The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79

Quite simply the most authoritative work on the pol pot led khmer rouge. If planing a visit to Cambodia Kiernan's book will provide excellent background and explain much of what you see today in rural Cambodia. Further details can be obtained from the website of Sage Insights who support local disadvantaged children by their work in tourism.

Without argument, Ben Kiernan is one of the the top Cambodia scholars working on the subject today. He has been in and out of Cambodia since the 1970's, including a trip shorty after the fall of the DPK in 1980. In 1995, Khmer Rouge forces even accused Kiernan of being a "war criminal," beaming the macbre message from guerrilla radio stations along the Thai border. The Pol Pot Regime, a follow up to Kiernan's How Pol Pot Came to Power, begins with the DPK takeover following the fall of the Lon Nol government. He then provides a nearly 500 page systematic study of the Pol Pot regime. Kiernan breaks the study down into three parts. The first segment discusses the very early days of the DPK and their paranoid attempt to cling to their hard-won power by emptying the cities, creating agrarian communes and exterminating the human remenants of the Lon Nol era, 1970-75. Kiernan labels this section, "Wiping the Slate Clean." Indeed, that is exactly what the Khmer Rouge intended to do, wipe the 'slate,' Cambodia, clean- in order to usher in a new era, even going so far as to declare 1975 Year Zero. Following "Wiping the Slate Clean," Kiernan begins to discuss the evolution and implementation of Khmer Rouge policies. It seems as though the ultimate goal of these radical Marxists was to create an agrarian utopia regardles of cost, even at the risk of turning the nation into one giant charnel house. Following the forced exodus of all major towns and cities, Cambodians were forced into the countryside to grow rice which the DPK felt would lead to the re-emegence of the great Khmer power of the past. The result was starvation and disease on a scale never before seen. Although production was quite high, the Khmer people were placed on starvation rations. Nearly all surplus rice was exported in exchange for goods and military hardware to support the emerging bloody conflict with neighboring Vietnam. This leads us to Kiernan's third section illustrating the subsequent demise of the DPK. As the war with Vietnam began to escalate, so did paranoia within the Party Cental. "Enemies" were ferreted out and executed, including numerous high ranking cadre and military commanders. In 1977, the purges were spiraling out of control. It wasn't long until a small contingent of DPK leaders grew fearful and disillusioned with the Central Party. A number of now famous commanders, most notably the current Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, fled to Vietnam and garnered support for the liberation of Kampuchea. Kiernan does an excellent and indepth job of studying the stucture of the DPK purges and why they lead to the ultimate collapse of the Pol Pot regime. The Eastern Zone of Cambodia, from where the liberation leadership emerged, was was the most heavily purged, not only due to it's close proximity to Vietnam, but also because the Eastern Zone cadre, from the earliest days of the revolution, tended to be less brutal in their treatment of Cambodians, essentia

Ben Kiernan's reports of eye-witnesses of the genocide by the inhuman Pol Pot regime is terribly shocking, to say the least. You need a strong stomach to read this relentless slaughtering of men, women, children and BABIES. It is quite frankly emotionally and humanly really depressing.One gets cold in the back when one sees what pure totalitarian ideology and raving racism are capable of, when implemented by a party (or one man) which wields total power in a single country.Ben Kiernan is right when he states that 'the two important themes in the history of the Pol Pot regime are the race question and the struggle for central power by the French-educated Pol Pot group'. All means (relentless infighting and killing) justified the end (take total power). There is however a third theme: ideology. Total power allowed the implementation of pure ideological policies.Pol Pot's regime was racist, e.g. the liquidation of the Cham people and the ethnic Chinese. This was real ethnic cleansing. But there was more. Ethnic Khmer who came from other countries were considered as enemies and were coldly liquidated.It was also a totalitarian regime that turned the whole Cambodian country in a monstrous concentration camp. All communication between people was paralyzed: 'know nothing, hear nothing, say nothing'.Criticizing the infallibility of the Angkar was a crime punishable by the death penalty. But inside Angkar nepotism was rampant.The similarities with the Stalinist USSR regime are overwhelming.Ben Kiernan stresses rightly the impact of the destabilizing US bombings of Cambodia (about 150000 civilian deaths). Part of the Khmer peasantry was alienated and turned to the Red Khmer.More, the US supported the Pol Pot regime and, into the bargain, secretary of State Brzezinski tried to get international support for Pol Pot, because he was an enemy of Vietnam. Mind-boggling.This book should be read as a reminder of the murderous sufferings inflicted on a largely innocent population by a totalitarian and blind ideology, IMPORTED FROM THE WEST.This should hopefully never happen again. Although we know that, I agree on a lesser scale, some aspects of Pol Pot's dreadful regime are still raging in some parts of the world.A depressing, but must read.I also recommend David Chandler's excellent biography of Pol Pot 'Brother Number One'.

A brilliant indictment of Pol Pot and a highly readable account of the Killing Fields. The focus on ethnic cleansing provides a new way of understanding the horrors of the Khmer Rouge.

As one who has lived through the Khmer Rouge years, I find this work indispensable in trying to make sense of the actual working of the Khmer Rouge during those years. Although a bit dense for the average reader, I believe it is worth the extra time to sift through the voluminous materials presented in the book.