After taking power in Cambodia in 1975, the Khmer Rouge emptied every city and town, marching the urban population into the countryside, herding them into labor camps, where they were compelled to live in primitive conditions and work twelve hours a day at exhausting manual labor. Crop yields were poor, and a large percentage of the nation’s rice production was earmarked for the export market. Little food remained for those who worked the land. The daily rice ration was just 250 to 500 grams, a grossly inadequate diet to sustain people working long hours at harsh labor. Vast numbers of people perished from malnutrition and hunger, and anyone who in desperation picked up stray grains of rice from the ground or picked wild berries could count on being executed. Truckloads of people routinely departed the camps, bound for execution sites. In all, there were around 150 execution centers in Cambodia, including the notorious Tuol Sleng prison, in which many thousands of people were tortured and killed. Out of a total population of just under 8 million, it is estimated that 1.7 million people died under Khmer Rouge rule from execution, hunger and overwork. During its four years of rule, the Khmer Rouge achieved a record of barbarism rarely equaled in history. Claiming Southern Vietnam territory, the Khmer Rouge launched numerous cross-border raids, burning down villages and massacring their inhabitants. In all, around 30,000 Vietnamese civilians lost their lives in the attacks. Vietnamese armed forces struck back and it took only two weeks to drive the Khmer Rouge from power.
The United States and China shared an antipathy for Vietnam’s alliance with the Soviet Union and sought a way to overturn the recent turn of events. U.S. Secretary of State Harold Brown denounced Vietnam for its “minor league hegemonism,” and China sent troops into northern Vietnam to fight a two-week war to “teach Vietnam a lesson.” According to journalist Elizabeth Becker, U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski “himself claims that he concocted the idea of persuading Thailand to cooperate fully with China in its efforts to rebuild the Khmer Rouge.” Brzezinski said, “I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot. I encouraged the Thai to help the D.K. [Khmer Rouge government-in-exile of Democratic Kampuchea]. The question was how to help the Cambodian people. Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him, but China could.” In fact, U.S. support went well beyond encouraging others to rebuild the Khmer Rouge. In 1979 the United States and China wielded their influence and pushed through a vote in the UN General Assembly in favor of granting Cambodia’s UN seat to the ousted Khmer Rouge regime, and terminated a UN investigation into Khmer Rouge crimes. The following year, the United States again supported the Khmer Rouge in the UN as the “legitimate” representative of the Cambodian people. Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping had an unshakeable fondness for the murderous Khmer Rouge and provided them with $100 million per year. “I do not understand why some people want to remove Pol Pot,” Deng remarked in 1984. “It is true that he made some mistakes in the past but now he is leading the fight against the Vietnamese aggressors.”
With U.S. backing, Cambodia would continue to be represented in the United Nations by a Khmer Rouge diplomat until 1993. The Carter Administration urged international aid organizations to cut off assistance and aid to Vietnam for having swept Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot from power. Nearly all non-socialist nations responded by severing aid to both Vietnam and Cambodia. The United States and its allies held enough votes to ensure that the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank cut off loans to Cambodia and Vietnam. Although the United States would not grant licenses to non-governmental organizations to provide aid to alleviate hunger within Cambodia, Operation USA gave $7 million to Cambodian refugees living in areas under the control of the Khmer Rouge. he anti-Cambodian policy would persist under the Reagan and Bush Administrations. In 1985, U.S. Secretary of State George Schulz visited Thailand and warned ASEAN diplomats to be careful in drafting peace proposals or the Vietnamese might accept them. Four years later, Bush Administration officials cautioned the Thai government that it would “pay a price” if it abandoned the Cambodian guerrilla movement in order to do business with the Cambodian government. Specifically, the Thai government was threatened with loss of trade privileges under the Generalized Special Preferences. In 1989, after UNICEF reported that up to twenty percent of Cambodian children were suffering from malnutrition, the United Nations Development Program planned to send an assessment team to Phnom Penh. That endeavor was cancelled due to objections by the United States and Japan. The first international conference to address the conflict in Cambodia took place in 1981. China and the United States pointedly excluded Cambodia from the conference, regarding the Cambodian government as having no right to a say in the future of its people. When ASEAN countries proposed disarming the Khmer Rouge, U.S. representatives pressured them into abandoning their position.
Vietnam offered to withdraw its forces in exchange for an end to assistance to the Khmer Rouge, while Cambodia suggested it would move its forces away from the Thai border if the Khmer Rouge would do the same. Both offers were nonstarters in the eyes of the Reagan Administration, and the United States backed UN resolutions demanding the unilateral removal of Vietnamese forces from Cambodia. With Cambodia still in the early stages of recovery from the devastation wrought by Khmer Rouge rule, the U.S. position was a recipe for the return of Pol Pot to power.
The official U.S position was that its aid was being supplied only to non-Khmer Rouge forces. However, political analyst Michael Haas reports that a diplomatic source revealed to him that American officials pressured Thailand to aid both the Khmer Rouge (KR) forces and the non-KR armies. The reason was not difficult to fathom. The Khmer Rouge fielded by far the largest guerrilla army, numbering at its peak 40,000 soldiers, and it comprised the only effective fighting force opposed to the Cambodian government. The KPNLF and ANS were much smaller and generally ineffectual. If the United States wanted to topple the Cambodian government, the Khmer Rouge was the only force capable of doing so. By 1990, the ANS, now renamed the Armée Nationale pour Khmer Independent (ANKI), had essentially become an offshoot of the Khmer Rouge. A CIA officer noted, “Whatever success they had, especially in 1990-91, was due almost entirely to the Khmer Rouge providing the real muscle. ANKI was mostly just window dressing for these operations.”
U.S. funding to the KPNLF and ANS armies allied with the Khmer Rouge was handled by a working group composed of representatives from the United States, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia. CIA satellite intelligence was provided, as were weapons manufactured in Singapore and Taiwan, which the KPNLF and ANS were free to sell at a profit. Quite often, this meant that the arms found a home in the Khmer Rouge army. The Thai military handled distribution, and corrupt officers sold a portion of supplies to the highest bidder. In practice, this meant the Khmer Rouge, which had ample resources from its gem mining and logging operations, not to mention generous funding from abroad. U.S. military officials in Thailand and Okinawa destroyed documents to cover up the sale of munitions by Green Berets to the Thai military, which sold the arms on the black market. Former Green Beret Bob Finley, who discovered an arms cache of $1million during an audit, believed the arms were “without a doubt” being sold to the Khmer Rouge. Finley revealed that U.S. embassy officials were aware of the sales and where the arms were going, but launched a cover-up rather than attempt to put a stop to the practice. Finley was ordered by a superior officer to destroy the incriminating evidence he uncovered during his audit.
By 1985, annual covert CIA support to Cambodian guerrilla factions had risen to $12 million, and Congress voted to send an additional $5 million per year in overt aid. Meanwhile, the British SAS began training Cambodian guerrillas based in Thailand.
In 1989, Vietnam removed its military and France agreed to Prince Sihanouk’s proposal to convene a peace conference in Paris. Sihanouk said, “I am flexible, but the Khmer Rouge want me to be tough. So, I have to be tough.” At the conference, Sihanouk argued in favor of a quadripartite coalition government, in which the guerrilla forces would be granted three fourths of the power, while the Cambodian government would be reduced to a minor role. While the Cambodian government and Vietnamese delegations made numerous concessions, Sihanouk and the Khmer Rouge remained intransigent. The American delegation expected all of the concessions to be made by the Cambodian government and Vietnamese, and none by their opponents. The United States had a single goal – to condemn Vietnam. It was the view of many non-Western delegates that the United States deliberately undermined the conference.
One year after the collapse of the Paris Peace Conference, Thai Prime Minister Chatichai Choonhavan traveled to Washington and met U.S. President Bush. There Chatichai urged Bush to apply pressure on China to reduce aid to Pol Pot. Bush refused, and answered that he supported a comprehensive solution that included the Khmer Rouge. Even with the withdrawal of Vietnamese troops, China continued to send arms to the Khmer Rouge and the flow of U.S. supplies continued unabated. It was the view of the United States that with Vietnamese forces out of the way, the government of Cambodia would soon fall. More aid would have to be sent to the guerrillas in order to hasten that result. Under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the United States imposed an economic embargo on Cambodia and prevailed upon Western European nations to cut off trade. In 1989, Eastern European nations that had been long-time trading partners with Cambodia were warned that they would not be permitted to join the IMF and World Bank unless they severed aid to Cambodia. United Nations Development Program funds that were earmarked for Cambodia were put on hold. UN aid went instead to Khmer Rouge camps in Thailand.
In 1991, a second conference in Paris reached an agreement that would bring the non-KR resistance groups onto the Cambodian political scene, but it would take until 1999 to eliminate the Khmer Rouge as a fighting force. The Khmer Rouge as an organization is gone now.
Yet today we see the duplicity of similar American foreign policy around the world, particularly in the Middle East and in Africa.
FROM HERE
The United States and China shared an antipathy for Vietnam’s alliance with the Soviet Union and sought a way to overturn the recent turn of events. U.S. Secretary of State Harold Brown denounced Vietnam for its “minor league hegemonism,” and China sent troops into northern Vietnam to fight a two-week war to “teach Vietnam a lesson.” According to journalist Elizabeth Becker, U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski “himself claims that he concocted the idea of persuading Thailand to cooperate fully with China in its efforts to rebuild the Khmer Rouge.” Brzezinski said, “I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot. I encouraged the Thai to help the D.K. [Khmer Rouge government-in-exile of Democratic Kampuchea]. The question was how to help the Cambodian people. Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him, but China could.” In fact, U.S. support went well beyond encouraging others to rebuild the Khmer Rouge. In 1979 the United States and China wielded their influence and pushed through a vote in the UN General Assembly in favor of granting Cambodia’s UN seat to the ousted Khmer Rouge regime, and terminated a UN investigation into Khmer Rouge crimes. The following year, the United States again supported the Khmer Rouge in the UN as the “legitimate” representative of the Cambodian people. Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping had an unshakeable fondness for the murderous Khmer Rouge and provided them with $100 million per year. “I do not understand why some people want to remove Pol Pot,” Deng remarked in 1984. “It is true that he made some mistakes in the past but now he is leading the fight against the Vietnamese aggressors.”
With U.S. backing, Cambodia would continue to be represented in the United Nations by a Khmer Rouge diplomat until 1993. The Carter Administration urged international aid organizations to cut off assistance and aid to Vietnam for having swept Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot from power. Nearly all non-socialist nations responded by severing aid to both Vietnam and Cambodia. The United States and its allies held enough votes to ensure that the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank cut off loans to Cambodia and Vietnam. Although the United States would not grant licenses to non-governmental organizations to provide aid to alleviate hunger within Cambodia, Operation USA gave $7 million to Cambodian refugees living in areas under the control of the Khmer Rouge. he anti-Cambodian policy would persist under the Reagan and Bush Administrations. In 1985, U.S. Secretary of State George Schulz visited Thailand and warned ASEAN diplomats to be careful in drafting peace proposals or the Vietnamese might accept them. Four years later, Bush Administration officials cautioned the Thai government that it would “pay a price” if it abandoned the Cambodian guerrilla movement in order to do business with the Cambodian government. Specifically, the Thai government was threatened with loss of trade privileges under the Generalized Special Preferences. In 1989, after UNICEF reported that up to twenty percent of Cambodian children were suffering from malnutrition, the United Nations Development Program planned to send an assessment team to Phnom Penh. That endeavor was cancelled due to objections by the United States and Japan. The first international conference to address the conflict in Cambodia took place in 1981. China and the United States pointedly excluded Cambodia from the conference, regarding the Cambodian government as having no right to a say in the future of its people. When ASEAN countries proposed disarming the Khmer Rouge, U.S. representatives pressured them into abandoning their position.
Vietnam offered to withdraw its forces in exchange for an end to assistance to the Khmer Rouge, while Cambodia suggested it would move its forces away from the Thai border if the Khmer Rouge would do the same. Both offers were nonstarters in the eyes of the Reagan Administration, and the United States backed UN resolutions demanding the unilateral removal of Vietnamese forces from Cambodia. With Cambodia still in the early stages of recovery from the devastation wrought by Khmer Rouge rule, the U.S. position was a recipe for the return of Pol Pot to power.
The official U.S position was that its aid was being supplied only to non-Khmer Rouge forces. However, political analyst Michael Haas reports that a diplomatic source revealed to him that American officials pressured Thailand to aid both the Khmer Rouge (KR) forces and the non-KR armies. The reason was not difficult to fathom. The Khmer Rouge fielded by far the largest guerrilla army, numbering at its peak 40,000 soldiers, and it comprised the only effective fighting force opposed to the Cambodian government. The KPNLF and ANS were much smaller and generally ineffectual. If the United States wanted to topple the Cambodian government, the Khmer Rouge was the only force capable of doing so. By 1990, the ANS, now renamed the Armée Nationale pour Khmer Independent (ANKI), had essentially become an offshoot of the Khmer Rouge. A CIA officer noted, “Whatever success they had, especially in 1990-91, was due almost entirely to the Khmer Rouge providing the real muscle. ANKI was mostly just window dressing for these operations.”
U.S. funding to the KPNLF and ANS armies allied with the Khmer Rouge was handled by a working group composed of representatives from the United States, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia. CIA satellite intelligence was provided, as were weapons manufactured in Singapore and Taiwan, which the KPNLF and ANS were free to sell at a profit. Quite often, this meant that the arms found a home in the Khmer Rouge army. The Thai military handled distribution, and corrupt officers sold a portion of supplies to the highest bidder. In practice, this meant the Khmer Rouge, which had ample resources from its gem mining and logging operations, not to mention generous funding from abroad. U.S. military officials in Thailand and Okinawa destroyed documents to cover up the sale of munitions by Green Berets to the Thai military, which sold the arms on the black market. Former Green Beret Bob Finley, who discovered an arms cache of $1million during an audit, believed the arms were “without a doubt” being sold to the Khmer Rouge. Finley revealed that U.S. embassy officials were aware of the sales and where the arms were going, but launched a cover-up rather than attempt to put a stop to the practice. Finley was ordered by a superior officer to destroy the incriminating evidence he uncovered during his audit.
By 1985, annual covert CIA support to Cambodian guerrilla factions had risen to $12 million, and Congress voted to send an additional $5 million per year in overt aid. Meanwhile, the British SAS began training Cambodian guerrillas based in Thailand.
In 1989, Vietnam removed its military and France agreed to Prince Sihanouk’s proposal to convene a peace conference in Paris. Sihanouk said, “I am flexible, but the Khmer Rouge want me to be tough. So, I have to be tough.” At the conference, Sihanouk argued in favor of a quadripartite coalition government, in which the guerrilla forces would be granted three fourths of the power, while the Cambodian government would be reduced to a minor role. While the Cambodian government and Vietnamese delegations made numerous concessions, Sihanouk and the Khmer Rouge remained intransigent. The American delegation expected all of the concessions to be made by the Cambodian government and Vietnamese, and none by their opponents. The United States had a single goal – to condemn Vietnam. It was the view of many non-Western delegates that the United States deliberately undermined the conference.
One year after the collapse of the Paris Peace Conference, Thai Prime Minister Chatichai Choonhavan traveled to Washington and met U.S. President Bush. There Chatichai urged Bush to apply pressure on China to reduce aid to Pol Pot. Bush refused, and answered that he supported a comprehensive solution that included the Khmer Rouge. Even with the withdrawal of Vietnamese troops, China continued to send arms to the Khmer Rouge and the flow of U.S. supplies continued unabated. It was the view of the United States that with Vietnamese forces out of the way, the government of Cambodia would soon fall. More aid would have to be sent to the guerrillas in order to hasten that result. Under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the United States imposed an economic embargo on Cambodia and prevailed upon Western European nations to cut off trade. In 1989, Eastern European nations that had been long-time trading partners with Cambodia were warned that they would not be permitted to join the IMF and World Bank unless they severed aid to Cambodia. United Nations Development Program funds that were earmarked for Cambodia were put on hold. UN aid went instead to Khmer Rouge camps in Thailand.
In 1991, a second conference in Paris reached an agreement that would bring the non-KR resistance groups onto the Cambodian political scene, but it would take until 1999 to eliminate the Khmer Rouge as a fighting force. The Khmer Rouge as an organization is gone now.
Yet today we see the duplicity of similar American foreign policy around the world, particularly in the Middle East and in Africa.
FROM HERE
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