Word: potted
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Some in the Cambodian military think current Khmer Rouge leader Ta Mok had his old rival murdered to take the heat off his embattled guerrilla group. And at least one of Pol Pot's captors has seen the death as a way to wash his hands: "We are clean now," said his jailer, Nuon Nou. So is the U.S., Thailand and Singapore -- a tribunal might have brought to light just how much they helped him evade capture...
Cambodians who survived the unspeakable brutality of Pol Pot's killing fields may take some solace in the fact that the Khmer Rouge leader ended his days in fear -- a fugitive from justice for his crimes against humanity, with the noose closing ever tighter around him. Still, there is something profoundly unsatisfying about accepting that an individual so evil has simply expired before history could deliver the requisite justice and retribution -- as if the movie ends without warning, five minutes before the bad guy gets his comeuppance...
...Pot's life spoke not only of the genocidal dangers of armed ideology, but also of the cynical marriages of political convenience that characterize a region deeply scarred by the Cold War. The peasant boy's government-funded education in Paris turned him into a Maoist whose first act in power was to launch a bloody purge of all educated Cambodians...
...Pot built his rural guerrilla army during the '60s, after Prince Norodom Sihanouk had driven the movement out of the cities. The peasant teenagers under Pol Pot's command seized control of the country in 1975 and declared "Year Zero." At least one million people are estimated to have died in the purges of the next three years as Pol Pot forced millions of Cambodians into the countryside...
...Ousted by a Vietnamese invasion in 1978, Pol Pot returned to the jungle to fight on, this time with backers ranging from China to U.S. allies such as Thailand. Meanwhile, in Phnom Penh, a new power struggle developed between the Vietnamese-backed leader Hun Sen and Sihanouk's son, Prince Norodom Ranarridh. As the Khmer Rouge began to splinter during the '90s, both Hun Sen and Ranarridh courted the support of its warring factions...