Marx. Lenin - Stalin - Mao - Pol Pot. With luck, the line ends here.

It's not yet clear whether Pol Pot will actually have to answer for his crimes in court. A trial would be a desperately needed antidote to the culture of impunity that has developed. And it would help establish the real chain of responsibility for one of the great crimes of the century.

But Pol Pot and the tatters of the Khmer Rouge are not the real crisis facing Cambodia today. The country is without effective leadership; the coalition government established after the U.N.-sponsored 1993 election has wholly fallen apart. The U.N. sowed the seeds of a civil society, and there are still courageous human-rights groups, women's groups, journalists and a few politicians. But the government is increasingly corrupt and lawless. Now, with the factions of the two prime ministers, Prince Norodom Ranariddh and Hun Sen, fighting each other in street gun battles, many diplomats in Phnom Penh fear that the political violence will increase, especially as next year's elections approach. Already, Prince Ranariddh and his associates are warning that Hun Sen will use his party's control of local administrations throughout the country to intimidate electors and corrupt the whole process. Ranariddh is seeking to strengthen his own position by dealing with the rump of the ""respectable'' Khmer Rouge, after Pol Pot has presumably been removed.

Before last week's street battle and the capture of Pol Pot, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was due to visit Phnom Penh. She has already expressed concern for the country's stability. If she actually makes the trip, what she sees and hears will give her further grounds for anxiety. The world must re-engage. Without much more pressure from donor nations - the United States, Japan and the European community contribute about half of Cambodia's annual budget - the country will continue its downward spiral. Pol Pot may be gone. But the real crisis continues.

SHAWCROSS, a journalist, is author of "The Quality of Mercy: Cambodia, the Holocaust and the Modern Conscience.

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