Word: khmers
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...memories of war are haunted most by the images of children fighting. Impassive Khmer Rouge kids, taught to massacre civilians, even their parents. Idi Amin's army of thugs, murderous preteens in wraparound sunglasses. Iranian ten-year-olds sent unarmed into battle as human minesweepers, with pictures of Khomeini pinned to their shirts. Now Mozambique is at the vanguard of the unconscionable. The Renamo rebels fighting the Chissano regime have become infamous for their instrumentalizados, children kidnaped by Renamo troops and not just trained to fight but also forced to slaughter and maim civilians...
Battle carries its own excitements, and children are as susceptible to those fevers as adults. Arn Chorn was ten when he was sent to Wat Aik, a Buddhist temple in Cambodia converted into a concentration camp by the Khmer Rouge. He spent two years there, a witness to daily butcheries, and he endured them in a state of numbness. When Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1978, he was sent to fight with the Khmer Rouge army. It was a new kind of terror, but he quickly got used to life on patrol in swampy jungles. Frightened the first time he fired...
...Then in April 1970 it joined South Vietnam in an invasion to clean them out. Just before the assault, Sihanouk was overthrown by a pro-U.S. junta led by Prime Minister Lon Nol, and Cambodians were suddenly engulfed in war against North Vietnamese and their then allies the Khmer Rouge, while U.S. bombs rained from above...
...illogic of the U.S. position has infected the entire peace process. No one wants the Khmer Rouge to return to power, but their military strength, many believe, makes them impossible to ignore. Various highly complex peace proposals have been offered by the governments of Australia and Thailand, and by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. Under some of these plans, the Khmer Rouge would even be permitted to serve in an interim coalition, pending elections. In all of them, Pol Pot's party has been given effective veto power -- with predictable results. A peace conference in Jakarta...
...there no other way? Many think there is, including former Carter Administration Secretary of State Edmund Muskie. "It is time to change U.S. policy," said Muskie recently. He suggested direct contact between the U.S. and the Hun Sen government, an end to Washington's "implicit" support for the Khmer Rouge, and separate verification of Vietnam's withdrawal as first steps toward a long-term political solution. This would shift the U.S. focus away from the rebel coalition that includes the Khmer Rouge and would require the U.S. to abandon its unyielding opposition to Hun Sen. As Muskie...