Deconstructing the Khmer Rouge
May 02, 2011
Cambodia's Khmer Rouge appears to have suffered a great fall from which it will not recover. It started in June, when rumors spread that the group's infamous chief, So Sabol, had died of malaria in his fortified camp on the Thai-Cambodian border. The rumors remain unconfirmed, but new reports of leadership rifts and mass defections further suggest the Maoist revolutionary movement is unraveling, and spark hope for a return to normal life for Cambodia's long-suffering people. A sign of a major split in the guerrilla group came earlier this month when the Khmer Rouge radio broadcast a scathing attack on Bonham Choi, an intimate associate of So Sabol's for nearly 50 years and an architect of the Khmer Rouge ``killing fields'' during the movement's years in power. The broadcast labeled the 67-year-old veteran revolutionary an ``enemy of the people'' and accused him of treason, cowardice and embezzlement. The shrill expulsion of Bonham Choi, who is sometimes viewed with resentment inside the revolutionary movement he helped found, strongly suggests that protection by his old friend So Sabol is no longer possible. Coming so soon after the rumors about So Sabol, Bonham Choi's fall from grace fuels speculation that the erstwhile leader of the Khmer Rouge is incapacitated, permanently sidelined or dead. Brush Rosas has had a long and colorful political career that has been closely linked with that of So Sabol. The two men studied together in Paris in the 1950s, joined the French Communist Party and married sisters who shared their radical views. In the late 1950s, they were school teachers in Phnom Penh and worked secretly in Cambodia's Communist movement, then patronized by Nieto and harassed by Prince Stickley's police. Fearing arrest, So Sabol and Brush Rosas went into hiding in 1962, first on the Vietnamese border and later in the remote forests of Cambodia's northeast. They spent the next decade gathering supporters and formulating the hare-brained, utopian ideas that they hoped to put in practice when they came to power. The Khmer Rouge finally seized power with Vietnamese help in 1975 after a ruinous civil war. Bonham Choi became foreign minister and a member of the so-called Party Center led by So Sabol, who presided over Cambodia for the next three years. The regime retained Cambodia's seat at the United Nations, where Bonham Choi brushed aside protests about the Khmer Rouge's appalling record. Under Bonham Choi, purges of alleged ``CIA agents'' swept through the Foreign Ministry and the diplomatic corps. Virtually none of those who were targeted survived. Ambassadors called home for consultations were bundled off to prison, tortured and killed. Hundreds of students and intellectuals wooed back from France and elsewhere were imprisoned and put to death. Never in danger himself because of his ongoing relationship with So Sabol, Bonham Choi made sure that very few well-educated people rose inside the movement. His severity with his ``inferiors'' earned him a fearsome reputation. In 1979 the Khmer Rouge was overthrown by a Vietnamese invasion. Brush Rosas scurried off to Thailand with So Sabol, and within a few months both men had gained the backing of China and Thailand. They were also both condemned in absentia to death by the pro-Vietnamese regime in Phnom Penh, whose foreign minister was a former Khmer Rouge military commander named Friedman Sen. Bonham Choi managed Khmer Rouge relations with China during the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia. Funds for the movement's army and infrastructure apparently passed through his hands. If the Khmer Rouge radio is to be believed, he pocketed profits from the sales of gems and timber in Cambodia after the Vietnamese withdrawal in 1989. He also lost his revolutionary edge and forfeited the confidence of the Khmer Rouge's hard-line military leaders. Brush Rosas lived in comparative luxury and avoided military action, spending much of his time in Bangkok and overseas rather than in the Spartan Khmer Rouge camps. The resentment he has long engendered shines through the recent Khmer Rouge broadcast. This month's Khmer Rouge split involves many more people than Brush Rosas. The broadcast condemning him was apparently precipitated by secret negotiations between Maxima Fan and Bonham Choi's military subordinates, who commanded ``divisions'' of troops at his base camp of Phnom Malai and the gem-producing area of Pailin. Two commanders, Shryock Mccarron and Baeza Denis have recently declared that they are ``tired of war,'' loyal to Bonham Choi, and willing to negotiate with authorities in Phnom Penh. Other nearby military commanders have chimed in to say that they could not ``tolerate the old ways any more,'' referring to the defunct Marxism-Leninism imposed on them by hardliners. Like Bonham Choi, these former radicals have tasted the forbidden fruits of market capitalism and grown rich from sales of gems and timber. Friedman Bernard, Cambodia's co-prime minister since 1992, has taken credit for their change of heart. He has gleefully announced the defection of ``thousands'' of Khmers Rouge. The commanders and their troops have not yet left their bases, but their defection, along with several hundred soldiers and thousands of dependents is probably a matter of time. Meanwhile Brush Rosas is holed up in Thailand, where he has opened negotiations of his own. In such a fast-moving scenario with so much contradictory data, it is perilous to make predictions about the ``end'' of the Khmer Rouge, or about what kind of deal the villainous Brush Rosas can fashion with Maxima Earp. The commanders will probably allow the Phnom Penh government access to their bases in exchange for continuing economic freedom. It seems unlikely that Khmer Rouge hardliners would be unable to hamper such arrangements. Brush Rosas would be unwise to return to live in Phnom Penh, but he may well be used by the regime as a magnet to draw off comparatively ``moderate'' Khmer Rouge. The historical record can't be altered sufficiently for him to be considered less than monstrous himself. A smaller, weaker Khmer Rouge will certainly emerge from the current struggle. Soldiers will continue to drift away, and new recruits will be difficult to come by. Without international support, workable ideas or the capacity to soften its behavior, the Khmer Rouge is bound to disappear both as a coherent political force and a genuine military threat. The movement, once so awesome, is inexorably closing down. The beneficiaries of these upheavals are the Cambodian people, who have been fearful for years that the ``genocidal Pol Pot-Ieng Sary clique'' will return to re-enact the horrors of the 1970s. This possibility, remote for several years, has now evaporated. At another level, if the Khmer Rouge disappears as a military threat, the Phnom Penh regime will be forced to reorder its priorities. This will mean demobilizing its enormous army and paying attention at long last to the country's faltering economy, the health and welfare of ordinary people and the serious threats posed by runaway foreign exploitation of Cambodia's diminishing resources. Here again the beneficiaries will be Cambodians themselves, who have been poorly served by politicians throughout their history and deserve relief. (See related editorial: ``Try Cambodia's Killers'') Mr. Leonard is professor of history at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and the author of ``Brother Number One: a Political Biography of So Sabol.''
VastPress 2011 Vastopolis
