Blowback - S5 Episode 10 - "The Terrible But Unfinished Story"

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

Wounded but not destroyed, Cambodia staggers into the 21st century.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The soldier on the left is the non-communist. Those on the right in the plain green are Khmer Rouge. And if they were fighting together side by side, you would find that, in your words, unacceptable. Absolutely, and we have indicated so very clearly to see Anuk and the other non-communists. What would we do about it? The law, if there was a judgment made,

that this violated the law, that then we would have to cut off arms. Up to now, the non-communist resistance. Correct. We are not supplying. I'm sorry, support, we do not supply lethal support, but we would have to cut off our support to the non-communist. In fact, you did say we would have to cut off arms

to the non-communist. Well, I made a mistake there. We do not supply any lethal assistance to the non-communists. Sometimes the CIA, Central Intelligence Agency of the USA, gave weapons to the non-communist forces. Perhaps, you know, your government and the CIA They are not cooperating with each other.

Each other, each other, with other, speak about this lost sign. James. And I'm Noah Colwin. And this is Season 5, Episode 10, The Terrible but Unfinished Story. In our final episode of this season, we'll see the aftermath of the Vietnamese occupation of post-Khmer Rouge, Cambodia. Hanoi will withdraw its forces, but what will be left in their wake, and what will become of the Khmer Rouge, who still stalk the west of the country. And in the jungles on the Thai border, Pulpot lives, growing more eccentric than ever and remaining as ruthless as ever, despite starting a new family. In this episode, we will see the demise of the Khmer Rouge by the end of the 1990s and the slow, painful, and long-overdue process

of establishing an international tribunal to affirm their crimes. And finally, we'll see where the players of our story all ended up and where things stand today in the terrible but unfinished story of Cambodia. On the diplomatic front, Thailand and its anti-communist partners in Southeast Asia found common cause with China in backing the resistance, but they were embarrassed by Paul Potts' reputation. So to win respectability for the resistance, the ASEAN nations had lobbied and pressured for a coalition with the Khmer Rouge, still the official government of democratic Cambodia. By the middle of the 1980s, it had become clear that the Vietnamese and Cambodian government's war with the Khmer Rouge insurgency

had fallen into an uneasy stalemate. As you've heard, Deng Xiaopin, Ping in Beijing and Ronald Reagan in Washington had conspired to keep the Khmer Rouge armed, fed, and in good diplomatic standing, despite their overall unpopularity in Cambodia. There was also a major change in leadership in Moscow at this time, the accession to power of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985. Last season, we described how, as part of a redoubled effort. effort to make nice with the West, Gorbachev had drastically reduced Soviet aid to allies like communist Afghanistan, Cuba, and Vietnam.

Without that aid, writes journalist Joel Brinkley, Vietnam was in trouble. Quote, so much so that the next year, the Sixth Party Congress in Vietnam took a radical step. It launched a program called Doi Moy, or Economic Renovation, an attempt to introduce a free market economy, end quote. Evidence suggests that this reordering of the economy in Vietnam had ripple effects on the Cambodian occupation next door. Hanoi's foreign debt had risen to $6.7 billion by the start of 1986, and with Vietnam still on the out, with the West, there was no sign of relief or aid in sight. The cost-benefit analysis for the Cambodian occupation, under a liberalizing economy back in Vietnam,

was becoming all too clear. In Tainin, one of the border areas that the Khmer Rouge attacked, we spoke with Mr. Haimam about his time defusing bombs left by the conflict. both Pulpott's war and the Americans. People here say there's no war as cruel as the war with Pol Pot. It's all landmines here. Out of 10 million square meters, 7 million are filled with landmines. It's harsh.

I have a younger brother who defused bombs. My father-in-law started to join two. He diffused landmines left by the Khmer Rouge, but that over there is a bomb from the old regime, or the Americans. Pol Pot's landmine might only break a leg, but the American bombs kill you. From here to there, a few hundred meters from here, it was all minefields.

The cost-benefit analysis for the Cambodian occupation, under a liberalizing economy back in front, back in Vietnam, was becoming all too clear. For several years, the Vietnamese had been eagerly courting U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz, who was less hostile to Hanoi than his predecessor, Alexander Hague. But even Schultz was wary of upsetting the U.S. alliance with ASEAN, or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Asian originally created in the 1960s to counter communist China.

was now positioned with China against communist Vietnam, the only country in the region left out of the association. With Vietnam appearing to sputter in the mid-1980s, its biggest rivals in ASEAN, Thailand and China, did not press for normalization either. Running out of options, Vietnam decided that its only maneuver left was to withdraw unilaterally from Cambodia.

from Cambodia, which it announced in 1988. Australia, Indonesia, Japan, France, and other nations had for a few years supported talks among Khmer Rouge, the Vietnamese government in Phnom Penh, Prince Sianuk, and erstwhile resistance leaders. None of that amounted to much, writes Brinkley. Quote, but the Vietnamese withdrawal changed everything. In Cambodia today, an end and a beginning, the end of Vietnam's the 11-year occupation as the last of those troops pulled out.

The beginning of great uncertainty about the future of Cambodia, our country is so beleaguered for so long. All of a sudden, people began to ask, with the Vietnamese army gone, what's to stop the Khmer Rouge from marching back into Phnom Penh? We spoke to journalist Elizabeth Becker about this moment when the Vietnamese unilaterally withdrew its forces from Cambodia. Finally, Vietnam pulled the, it's called the Bluff. They had hoped for a final peace agreement and nothing happened. So they said, okay, we're withdrawing without a peace agreement.

And only then, this is, by now you have gone through President Korn. Carter, President Reagan, and now President George H.W. Bush. And James Baker finally turned around and said, uh-oh, this is not going to be good if the Khmer Rouge come back to power, which is what was it set up to do? And so I did a lot of reporting out of Washington for this because so much was in Washington's hands. They finally said, oh, without us, there's no Khmer Rouge. Vietnam promises troops will leave Cambodia by fall, read a special report in the New York. Times on April 6, 1989. Quote,

today, instead of waiting for aid to the opposition guerrillas to cease, Vietnam urged the supporters of the opposition guerrillas, most notably China, to honor promises to stop all military aid when Vietnam withdraws, end quote. Cambodians are split, happy the Vietnamese occupiers are leaving, but fearful of the future. The Vietnamese aren't the first ally to leave the Cambodians in the learned. Much, 15 years ago, the U.S. evacuated and the Khmer Rouge gained power. The man overseeing the return of full sovereignty to Cambodia was Hun Sen. Hun was a former Khmer Rouge leader now running the pro-Vietnam People's Republic of Campuchia.

A one-time Khmer Rouge who defected to Vietnam, he had been a part of Hanoi's trained National Liberation Front that rolled into Cambodia on Christmas 78. He wore a glass eye as the result of a war wound from fighting Lawnall. Power-hungry, yes, but by the standards of Cambodia at the time, Hun Sen was a, quote, modern, vibrant politician in the words of Elizabeth Becker. And, at the beginning of 1989, he got to be the bearer of good news. Hun stated publicly, quote, It is as if I've just woken up from a very bad dream

and I have to reorder everything again. The question is nation building. We are not looking to build up Marxism or communism. We are looking to improve the welfare of the people. This, Hun said, requires capitalism. And in the past six months, wrote Elizabeth Becker, he has pushed the economy in that direction, by pegging the currency to the international market,

requiring industry to earn a profit or become privatized, allowing wages on a peace rate basis for key enterprises, and expanding the private sector to include schools, medical clinics, and soon, banks, end quote. The Cold War was, in fact, thawing all over. Mikhail Gorbachev had just embarked on a springtime visit to Beijing, the first real step in mending the sun. Sino-Soviet split.

Perhaps relatedly, Cambodian neighbors, like Thailand, began sending friendly signals to Hun Sen, against the wishes of Deng Xiaoping. The contours of a political settlement in Cambodia, not to mention the first democratic election in the country

in decades, were finally coming into view. This wasn't to say the Khmer Rouge threat, had disappeared. But no less than Pol Pot himself knew that, as Philip Short writes, quote, if elections took place before the guerrillas had got control of a big enough part of the rural population, it would be a disaster, end quote. But time was not on pole's side. When the Vietnamese did withdraw their remaining forces from Cambodia in September 1989, the Khmer Rouge was still

far from retaking power. Perhaps all of this is why the United States, now led by George H.W. Bush, then took the opportunity to remove the Khmer Rouge from its client list. Quote, the United States would end its political and tacit military support for the Khmer Rouge, writes Brinkley. More than 11 years after they'd fallen from power, a decade after it had become perfectly clear that Paul and his minions had murdered at least 1.7 million people, about a quarter of Cambodia's population. Secretary of State James Baker said the United States would resume humanitarian assistance to Cambodia, reverse its policy on the Khmer Rouge's seat at the UN, and talk to Vietnam, end quote.

Standing next to Baker was Edward Shevardnadzei, Soviet foreign minister. And Baker said that with the U.S. dropping the Khmer Rouge, the American and Soviet positions had now, quote, come much closer, end quote. But the years of support for the Khmer Rouge had earned the group a place at the table. They, much like the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, possessed enough manpower and territory to earn recognition as a legitimate political faction. The following June, the four main Cambodian factions, including Paul Potts and Sienooks, agreed to form a Supreme National Council that would govern Cambodia until elections took place. In October came the ratification of yet another deal called the Paris Peace Accords, this one being the UN agreement to end this Cambodian war. All of a sudden, you get a real peace conference, and that's in Paris. But even then, the Khmer Rouge, D.K, get a seat at the table.

And part of the deal was that there's no requirement for a trial of the Khmer Rouge. And it took America forever to admit to what the Khmer Rouge had did, whereas when they were in power, the United States wanted to say how bad they were, but once they went out of power and were in part of the geopolitical mix, they refused to, and it took for a long, long time. And finally, we got the peace agreement and the UN peacekeeping group on tech. And then, write short, quote, the UN began gearing up for the biggest and most expensive peacekeeping operation in its history.

Short continues. Cianook drove into Phnom Pen three weeks later, along streets lined with cheering crowds in a pink Chevrolet convertible, a relic of his former rule, refurbished for the occasion. Children cried out excitedly, The king! The king has returned! And for most of the population,

after 20 years of civil war, Khmer Rouge despotism, and Vietnamese occupation, that was indeed how it seemed, end quote. In Cambodia, Prince Noradam Seenov returns after years in exile, part of an effort to restore peace and democracy

to that ravaged land. In this country, A federal court throws out the convictions of John Poindexter in the Iran-Contra affair. The U.N. sponsored elections for a new Cambodian government were scheduled for spring 1993. The back of the napkin math for the enterprise bothered Washington. Quote, we estimated this would cost $2 billion, a then assistant secretary of state, named John Bolton, later told a journalist. Quote, the whole plan, it was completely unprecedented, and I didn't think it would work, end quote.

For Cambodia's reformist Prime Minister Hun Sen, here returning from an official visit to Australia, the new changes signaled both success and failure. He's brought his country to a process which he knows could ultimately guarantee his government's survival. There were a number of obstacles in the way. First, the Khmer Rouge had by now arguably become a, a mining and logging syndicate, rather than a conventional political movement that could be negotiated with. Second, they were stronger than the United Nations forces in the country during 1992. And third, Hun Sen, who had essentially ruled over Cambodia since 1985,

did not seem interested in giving up power. He used his own forces to attack his political opponents. And against the rules of the UN agreement, QSampan of the Khmer Rouge made it clear that the group would not go so far as to lay down its arms. From then on, writes Philip Short, the Khmer Rouge adopted a much more confrontational stance. By now it controlled, quote, about a fifth of Cambodia's territory, though only 5% of its population, in an easterly arc along the Thai border. Ultimately, the Khmer Rouge boycotted the elections. Prince Sionuk, calling the situation, quote,

a hideous comedy, quit campaigning for the election and returned to his mansion in Beijing. Also in Asia, peaceful displays of power this day. Early returns in Cambodia's first election in decades shows a slight lead for the party headed by the son of Prince Nortem Sienok. Despite threats of Khmer Rouge violence, 90% of the country's eligible voters cast ballots in the last several days. The election took place as scheduled in May 1993, and the results announced in June held surprises.

Seunuch's son, Prince Rennarid, had not given up on campaigning, and his party narrowly beat Hun Sen's. But Hun Sen refused to recognize the results. After a 10-day panic, a compromise was reached. both Hun Sen and Renarid would be Prime Minister. Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party, the CPP, lost the historic election, but he refused to accept the result, forcing negotiations that saw him appointed as a joint prime minister. The Khmer Rouge, on the other hand,

were out of power entirely. They had boycott. the election, and the price for it was that they were once again outlawed, as they had been in their glory years, in the 1960s, in the days of the Marquis. But as before, the Khmer Rouge were not totally dead. Paul Pot himself would change his identity again. From the elections onward, fortune did not. smile on the Khmer Rouge. Quote, the three years after the latest Paris agreement from 91 to 94 rodded the movement

from within, right short. The rank and file had had enough and returned to their villages. Quote, the desertion rate, which had been running about 300 men a year in the 80s, rose tenfold, end quote. But the leadership of the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot, least of all, did not. disband, nor did he moderate. After all, the Khmer Rouge had been in far more dire straits than this. An interesting devolution occurred as Pulte brought the movement back to its roots after years of Western backing. Quote, the old slogan of

independence mastery was revived, and red flags bearing a sickle, but no hammer, were flown in Khmer Rouge villages," end quote. The group established a new prison, call it a new S-21, where people were beaten to death in the old style. Included in the numbers of the victims were an ill-fated group of traders 20 miles southwest of the Khmer Rouge bases, quote, who ran an open-air market in the no-man's land between the government and Khmer Rouge territory. Fifty-two people, short writes, including women and small children were executed, end quote. Pol Pot himself, however, did not exactly return to the monkish lifestyle of the old marquee.

His retirement home sat in the crest of the Dengrek Mountains, quote, on the edge of a cliff, a thousand feet above a perfectly flat plain that stretched away to the horizon in the south, end quote. Paul had changed his moniker yet again in these new environs, and he was now known as Grandfather Eighty-seven. He had remarried after the Vietnamese invasion, and he was photographed smiling with his young daughter and teaching students in the open-air classes hosted on Khmer Rouge territory.

Funny and warm with students, he lectured without notes, a former pupil recalled, gives you confidence in yourself. remembered another. Paul's Hodgkin's disease, which had been with him since the 1980s, chipped away at his body, and he also had developed heart problems. He had had a minor stroke in 1995, and often required oxygen. Breaking slightly with his lectures on living with the poorest of the poor, Paul liked to relax with cognac, sourced from Thailand, as most of his luxuries were, and to listen to old Khmer folk music. But age had not mellowed him, right short.

Quote, in September 1994, the gentle old man who doted on his small daughter ordered the execution of three young backpackers who had been captured by Khmer Rouge in an attack on a train during the summer. There was no particular reason to have them killed, end quote. Historian David Chandler describes Paul at this time as an old fanatic retreating into his own mind. Quote, early intellectual influences, Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao were no longer mentioned,

nor were the words party, socialism, or revolution. More important, Pol Pot said nothing about how a reborn and rededicated Cambodia would fit into Southeast Asia in the 1990s or beyond. The world he described was changeable insofar as friends and enemies changed, but inside his head, it seems, it was not a different world from the world of the 1960s or the 1970s, end quote. Life seemed to be returning to normal in northwestern Cambodia. Government troops had succeeded in pushing back the Khmer Rouge rebels.

Then earlier this week, the rebels gained ground and the army was forced to rush reinforcements to the area. The Khmer Rouge reached the outskirts of Cambodia's second-largest city, Batambang. They've now been routed by the army. Judging by what came right after, Cambodia's UN-sponsored elections in 93 were not a great success. From 93 to the summer of 97, Sionuk's son, Prince Ronorid, was locked in a strong.

with Hun Sen for leadership of Cambodia. The two men had divided power since the election, producing a schism that contributed to a near collapse of the rule of law in the country. And instead of real economic development, as foreign aid finally came in, Cambodians were exploited as some of the cheapest labor in the entire world. Several Asian nations, writes Brinkley, quote,

principally China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan, on their own initiative, began building garment factories in Cambodia. In the 1990s, the number of these factories rose to more than 300, employing as many as 380,000 Cambodians, primarily women. The workers made jeans, t-shirts, baseball caps, and sweaters, primarily, and sold almost three-quarters of their products to the United States. States. The factories grew to produce 70% of Cambodia's exports. The only real competition was rice, end quote. Much like the states of the former Soviet Union, Cambodia was now

routinely identified by the Western press as a weak gangster state. The country's vacuum of authority led to a run of crises. Deforestation, assisted by corrupt Cambodian military, officials became rampant. The country was rife with heroin traffickers. Nationwide, most people weren't connected to electricity. Rates of HIV and AIDS and other diseases were skyrocketing, exacerbated by the arrival of thousands of UN peacekeepers. And, as Brinkley writes, quote, people who lived outside the major cities, in other words, almost everyone, had access to nothing but noxious, dysentery-inducing drinking water. In such a chaotic environment,

it was not difficult for former leaders of the Khmer Rouge to walk around as free men. Prince Ronarid had struck a deal with remnants of the Khmer Rouge and was clearly getting ready to push out, Hun Sen. The Khadry is... of Cambodia's latest battles lie in the citizen's hospital. Most are civilians, many of children

whose limbs have been shattered by mines planted by both the army and the Khmer Rouge. Fighting in the northwest over the past two months has fled to levels not seen since the Vietnamese army withdrew in 1989. The rise in temperature was easily noticed. Scirmishes in Phnom Penh, led to a stray rocket landing in the yard of the American ambassador. Bill Clinton's Secretary of State Madeline Albright, who was already planning a visit to historic Angkor Wat, offered to mediate between the prince and Hun Sen, but no dice. Ranarid was ready to make his attack on Hun Sen. But the latter successfully carried out what the political scientist Sorpong Pu

later called a preemptive coup. Over two days of battle in early July, Ronorid lost the fight and fled into exile. Although national parliamentary elections were held in 1998, Cambodia was now run unchallenged by Hun Sen. For the next quarter century, he was the country's prime minister and the head of a government known for its corruption and cruelty. But he also oversaw a country truly at peace for the first time in 30 years. a country on which no one dropped bombs any longer. None of Paul Potts' lectures in camp stopped the bleeding,

the slow-motion mutiny of the Khmer Rouge forces. A mass defection unfolded month by month until, on August 15, 1996, quote, quote, Yang Suri and others had severed their ties with the Khmer Rouge and formed a new political movement which would cooperate with the government, right short. Suri received amnesty from Hun Sen and, quote, some 4,000 soldiers, nearly half of the total Khmer Rouge troop strength, were integrated into the Royal Army, end quote. Paul Pot, suspicious of even his oldest comrades who remained, placed military commander Tamak, one-time defense minister Son Sen, and Paul's right-hand man, Nuanchaia,

all under house arrest. But by the middle of 1997, writes Chandler, Paul had run out of time and space. Quote, his last few weeks in command were terrifying, and his behavior blotted out the image of easy-going charisma that he'd cultivated for so long, end quote. In a purge that served as a coda to his whole career, Paul's remaining subordinates eliminated dozens of unarmed and supposedly allied cadres, burning down their homes. As a finale, he declared that his old friend, Son Sen, and his wife, were traitors, working even at this late date, somehow with the Vietnamese. Paul uttered, as short puts it, the fateful words, which over the years had signaled the liquidation of so many of his associates,

I would like you to take care of it. Quote, in the early hours of the morning, another of the old guard heard the sound of distant gunfire. Son Sen, his wife, and 13 other family members and AIDS, including a five-year-old grandchild, were shot to death, end quote. Unlike his terrified or sycophantic colleagues, Tom Mock, the stony-faced and ruthless warlord of the old Southwest zone, he'd had enough. Quote, Mok felt that if Sun Sen could be killed, no one was safe.

He formed a contingent of soldiers to dethrone Pau-Pot at his perch on the mountain. He didn't need to convince many people that the old man had to go. Quote, that afternoon, Paul, his wife, 11-year-old daughter and another child, left on foot with 20 bodyguards along a dirt track leading eastward along the crest of the mountains.

Tracked by Thai Air Force spotter planes. It's hard to believe this shambling old man was responsible for the deaths of millions of Cambodians. Paul Pot was the mastermind behind Year Zero, the architect of the killing fields. Now his former comrades have him under house arrest. Paul was captured by Tamaq and placed under house arrest in a small cottage near the massacre of Sunsen's family.

To make matters worse, Hun Sen's forces were closing in on the Khmer Rouge bases. Perhaps in a bid to achieve yet another rebrand, the Khmer Rouge now under the control of Tamaq put Paul Pot on trial. The only things he says is in general terms along the lines he said throughout his career is that all he did was to fight against the Vietnamese to stop Cambodia being swallowed by the Vietnamese. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, writes Chandler, Pol Pot was not accused of any crimes committed in the 70s or 80s, in which many of those in the audience and among his accusers were

implicated. quote, instead he was charged with murdering Sonsen, with taking people's property, ordering their houses burned down, and urging his exhausted followers into an open-ended war with Phnom Penh. These activities drew accusations dredged up from old slogans used for the Khmer Rouge opponents. Quote, barbarous, fascist, narrow-minded, and corrupt. Radio Khmerer denounced him. as a traitor, end quote. The thin layer of what remained of the Khmer Rouge

sentenced him to life imprisonment. He lived out the rest of his days in quiet disgrace, like a ghost. On April 15th, Paul heard it on the radio. Hun Sen's forces were staging a raid on the remaining Khmer Rouge outposts in the West. Guards died Paul's hair brown in case they had to flee into Thailand, note short. But that wouldn't be necessary. Paul died in his sleep that very night. The cause

of death was heart failure. David, you ready to go? There's no question that we saw today the body of Paul Pot that the man who was the architect of the killing fields was the man who we saw dead in on Longbeng only a few hours ago. Paul's body was preserved with ice and formaldehyde so journalists could come to witness the funeral, right short. Thai forensic specialists took fingerprints, dental photographs, and hair samples, end quote. After Paul's family gave him a funeral, complete with Buddhist rights, his old colleague, Taw Mock, who would himself be captured in just a few months, provided an earthy eulogy

for Salath-Sar, alias Pulpot, alias Fem, alias Grandfather Eighty-Seven. Quote, Now he's finished. He has no power. He has no rights. He is no more than cow shit. Cowshit is more important than him. We can use it for fertilizer. With Pulpot now dead. In 1998, the remaining faces of the Khmer Rouge were Nuanchea, and Kusampan, while the guy actually running the guerrillas, was Tamaq. All had deep history in the Khmer Rouge.

But now, with the Americans turned against them, they were out of time. They had no future. The Cambodian government has informed us that Tamaq, who is known as the butcher, who was the right-hand man of Paul Pot, and who was, was alleged to be responsible for upwards of 1.7 million dead Cambodians. This senior Khmer Rouge figure has been wanted for some time. We are encouraged that we now have the opportunity to bring one of the most notorious war criminals in the recent past to justice. Back in 1979, as we discussed earlier this

season, the Vietnamese had supported genocide tribunals of the Khmer Rouge. While those trials were mostly condemned or ignored by Western governments, the United States was now singing a different tune a decade and a half later. In the 1990s, particularly after the Rwandan genocide in Africa and the Balkan wars in Eastern Europe, the U.S. State Department began putting serious energy into war crimes investigations. And Cambodia, having just hosted the most expensive U.N. election of all time, and subsequently receiving huge amounts of U.S. aid, came under special scrutiny. The Khmer Rouge had been defeated, but many of its most notorious leaders still walked around the country as free men. Yang Seri, for example, had been the Khmer Rouge's face to the world outside,

both when the movement was in power and after Vietnam it kicked them out. But after accepting an amnesty offer in 96, writes Brinkley, he settled into a mansion by Cambodian standards, just down the street from the Senate Gulf Range. There, he comfortably lived among his former victims, end quote. For foreigners working in Cambodia, Brinkley adds, quote, this seemed little different from allowing Joseph Goebbels or Rudolf Hess to move back into their Berlin homes after World War II, end quote.

At first, writes Elizabeth Becker, Hun Sen's victory in the 97 coup had, quote, ended all cooperation for the handover of Paul Pot to an international tribunal, end quote. But Paul's death had been a global media phenomenon. and the Clinton administration, having now poured so much time and aid into Cambodia, was solidly behind setting up new Khmer Rouge tribunals. Not to mention short rights, after the United States created the conditions for the Khmer Rouge to seize power, and after it deliberately supported them later on, quote, the American effort to bring the surviving Khmer Rouge leaders to trial,

their condemnation for genocide, it would allow the U.S. to turn the page with honor and regain the moral high ground." Left unmentioned, of course, was that when there had been tribunals of the Khmer Rouge 20 years earlier, and when it was the Vietnamese who sought to arrest Paul Pot and other leaders, Western governments either paid them no mind or actively protected the Khmer Rouge. Now, the Cambodian government and the U.N. negotiated the terms of an international genocide tribunal, focused on the state of Democratic Campuchia from 1975 to 1979, and starting in 1998, suspects began to be rounded up.

Among those captured was Tammach, the final leader of Khmer Rouge forces and successor to Pol Pot. Another was Dutch, the leader of the infamous torture center, Toul Slang, or S-21. Dutch was arrested in Western Cambodia, where he had been living under an assumed name as a born-again Christian. On Christmas Day, write journalists Tom Fothrop and Helen Jarvis, quote, two of the world's most wanted men, Nuancia and Qusampan, prime suspects for the Cambodian Genocide Tribunal, were star attractions at a government-organized press conference at a luxury hotel in Phnom Penh, end quote. Hun Sen himself said that he sought to greet Nguan, in Q, quote,

with bouquets of flowers, not with prisons and handcuffs. We should dig a hole and bury the past and look ahead to the 21st century with a clean slate. The rich reception given to these men in the name of the name of the last, of national unity should, perhaps, have been a sign that the wheels of justice would turn slowly. It would take until 2003 for Hun Sen and the United Nations to reach an agreement to create what would be known as the extraordinary chambers in the courts of Cambodia. And it would take another three years for that court to actually start up operations. Yang Seri, the first Khmer Rouge heavyweight to turn himself in to Hun Sen in the 1990s.

He wasn't arrested until 2007. Spending $330 million from 2007 to 2022, the E-Triple-C brought cases against five suspects, successfully convicting three. Tulsling's Dutch was the first to be charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes of which he was convicted in 2010. Sentenced to life imprisonment, Dutch was the only convict to admit his guilt. Upon Dutch's death in 2020, historian David Chandler told the New York Times that, quote, he's a guy who's thought about it, faced up to some stuff.

Dutch is the only human on trial. The others are monsters, end quote. Nuon Chea, who had been brother number two, and QSampan, Khmer Rouge head of state, were convicted in multiple sub-trials of crimes against humanity and war crimes, and then of genocide of Vietnamese and sham minorities inside Cambodia. The two suspects who evaded the courts, judgment were Yang Sari, who died mid-trial in 2013, and his wife, Yang Therith, whose prosecution

was stalled due to her advanced Alzheimer's disease. Only QSampan still draws breath, making him, at the time of this recording, the oldest surviving leader of the Khmer Rouge. A landmark ruling, guilty of genocide. The first and only such charges against former leaders of the Khmer Rouge. 92-year-old Nune Che, known as Brother No. 2, second in command to Pol Pot, was found guilty of genocide against the Muslim cham and Vietnamese minorities, and former head of state, Quson Pond, who is 87, was convicted of similar charges against the Vietnamese. Although the ECCC was marred by corruption, process delays, and, above all, a limited scope of prosecution,

it led to the creation of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, an internationally respected repository and research institution. To this day, it collects testimony about life under Khmer Rouge rule. During our trip to Cambodia, we visited the Documentation Center's offices, located at the Queen Mother Library in central Phnom Penh. Among the center's responsibilities these days is coordinated, volunteers, mostly young people, to interview the fewer and fewer remaining elders who have memories of the Khmer Rouge.

Yet despite the ultimate success in convicting some Khmer Rouge leaders, the period of time under scrutiny in the International Tribunal was conveniently limited to the reign of Pol Pot. The years of America's bombing of Cambodia, of its invasion, of the Civil War, and of the pogroms under Law Nall, which, taken together, claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, this was all left out of the tribunal's purview, and the perpetrators left out of the docket. The reign of the Khmer Rouge is nearly synonymous with the phrase Cambodian genocide. Yet there has been some debate over how and even whether the mass

killings committed by Pol Pot and his colleagues fall under the specific legal rubric of genocide up to and during the UN tribunal. For example, British journalist Philip Short, whose biography of Pol Pot we've cited extensively in this show, he argues that the Khmer Rouge were guilty of many crimes against humanity, but not the specific charge of genocide. And short is by no means alone here. Cambodia scholars Michael Vickery and David Chandler, also cited on this show,

have in the past taken up the same line of argument. That genocide, in its specific legal dimension, is a campaign of mass murder whose motive is to explicitly wipe out a racial or religious group. They argue that the Khmer Rouge killings, however vast, were not racist in their motivation, but political.

After all, the majority of the roughly 1.7 million killed under Pulpott were fellow Khmer, and it is certain that the Khmer Rouge did not intend to wipe out the Khmer people for the crime of being Khmer. They instead suspected fellow Khmer of insufficient political loyalty or judged them to have given insufficient contributions to the revolution and murdered people accordingly. We spoke to scholar Ben Kiernan about how the UN tribunal

handled this question of the Khmer Rouge killings of fellow Khmer, and the question of racial versus political motivations. Actual killings extended to about a million people of the Cambodian population as a whole, including Buddhist monks, including Chinese, including Chums and Vietnamese. But most of the killings were directed at members of the Khmer majority. Now, the tribunal didn't find this to be a genocide.

It did find it to be extermination, the crime against humanity of extermination, which is a different definition, and it applies to political groups as well as ethnic, national, racial, or religious groups. It doesn't require the high burden of proof that genocide does require, but it's still an extremely serious crime against humanity. And the Lewinshire and Quson were first found guilty of that in relation to the command majority. Then, there are the campaigns against ethnic minorities. There is no question, Kiernan writes, that Democratic Campuchia waged a campaign of genocide

against ethnic Vietnamese. As late as 1993, D.K. forces continued to massacre Vietnamese civilian refugees who had returned to Cambodia after 79, end quote. And the Muslim cham population, before and during their attempted extermination, was not only prohibited from practicing Islam, but also made to violate their tenets of worship, such as being forced to eat pork. Generally speaking, they were last on the lists for distribution of rations and medicine, and discriminated against in daily life, as well as in the killing fields.

As we've seen, when it comes to the killing of Cambodia's ethnic minorities, the surviving Khmer Rouge leaders now stand convicted by the UN Tribunal of Genocide. This squared with the findings of scholars such as Kiernan, that in targeting the ethnic Vietnamese and Muslim chams, the Khmer Rouge waged campaigns of Indyenne. intentional, racial extermination. Kiernan spoke to us about the Khmer Rouge killings of Vietnamese, Chinese, chams, and the religious group of Buddhist monks in Cambodia. Well, the legal definition of genocide is acts committed with the intent to destroy

in whole or in tongue, an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group as such. according to the lawyers who interpret the genocide convention of 1948 to which Cambodia was a signatory they make it clear that this requires conscious design on the part

of the perpetrator to destroy the group this definition and this interpretation has been applied to the Khmer Rouge and the UN sponsor tribunal in 2018 found them the Khmer Rouge leaders, guilty of two cases of terms of the destruction of the Vietnamese minority,

the 20,000 of them who were still alive after 1976 in Cambodia, only about a dozen of them survived. They were all nearly all murdered in 77 and 78. And this was a clear case of genocide. they also found Nguir guilty in in 2018 of

the chenocide of the Chal Muslim minority ethnic or religious group I could mention others such as the ethnic Chinese which I have written about about half the population of ethnic Chinese perished in the Pol Pot period

now what they didn't what the tribunal didn't investigate in much detail or conclude with the genocide was a religious group, that is the Buddhist monk group, which was the largest religious group in Cambodia. Many, many Buddhist monasteries existed all over Cambodia with dozens of monks in each one.

They were all defrapped. The fact that they were defrapped and then murdered was clear that they were selected, that they were targeted. as a religious group, as such. In October 2012, Noradam Sianuk died at the age of 89 in Beijing. He had spent his last years once again as king of Cambodia,

though often spending time in his homes away from home in China and North Korea. In his later years, remained as colorful and unpredictable as ever. In the 90s, when he floated the idea of abdicating once again, Hun Sen threatened to pass a law banning any former royal from holding office. In the 2000s, when accused of hoarding wealth by his political opponents, Cianook publicly announced that all his assets, $45,000, could be found in a French bank. And, Cianook also came out in favor of gay marriage in Cambodia before any head

of state had done so in America. No one leader in our story has been quite as ubiquitous to Cambodia as Sionuk, nor more contradictory. He had been installed by the French colonialists,

yet schmused his way into achieving independence. He had crushed the communists in his home country, but embraced the heads of Red China and North Korea. He'd been imprisoned by the Khmer Rouge, who executed much of his family, only for him to call them patriots once the Vietnamese drove Pulpott from power. And after a lifetime of working, in his own way, for his country,

by the time peace arrived, he stepped back. He once again played the role the French had assigned him as a young man, a smiling figurehead meant to comfort his people. upon his death he had achieved an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records most state roles held by a royal

an incomplete list king from 41 to 55 Prime Minister from 55 to 66 head of the government in exile in 1970 head of the government in exile again from 89 to 91 head of state from 91 to 93

and in 1993, restored finally as king. I was sure to save Cambodia because, you know, by dealing with Hanoi, and I was a good friend of Moscow also, I could save Cambodia. One day I saw that one day there would be peace between the West and the communist power. and since, you know, I gave some facilities to the Vietmen and the Viet Cong, so I could have them as friends. Sianuk was survived by his children, one of whom Siamoni succeeded him as king, and by his wife Monique, who as of this recording is still alive.

at 88 years old. Among Sianuk's many passions was composing and performing music, which is widely available in Cambodia. During our stay in Phnom Penh, we visited the Queen Mother Library, a cozy archive filled with different photographs, possessions, and biographies of the king,

and of course, vinyl records of his recordings. Listening to him on the old gramophone, as his portraits gaze at you from all sides, you get the feeling that no leader in Cambodia will ever quite replace the eccentric, opportunistic, and endlessly charismatic figure of Nurudam Sianuk. After all, as the king himself had once said, Cambodians are all naughty boys, and that includes me. In the spring of 2024, we visited the Cambodian village of Neklong. Located southeast of Phnom Penh, the town was first the site of American bombing, and later Camer Rouge atrocity.

Today, Neklong is bustling markets and streets full of traffic, as well as a massive two-kilometer bridge that spans the Mekong River, the longest bridge in the entire country. Cambodia, after many years, is still primarily a nation of people who live in the countryside, anchored by a booming capital city, Phnom Penh, which accounts for most of the nation's city dwellers. Neck Lung is, in many ways, representative of Cambodian life, for good and for bad. While we were there, we interviewed one man in his mid-50s, a mechanic at a local ice factory named Sao Hun, who told us about how life has changed in his town since the 1980s. In the past, one person could make enough money to raise the whole family. These days, the economy is bad, so 10 people need to work to support a whole family.

Between 1994 and 2006, the proportion of Cambodians living below the poverty line decreased from about 40% to about a third. For most of the time since the Khmer Rouge exited power, Cambodia has remained either the poorest or one of the poorest countries in all of Southeast Asia. It wasn't until 2009 when Cambodia achieved any economic takeoff, benefiting from a Chinese investment boom. Since then, Cambodian GDP has roughly tripled in size, growing from $10 billion to $30 billion. For Vietnam, however, the decades unfolded very differently, as the country integrated further and further into the world economy and developed into a manufacturing powerhouse. Vietnam's GDP grew from $21 billion in 94 to $430 billion in 2020.

according to the World Bank. And when you cross the Vietnamese-Cambodian border, there is a visible and palpable shift. Quote, the percentage of Cambodians struggling to afford food has fallen from its height of 72% in 2013, but remains persistently high at 58%, according to a recent Gallup survey. Among the poorest fifth of society,

the inability to afford food reached a record high of 87% last year. In no other country in the world is there greater inequality between the rich and poor in their ability to afford food, end quote. Both countries now navigate a new tension

that structures Southeast Asia, the increasing hostility from the United States toward China. As Western-aligned firms move their manufacturing operations out of China, Hanoi has aggressively sought to absorb this outflow, while simultaneously balancing peaceful relations with both Beijing and Washington. Cambodia, on the other hand, has increasingly aligned itself with Chinese strategic interests.

On the surface, this may seem ironic, as Honsen, once China's bitterest hater, still exerts heavy influence on the nation's politics. In fact, Cambodia's government is now run by his son, Hun Manet, who is a graduate of the American Military Academy, West Point. So far, the U.S. has taken a relaxed position on Chinese influence in Cambodia. But in an article published in early 2024, the academics Chris Pimiano and Sovinda Poe argue that, quote, as long as there are no major domestic political threats to his rule,

Cambodia will continue to maximize its benefits by further embracing China and repairing ties with the United States, end quote. But will the United States remain so relaxed? In July 24, the New York Times reported that the Cambodian government had demolished a recently constructed American naval base located on the Gulf of Thailand, to make way for a new Chinese naval base. Quote, We are clear-eyed about the People's Republic of China's efforts

to establish overseas military bases, a Pentagon spokesman told the paper. The U.S., meanwhile, is running out of places to establish its bases. According to the scholar David Vine, as of 2021, there were roughly 750 American military installations in more than 80 countries around the world. And more and more, these bases have been oriented toward the containment of China, particularly by sea. According to a report by a Beijing-based think tank, the U.S. military in 2023 led at least 107 large-scale exercises in the South China Sea, and the areas around it.

Against those roughly 750 American military installations, China is known to have two overseas military bases as of July 24, one of them being its installation in Cambodia. In 1955, an academic defense theorist writing in Foreign Affairs magazine concluded that American foreign policy was in a bind. After the Korean War, America had to show toughness against the communists, but the country clearly could not stomach the destruction of an all-out confrontation.

The solution to this problem concluded the author, one Dr. Henry Kissinger, was that America must defend the world's quote-unquote gray areas, the little countries around the globe where Soviet influence might be winning out. If we lost these gray areas, Kissinger writes, Americans would be confronted by three-quarters of the human race. the end of the Cold War, the world, in Kissinger's terms, became grayer. But that has not stopped the same old mentalities from ruling Washington in the decade since. The modern Yankees intone darkly about Russian plans for world domination. The modern cowboys holler about

China's plot to strangle American greatness once and for all. Of course, it is possible that in an age of waning American power and influence, what happens in Kissinger's gray areas, be it Cambodia or anywhere else, it will no longer be up to the United States. It is possible that it's now the turn of the other three-quarters of the human race. That just about for our fifth season. We'd like to thank all of our guests,

Elizabeth Becker, Ben Kiernan, Sai Hirsch, Elizabeth Haltzman, Vu Min Huang, John Quigley, Perry Pettus, and Marv Truy. And of course, to everyone with whom we met and spoke in Cambodia and Vietnam. We are also in the debt of our fixers and translators. Thank you to Horm Shrenik, Matbeth, and Yen Duong.

We'd also like to thank Matthew Giles, fact checker and Jesse Garaciah, my absolutely essential assistant editor. And special thanks to Ben Clarkson and Daniel Beckner for the blockbuster trailer that we put out this year. Go check out Ben's new graphic novel. Justice Warriors, Vote Harder, available now. And now, since you are an honored and esteemed subscriber, enjoy the 10 bonus episodes included in your subscription feed, and stay tuned for discount code. for subscriber deals on merch. We appreciate all your support,

and we'll see you next time. Thank you.