Word: khmer
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...Cambodia has proved to be about as elusive as the sight of John Sununu on the shuttle. But last week brought progress toward a settlement of the 12-year-old civil war. The Vietnam-supported government of Prime Minister Hun Sen and three rival resistance groups -- the communist Khmer Rouge, the noncommunist followers of former Prime Minister Son Sann, and the disciples of former head of state Prince Norodom Sihanouk -- accepted an unconditional cease-fire and a cessation of foreign-arms supplies. At Sihanouk's prodding, the transitional 12-member Supreme National Council, made up of representatives of the four...
...Khmer Rouge sent to the killing fields all who spoke French or wore glasses or had soft hands. The Khmer Rouge aimed to cancel all previous history and begin at Year Zero. Utopia, this century has learned the hard way, usually bears a resemblance to hell. An evil chemistry turns the dream of salvation into damnation...
There is reason for doubt. In the 1970s Pol Pot slaughtered as many as 2 million Cambodians. But he was a stay-at-home Hitler, so the world merely tut- tutted. When Vietnam finally invaded Cambodia in 1978 and evicted the Khmer Rouge from Phnom Penh, the United Nations in effect judged intervention to be an evil greater than genocide. During the cold war, geopolitics often overrode morality and common sense alike. Vietnam was a Soviet ally; therefore its thrust into Cambodia was perceived, and condemned, as part of the Kremlin's global offensive...
...sleeves, offered his services as a double agent for the British. Another episode seems a conscious reprise of Heart of Darkness. Ned is sent east to find out what happened to an agent who disappeared; he turns up an account of appalling brutality at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, and unbelievable paternal devotion from a father to his half-Cambodian daughter...
Unfortunately, the Cold War never allowed the U.S. to oppose the Vietnamese-backed government in any constructive way; rather than backing the Cambodian rebel group--which was dominated by the Khmer Rouge--the U.S. should have recognized neither side and supported a peace process. But then again, the world was a different place 10 years...