Truman Series: Remember Cambodia

After taking a holiday break, AOM is reinvigorating our series of postings from Truman National Security Project fellows.  Katherine Southwick writes:

Struggling to sneak a photo of a vine-shrouded statue before throngs of other tourists trekked by, it was hard to agree with our tour guide’s assertion that 4,000 visitors a day to the Angkor Wat temple complex was a good thing.

But he was correct that the lure of the UNESCO World Heritage Site created jobs and income, and that “foreigners become aware of Cambodia when they visit the temples, not just our ancient past, but our recent history, too.” Indeed, while the temples’ grand scale and intricate carvings can transport you back to the twelfth century, occasional bullet holes in the sandstone structures are jarring reminders of the horrors of the twentieth. The brutal Khmer Rouge regime had used nearby areas as killing fields in the late 1970s and controlled the region even after its downfall.

That’s why it’s worth noting that America was not the only country that marked a major milestone this January. On January 6, 40,000 people attended a stadium ceremony in the capital of Phnom Penh to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the Vietnamese-led overthrow of the Khmer Rouge. Taking power in 1975, within less than four years, the Khmer Rouge oversaw approximately 1.5 million deaths, around 20 percent of the country’s population. Under its radical communist policies, the Khmer Rouge concentrated nearly the entire population in collective farms, splitting up families and targeting religious groups and social elites. People died as a result of forced labor, starvation, torture, and execution.

Coming to terms with ancient and recent history are two separate endeavors. Tour guides are excellent at rattling off facts about the Angkor period–how the temples were built, who the kings were, and stories from Hindu and Buddhist mythology.  But an uneasy ambivalence hangs over how to deal with memories of the Khmer Rouge.  After accusations of corruption and years of delay, a UN-supported tribunal in Phnom Penh is set to begin its first trial next month.  Most of the defendants are now in their 80s and Pol Pot, the notorious leader of the movement, died in 1998.  Controversy continues over whether to indict others or to pursue alternative reconciliation policies.  And some view the Vietnamese intervention more as an invasion and decade-long occupation than as a liberation. Despite the lack of consensus, at least the anniversary encourages Cambodians to reflect on their past and future one way or another.  At least an effort is made.

Such an effort might be made in the United States, too.  In much of the talk today of military pressure in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Gaza, rarely mentioned are the U.S. bombing campaigns of Cambodia and Laos during the Vietnam War.  Some historians argue that the bombings, which killed anywhere from 150,000 to 500,000 Cambodians, boosted recruitment for the Khmer Rouge.  While the campaigns demolished thousands of tons of weapons and other supplies, they did not fulfill their objective to destroy the Vietcong and their sanctuaries in that region. In some respects, it is a cautionary tale about the unintended consequences of force, of the notion that where overwhelming force may have a logical basis, it may not be an effective instrument of policy, even if used as a last resort.  Partly because historical disagreements persist, we have not yet answered the profound question of what we still owe Cambodia for our actions more than thirty years ago.  At the very least, we honor the costs we imposed on that vulnerable country by applying these lessons to minimize loss of life elsewhere.  Let us hope we do so before the recent past becomes ancient history.

Katherine Southwick is an international lawyer with expertise in human rights and conflict studies as well as a fellow in the Truman National Security Project. The views expressed here are her own.