[Publisher’s Note: A number of lessons came out of the Vietnam War. I have been wondering about the similarity between Pol Pot’s Year Zero and ISIS for some time. The ABC news tells us that ISIS is now (7 April 2015) in control in the outer suburbs of Damascus, the oldest city in the middle east. After so much US-led bombing, it is little wonder that something pre-modern would emerge, something so brutal that the middle east (and therefore the world) is changed forever. Perhaps that is what was intended by the protagonists of the war against the Iraqi people in 2003? From the discussion below, from an unlikely source (a right-wing think tank), it seems that others have been making the same comparison. Plus I came across this apt quote from a book I am currently editing. Ian Curr April 2015.]
“Savagism had no rights; the world belonged to civilization, to Christianity if Christ were stronger than Mahomet, to whatever idea, principle, or power that could take it. In none of their pretended principles, in none of their codes of honor or ethics, was there any other ultimate appeal than brute force; their deity they made to fit the occasion, whatever that might be… The recognized theory of Christendom was that the earth belonged to the Lord who made it, and the children of the Lord were alone entitled to inherit it. The unconverted were the sons of Belial, the enemies of God, and as such should be exterminated … The first right, as they chose to call their claim, was that of discovery. To the finder belonged the spoils, but always in the name of God, the creator, the owner. God and Mahomet, or God and Christ, Mahomet or Christ, whichsoever was the stronger, in his name should the thievery be done.”
— Hubert Bancroft makes the realpolitik plain in History of Central America. Vol. I. 1501-1530. (San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft & co Mr. Any, publishers. 1882.)
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In an excellent exploratory piece by Graeme Woods in The Atlantic this month, he notes in passing the similarities between ISIS and the Khmer Rouge. It’s a worthy comparison – further highlighted by ISIS’ destruction of antiquities as reported last week – and something that merits a deeper look.
In the 1960s and 70s, communism was arguably the Western world’s equivalent to today’s global battle with Islamic jihad. Its scourge and spread in the midst of the Cold War kept US and European policymakers awake at night. One of the groups that emerged under the broad guise of communism was the Khmer Rouge.
A regressive and genocidal regime, the Khmer Rouge seized upon the anger of Cambodians following a brutal US bombing campaign. That campaign, from 1965 to 1973, flew 230,516 sorties and dropped 2,756,941 tons of ordnance on Cambodia (more than the Allies dropped during the entirety of World War Two). The bombing campaign, of which over 10% was on indiscriminate sites, was aimed at destroying mobile Viet Cong bases in eastern Cambodia. The environment of anger that the campaign fermented gave way to a coup d’état in 1970, followed by the Khmer Rouge seizing power in April 1975.
As a 2006 paper by Taylor Owen and Ben Kiernan noted, ‘despite many differences, a critical similarity links the war in Iraq with the Cambodian conflict: an increasing reliance on air power to battle a heterogeneous volatile insurgency.’ Just as in the case of Cambodia, that heterogeneity in Syria and Iraq has given way to a calcified homogenous and territorially-bound group.
In one of their first acts, the Khmer Rouge emptied Phnom Penh and forced the capital’s residents on a long and deadly march into the countryside to work rice fields. Torture and execution were central to their brutal grip on power. As Kiernan explains, Cambodians ‘quickly learnt that any display of knowledge or skill, if “contaminated” by foreign influence, was folly.’
At the forefront of the Khmer Rouge’s ranks were thousands of indoctrinated youth who were to usher in ‘Year Zero’. At the base of the Khmer Rouge’s genocidal regime was a mix of ideological agrarian socialist utopianism and a desire to reinstate the glory years of the 12th Century Khmer Empire. Pol Pot, a self-proclaimed leader, found an opportune moment in the Cold War, playing the great powers and capitalising on public discontent, to build his ranks then seize and maintain power. His genocidal reign was short but destructive.
There’s much similarity to be gleaned from Pol Pot’s genocidal regime that parallels with ISIS today.
Aside from obvious similarities that will be noted from the above, both groups subscribe to the destruction of a collective memory in place of a favoured revisionist other. In effect, both are anti-progress. Reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge’s ‘Year Zero’ concept is the recent footage of ISIS destroying ancient artefacts in Mosul and Nimrud (despite having profited greatly from the smuggling of other antiquities).
Anti-progress movements (whether religious or ideologically driven) are nothing revolutionary. The very nature of progress gives birth to counter-movements – the Luddites, for example, destroyed machinery during the 19th Century Industrial Revolution. These groups thrive in periods of change, such as the incredible social and technological upheaval that has marked this new century.
Anyone who has walked Cambodia’s Killing Fields or S-21 prison should need little reminding of the urgency for action against genocidal groups. In the three years, eight months and 20 days of the Khmer Rouge’s power, an estimated 1.7 million people died. That number, among the most conservative of estimates, equated to 21% of the population. The long tail of that civil war lasted until 1998. Yet unlike Pol Pot’s Cambodia which financially ran itself into the ground, ISIS has riches and resources far beyond.
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No one is more aware than I of the terrible cost of Khmer Rouge rule in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. It was a period that devastated a country I knew well, and which led to the death, as Elliot (see below) rightly notes, of at least 1.7 million people, including several of my close friends.
But there are several reasons for offering a more nuanced view of what occurred under the Pol Pot regime than Elliot suggests, and reasons for wondering whether the Cambodian experience has all that much to tell us about what is happening in the Middle East. There are also some factual points that need adjustment.
The fact that the US bombing campaign had a terrible cost is beyond dispute. However, the revelations that bombing began in 1964 under President Johnson, before Nixon’s authorisation of Operation Menu, which lasted from 1969 to 1973, needs to be put against the fact that little of this bombing, however damaging it may have been, was in populated areas. During the more than six months I traveled around Cambodia in 1966 (including in the northeast of the country), there was simply no general awareness that bombing was taking place.
There is another problem in relation to the bombing. While it is quite clear that the Khmer Rouge made the bombing a successful basis for propaganda and recruitment, we simply cannot say with any certainty just how much this contributed to its recruitment campaigns. Interviews with former Khmer Rouge cadres can only tell part of the story. For the record, I have acknowledged the importance of the bombing for recruitment in my book Before Kampuchea: Preludes to Tragedy.
More to the point, and on an issue of fact, the overthrow of Prince Sihanouk was not the result of the American bombing campaign, as Elliot suggests. The coup was mounted by men of the Cambodian right who had been Sihanouk’s close associates. It is not correct to link the bombing and the March 1970 coup. The best account of the coup is provided by David Chandler in his book The Tragedy of Cambodian History, where he describes the anti-Vietnamese feeling and resentment of Sihanouk’s consort’s family as prime factors in his overthrow.
As to the extent to which the bombing explains later Khmer Rouge actions, I think this is far from clear.
Philip Short’s excellent biography of Pol Pot presents a picture of a man and his close associates who were ready to transform Cambodia well before the US bombing took place. As for the phrase ‘Year Zero’, now so routinely associated with the Khmer Rouge, David Chandler, whose judgment I accept, maintains that this was never used by them. The term was originally associated, it is suggested, with Lenin. But it seems to have gained currency in relation to Cambodia because of its use as a book title by Francois Ponchaud, Cambodge Année Zéro.
What were the Khmer leaders’ views of Cambodia’s past?
As Elliot notes, Pol Pot referred to Cambodia’s Angkorian past as a symbol of what the nation he now ruled over could achieve. So it is not all that surprising that the physical symbols of the past were not destroyed by the Khmer Rouge regime. While looting on a major scale took place in the Angkor region after the Khmer Rouge was defeated in 1979, there is no evidence of the Khmer Rouge setting out to damage the Angkor temples while it was in power. Indeed, the one serious instance of damage at Angkor Wat appears to have been the result of a missile launched by Lon Nol forces.
The priceless treasures in Phnom Penh’s National Museum remained untouched while Pol Pot was in power. And despite claims made in some editions of the Lonely Planet Guide to Cambodia that the Silver Pagoda was looted, my own judgment is that the collection of Buddha images that can be seen there today is very much the same as could be seen before 1975. The one notable loss from the royal palace in the 1975-79 period was the royal regalia. The sacred sword, known as the Preah Khan or ‘Lightening of Indra’, has never been recovered.
Action against genocidal groups is indeed a necessity. But one cannot readily equate one genocidal group with another. The lack of a religious element in the Cambodian genocide (or ‘auto-genocide’, to use Jean Lacouture’s term) is surely vitally important given the central role religion plays in the beliefs of ISIS.
In short, one genocide may have some similarity with another, but it is just as important to give due weight to the differences between them.
Photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
Elliott’s comments
Milton Osborne’s rebuttal to my piece on The worrying similarities between the Khmer Rouge and ISIS was a welcome prompt to flesh out my argument. Milton’s wealth of expertise on Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge brings important nuance to my argument.
As Milton notes, David Chandler’s excellent account highlights anti-Vietnamese feeling and resentment toward Sihanouk’s consort’s family as prime factors in his overthrow. I would cede to the scholarship of both on the root causes of his overthrow and more broadly on the motivations of the Khmer Rouge. As Milton rightly notes, the degree to which the bombing campaign impacted on the rise of anti-Vietnamese anger and desire for change is unknown. In its brevity, my post doesn’t sufficiently acknowledge this fact.
Between 1965 and 1968, 214 tons of bombs were dropped on Cambodia. This paled in comparison to the 2.75 million tons dropped on Cambodia until 1973. It may not be altogether surprising, then, that there were few rumblings of discontent in 1966, as Milton notes. That said, Kiernan and Owen’s 2006 argument on the similarities between the bombing campaigns of Cambodia and Iraq still holds water, in that the destructive impact of the bombing campaign likely benefited Khmer Rouge recruitment. Milton and I disagree to the extent of this benefit to the Khmer Rouge, though we agree that it is extremely difficult to measure.
Similarly, in drawing parallels between the Khmer Rouge and ISIS, I have neglected mention of the immense impact of Prince Sihanouk in the coup and on the Khmer Rouge’s rise. Prince Sihanouk, who was revered in the Angkor tradition as a deva-raja (god-king), fell out of favour with the army and the Cambodian right, who would lead the coup against him in March 1970. His policies were often contradictory, which may be explained by his attempts to keep his country neutral in the Vietnam War. He had allowed the Vietnamese to use Cambodian territory and Chinese arms were flowing from the Cambodian port in Sihanoukville to Vietnamese forces, including to the Viet Cong. Unsurprisingly, this angered many in the country and the US; the latter supported his ouster in favour of a pro-American government. In the fall of Sihanouk, we may glean some loose similarities with power vacuums and change in ‘stability of the status quo’ that emerged in post-Saddam Iraq.
Milton rightly points out the origins of the ‘Year Zero’, which was applied as a tidy catch-all name in 1978 in Ponchaud’s book and the following year by a John Pilger documentary of the same title. The term itself draws reference from the French Revolution’s turning back of the calendar in 1792. Pol Pot was exposed to both this revolution during his time studying in Paris and to Mao’s Cultural Revolution during a trip to China in 1965 and 1966. The brutal ‘Cultural Revolution’ Pol Pot oversaw in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge’s reign have all the trimmings of the ‘Year Zero’ concept, even if this name was only assigned after the fact.
I certainly agree with Milton’s final assertion that we need to highlight differences as much as the similarities. There is, of course, a wealth of difference between ISIS and the Khmer Rouge. Milton has rightly highlighted some of the details concerning the Khmer Rouge, yet the obvious differences between the groups should not dissuade us from searching for lessons from the heinous crimes of the past to stop crimes of the present and future. But exploring similarities in motivations (and to a lesser degree, actions) of past extremist actors can help inform counter-actions against current groups.
This brings me to the underlying theme of my post. Both groups emerged as anti-progress movements in the shadows of larger geopolitical events. These permissive environments were the oxygen that birthed both groups. In my view, the success of their ideologies (short-lived in the case of the Khmer Rouge) was secondary; rather it was their free-riding on popular discontent that mattered most.
Most importantly, in drawing out similarities with past genocidal groups, we deflate some of the awe that surrounds current extremist groups. By remembering earlier ‘big idea’ extremist ideologies that failed, we tackle the narcissistic notions of those drawn to such groups expecting to participate in an ‘end of time’ event.
Lastly, comparisons between extremists groups can demonstrate that this is not a religious problem or an ideological one, but something far more profound and far more human. This helps us think more deeply about extremist groups such as ISIS and thereby gives us a stronger hand in tackling root causes of recruitment and the motivations of those joining such groups.