Khmer Rouge Fades Into History

The Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot’s murderous movement of the 1970s and 1980s, is now just a shadow, riddled by defections and combat losses. The man who terrorized Cambodia is said by Thai reporters to be frail and barely able to speak, still in the custody of his former followers. Some press reports say he is being held as bait for a prisoner exchange.

Times correspondent David Lamb, reporting from Phnom Penh last week, said the rest of the army that once ruled Cambodia is down to a few hundred, led by a one-legged commander, Ta Mok, “the Butcher.” With the army of Cambodia’s new leader, Hun Sen, at its heels and the Thai army struggling to keep this fight on the Cambodian side of the frontier, the game is clearly up for the Khmer Rouge and the old man whose reign saw an estimated 1 million people in a once peaceful land die for an impossible Communist ideal of agrarian paradise; in that Red Eden more people were planted than rice.

Once the remnants of the Khmer Rouge are gone, however, Cambodia cannot expect dramatic change. Too many promises have been broken in post-Pol Pot efforts to make a democracy where none had ever existed. King Norodom Sihanouk can rule but cannot lead, and thus spends his days in China. His son, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, has the political instincts of a royalist in a country of peasants and has not played his cards well. The prospects of his followers in a planned June 26 election have not been helped by his continued absences.

Pol Pot probably won’t live to see the outcome, whatever it is. But he doesn’t deserve to, anyway.