Nate Thayer

International Campaign to Ban Landmines soundly rebuts my story against Treaty

International Campaign to Ban Landmines soundly rebuts my blog post opposing landmine treat

Yeshua Moser-Puangsuwan
Research Coordination:
Ban/Policy (Asia)
Non-State Armed Groups (Global)

Dear Nate: Good to see your article, and I couldn't agree more with you on the lunacy of armed conflict as you perfectly describe it.
However, your conclusion regarding landmines is questionable. Your argument seems to be since conflict is unlikely to cease soon (agreed) then any international convention to take away a tool of the mass insanity will fail (facts are against you on the later).
We watch this carefully, and track it in our annual Landmine Monitor reports (www.the-monitor.org).
While there are some ups and downs in the pattern, we are clearly making a difference.
Since the 1997 Treaty came into existence, casualties from antipersonnel mines have dropped almost 75%.
80% of the world's governments have joined the treaty, which requires them to destroy their stockpiles and production capacity- they can't give it away or sell it.
Known legal trade in the weapon has halted for more than a decade.
Ground has been cleared of the weapon, last year areas of land 9 times the size of metro Paris were cleared of mines and returned to productive human use.
Non-state armed groups have also stopped using the weapons. A couple of reasons for this, one is the global norm we have created which stigmatizes users of the weapon, and many non-state armed groups are struggling for legitimacy and therefore do not use the weapon. Also they have relied in the past on state stocks which they could buy, steal or lift from the field, as those stocks are destroyed, and land is cleared under the convention, they have lost those sources.
The main countries in which non-state armed groups still use landmines- Afghanistan, Burma and Colombia, they make their own. However, since 2000, use of mines, self-made or otherwise, by non-state armed groups has dropped from 18 to 4 in 2011.
While we have yet to totally eradicate the weapon, we are on track.
And this has saved an enormous number of lives, both of combatants and non-combatants.
You are right, basically we need to bring a halt to this mass insanity in which young males are enticed to kill the latest enemy for the latest reason.
However, taking away a few of the means in the meantime can't hurt.
Cordially,
Yeshua

--
Yeshua Moser-Puangsuwan
Research Coordination:
Ban/Policy (Asia)
Non-State Armed Groups (Global)

www.the-monitor.org
an initiative of the
International Campaign to Ban Landmines
1997 Nobel Peace Co-Laureate
www.icbl.org
providing research & monitoring for the
Cluster Munition Coalition
www.stopclustermunitions.org

Yeshua: Thanks for the reasoned well sourced reply. Of course we are in agreement on the basic issues. I do take issue with some of your definitions and statistical methodology at first read. But I will make sure I examine what you are basing your conclusions on before responding.

My basic point is that while formal landmines can be restricted, they will be replaced by more crude explosive devices to serve the same tactical purpose. And they will be much harder to track control remove regulate or enforce. For instance what do you categorize IED'd as. Surely they are landmines. And surely they are in wider use now than 1997 What do govt and guerrilla forces use to secure their perimeter with in Afghanistan for instance. Particularly in contested remote areas? Or in African conflicts? I will respond thoughtfully after reading your msg carefully.

Of course we are on the same team here. Anything that will eliminate or reduce civilian and combatant casualties is good. And to make them effectively more enforceable by international treaty. So, as I said in my post, my comments were as much interrogative as a statement. I remain open minded and will reply. I would like to post your comment as a reply on my blog if I have your permission

warm regards on good work,
Nate

Nate,
Sure, you are welcome to post my reply on your blog.
There has been a dramatic increase in IEDs in insurgencies around the world, especially since Iraqi insurgents brought the superpower to its knees through their use. Wow, what self-respecting rebel is going to pass up this easy to make weapon?
However, IEDs do not resemble, nor are they used in the same way, as the landmines proscribed by the 1997 Convention.
This difference is further obfuscated by many journalists reporting anything on the ground which goes boom as a 'landmine' (especially in S Asia... I'll be giving a workshop on Reporting on Explosive Weapons at the Indian Press Club in January as part of our efforts to get accurate reporting).
The convention was mobilised by humanitarian groups, a history you know well. The focus was on the indiscriminate nature of the weapon. Once laid, it kills friend or foe, much like the AV mine you got up close and personal with.
The Mine Ban Treaty bans any weapon, not just antipersonnel mines, which explodes due to the presence, proximity or activity of a human being. This means they are activated by the victim.
Most IEDs are targeted weapon, they are not victim activated. They require the operator to trigger them, usually through remote, electric, command (frequently cellphones, but also by wire). These targeted bombs have been used in Iraq, Chechniya, Afghanistan, S. Thailand and India by rebels to devastating effect.
Of course, just like US drones, they sometimes get it wrong and wipe out a bus load of ordinary folk. When that happens, by either NATO or the Maoists, it is a war crime, but does not come under the Mine Ban Treaty.
So, no, IEDs are not covered by the Mine Ban Treaty. With the exception of those which meet the treaties definition, however most don't. Do we need another convention to cover them? Well that's not going to happen. Anyway I'd prefer a convention against all war, or if we keep them only sending presidents and generals to fight them.....
by the way, all explosive boobytraps are prohibited by the mine ban treaty.
Cordially,
Yeshua

Yeshua:

I take no issue with any of the below. And again we are on the same team onn these issues. I am aware of how you described the  tactical use of IED's. And I am not trying to much up the debate with Socratic logic to detract from the legitimacy of your premise or the practical compromises that have to be made.

My original point was the use of a tactic weapon to secure the perimeter of infantry grunts actually at risk and deployed to carry out the combat. If landmines are banned, what will/do they now use in there place to secure their perimeter? I know it is different for newer usage of asymmetrical warfare, "terrorism" which targets civilians, and urban warfare in general (all of which violate existing international rules, laws, conventions, and treties of war), but in the field, say Afghanistan, what do forward deployed soldiers use to secure their AO? If they aren't using landmines, they are replacing them with something. And victim-activated devices may be banned, but thats the only way you are going to secure whatever piece of real estate you are using as a forward operating base. So, are they using imporvised explosives designed for other purposes or homemade or landmines? If not then waht? They certainly aren't going to rely on a gentleman's agreement with the other side when office hours are open for business. That is pretty much the basis of my entire admittedly intentionally provocative post. if you can convince me of another way that two sides on a mission to murder the other can replace that or not need to employ it, then I will promptly retract my (very luke warm and probably not really honestly committed to but meant to initiate a debate) initial opposition to the Treaty

Thanks for the substantive and thoughtful rersponses,

Nate

Below is the Original post or you can see full version on this blog:

Why Landmines Should not be Banned

 

By Nate Thayer

Great piece by Luke Hunt, as is his norm. But with the full knowledge I will get rebuked like a convicted pedophile arguing for the right to work as a summer camp counselor for teenagers, I am opposed to a ban on landmines and the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Treaty. I promise I love my mother, dogs, children, and freedom etc. etc. But, in my view, an international treaty making  it illegal to manufacture, produce sell, export, buy, and use anti-personnel mines will result in increasing civilian and non-combatant casualties, and increase both the number of combatants wounded and the severity of their wounds. Here is my reasoning:  

The statistics swing wildly, as does the category what team is allowed to murder whom and when, which team doesn’t have the thumbs up to kill, or whom it is against the rules to murder (see below for far more random data than you want to know), but it is generally accepted that well over 250 million people were killed by political groups in the 20^th century—far more than any century in human history. It was a century that began with a murder that sparked a war in Sarajevo, interrupted by an icon event of world harmony and unity—the Olympics—in Sarajevo and ended with a mass orgy of mass killing and atrocities in Sarajevo. And it only seems to be getting worse since. There have been several hundred wars this last century, but the figure swings wildly depending on who is counting what and where.

But my conclusion is that it looks like it is going to be a while before people figure out another way to settle their differences. Another way than sending off as-close-to-teenage-boys-that-might-still-think-it-is-a-like-a-video-game as they can get away with, to do their killing or get killed trying to not let the other team kill the guy who sends the other guy who thinks it is like a video game off to prevent him from getting killed while trying to kill the opposing teams elite.

But, at the end of the day, anybody who has been to war knows that the first thing you do when you seize a piece of real estate is to protect your perimeter from being penetrated by someone trying to kill you. It is human nature. So you can take care of such matters as eating, talking, sleeping, thinking, and, in general trying not to dwell on the fact that you are unwanted where you are enough that someone will kill you for being there. It has nothing to do with politics. Or country. Or freedom. Or justice. Or ideology. Or patriotism etc. It has to do with not getting killed.

To secure your perimeter you must make the other team afraid enough to not risk trying to breach it. So you put things that explode and will kill them under the ground or along a path or between trees to make a circle around you that will kill them so they won’t kill you. So you can eat, sleep, and wake up. It has nothing to do with landmines per se. They make them designed to just blow your leg off and NOT kill you so two other guys will be out of action also because they need to carry you back from whence you came. Actually the good ones are designed to blow three peoples legs off to make SIX other guys, totaling nine, to be out of action. They have landmines that can bounce in the air and instead of blowing your leg off, blow up chest high to kill a bunch of the other team. Or attached in a line down a path so the first guy sets off an explosion that kills a whole line of guys going back, say, 40 feet. There are all kinds of tricks. You can easily make your own landmine from any explosive—a mortar, or artillery shell, grenade or a Budweiser beer can filled with innards of bullets etc. The point being that banning landmines isn’t going to stop some young fellow from doing whatever he can to make sure he can eat and sleep to minimize the chances of someone from the other team trying to kill him successfully while he does so.

It is human nature to try and avoid death, pain, injury or danger.

I will add here I speak as someone who has been on the wrong side of a landmine. Actually two landmines placed on top of one another just for good measure. Two anti-tank mines. I was in a Russian truck that the team I was with had just captured from the other team. After taking their whole town. We were driving at night down a jungle dirt path back towards our team’s locker room. Before this particular battle, the team I was with didn’t have any tanks—or trucks. These anti-tank mines are pressure designed. You can walk on them and they won’t go off, but you drive over it and the weight of the vehicle will create an explosion that will shake the earth ten miles away. I was 4 feet away when we did just that. It was placed earlier by my own team I was with to prevent the other team from driving their tanks—or trucks—through my team’s perimeter. But I guess they forgot. There were three of us in the front of the truck and six in the bed of the Russian Zil transport military vehicle. I was in the middle in the front. The mine blew the truck into the air like a child’s toy and shredded it into a thousand shards of lethal metal. The other two people sitting with me were killed. Well not immediately. I woke up in the engine compartment of the now non-existent truck with a severed leg across my face. It wasn’t mine. I checked. It was however the driver whom I had been sitting next to. He was holding the stump of his leg with the expression of frozen eyed indescribable shock of someone who knows he is about to die. He cried calling for his mother for what seemed like a long time. Then he died. The fellow sitting on my other side was luckier. He took shrapnel through his brain and died instantly. It was rainy. It was night. It was a jungle. And we were seven miles from the nearest place where someone wouldn’t shoot us if we arrived. Several were badly injured. I had shrapnel through my legs torso and head. And several broken bones. We tied a hammock to a small tree we cut down and carried the more seriously wounded through the jungle towards “home”. I only realized my ankle bone was sticking out of my leg when I stepped in a muddy puddle and pain shot up to my brain. I only realized I had pieces of metal in my head when I tasted blood dripping in my mouth, wiped my face, and my hand was covered in bright crimson liquid. Two died while we walked—for two and a half hours.

My point being only I really don’t like landmines at all. So it might seem odd I support them being used as a weapon of war, but it isn’t idle ignorance of the suffering they inflict. But it makes a lot of sense actually. Because I didn’t and don’t want to die.

If you make landmines illegal, it will be like alcohol prohibition or making marijuana illegal. It won’t stop them from being used; it will just make the issue worse. Think IED and Iraq and Afghanistan. Those aren’t landmines. But they are. They are just homemade. And far messier and harmful.

If landmines are controlled and regulated, it is a far more sensible and workable option. They can be designed to easily be detected and removed. Rules of war can be made to require they be mapped when placed, removed when the other team seizes that particular plot of land, or made to disintegrate after a period of time--whenever whatever organized lethal squabbling brought these young boys to wherever they are that requires more than turning off the bedside lamp to get a good night sleep.

But you can’t make laws that prevent people from trying simply to not let someone else they really have no beef with personally be able to kill them when they are eating lunch or sleeping. If you want to stop that from happening, then perhaps it is better to focus on not ordering sending these people off to kill and get killed because you want to protect your money, political power, or religion, or race, or whatever belief system is deemed worthy enough to declare war on the other team.

 

According to the Red Cross, the civilian to soldier death ratio in wars fought since the mid-20th century has been 10:1 and rising. From 1900 to 1987 more than 170 million were killed as defined by “death by government.” From 1945 and up to 1987, about 76,000,000 people have been murdered in cold blood by one regime or another. Most of this for political reasons of state or power, but also outright genocide—murder for reasons of ethnicity, race, religion, or nationality. From 1900 to 1987, about 39,000,000 people were killed in genocide or 20 million by the definition of genocide since WW2. And estimated 19 more million were killed between 1990 and 2000. So 80 million in war murdered since WWII. Only twelve countries in the world have a population larger than this. Then you add on that the additional that have been killed by government violence in the 20^th century—not war among combatants--but mass murder or intentional killings of their own people under their political control. Estimates are more than 150 million. The statistics people have actually devoted their lives to figure out categorizing the above to justify, excuse, create rules to make it morally OK, or to blame it on the other team are staggering. There is a list “ Attributing casualties caused just to Christians” and lists of  “How many people have died in the name of Christ, Christianity and Catholicism?” and lists of “Victims of the Christian Faith” which include “Ancient Pagans, Mission,  Crusades (1095-1291), Heretics, Witches,  Religious Wars,  Jews,  Native Peoples,  20th Century Church Atrocities”,  Then there is a list of “Death by Government” and an actual US military computerized system to estimate acceptable levels of “Collateral Damage” i.e. percentage of civilians acceptable to kill in a military operation.  The software used is known as “FAST-CD” or “Fast Assessment Strike Tool—Collateral Damage." A helpful, if a bit transparently sure- of-himself author explains how it works which I am not sure really makes much difference if you’re the one who is dead. “When followed, this process dramatically reduces the amount of collateral damage in U.S. military operations, and also ensures high levels of political accountability.” Here he gives the people who might be killing you a bit of wiggle room. “However, due to the realities of combat operations, the process is not always followed. The U.S. military’s collateral damage estimation process is intended to ensure that there will be a less than 10 percent probability of serious or lethal wounds to non-combatants. Less than 1% of pre-planned operations which followed the collateral damage estimation process resulted in collateral damage.” What a relief to know that, I am sure any reader would agree. The author continues to reassure potentially dead people: “When collateral damage has occurred, 70% of the time it was due to failed “positive identification” of a target, 22% of the time it was attributable to weapons malfunction, and a mere 8% of the time it was attributable to proportionality balancing - e.g. a conscious decision that anticipated military advantage outweighed collateral damage. ^“ Ah hah! So only 8% of the times were the murders of women, children, old people or other people not dressed hostilely intentionally killed? What a reassurance that is.  He continues, a bit annoyingly, self-riotously: “According to public statements made by U.S. government officials the President of the United States or the Secretary of Defense must approve any pre-planned ISAF strike where 1 civilian casualty or greater is expected.” 

Then the lists get endlessly more entertaining on who it is OK to kill, who, and why is doing the killing, and who killed against the rules (the rules of OK being quite remarkably distinct from each other) There is the “Overview of Twentieth Century Wars, Massacres and Atrocities: Source List and Detailed Death Tolls for Man-made Multicides throughout History” It only gets more unpleasant. There are lists that just include soldiers—dismissing the women children and civilians as not statistically relevant to study for that project. “There are endless lists of “Wars of the Twentieth Century” and “Death Tolls for the Multicides of the Twentieth Century”,(see below starting with “Alphabetical Index (A-J)” Almost every war falls into one of two categories: Ethnic conflict or religious conflict. There are lists of subcategories or additional lists where religion is just one of several issues worth murdering or being killed for. And then a list where different ethnic groups fought for primarily religious reasons. There is a list which is prefaced: “This list focuses on atrocities which are largely the direct result of unbridled corporate exploitation. Obviously, many additional conflicts have an underlying economic cause which operates indirectly.”

Then you have what defines a civilian casualty of war. The label ‘civilian’ is parsed and selectively applied in a multitude of definitions to make killing them acceptable for one team or another. You would think a civilian is pretty simple-- any person who does not belong to the armed forces of one side trying to kill the other team. But there are endless debates about, for example, civilian contractors, working with the military, or “terrorists” (which is another category with an endless disputed list of one group of people given the A-OK too kill another group). Not to mention whether said defined terrorist group has the green light to kill category “B” of said defined target for murder. So that complicates the whole issue of how one defines a “civilian casualty of war.” The disputed groups of who without a uniform and gun shooting back at you deserves to die a legal murder include: Those killed as a direct effect of war; Those injured as a direct effect of war; Those dying, whether during or after a war, from indirect effects of war such as disease, malnutrition and lawlessness, and who would not have been expected to die from such causes in the absence of the war; Victims of one-sided violence, such as when states slaughter their own citizens in connection with a war; Victims of rape and other sexual violence in connection with a war; Those forced to flee their homes from war – that is, refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs); and those who, even after a war is over, die prematurely from injuries sustained in war. 

Virtually every atrocity statistic is denied, minimized or rejected by someone, but the following lists of dead people from being murdered for a political reason are among the most argued about: Racism, since, as a collection of physical traits is not really a scientific concept, how do you attribute motive to murder from purely racial conflicts and all other ethnic conflicts? Whether a conflict is racist depends on whether the bad guy comes from the other side of the river or the other side of the planet. Generally, racism is covered by the African Diaspora, Apartheid, Colonial Activities and Indians.

 Then there is the list of “Secondary Wars and Atrocities of the Twentieth Century” and “Deaths by Mass Unpleasantness: Estimated Totals for the Entire 20th Century” Which I find particularly clever.

---

Then there is the Infamous Proverbial Body Count Quiz Show Debate: How many people died in all the wars, massacres, slaughters and oppressions of the Twentieth Century? Here are a couple figures to choose from. Note the categories the different researchers deem OK to call “Against The Rules.”

Cherif Bassouni, "Searching for peace and achieving justice: the need for accountability", published on Law and Contemporary Problems, vol. 59: no. 4.) 33 million "military casualties" (that would mean dead boys carrying a gun wearing the same color coordinated clothes only); 170 million which is defined as dead people killed by or fighting their own governments in "conflicts of a non-international character, internal conflicts and tyrannical regime victimization" and “includes 86 million since the Second World War” for a grand total of 203 million people.

 

Or you can choose Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-first Century (1993)”  He counts "Lives deliberately extinguished by politically motivated carnage":  which he says is 167 million to 175 million which includes “War Dead: 87,500,000”,  “Military war dead: 33,500,000”, “Civilian war dead: 54,000,000”,  “Not-war Dead: 80,000,000”,  “Communist oppression: 60,000,000” Or then for selective reading there is David Barrett, “World Christian Encyclopedia (2001)”,  who just counts “Christian martyrs only” at 45.5M.  Or Stephane Courtois, in “The Black Book of Communism”, who limits dead victim to “Victims of Communism only” at 85-100 million. Or there is Milton Leitenberg who slices up the body count to only include “Politically caused deaths in the 20th century” which he puts at 214 million to 226 million” which sub diced up into “Deaths in wars and conflicts, including civilian: 130 million to 142 million” and ‘Political deaths, 1945-2000” which, probably through some government funded research grant comes up with the pretty darn laser clear number of “50 million to 51 million. Then there is the oddly titled list “Not The Enemy Media”  which lists those “Killed through U.S. foreign policy since WWII, as of July 2003” to the pretty darn mathematically specific “10,778,727 to 16,861,695 (1945-May 2003).” Or there is the abruptly titled ominous list by Rudolph J. Rummel, titled “ Death By Government”, which  comes up with (Google the word, I had to) "Democides - Government inflicted deaths (1900-87)” and has a grand total of exactly “169,198,000” which includes the suspiciously partisan sounding categories of “Communist Oppression” which he places at “110,286,000” and the very different murderer but same dead result of “Democratic democides” which are suspiciously lopsidedly slim at “2,028,000.” He also, for fun or because his government research grant budget hadn’t been all spent yet maybe, has a list clarifying “Not included among democides”( but just as dead: my inserted notation): “Wars: 34,021,000” and “Non-Democidal Famine (which he helpfully defines for us: my notation) “(often including famines associated with war and communist mismanagement):”  and then provides further scientific sub categories of “China (1900-87): 49,275,000” and “Russia: (1921-47): 5,833,000” for a total of “258,327,000 for all the categories listed here.” Phew!!

Or the more sober data chart of Matthew White, “Historical Atlas of the Twentieth Century, 2010)” which has the list as follows: “Deaths by War and Oppression during the 20th Century: 203 million”

	Military	Collateral*	Democide	Famine	Total
Wartime	37m	27m	41m	18m	123m
Peacetime	0	0	40m	40m	80m
TOTAL	37m	27m	81m	58m	203m

Mr. White, thankfully defines “Collateral = civilian deaths that are generally considered to be an unavoidable, legitimate byproduct of waging war.” And breaks it down further as “My estimate for the Communist share of the century's unpleasantness: Genocide & Tyranny: 29 million” and just to be clear adds it is “including intentional famine.” There is a separate list of dead people from other people being upset with some group of another people Mr. White includes of  “Man-made Famine: 41 million” adding “(excluding intentional famine, but including both wartime and peacetime)” which , frankly still leaves me a bit confused. He has other lists for the cause of a specific group of dead people which are “Communist-inspired War (for example the Russian Civil War, Vietnam, Korea, etc.)”  which he calculates at “Military: 7 million” and “Civilian (collateral): 10 million” And just so he is perfectly clear as to who caused who to be dead from what and for what reason, he adds “NOTE: With these numbers, I'm tallying every combat death and accidental civilian death in the war, without differentiating who died, who did it or who started it. According to whichever theory of Just War you are working from, the Communists may be entirely blameless, or entirely to blame, for these 17 million dead.” His final tally for dead people by political allegiance (or more accurately lack of allegiance, but still dead for some degree of political something or other he continues: “TOTAL: 87 million deaths by Communism.” And “RESIDUE: 116M deaths by non-Communism.”

He has further lists, he says “For Comparison” of dead people including “smallpox, smoking, abortions, Cats and Dogs, Influenza Epidemic 1918-1919, ASIDS, Homicides, Disasters, racism, Decommunization (I didn’t bother to Google that one), Medical Mistakes, and Eaten by Tigers”

 

Ok, I will stop here but I will let the lists continue on their own. But a warning to those who dare read on: You might be, statistically, risking dying from old age or confusion before getting to the end……………….

 

Taking the moral high ground: Swedish Pol Pot supporter apologizes for his mistake

Taking the moral high ground:Swedish Pol Pot supporter apologizes for  his mistake

By Nate Thayer

When Gunnar Bergstrom was a guest in Khmer Rouge Cambodia of Pol Pot in August 1978, the Swede enjoyed a rare meeting and dinner of oysters hosted by Pol Pot.

The meal followed a rare interview he and three politcal comrades from Sweden were given by the innaccesible and secretive Pol Pot who was then presiding over the death of more than a million and a half people that was actually escalating and under full rage at the time of that August 1978 feast. he returned to Europe and labeled talk about genocide under Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge rule as a  Western lie.  

He has since fully publicly acknowledged his mistake, without mitigation or justification. he simply said he was wrong and asked for forgiveness. "For those still appalled by my support of the Khmer Rouge at the time, and especially those who suffered personally under that regime, I can only say I am sorry and ask for your forgiveness," Bergstrom says in his book, "Living Hell."

Full stop. He returned to Cambodia in the mid 2000's and publicly apologized again. He should be commended for having the moral courage to simply admit he was wrong, instead of the decades of silence or mitigation or justification that many others have chosen who shared his views and had a significant influence on public opinion and policy. He has shown moral courage that in contrast is absent from many of his contempraries who remain active in the Cambodian politcal debate today.

The young Swedish leftists  shared Pol Pot's view, seeing the Khmer Rouge takeover as a revolution to transform Cambodia into a fairer society benefiting the poor.

Bergstrom has since realized he was mistaken about Pol Pot's brutal regime, and he has publicly retracted and apologized for his support and the propoganda influencee it had. he took the initiatiove to try and make amends.

 "We had been fooled by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. We had supported criminals," he told The Associated Press  from Stockholm. Gunnar Bergstrom has deep regret. He was one of only a handful of Westerners whom the Khmer Rouge allowed to visit during its 1975-79 hold on power. "For those still appalled by my support of the Khmer Rouge at the time, and especially those who suffered personally under that regime, I can only say I am sorry and ask for your forgiveness," Bergstrom says in his book, "Living Hell."

In 1978, Bergstrom was president of the Sweden-Kampuchea Friendship Association, a political group that supported Mao Zedong's China and influenced by the U.S. war in Vietnam. To Bergstrom, the Khmer Rouge revolution presented an "idealistic idea about an alternative society."

Bergstrom has shown courage and gained my respect for his very simple act of moral courage. He, in a way, is a hero in a sea of intellectual cowards that still remain mute in the wake of their shrill cries of support and defence of crimes against humanity. To them, it should be reminded, it is pretty simple: "I was wrong  and I am sorry."

Khmer Rouge Apologist Noam Chomsky: Unrepentant

Khmer Rouge Apologist Noam Chomsky: An Offense to all who died under Pol Pot

A Review of his record to date

By Nate Thayer

 

Professor Noam Chomsky is a brilliant man. He is without question the world’s leading scholar on linguistics, a long deserved tenured professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and speaks 32 languages. He so dominates the international field of linguistics, that he created another school of linguistic theory for the purpose of encouraging debate within his specialty.

However Chomsky is best known as a very active political critic. He refuses to attach an ideology to himself, but has described his politics in their past as similar to an Anarchist.

He is too smart to simply not understand the political consequences he has made a career out of  espousing on the issue of culpability for crimes committed during Khmer Rouge rule. And they are nothing less than intellectually intentional, knowing lies designed to mislead people as to the true facts to further a pre-determined ideological agenda, parsing, obfuscating and intentionally deceiving people to wrongly attribute the origins, causes, responsibility and perpetrators of the Cambodian suffering. His writings on Cambodia have done more damage, through its surface logic, to allowing those responsible for mass murder to avoid facing justice, and to misdirect that responsibility on peripheral players in the 40 year old drama. Not only does he deem the architects of Cambodian suffering as the US government, but labels the intenrational independent media as willing accomplices.

In the June 25, 1977 issue of the “Nation” a popular left leaning magazine in the U.S., Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman authored “Distortions at Fourth Hand.”

In it, he denied the credibility of information leaking out of Cambodia of a bloodbath underway, and viciously attacked the authors of reportage suggesting many were dying and suffering under the Khmer Rouge. “The technical name for this farce is 'freedom of the press'. All are free to write as they wish: Fox Butterfield, with his ideological blinders, on the front page of the Times (daily circulation more than 800,000)…. that find only 'woes' and distress, reach a mass audience and become part of the established truth. In this way a 'line' is implanted in the public mind with all the effectiveness of a system of censorship, while the illusion of an open press and society is maintained. If dictators were smarter, they would surely use the American system of thought control and indoctrination…."

Chomsky called it "a campaign to reconstruct the history of these years so as to place the role of the United States in a more favorable light. The drab view of contemporary Vietnam provided by Butterfield and the establishment press helps to sustain the desired rewriting of history, asserting as it does the sad results of Communist success and American failure. Well suited for these aims are tales of Communist atrocities, which not only prove the evils of communism but undermine the credibility of those who opposed the war and might interfere with future crusades for freedom."

"It is in this context that we must view the recent spate of newspaper reports, editorials and books on Cambodia, a part of the world not ordinarily of great concern to the press. However, an exception is made when useful lessons may be drawn and public opinion mobilized in directions advantageous to the established order. Such didacticism often plays fast and loose with the truth.” “For example, on April 8, 1977, The Washington Post devoted half a page to 'photographs believed to be the first of actual forced labor conditions in the countryside of Cambodia [to] have reached the West.' The pictures show armed soldiers guarding people pulling plows, others working fields, and one bound man (“It is not known if this man was killed,” the caption reads). Quite a sensational testimonial to Communist atrocities, but there is a slight problem. The Washington Post account of how they were smuggled out by a relative of the photographer who died in the escape is entirely fanciful. The pictures had appeared a year earlier in France, Germany and Australia, as well as in the Bangkok Post.” He suggested that “the series of pictures could have been taken in Thailand with the prime objective of destroying the image of the Socialist parties” before the election.” He continued: “Even if the photographs had been authentic, we might ask why people should be pulling plows in Cambodia. The reason is clear, if unmentioned. The savage American assault on Cambodia did not spare the animal population. Hildebrand and Porter, in their Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution, cite a Cambodian Government report of April 1976 that several hundred thousand draft animals were killed in the rural areas. The Post did not have to resort to probable fabrications to depict the facts.” Hildebrand and Porters book Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution was cited as quoting the Pol Pot Khmer Rouge themselves as to why slave labour under the KR was a myth created to serve American propaganda. “Hildebrand and Porter present a carefully documented study of the destructive American impact on Cambodia and the success of the Cambodian revolutionaries in overcoming it, giving a very favorable picture of their programs and policies, based on a wide range of sources.” Their book was a left wing diatribe that relied entirely on KR official propaganda documents and statements melded with anti--American propaganda. There was nothing remotely acceptable in its scholarship or methodology. Both authors admitted a number of years ago that their book had been discredited and distanced themselves from their own work. “In his Foreword to Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution, Asian scholar George Kahin observes that it is a book from which 'anyone who is interested in understanding the situation obtaining in Phnom Penh before and after the Lon Nol government's collapse and the character and programs of the Cambodian Government that has replaced it will, I am sure, be grateful…' But the mass media are not grateful for the Hildebrand-Porter message, and have shielded the general public from such perceptions of Cambodia.” Here Chomsky blames the media, again, as conspiring en masse to allow the public to hear the truth about the KR. “In contrast, the media favorite, Barron and Paul's Murder of a Gentle Land: untold story of Communist Genocide in Cambodia (their subtitle), virtually ignores the U.S. Government role. When they speak of 'the murder of a gentle land,' they are not referring to B-52 attacks on villages or the systematic bombing and murderous ground sweeps by American troops or forces organized and supplied by the United States, in a land that had been largely removed from the conflict prior to the American attack. Their point of view can be predicted from the 'diverse sources' on which they relied: namely, 'informal briefings from specialists at the State and Defense Departments, the National Security Council and three foreign embassies in Washington.' Their 'Acknowledgements' mention only the expertise of Thai and Malaysian officials, U.S. Government Cambodian experts, and Father Ponchaud. They also claim to have analyzed radio and refugee reports.” In fact Barron and Paul’s book, widely vilified by the left ideologues when it came out, was the first to document widespread starvation, murder, human rights abuses, torture, and harsh central polices where people were dying from being turned into slave labor. It was widely accused for being a CIA funded propaganda tract. Its contents have almost wholly turned out to be remarkably accurate. In fact it relied almost exclusively on interviews with several thousand refugees who had managed to escape to Thailand and were in refugee camps on the Thai border. They were eyewitness accounts from inside KR Cambodia---sourcing that didn’t exist in either Chomsky or Porter and Hildebrand's books.  Barron and Paul also included eyewitness reports from journalists who were held at the French embassy in Phnom Penh and saw the genesis of the transformation of Cambodia into the shocking central controlled policies that left nearly 2 million dead. Chomsky downplays these reports, cherry picking from those that, as journalists are supposed to do, only reported what they could confirm. Their scholarship collapses under the barest scrutiny. To cite a few cases, they state that among those evacuated from Phnom Penh, “virtually everybody saw the consequences of [summary executions] in the form of the corpses of men, women and children rapidly bloating and rotting in the hot sun,” citing, among others, J.J. Cazaux, who wrote, in fact, that “not a single corpse was seen along our evacuation route,” and that early reports of massacres proved fallacious (The Washington Post, May 9, 1975). They also cite The New York Times, May 9, 1975, where Sydney Shanberg wrote that “there have been unconfirmed reports of executions of senior military and civilian officials ... But none of this will apparently bear any resemblance to the mass executions that had been predicted by Westerners,” and that “Here and there were bodies, but it was difficult to tell if they were people who had succumbed to the hardships of the march or simply civilians and soldiers killed in the last battles.” Chomsky neglects to point out that the journalists were held hostage and Schanberg concluded they saw no corpses because the Khmer Rouge made sure they did not. Schanberg was also almost executed himself for seeing what little he did see. In the same article Chomsky cites from Cazaux, he fails to include the detailed account of the French surgeon at Calmette Hospital who came out with the last group of westerners, who said that he saw three hundred bodies with their throats cut in the central market. Chomsky goes on: “(Barron and Paul) do not mention the Swedish journalist, Olle Tolgraven, or Richard Boyle of Pacific News Service, the last newsman to leave Cambodia, who denied the existence of wholesale executions; nor do they cite the testimony of Father Jacques Engelmann, a priest with nearly two decades of experience in Cambodia, who was evacuated at the same time and reported that evacuated priests 'were not witness to any cruelties' and that there were deaths, but 'not thousands, as certain newspapers have written' (cited by Hildebrand and Porter).” Chomsky here refers to an article in the LA Times of May 9 which shows how he distorts, in what can only be intentional, the journalists account: “Phnom Penh was described by many of the returnees as a “dead city,” littered with decomposing bodies, and abandoned household goods and populated by a few forlorn pets and a few Khmer Rouge soldiers. One Frenchman said last Thursday the Khmer Rouge had come to his house and ordered him to leave or be shot. He recalled: “On the way to the embassy I saw several dead bodies rotting in the street. Some of them apparently had been shot, but some had their heads crushed and appeared to have been beaten to death.” "A Swedish journalist, Olle Tolgraven of Swedish Broadcasting, said he did not believe there had been wholesale executions. But he said there was evidence the Khmer Rouge had shot people who refused to leave their homes in a mass evacuation ordered the first day of the takeover. This was corroborated by others. One Cambodian woman said many old people died on the trek out of the City “because it was too hard for them to walk.” Chomsky and Herman continued to shift blame from the KR, tried to discredit reports suggesting KR atrocities, and cited without quotation media that he throughout uses as examples of a conspiracy of propaganda: “Before looking more closely at Ponchaud's book and its press treatment, we would like to point out that apart from Hildebrand and Porter there are many other sources on recent events in Cambodia that have not been brought to the attention of the American reading public. Space limitations preclude a comprehensive review, but such journals as the Far Eastern Economic Review, the London Economist, the Melbourne Journal of Politics, and others elsewhere, have provided analyses by highly qualified specialists who have studied the full range of evidence available, and who concluded that executions have numbered at most in the thousands; that these were localized in areas of limited Khmer Rouge influence and unusual peasant discontent, where brutal revenge killings were aggravated by the threat of starvation resulting from the American destruction and killing. These reports also emphasize both the extraordinary brutality on both sides during the civil war (provoked by the American attack) and repeated discoveries that massacre reports were false.” Citing news reports that “repeated discoveries that massacre reports were false” is an outright fabrication. Just because the closed Cambodian borders made evidence difficult to confirm does not mean anyone was reporting they were outright false, save for Chomsky and his ilk. As Cambodia scholar Sopheal Ear points out: “Of course the respectable magazines that Chomsky and Herman cite (the Economist and the Far Eastern Economic Review) say no such thing, and if there had really been any 'discoveries that massacre reports were false' then Chomsky and the magazine in which his article appeared would have given us chapter and verse in type the size of tombstones." "Chomsky leads the reader to believe that a well informed person, someone who reads prestigious news magazines like the Economist, who reads magazines targeted primarily at the wealthy, someone affluent and cultured, would not believe the stuff about democide, and that that business about democide was just lowbrow propaganda for the ignorant trailer trash masses. Chomsky uses the authority and prestige of these very reputable magazines to contradict reports of vast crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. He claims that these are 'conflicting reports' that justify disbelief in the alleged crimes of the Khmer Rouge, that these very respectable magazines endorse his position (without actually admitting that that is his position)." There was of course no such evidence, and no such endorsement. When one chases down these citations, one is led to an article by Nayan Chanda, who thought that the guilt of the Khmer Rouge was not proven. Chomsky and Herman leads the reader to believe them in confident possession of evidence proving the innocence of the Khmer Rouge….. When Chomsky and Herman tell us of 'discoveries that massacre reports were false' this leads the reader to expect (from the context that this is a criticism of press reporting) that some of the many horrific massacre reports he has read in the press were discovered to be false, and that the terribly biased press failed to broadcast this news. The reader expects that if he looks up these sources he will find important neglected news, some dramatic newsworthy facts that disproves some of these terrible stories, and thus casts doubt on all these stories of horror, terror and mass murder under the Khmer Rouge.” In fact the Economist wrote an article endorsing Ponchaud's estimates of hundreds of thousands executed, a million or so dying of brutal mistreatment. Chomsky presented the Far Eastern Economic Review as confidently denying the possibility that the killings were vastly higher, but Chanda specifically denies such knowledge and confidence. Chanda's claim was not that he had evidence that the Khmer Rouge were innocent, but that if we ignore all the evidence indicating they are guilty, there is not much evidence that they are guilty — a position that might perhaps have been defensible when Chanda wrote in 1976, but had become untenable when Chomsky and Herman wrote in 1977. The refugee reports of casual murder, massacres, and frequent forgetfulness of the need to feed and water the slaves, were confirmed by massacres on the border. Chomsky then writes:”They also testify to the extreme unreliability of refugee reports, and the need to treat them with great caution, a fact that we and others have discussed elsewhere (cf. Chomsky: At War with Asia, on the problems of interpreting reports of refugees from American bombing in Laos). Refugees are frightened and defenseless, at the mercy of alien forces. They naturally tend to report what they believe their interlocutors wish to hear. While these reports must be considered seriously, care and caution are necessary. Specifically, refugees questioned by Westerners or Thais have a vested interest in reporting atrocities on the part of Cambodian revolutionaries, an obvious fact that no serious reporter will fail to take into account.” In fact refugee reports are highly credible. Refugees are not trained or in a physical or mental state to concoct false political conspiracies that hold water. Refugees are credible because they come across in separate groups or alone from different areas of the border and originating from different parts of Cambodia at different times for different reasons. It would be impossible for them to conspire together to tell a consistent false story. Chomsky uses official KR statements and propaganda as “credible documentation” while dismissing the eyewitness accounts of people fleeing abominable conditions and further states “Washington is the torture and political murder capital of the world.” When it comes to death from disease, Chomsky again blames the Americans: “though there was ‘a big death toll from sickness’— surely a direct consequence, in large measure, of the devastation caused by the American attack.” The American bombing had stopped 2 years prior to KR victory, and he fails to even mention the effect of the evacuation of 2 million people from the cities as a possible contributing factor. As to the toll of central policy of the KR resulting in people killed Chomsky says this, quoting Ponchaud, the French priest: “Here we read the 'Most foreign experts on Cambodia and its refugees believe at least 1.2 million persons have been killed or have died as a result of the Communist regime since April 17, 1975' (UPI, Boston Globe, April 17, 1977). No source is given, but it is interesting that a 1.2 million estimate is attributed by Ponchaud to the American Embassy (Presumably Bangkok).” He continues outright dismissing reports of mass deaths as credible using no sourcing to attribute it to: “a completely worthless source, as the historical record amply demonstrates. The figure bears a suggestive similarity to the prediction by U.S. officials at the war's end that 1 million would die in the next year.” In fact in 1976 Time magazine estimated about six hundred thousand. In 1977 Ponchaud estimated about one million two hundred thousand wrongful deaths, Barron and Paul the same. In 1978 US senator George McGovern estimated two and a half million. The universally accepted figure, after forensic, demographic, and scientific analysis now puts the figure at 1.7 million deaths in the KR 3 year reign. Chomsky doesn’t stop there: “In the New York Times Magazine, May 1, 1977, Robert Moss (editor of a dubious offshoot of Britain's Economist called “Foreign Report” which specializes in sensational rumors from the world's intelligence agencies) asserts that “Cambodia's pursuit of total revolution has resulted, by the official admission of its Head of State, Khieu Samphan, in the slaughter of a million people.” Moss informs us that the source of this statement is Barron and Paul, who claim that in an interview with the Italian weekly Famiglia Cristiana Khieu Samphan stated that more than a million died during the war, and that the population had been 7 million before the war and is now 5 million. Even if one places some credence in the reported interview nowhere in it does Khieu Samphan suggest that the million postwar deaths were a result of official policies (as opposed to the lag effects of a war that left large numbers ill, injured, and on the verge of starvation). The “slaughter” by the Khmer Rouge is a Moss- New York Times creation. Christian Science Monitor editorial states: 'Reports put the loss of life as high as 2 million people out of 7.8 million total.' Again, there is no source, but we will suggest a possibility directly. The New York Times analysis of 'two years after the Communist victory' goes still further. David Andelman, May 2, 1977, speaks without qualification of 'the purges that took hundreds of thousands of lives in the aftermath of the Communist capture of Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975.'” The experts who actually made the study where both the books of Ponchaud and Barron and Paul, which Chomsky condemns as US propoganda and turned out to be an underestimate of the deaths confirmed in the 1990’s up to date in exhaustive research. Chomsky doesn’t seem satisfied dismissing death tolls out of hand, offering no independent evidence, simply attacking the sourcing as politically motivated lies.” Even the U.S. Government sources on which journalists often uncritically rely advance no such claim, to our knowledge. In fact, even Barron and Paul claim only that “100,000 or more” were killed in massacres and executions — they base their calculations on a variety of interesting assumptions, among them, that all military men, civil-servants and teachers were targeted for execution; curiously, their “calculations” lead them to the figure of 1.2 million deaths as a result of “actions” of the Khmer Rouge governing authorities, by January 1, 1977 (“at a very minimum”); by a coincidence, the number reported much earlier by the American Embassy, according to Ponchaud. Elsewhere in the press, similar numbers are bandied about, with equal credibility.” The figures cited, after extrapolation from a broad range of available but limited sources—but qualified by the authors as such--were: Barron and Paul estimate: 400,000 or more during the first exodus; 430,000 or more from disease and starvation during the latter half of 1975; 250,000 or more from disease and starvation in 1976; 100,000 or more in massacres and by execution; and 20,000 or more during escape attempts. While these figures during this period are higher than now believed, they reflect the pattern and, aggregately, reflect the final death toll. Again Chomsky attributed suffering under the DK, not to the KR, but to the American policy toward Cambodia.” It is difficult to convey the deep cynicism of this all-too-typical reporting which excises from history the American role in turning peaceful Cambodia into a land of massacre, starvation and disease. While the editors prate about morality, people are dying in Cambodia as a direct result of the policies that they supported, and, indeed concealed. Hildebrand and Porter quote a Western doctor in Phnom Penh on the mass starvation that resulted from the American war: 'as well as knocking off a generation of young men, the war is knocking off a generation of children'—those who will die from the permanent damage suffered from severe malnutrition, one small part of the American legacy to this “lovely land.”” Here he blames not just any problems in post KR Cambodia on the US, but on a vast conspiracy of silence by the media: ”To appreciate fully the cynicism of the press and editorial comments, it is necessary to recall the role of the American mass media in supporting the “secret war” against Cambodia. Prior to the Nixon-Kissinger administration, Cambodian villages had been subject to U.S. or U.S.-supported armed attack, invariably denied, but on occasion later conceded when it was discovered that Western observers were present. The massive assault against Cambodia began in March 1969, when the “secret” B-52 raids were launched. In the following weeks, the Cambodian Government made repeated efforts to bring the facts to the attention of the international press. Prince Sihanouk appealed to the press to make public these “criminal attacks” on “peaceful Cambodian farmers” and to “publicize abroad this very clear stand of Cambodia” in opposing all bombings on Cambodian territory under whatever pretext.” In January 1970, his government released an official White Book giving details of U.S. attacks on civilians up to May 1969 including names, places, dates; figures and photographs. All of this was concealed by the American press, which was later to claim that it was Richard Nixon who kept the 1969 bombardment from the press and the American people. There was one notable exception, a New York Times report by William Beecher (May 9, 1969), headed “Raids in Cambodia by U.S. Unprotested,” which reported B-52 raids on “Vietcong and North Vietnamese supply dumps and base camps “in Cambodia,” citing U.S, sources and disregarding Sihanouk’s impassioned protest against the murder of “Khmer peasants, women and children in particular”” Here Chomsky belittles comparisons to fascist Germany to the suffering at the time of his writing was underway on a full scale. His argument is that since the source was not the KR themselves, rather an independent newspaper report, it wasn’t credible: “Lacouture does in fact compare the Khmer Rouge to the Nazis. He states that Ponchaud cites “telling articles” from a Cambodian Government newspaper and quotes a paragraph which states that “we will choose only the fruit that suit us perfectly,” as distinct from the Vietnamese, who “have removed only the rotten fruit.” Commenting on this passage Lacouture states “Perhaps Beria would not have dared to say this openly; Himmler might have done so.” And he then concludes that the Cambodian revolution is “worthy of Nazi Gauleiters.” The newspaper report that elicited these judgments, on which the press uncritically relies, does appear in Ponchaud's book. The source, however, is not a Cambodian Government newspaper, but a Thai newspaper, a considerable difference. The quoted paragraph was written by a Thai reporter who claims to have had an interview with a Khmer Rouge official. How seriously would we regard a critical account of the United States in a book by a hostile European leftist based on a report in Pravda of a statement allegedly made by an unnamed American official? The analogy is precise. Why then should we rest any judgment on Ponchaud's account of a Thai report of an alleged statement by an unnamed Khmer Rouge official? What is certain is that the basis for Lacouture's accusations, cited above, disappears when the quotes are properly attributed: to a Thai reporter, not a Cambodian Government newspaper.” Instead, he makes a comparison to the French revolution, adding the suffering in France was considerably less than suffering inflicted by the US. “But if postwar Cambodia is more similar to France after liberation, where many thousands of people were massacred within a few months under far less rigorous conditions than those left by the American war, then perhaps a rather different judgment is in order. That the latter conclusion may be more nearly correct is suggested by the analyses mentioned earlier.” Again, he claims there is a conspiracy by the media in cahoots with the US to deceive the public of the truth, which he cites as more accurately reflected by Porter and Hildebrand—an outright ideological tract with no acceptable scholarly methodology, an apologist tract for communist theory in which both authors later personally disavowed themselves from their own work. ”What filters through to the American public is a seriously distorted version of the evidence available, emphasizing alleged Khmer Rouge atrocities and downplaying or ignoring the crucial U.S. role, direct and indirect, in the torment that Cambodia has suffered. Evidence that focuses on the American role, like the Hildebrand and Porter volume, is ignored, not on the basis of truthfulness or scholarship but because the message is unpalatable.” Ad infinitum:” It is a fair generalization that the larger the number of deaths attributed to the Khmer Rouge, and the more the U.S. role is set aside, the larger the audience that will be reached. The Barron-Paul volume is a third-rate propaganda tract, but its exclusive focus on Communist terror assures it a huge audience.” He concludes the conspiracy chain of propaganda that removes culpability from the Khmer Rouge and puts it on the free press as a willing vehicle of the US government lies: Reports of” large numbers executed gave a 'Left' authentication of Communist evil that assured a quantum leap to the mass audience unavailable to Hildebrand and Porter. Contrary facts are generally ignored or inadequately reported in favor of a useful lesson…The chain of transmission runs from refugees (or Thai or U.S. officials), to Ponchaud, to the New York Review, to the press, where a mass audience is reached and 'facts' are established that enter the approved version of history.” Chomsky has written numerous tracts and books defending his position since, including “Manufacturing Consent”, published alongside Edward Herman in 1988, a work Chomsky boasts is “a rare study that does not contain errors”. He and Herman also wrote “After the Cataclysm,” which said “In the first place, is it proper to attribute deaths from malnutrition and disease to Cambodian authorities?” Both books are on the Cambodian period under the Khmer Rouge and the role of the media in intentionally writing propaganda in the service of the US government.   Other gems: “If a serious study … is someday undertaken, it may well be discovered … that the Khmer Rouge programmes elicited a positive response … because they dealt with fundamental problems rooted in the feudal past and exacerbated by the imperial system.… Such a study, however, has yet to be undertaken.” And: “New York Times' analysis of 'conditions in Indochina two years after the end of the war there.' Nor is there any discussion in the Times of the 'case of the missing bloodbath', although forecasts of a holocaust were urged by the U.S. leadership, official experts and the mass media over the entire course of the war in justifying our continued military presence. The technical name for this farce is 'freedom of the press'. All are free to write as they wish: Fox Butterfield, with his ideological blinders, on the front page of the Times (daily circulation more than 800,000)” Chomsky and Herman use Hildebrand and Porter’s Starvation and Revolution as its most credible source. A brief examination of it reveals it for what it is. Just as Hildebrand and Porter had nothing negative to say about the Khmer Rouge, Chomsky and Herman had nothing negative to say about Hildebrand and Porter. Describing the reports of atrocities in Cambodia as a "systematic process of mythmaking." They assert that reports of starvation in Cambodia are incorrect: "It is the officially inspired propaganda of starvation for which no proof has been produced... Thus the starvation myth has come full circle to haunt its authors." The Khmer Rouge were implementing a "coherent, well-developed plan for developing the economy." On the evacuation of the cities: “"It is the officially inspired propaganda of starvation for which no proof has been produced... Thus the starvation myth has come full circle to haunt its authors." By 1978 Hildebrand backed off from his own work, but Chomsky didn’t. “ON CBS 60 Minutes Hildebrand said: My... my only plea is for some degree of balance in assessing the human suffering that undoubtedly still exists in Cambodia." “In after the Cataclysm” written after the KR fell from power, Chomsky and Herman continued: “"The ferocious U.S. attack on Indochina left the countries [of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia] devastated, facing almost insuperable problems. The agricultural systems of these peasant societies were seriously damaged or destroyed... With the economies in ruins, the foreign aid that kept much of the population alive terminated, and the artificial colonial implantations no longer functioning, it was a condition of survival to turn (or return) the populations to productive work. The victors in Cambodia undertook drastic and often brutal measures to accomplish this task, simply forcing the urban population into the countryside where they were compelled to live the lives of poor peasants, now organized in a decentralized system of communes. At heavy cost, these measures appear to have overcome the dire and destructive consequences of the U.S. war by 1978." They wrote: “"While all of the countries of Indochina have been subjected to endless denunciations in the West for their 'loathsome' qualities and unaccountable failure to find humane solutions to their problems, Cambodia was a particular target of abuse. In fact, it became virtually a matter of dogma in the West that the regime was the very incarnation of evil with no redeeming qualities, and that the handful of demonic creatures who had somehow taken over the country were systematically massacring and starving the population." Ponchaud wrote later of Chomsky’s citing of his work: "Even before this book was translated it was sharply criticized by Mr. Noam Chomsky and Mr. Gareth Porter. These two 'experts' on Asia claim that I am mistakenly trying to convince people that Cambodia was drowned in a sea of blood after the departure of the last American diplomats. They say there have been no massacres, and they lay the blame for the tragedy of the Khmer people on the American bombings. They accuse me of being insufficiently critical in my approach to the refugee's accounts. For them, refugees are not a valid source...After an investigation of this kind, it is surprising to see that 'experts' who have spoken to few if any refugees should reject their very significant place in any study of modern Cambodia. These experts would rather base their arguments on reasoning: if something seems impossible to their personal logic, then it doesn't exist. Their only sources for evaluation are deliberately chosen official statements. Where is that critical approach which they accuse others of not having?" “Referring to Chomsky, Ponchaud writes:"He has made it my duty to 'stem the flood of lies' about Cambodia -- particularly, according to him, those propagated by Anthony Paul and John Barron in 'Murder of a Gentle Land.'" "Mr. Gareth Porter also criticized my book very sharply during a congressional hearing on the subject of human rights in Cambodia, and argued that I was trying to convince people that Cambodia was drowned in a sea of blood after the departure of the last American diplomats. He denied that a general policy of purge was put into effect and considered that the tragedy through which the Khmer people are now living should mainly be attributed to the American bombings. He censured me for lacking a critical approach in my use of the refugee accounts, on the ground that they were not credible because the refugees were deliberately trying to blacken the regime they had fled.In the beginning, I was not opposed to the Khmer revolution... I welcomed the revolutionaries' victory as the only possible means of bringing Cambodia out of its misery. But after making a careful and full study... I was compelled to conclude, against my will, that the Khmer revolution is irrefutably the bloodiest of our century. A year after the publication of my book I can find no reason to alter my judgment." Other Khmer Rouge scholars on the left have refuted their earlier sympathetic writing which Chomsky used and still uses as primary sourcing.  Ben Kiernan reconsidered his position shortly after the publication of After the Cataclysm. In the Bulletin of Concerned Asia Scholars, October-December 1979, the editors of that publication asked him why he had "changed his mind" and had become critical of the Khmer Rouge regime. "I was late in realizing the extent of the tragedy in Kampuchea," he wrote. He continued: "I was wrong about an important aspect of Kampuchean communism: the brutal authoritarian trend within the revolutionary movement after 1973 was not simply a grassroots reaction, and expression of popular outrage at the killing and destruction of the countryside by US bombs, although that helped it along decisively." He echoes this statement in Peasants and Politics in Kampuchea 1942 - 1981. "In analyzing the reasons for continuing violence after the war, I failed to identify the deliberate, if hampered, activities of the Pol Pot group." Leftist scholar Michael Vickery after 1979 revised his pro-Khmer Rouge stance and Chomsky and Herman adopted it. If the Khmer Rouge were bad, it was because the U.S. deliberately made them that way. Thus, they repeat Michael Vickery's claims that US policy in Cambodia was driven by a desire to "'insure that the post-war revolutionary government be extremely brutal, doctrinaire, and frightening to its neighbors, rather than a moderate socialism to which the Thai, for example, might look with envy.'" So even after the KR were overthrown and the evidence was clear of the barbarity they imposed Chomsky continued with his same theme of apologetic excuses and misdirected blame. "If a serious study of the impact of Western imperialism on Cambodian peasant life is someday undertaken, it may well be discovered that the violence lurking behind the Khmer smile…is not a reflection of obscure traits in peasant culture and psychology, but is the direct and understandable response to the violence of the imperial system, and that its current manifestations are a no less direct and understandable response to the still more concentrated and extreme savagery of a U.S. assault that may in part have been designed to evoke this very response, as we have noted. Such a study may also show that the Khmer Rouge programs elicited a positive response from some sectors of the Cambodian peasantry because they dealt with fundamental problems rooted in the feudal past and exacerbated by the imperial system with its final outburst of uncontrolled barbarism." In 1988, Chomsky and Herman published 1988 “Manufacturing Consent”, a tract linking a supine willing ‘free press’ to carry out the propaganda orders of their western governments. "The CIA, in its demographic study in 1980, claims that Pol Pot killed 50-100,000 people and attributes most deaths to the Vietnamese invasion, also denying flatly the atrocities of 1978, which were by far the worst (that's the source of the famous piles of skulls, etc.; these became known after the Vietnamese invasion in 1979, and were certainly known to the CIA). Michael Vickery has written about the CIA study, suggesting that it was tailored to fit the fact that the US was tacitly supporting Pol Pot in '78 and later... Vickery estimates about 700,000 deaths 'above the normal' in the Pol Pot years -- which, if accurate, would be about the same as deaths during the US war (the first phase of the 'Decade of Genocide,' as 1969-79 is called by the one independent government analysis, Finland). For that period, the CIA estimates 600,000 deaths. The Yale Genocide project (Ben Kiernan and others) gives higher estimates, about 1.5 million. In fact, no one knows. No one ever knows in such cases, within quite a broad range. When numbers are put forth with any confidence, and without a big plus-or-minus, you can be sure that there is an ideological agenda, in any such case. Demographic analyses are very weak." They continue:” "US intelligence  took a much more skeptical position than we did on refugee reports, but anyone who is even marginally serious about the matter understands all this -- of course, not those who don't give a damn about the suffering that refugees report, but are merely using it as an ideological weapon, specifically, as a justification for brutal atrocities. Recall that that was exactly the crucial issue at the time, as charges about the KR and the Vietnamese, many of them fabrications at a level that would have impressed Stalin (as we demonstrated), were being used as a justification for US atrocities in Central America and elsewhere. But credible evidence of atrocities existed then, which is why we condemned the brutality and crimes of the Khmer Rouge, and a lot more evidence came to light after we wrote, and after the reports of Ponchaud and State Department intelligence that we cited..." Then they try to ignore some of there now indefensible claims and rewrite their own record.” "You might recall, perhaps, that we were probably the only commentators to rely on the most knowledgeable source, State Department intelligence. Our conclusion at the time was that it was probably the most reliable as well as by far the best informed, and subsequent revelations support that tentative judgment. They were avoided in the mainstream commentary because their conclusions didn't fit the propaganda line that was required to exploit the misery of the Cambodians to justify subjecting millions of other people to comparable misery, in Central America and elsewhere. Presumably that is also why the CIA demographic study of 1980, regarded as authoritative by US government specialists, is totally ignored..." "The accepted view is that Cambodia was a gentle country of smiling Buddhists until the Khmer Rouge swept to power in April 1975. This is a fabrication," said Professor Noam Chomsky, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, author of Manufacturing Consent, a book examining media misrepresentation of world affairs. "There were countless atrocities before 1975, when the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh, and after 1979, when the Vietnamese defeated the Khmer Rouge, that are simply not mentioned. Why? Because the West was involved." Chomsky goes on to add that:   "There is a Cambodian Genocide Act in [the US] Congress and it refers to crimes from 17 April, 1975, to 9 January, 1979," said Prof. Chomsky. "That is, it excludes the period when the US was supporting atrocities before and after Pol Pot." To this day Chomsky defends every word he has written: "I am very pleased that there has been such a hysterical reaction to these writings. They've been analyzed with a fine tooth comb to try to find some error, and to my knowledge, the end result is that not even a misplaced comma has been found. True, a lot of errors have been found in fabricated material attributed to me, but that's a sign of the desperation of the apologists for state violence. If you know of an exception, I'd appreciate it if you'd inform me. I haven't yet seen one." He continues in an interview: “"I should add that I don't pay attention to what appears on the internet sites that you are referring to... But if you do find this interesting, I'd suggest that you switch to sites that are at a similar intellectual level but a much higher moral level: I have in mind neo-Nazi and neo-Stalinist sites, which I presume exist. There I suppose you'll find very similar arguments: denunciations of those who condemned Nazi and Stalinist crimes on the basis of the terror and atrocities of resistance forces and the horrible aftermath of the defeat of fascism and the collapse of the USSR... But the neo-Nazis and neo-Stalinists are on a far higher moral level, for the obvious reason: fortunately, they are in no position to exploit the terror of the resistance and the horrendous aftermath in order to justify, and carry out, terrible crimes. That is, they were unable to sink to the depravity of those whose sites you are reading, who exploit the suffering for which they share considerable responsibility in order to impose misery on others, to protect them from 'the Pol Pot left' in El Salvador (priests organizing peasants, for example), or from the 'Communists' elsewhere -- exactly as we wrote in the 70s, and as has been happening since." In October 1990 in a letter to the editor in a British newspaper Chomsky wrote a reply to a criticism: Sir: Douglas Hurd (12 October) writes that as an “apologist” for the Khmer Rouge, I “condemned reports of Khmer Rouge atrocities” as fabrications. There is a particle of truth in his statement: I did expose fabrications as fabrications, as in many other cases, e.g. vast exaggerations of the death toll due to US bombing in Cambodia - an exposure which, for some reason, has never elicited any criticism. The rest is a recurrent fantasy that has regularly been refuted in detail, only to surface in some new version. It is noteworthy that despite the hysteria that these exposures have aroused, no error has ever been discovered in them, a fact noted in the scholarly literature. The facts are easily checked.” As recently as 2006 Chomsky wrote on his 30 years of denial of the Khmer Rouge culpability in crimes against humanity” “I know nothing about Bruce Sharp, and have no time to access the link or in fact anything from the huge torrent of charges about Cambodia that derive from one of many industries of denunciation, from many different quarters. They would take 48 hours a day if I bothered with them. No one does that, or is expected to, in professional life either. It would be an impossible and pointless task, for anyone who does anything in the least controversial. In the case of the Cambodia industry, I did respond to much of the hysteria and deceit elicited by what Edward Herman and I wrote (as did he), but I stopped paying attention years ago because the industry was simply re-cycling charges that we had already answered. However, if someone wants to bring something specific to my attention, I do respond. As I will show below, the one excerpt from Sharp's article below keeps to the standards of extreme dishonestly of the industry. It is interesting that in the reams of industry denunciations brought to my attention, no one has found anything mistaken or even misleading in the 1977 review-article or in our follow-up chapter in Political Economy of Human Rights (PEHR) or in anything else we have written on the matter jointly or individually. If you (or anyone) thinks there is something else in Sharp's comments that merits attention, then I'll be happy to consider it and respond, if you send it to me, either here or privately, and I presume Ed Herman would be too. But no one, ever, can be expected to respond to what is posted somewhere or even appears in print. To repeat, no one ever is expected to do that, whether in professional or political life, and certainly not when it becomes an industry -- in this case, an extremely interesting industry, casting a dazzling light on the deeply rooted imperial mentality and the dedication to serve state power and atrocities. “ There is really not much needs to add to Chomsky’s own indictment of himself. He owes not just Cambodians an apology, but one to the  importance of intellectual honesty itself he has tarnished.

"Your scoop? Nah. It's ours if we want it" By Paul McCann

Your scoop? Nah. It's ours if we want it

'Ethics' and 'large media organisation' are terms that look less and less comfortable together. Paul McCann profiles a recent conflict involving star foreign reporter Nate Thayer, Pol Pot and America's ABC News

By Paul McCann

The (London) Independent

Monday 25 May 1998

Nate Thayer is the kind of reporter that makes idealistic youngsters want to be journalists. He has risked his life in jungles, crossed the front lines of a civil war, been expelled from his home for exposing corrupt ministers and made secret rendezvous with genocidal killers. All for what is universally acknowledged to be the scoop of the decade - finding Pol Pot.

Now his lustre has been burnished all the brighter by his refusal to kow-tow to the might of the American TV network ABC. Furthermore he has become the first person in 57 years to turn down a prestigious Peabody award because it would have been shared with what he believes is a duplicitous media monster.

When he found the hidden Khmer leader last July, Thayer was described as having spent 10 years on the trail of Pol Pot.

"In fact that is rather a lot of hype," he says. "It's not like I had an obsession with Pol Pot. I was a Cambodian correspondent and lived there for six years. I also lived in Thailand for another five years so obviously there were plenty of other Cambodian and Asian stories that I covered.

"But I had always thought that Pol Pot was one of the last great interviews in the world. Here was a household name the world over who had never explained himself. He was perhaps the most effective 'secret leader' of the twentieth century.

"So all the time I lived in Cambodia and Thailand I kept one eye on Pol Pot. I made numerous trips into the jungle and built up contacts with Khmer Rouge leaders. And I made constant requests for access or an interview with Pol Pot.

"The break came in June 1997 when I was expelled from Cambodia for exposing connections between the Prime Minister and heroin traffickers. I decided to write a book so I spent a lot of time just sitting in a room with the Khmer Rouge's clandestine radio station on in the background. I heard then that the defence minister had been deemed a traitor and executed so I immediately went to my Khmer Rouge contacts who told me about serious infighting within the leadership and that Pol Pot had been overthrown.

"They even announced Pot's overthrow on the radio but no one believed them and that became the basis for my argument for getting access. No one would believe he had been overthrown unless a western journalist got in to prove it.

"From there I began the process of getting into one of the most impenetrable places in the world. The only foreigners to have been there before were the three guys who were kidnapped and executed. It was made all the harder because last July a civil war broke out in Phnom Penh and I had to fly to Bangkok and try from there by illegally crossing the border, not to mention the front lines of the Phnom Penh civil war and the front lines of the Khmer Rouge civil war.

"Once me and my cameraman were in a hotel over the border I had to phone a number in Europe to tell them my room number before being infiltrated into the jungle.

Thayer never did actually interview the leader responsible for the deaths of an estimated one million Cambodians. Instead, he filmed two hours of Pol Pot being denounced at a classic Maoist show trial.

Nevertheless, his story was dynamite, and as soon as it became known that he had footage, pictures and a story he was bombarded with hundreds of calls from news organisations. His main priority was to have the print story go in the Far Eastern Economic Review, which he had worked for as a freelancer for years and which had supported him for six months while he tried to get to Pol Pot in the jungle.

But he sold the North American television rights to his footage to ABC for $350,000 - "Mainly because ABC's Ted Koppel is as good as it gets on American TV. He seemed like the last honourable guy."

But now Thayer is seriously pissed off at ABC. The network's PR department got hold of the footage and did a major number on it. They made enhanced video-grabs which they gave to newspapers under an "ABC Exclusive" tag. This meant that, using ABC's released material, the New York Times was able to run Thayer's story before he had even started writing for the Economic Review. And by putting out the video grabs and downloading images onto its Web site, ABC ruined Thayer's chances of selling the stills from his trip into the jungle.

"Basically they said 'f*** you' to my lawyers because they knew their lawyers could eat a freelancer alive," says Thayer. "It was an outrageous ethical violation. They then refused to pay me my agreed fee until I signed something saying that they had done nothing wrong. It took 10 months to get my money and they only paid up because they knew when I had won the Peabody that it would turn into a PR nightmare."

ABC claims that its pre-broadcast publicity was perfectly normal behaviour and Thayer was naive for not understanding this.

Thayer believes the network's behaviour speaks volumes about the state of US television news. "ABC have one correspondent for the whole of Asia so they take freelancers' work and try to take credit for it. The function of people like Koppel is to prove that there is a serious side.

"But in reality to them the function of journalism in a free society is no more than delivering audiences to advertisers."

Lighting the darkness: FULRO's jungle Christians:Vietnam Era Renegade Army Discovered By Nate Thayer

(Two story package in Phnom Penh Post. An earlier cover story appeared in the Far Eastern Economic Review. PPP publisher Michael Hayes and I travelled to the remote NE Cambodian jungles near VN by helicopter to find an army literally lost in time. Eventually all 398 FULRO fighters and families were given political asylum in the U.S. and settled in North Carolina)

Lighting the darkness: FULRO's jungle Christians

By Nate Thayer

Phnom Penh Post

Friday, 25 September 1992

MONDULKIRI - Accompanied by a chorus of crickets and the steady drumming of rain on the leaf roofs of their huts, scores of Montagnard fighters and their families gather in the jungle darkness each night to pray and sing.

Having long ago fled ideological restrictions in Vietnam for a religious sanctuary deep in the forest, the soldiers are members of FULRO-the United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races-which has fought for a separate homeland in Vietnam for their hilltribe people since 1964.

Lamps fueled by chunks of slow-burning tree resin give light to the few shared tattered bibles and hymnals as Christian songs of worship echo through the otherwise uninhabited forest. Familiar gospel hymns are sung in the tribal dialects of the mountains.

For many at FULRO's scattered guerrilla bases, the ability to pray freely was a main motivation to flee their villages in Vietnam's central highlands 17 years ago.

"The communists will not let us pray. They say that Christianity is an American and French religion, so we came to live in the jungle," said Lt.-Col. Y Hinnie. "In our land under the communists, people pray at home secretly or in the ricefields. They cannot worship together like we do in the jungle. Here we are free."

Each of the five jungle encampments in the FULRO rear base area have an Evangelical church, while there is a lone Catholic church in the main guerrilla camp. Nearly 40 people share a single bible for the daily Catholic Mass and at weekend services. The church consists of pews of wooden logs lined neatly in a clearing, a towering rough-hewn cross behind the altar.

Similar Evangelical churches, cut into clearings surrounded by 30-meter high hardwood trees, are packed with more than 350 worshippers for the daily two-hour evening service and brief early morning prayers. Each church has its own pastor, and worshippers bring large green leaves as hassocks to kneel on the damp forest floor.

These believers are the legacy of Christian missionaries who lived in the Central Highlands until 1975, when the last of them were expelled by the current government in Viet-nam. Many of the missionaries had mastered the local dialects, translating Bibles and hymnals into the region's Rade, Jarai and Koho languages.

The guerrillas also tune into weekly radio sermons delivered in their native languages by a powerful shortwave radio station in Manila operated by the Christian Missionary Alliance.

A guerrilla congregation reels off the names of "their" missionaries like a litany: "In Pleiku, Mr. Long and Mr. Fleming and in Dalat, Helen Evans, she is from America too. Ken Swain from Darlac, he preaches in our language on the radio every Saturday now."

FULRO officials say some of the missionaries' involvement with the Montagnards went beyond simply bringing the scriptures to the area. They said some of them were active in the waning days of U.S. involvement in the early 1970s in running guns to the guerrillas.

Following the collapse of the South Vietnamese regime in 1975, FULRO leaders say, the communists set about systematically dismantling Christian churches. Many of the Montagnards' religious leaders were arrested and killed after the communist victory in 1975, they say.

"They take our pastors, preachers and Christians and put them in jail," said FULRO's military Commander-in-Chief Col Y Peng Ayun. "We don't hate any one man because we are Christians, but we can never trust the communists," he added.

Two prominent Montagnard pastors from Ban Me Thuot, Y Ham Nic Hrah and Y Lico Nie, died in the early 1980s after many years of harsh conditions in prison, according to the guerrillas. "Here, we worship no matter what," said Pastor Budar Su Khong, 52, from Dalat. "Jesus said 'Come to me whoever is tired, and I will bring you rest.' We are very tired. Please take a message to Christians in other countries to pray for us, and we will pray for them."

(On Sept. 19, UNTAC deployed three soldiers from Sector IV headquarters in Stung Treng to FULRO' encampment. They will be permanently based there to provide protection until the U.N. decides how to respond to FULRO's requests for help.)

Montagnard Army Seeks U.N.Help:Vietnam War Era Renegade Army Discovered In Mondulkiri

By Nate Thayer

Phnom Penh Post

Saturday, 12 September 1992

MONDULKIRI, Cambodia-Abandoned for years by their own leaders and former foreign military backers, an anti-Hanoi Montagnard army based in northeast Cambodia has approached the United Nations with a plea for protection.

The military combatants of FULRO-the United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races-have waged a lonely battle for a separate homeland in Vietnam for their hilltribe people since 1964.

The recent discovery of the Montagnard army in Mondulkiri province prompted Phnom Penh's Interior Ministry to inform U.N. peacekeeping forces that unless the group-formerly given sanctuary by the Khmer Rouge-is disarmed they would attack them.

On Sept. 4 a joint mission of officials from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) met with the fighters to discuss their request for sanctuary.

"We have to be very cautious because they may be in danger," said UNHCR Press Officer Annick Roulet.

Previous discussions with UNTAC military officials at their remote jungle camp near the Vietnamese border have resulted in conflicting impressions as to whether or not FULRO troops want to give up their struggle and apply for refugee status or continue to wage war against Vietnam.

Under threat from the Phnom Penh regime, expelled by the Khmer Rouge, and a thorn in the side to Vietnam, FULRO is presenting an interesting if not painful dilemma to U.N. officials in Phnom Penh.

UNTAC-mandated to verify the withdrawal of all foreign forces in Cambodia-may be obligated to ensure the return of the group to Vietnamese soil if they insist on continuing to wage war.

But UNHCR-responsible for protecting people with a "well founded fear of persecution"-may have to offer asylum to the fighters if they are in danger of being sent back to Vietnam, where they certainly would face imprisonment.

That, in turn, could open the floodgates to thousands of requests for political asylum from Vietnamese living in Cambodia.

"We have enough problems in Cambodia dealing with the four factions, and now this army we never even heard of turns up," said one UNTAC military official.

American diplomats in Phnom Penh and U.N. military officials in Cambodia are urging that UNHCR grant the group refugee status to begin the process of third country asylum, and give them temporary protection from military attack.

But FULRO Commander-in-Chief Y Peng Ayun and his forces are reluctant to accept giving up their fight without first getting U.N. protection.

"If we give up our weapons, they will take us back to Vietnam or the Vietnamese will come get us," Ayun said. "If I go to the U.S., I don't want to stay a long time there, because I have responsibility to liberate my country."

Frozen in Time

When two correspondents from the Phnom Penh Post visited FULRO's remote guerrilla headquarters last month, they found an army unaware of the world around them and desperately seeking instructions and resupply from their leadership.

Col. Ayun and his lieutenants gathered around the Post reporters, hungrily seeking information.

"Please, can you help us find our president, Y'Bham Enuol?" Colonel Ayun asked. "We have been waiting for contact and orders from our president since 1975. Do you know where he is?"

Neither Ayun nor his troops, who gathered around to meet the first journalists to find them since they fled to the jungles after the American defeat in Indochina in 1975, knew that their leader was executed 17 years before by the Khmer Rouge.

They fell silent when informed; some wept quietly.

Situated in a string of five villages carved out of dense forest along a raging river, the group of 407 guerrillas and their families have no access to even the smallest luxury items except from fighters returning from Vietnam.

There is no medicine or schools, and many of the soldiers and their families have only the clothes they wear and rifles. Bamboo huts with roofs of leaves provide shelter.

"The food we get from the forest. The forest belongs to FULRO." said Lt. Col. Y Hinnie. "We don't have food or medicine, so it is difficult. But with food and medicine the jungle is a very nice place. We are used to it."

The rivers nearby abound with crocodiles, huge catfish, and fresh water porpoises and the surrounding jungle-thick with mosquitos-is home to elephants and a host of deadly snakes.

The combatants and their families are traditionally rice eating people, but they are unable to farm rice here with the enemy constantly forcing movement.

A staple of corn, with jungle cucumbers, pumpkins, and hot green peppers are all they have. For part of the year they survive on poisonous potatos that must be carefully processed for five days to extract a deadly toxin.

"We must eat it slowly until our bodies get used to it or it will kill you," Hinnie said, "But the poison is also the medicine we use to cure snakebites." Nearby a soldier lay paralyzed from a snakebite he received three months before.

"This tree has the medicine we use for malaria and this one here we can use to treat diarrhea," Hinnie said, pointing.

The army has no maps or compasses. "But we can guide ourselves by stars and winds of the seasons. We can tell by which side of the tree is wet during different months exactly which direction we are going," he said.

Hinnie spoke credible English from his days as a young boy with Christian missionaries, as well as Khmer, Vietnamese, and French, and several tribal dialects, and translated for others who spoke in Rade. His skills have given him the title of "the FULRO Military Delegation's Representative of Foreign Affairs."

But his knowledge of world events is spotty. "We would like you to take a message to U Thant," he said, referring to the former U.N. Secretary-General. Asking about the cold war, he said, "I hear that President George Bush now contacts with the Russians."

He is charged with listening to the shortwave radio each morning, tuning in VOA, BBC, Christian radio, and Radio Vietnam to keep the group abreast of foreign developments.

Hinnie told amazed fighters of the fax machine: "You take a letter and put it in a telephone and it comes out in one minute in America," he explained.

The Forgotten Army

A number of soldiers appeared to introduce themselves in English as having fought with the Americans.

"You are the first foreigner I have seen since 1975," said Bhong Rcam, 47, "The Americans usually call me Tiny."

Like many of the fighters of FULRO, he worked with the U.S. Special Forces during the Vietnam War. After the U.S. withdrawal he was jailed by Hanoi, before joining FULRO in the jungle in 1976.

During the Vietnam War FULRO was supplied with millions of dollars of U.S. equipment, and before that, used as allies to further the objectives of the French and various Vietnamese regimes.

When the North Vietnamese launched decisive offensives in March 1975, FULRO leaders say that senior U.S. officials in Saigon promised continued support for the Montagnards and pledged to covertly support their fight.

Well equipped with American weapons and promises of more as South Vietnam crumbled in the spring of 1975, FULRO waited for the Americans who never returned, eventually re-grouping in the jungle.

"The Montagnard people and the Americans are like one family," said Lt. Col. Hinnie. "I am not angry, but very sad that the Americans forgot us. The Americans are like our elder brother, so it is very sad when your brother forgets you."

FULRO continued to launch attacks on Vietnam for four years after the U.S. withdrawal, fielding a fierce army of 10,000 fighters. But by 1979 they were running low on ammunition and had suffered huge casualties, with more than 8,000 of their fighters killed or captured.

In 1979 FULRO abandoned their bases in Vietnam and moved to the jungles on the Cambodian side of the Vietnamese frontier, switching to underground networks and small guerrilla strikes in their four regions of operations in Vietnam-Quang Duc, Darlac, Pleiku, and Kon Tum.

Previously given sanctuary by the Khmer Rouge in areas under their control, FULRO was expelled from Khmer Rouge zones in January to a remote area of Mondulkiri province. Khmer Rouge officials in Phnom Penh say they had given FULRO sanctuary since 1979, despite having fallen out with their leadership in 1986.

"They had no political vision. Their fighters are very, very brave, but they had no support from any leadership, no food, and they did not understand at all the world around them," said one senior Khmer Rouge official.

Jungle Christians

Col. Ayun complained bitterly of the treatment of his people by the Hanoi government.

"My people suffer terribly under the Vietnamese communist regime," he recounted from a thatched hut in the forest. "They came and took our land, and made it theirs. They try to erase our language and force us to speak Vietnamese. They have taken our fertile land and forced us to the bad land.

"They say they have come to build progress for my people, but they have come to kill, arrest, and oppress my people."

For many at FULRO's scattered guerrilla bases, the ability to pray freely and practice Christianity was a main motivation to flee Vietnam. Each of the five villages in the FULRO area have an evangelical church, while there is a lone Catholic church in the main guerrilla camp.

"The Communists will not let us pray," Col. Hinnie said. "They say that Christianity is an American and French religion, so we came to live in the jungle."

Col. Ayun requested to meet with the American ambassador to seek advice on whether his group would get the aid he said was long promised and to seek proof of the death of their leader.
"We are the troops of President Y Bham Enuol," he said.

"If he has died, we want proof from the United Nations. The Americans had a whole plan for Indochina. I want to meet face to face with the American ambassador. I have a plan for the future, and they should know clearly our position for the revolutionary struggle. We want to know whether they will help us or not."

But the chances of U.S. support for Ayun and his forces are dim, and FULRO faces a whole new series of difficulties.

Montagnard leaders now living in the U.S. appealed to Col. Ayun to give up the fight. "Due to unfavorable circumstances, I suggest it is time to stop fighting, to find different ways to reach our ultimate goal," said Pierre K'briuh in a recent message to the FULRO fighters.

K'briuh is a leader of the former FULRO troops now in the United States and he himself was jailed by Hanoi until the early 1980s.

"President Y-Bham Enuol and his entourage were executed by the Khmer Rouge in 1975," he wrote.

"Therefore, based on common sense, lay down your weapons and appeal at once to the U.N. for political asylum to join us here. We don't have any other choice."

Col. Ayun and his troops say that if they have proof that Y Bham Enuol is indeed dead, they will consider going to the U.S.

"But even if we go to another country, our resistance will continue until we get our own land, until we get back the land that belonged to us before," Ayun said.

"I don't want to go to a free nation," he added. "I want to stay here because this is my battlefield. It is my responsibility. But I have no supplies or help from free countries."

- Michael Hayes contributed to this report.

KR HARDLINERS- DOWN BUT NOT OUT-By Nate Thayer

KR HARDLINERS- DOWN BUT NOT OUT

Phnom Penh Post

By Nate Thayer

Friday, 04 October 1996

The Khmer Rouge split has brought much attention to the mysterious rebel group's inner workings. Nate Thayer analyses the break-up and assesses where the Pol Pot faction now stands.

AFTER the raw drama and spell-binding intrigue of the unprecedented Khmer Rouge break-away, one thing remains sure: thousands of hardcore troops and commanders remain loyal to Pol Pot. These hardliners, who have long warned against dealing with the enemy, have likely been hardened by recent events.

The schism has pitted Ieng Sary - former Khmer Rouge foreign minister, brother-in-law of Pol Pot, and former No. 4 in the all powerful Standing Committee of the Party - and a group of powerful younger military field commanders, against the old guard leaders and their loyalists. Not since the purges and open warfare of 1978, that led to the Vietnamese invasion and the fall of the KR regime, has the movement's inner-circle been so rocked.

Remaining intact, however, is virtually all of the important KR political leadership and most of its military command structure. These include party supremo Pol Pot, his second in command Nuon Chea, chief of the general staff Ta Mok, and Defense Minister Son Sen.

Mok, who opposed the Paris peace agreements and advocates an aggressive military posture, has seen his power significantly rise as a result of the internal strife. He now directly commands at least 80 percent of the KR troops, though the rank and file remains split, with final alliances not expected to clarify themselves for months.

Though Sary has taken as much as 20 percent of the KR's fighting force, he has not gone over to the Royal Government. Sary's faction has effectively set up an autonomous command with a tenuous agreement of a truce with government forces.

But the rebel faction has removed a major stronghold and leadership base, as well as control of rich gem and timber territory that provided desperately needed cash to the movement's central coffers - a major economic and political blow to the leadership.

In addition, for the first time in 30 years the KR loyalists find themselves without foreign or domestic allies that have been critical to it's survival.

The United Nations, the United States and ASEAN, who all backed the KR-led guerrilla movement prior to the 1991 peace accords, are all now firmly behind the Cambodian government. China halted all support in 1991, and Thailand has gone to lengths to stop cross border traffic and covert assistance to the guerrillas. In addition, their former battlefield allies - the two non-communist factions - are now part of a coalition government and formally at war with the KR.

Pol Pot, known as a brilliant military strategist, saw the writing on the wall in 1992, and warned his comrades of impending danger: "While Democratic Kampuchea has indeed now become strong, without others to be with it, Democratic Kampuchea cannot be strong all on it's own. When these guys...leave Democratic Kampuchea on it's own, it is possible for us to be weakened. Once that happens, they will attack the DK and drag the other forces into joining with Phnom Penh. It would become an alliance between the West, the Youn [Vietnamese], the contemptible puppets and two of the three parties. If this were to be the situation, then the Chinese, the Thai, and ASEAN would all accept it whether they liked it or not...the forces sustaining us would be enfeebled, which would lead to our being isolated and attacked." He termed it "a life and death struggle".

The scenario that Pol Pot described as his faction's worst nightmare is precisely the situation they face now, many analysts say, and is key to the pressures which contributed to his movement's implosion.

Since 1992, when the KR pulled out of the UN-sponsored election they have attempted to become self sufficient, relying on timber and gem trading for new resources. The breakaway faction has taken with them control of the most lucrative area. In 1993, at least 57 Thai companies were operating over 1,000 earth moving vehicles in KR-controlled ruby regions of Pailin, with more than three billion baht invested, according to then Thai MP Thanit Traivut. Western intelligence and Thai businessmen put the guerrillas' monthly gem profits at $10 million from Pailin alone, until the early 1990's.

In a speech to senior cadre before the peace agreement, Pol Pot explained the importance of Pailin: "Our state does not currently have sufficient capital either to expand its strength or enlarge the army. We are spending many tens of millions of baht to augment the assistance of our foreign friends, but that is still not enough and there are many shortages. It is thus imperative that we find ways to develop the natural resources that exist in our liberated and semi-liberated zones as assets to be utilized in the fight the aggressor enemy."

ORIGINS OF THE CURRENT CONFLICT

It was a centrally-ordered directive by the senior leadership in recent months to re-seize control over resources in Pailin that sparked the crisis.

Importantly, KR radio - still in the hands of the loyalists - and the rebel radio provided important and accurate details of the origins of the split.

While often used for propaganda, KR radio also serves as a vital communication link to the rank and file. References to its importance are often cited in internal KR documents.

Between radio broadcasts, intelligence reports, and guerrilla and loyalist sources, the origins of the split are relatively clear. There are several important factors.

Firstly, there are long personality disputes among the leadership that have simmered for years. Particularly, Ieng Sary was in fact purged from all positions of political importance within the organization more than six years ago. While he continued to live in DK zones, he was in many ways a minor figure. It was the younger field commanders, Y Chhien in particular, who held the real power.

Secondly, the KR, in the aftermath of the failed Paris Agreements, the cut off of foreign assistance, and the loss of their former Cambodian allies to a government coalition, are suffering from an increase in "regional fiefdoms". In areas like Pailin the large amount of trading in valuable resources has made many ordinary KR cadre, soldiers and civilians relatively wealthy - and reluctant to go back to the times of warfare and central control by the DK leadership.

Thirdly, because of the cut-off of foreign assistance and pressure on cross border trade with Thailand, the KR leadership increasingly is in need of cash and was trying to consolidate central control of resources and political loyalty.

Furthermore, the massive trading with Cambodians from government territory and Thais has left sectors such as Pailin vulnerable to infiltration by enemy operatives. Senior KR sources say they have been suspicious of locating important bases at Pailin since at least 1990, when they began detecting radio emissions not under their authorization. The brief government military capture at Pailin in 1994 was blamed by senior KR officials on government special forces units and other "spies" posing as businesspeople.

The split erupted publicly on 6 August when KR radio called for the arrest and "destruction of the traitors", naming Ieng Sary, 450 Division commander Sok Pheap and 415 commander Y Chhien.

Ieng Sary, in a rebuttal broadcast over government radio, called Pol Pot "the cruelest and most savage murderer", and also condemned Ta Mok and Son Sen.

On 7 August, the DK radio again denounced Sary as a traitor, accusing him of embezzling millions of baht from the movement to lavish on himself and his family.

On Aug 8, the loyalist radio called for the arrest of Chhien for spying and stealing party coffers.

Importantly, the radio also said "this Chhien and a couple of his thugs, such as the named Nhoek, Lanh, and Khieu, threatened to arrest, in a pseudo coup, the NADK supreme command representatives... This open offense and threat to arrest the supreme command representatives took place on the morning of 6 August."

The rebel faction shot back, announcing loyalty "to support our leader" Ieng Sary and "deny[ing] our support to Son Sen who is not our leader who confiscated possessions, such as ox-carts".

The rebel broadcast also referred to Son Sen accusing "patriotic fighters...such as the late comrade in arms Hoem and Mich, of being traitors.."

Many aspects of the radio reports were confirmed by Khmer Rouge loyalist and rebel sources, and the radio was used, during this crisis, as a means to communicate with the rank and file to attempt to explain the events and halt the erosion of unity within the ranks.

The spoils of rubies and timber sparked an internal party conflict that has escalated to what we have today. In essence, the Khmer Rouge military leadership, including Ta Mok, Son Sen and Nuon Chea, attempted in recent months to re-assert central control over elements in the army in control of the Pailin sector. These forces, particularly Chhien and his allies, balked, and the confrontation escalated.

Furthermore, the rebels' reference to the "late comrade in arms" Mich of being a traitor suggest a purge was under way prior to the open split. Mich served as a senior military chief of Front 250, elements of which joined the rebels.

The government reference to Chhien and a "couple of his thugs" attempting to arrest the leadership is a direct reference to younger field commanders seeking to arrest Ta Mok, Nuon Chea, Son Sen, and Nikon after the attempt to seize control over the area in early August.

What is clear is that the rift had virtually nothing to do with politics, and even less to do with factions of the KR defecting to the royal government, which was decidedly a spectator - although beneficiary - to the events.

IENG SARY AND LEADERSHIP CONFLICTS

Ieng Sary - a long-standing member of the Communist Party standing committee, foreign minister and deputy prime minister during the DK years in power, and the key liaison for all Chinese military and financial aid throughout the guerrilla war of the 1980s - was stripped of power in a bitter break with the organization many years ago.

His fall came after years of friction, much of it based on personality conflicts.

As foreign minister during the KR rule, most of the intellectuals who came back to Cambodia after the KR victory in 1975 were under his charge. Hundreds perished, and many more were kept in reeducation camps or were forced to do menial work in state ministries.

When the KR retreated to the jungle in 1979 after its overthrow by the Vietnamese, Sary caused a major rift within the leadership by acknowledging to a reporter the existence of the Toul Sleng torture center in which at least 16,000 people were interrogated and executed - mostly party cadre and their families. Sary was denounced in internal party meetings for violating a key tenet of the KR - to never make public statements not sanctioned by the leadership.

But Sary had the support of the Chinese, who insisted that all their assistance be passed through him. As a result, he was effectively in charge of distributing weapons and money throughout the 1980s, a role which gave him concrete power. But he is known to have had several disputes with Pol Pot, and to have angered field commanders and political cadre with his autocratic style and abrasive personality. When the signing of the Paris agreements ended all Chinese covert aid in 1991, his influence effectively ceased.

Ousted from the Standing Committee of the Communist Party around 1989, Sary was no longer invited to high level meetings, according to KR officials. In a late 1992 meeting between Pol Pot and another senior official, Pol Pot agreed with criticism of Sary, saying "I have known for a long time that Ieng Sary was a bad leader", according to sources close to the faction.

KR sources say that serious rifts between Sary and the leadership began in 1986, "when one guy who was in charge of security for Ieng Sary organized a bandit attack with some Thais at Pailin and stole millions of dollars," according to one source.

Many Khmer Rouge intellectuals complained bitterly about Ieng Sary's abrasive personality. "We have a saying in Cambodian that people had to 'walk like a duck' around Ieng Sary and his wife. If they dropped something, someone else picked it up. They complained about the quality of the food. Their servants were nervous and obsequious, like around a king. It was very feudalistic," says one source close to the KR leaders.

"In 1993, Ieng Say still lived in Thailand in a very nice home built with DK money. That was denounced by the leadership. While others suffered in the jungle, he lived in a nice home in Thailand."

During the 1980's, most of the KR intellectuals were based at Phnom Malai, in areas under Sary's influence. But in the early 1990's, almost all of the political leadership, including the foreign affairs staff, young intellectuals, and Khieu Samphan and the office of the president of Democratic Kampuchea, moved north to the base of Phnom Chhat. Under the control of So Hong, commander of sector 102 and the nephew of Pol Pot, it served as a major base for the leadership until it was overrun by government forces in a surprise attack in August 1993.

While Sary is held responsible for the deaths of many intellectuals during his tenure as DK foreign minister, Cambodian scholar Steve Heder points out that some of the only ones who survived were those directly under his charge. Department heads in the Foreign Ministry during the Khmer Rouge rule included Suong Sikoeun (who joined Sary's breakaway in August), Kiet Chhon (who defected in 1993 and is the current Finance Minister), Thionn Prasith (former KR ambassador to the UN through the 1980s until his retirement), Long Norin (who is with Sary's breakaway), Ok Sokhun (KR ambassador in Paris until the embassy was turned over to the government after the Paris agreements), Pech Bun Ret (who remains with the loyalists), and Chan Youran (the current DK "foreign minister"). Such survival rates among these intellectuals, who had all been named to the security services at Toul Sleng as traitors, suggests that Ieng Sary was able to protect them from the purges that claimed many of their colleagues.

THE REAL POWER

Many KR sources say that by far the most important defector, rather than Sary, was military commander Lt. Gen. Y Chhien, who, as officer in charge of Pailin, controlled crack troops and the lucrative gem and logging trade with nearby Thailand.

"Officially Chhien should be under Ieng Sary, but many believe that Chhien now controls Ieng Sary," said one source close to the KR. "He controls concrete forces - troops and money."

Chhien "was said to be a protégé of Pol Pot", says scholar Heder. "He was responsible for the personal security of both Pol Pot and Nuon Chea," according to the confession of senior Khmer Rouge official executed at Toul Sleng prison in 1977. In 1977, he accompanied then Foreign Minister Ieng Sary on an officials visit to Rangoon, in the capacity of "bodyguard".

By 1981, he was identified as Division 415 commander, and in 1991 promoted to overall Pailin sector commander - equivalent of a governor, civilian administrator, military commander and economic czar.

It was a role that gave him great influence, and one that would be bestowed on someone with the total confidence of the leadership, including Pol Pot. Chhien was viewed as one of a rising group of six or seven younger commanders being groomed for taking over the movement.

Sary's daughter, a graduate of the State University of New York at Stony Brook in the late 1980s, is married to a top lieutenant of Chhien.

"Both Sok Pheap and Chhien had a high degree of interaction with the international community. They had extensive contact with Thais and other foreigners," said Heder. "Elements of both Divisions voted in the UNTAC elections, against the directive of the leadership."

On the other side of the KR, perhaps the most key military man is Ta Mok

The number three on the standing committee and Chief of the General Staff of the army, has seen his influence considerably enlarged since the UN peace agreements. He increased his control from 6 to 12 divisions in 1992, and is responsible for troops from the northwestern Thai border throughout the north and the entire east of the country on the Vietnam border.

This gave him control of perhaps 70 percent of the Khmer Rouge army. But one of the consequences of the recent split is the marked rise in influence of Ta Mok in the wake of the loss of Pailin. Now more than 80 percent - and perhaps as much as 90 percent - of the remaining troops are under his direct command.

Ta Mok, otherwise known as Chhit Choeun, studied Buddhism when young, and reached the status of "Lok Kru Achhar". He took over his father's lumber business and was described as "bright".

According to a senior KR official in 1977, Ta Mok "made vital contributions...by building up a solidly reliable base. He was able to build up military strength in every sector", "throngs of people supported him" and "he was able to build up massive armed forces rapidly" and "went down personally to lead the military". But, continued Non Suon, who was later executed at S-21, Ta Mok had "shortcomings"; "he thinks only his zone is important" and "is quick to become angry, even furious...his attitude is displayed in loud rages and cursing. A lot of other cadre have been cursed out by him". Non Suon continued to say Mok has a "boastful personality and clings stubbornly to his understanding of things. Whatever he says has to be done, is to be done. If this is not curbed in time he could be transformed into an authoritarian strongman."

THE NUMBERS GAME

While Prime Minister Hun Sen said in August that the two commanders Chhien and Sok Pheap would bring 3,000 troops to defect to the government, analysts urged caution, and the intelligence figures suggest otherwise.

In August 1991, the NADK formally submitted military organization charts to the UN, in accordance with the agreements reached in Paris. They said that 415 division had a strength including combatants, guerrillas (militia), and porters of 1,200 men and women. In 1992, UN military intelligence put the real number under arms at about 400. In internal documents of the RCAF's 2nd bureau responsible for military intelligence dated June 1995 put the troop strength at 350.

For division 450, the August 1991 NADK official figure was 1,635 (of which the DK said about 65 percent were under arms). UNTAC estimates in 1993 put the figure at 400, and the later RCAF internal intelligence documents reported about 300 under arms.

Whichever way one analyses it, the figures bandied about by the government of late can be dismissed as propaganda.

For overall figures of DK armed strength, their formal submissions to UNTAC in August 1991 was 25,175 combatants and porters plus 2,510 guerrillas, of which 65 percent - or about 18,874 - under arms. These figures are consistent with the upper ranges of State of Cambodia and Vietnamese intelligence estimates at the time. In the mid-1992 UNTAC's "guestimate" was about 10,000 KR under arms. But after the DK's withdrawal from the peace process, they began a central directive of remobilization of troops. By December 1992, UNTAC had increased their estimates to 15,000 under arms. In June 1995, RCAF intelligence put the KR strength at 4,750 regular forces, with militia bringing the total to 8,500.

Using the government own intelligence figures, the two divisions comprise approximately 800 soldiers, or between 10 and 20 percent of the entire KR fighting force.

But the KR leadership is not only short of friends and money, but also ammunition. The group has ordered all soldiers and civilians to meet a quota of homemade bamboo stakes and other crude weapons since last year. In an internal strategy document from the leadership to cadre earlier this year, the leadership spoke of "The strategic weapons that we call our main forces, sharp pointed soldiers, which are punji sticks, poison punji sticks, and booby traps...machetes, axes, and knives are locally abundant."

THE FUTURE

While the internal split within the movement has caused concrete damage and is a major propaganda victory for the government, it is much too early to count the KR out.

Virtually the entire KR political leadership, and much of its military command, is intact. The entire northern command structure - which has successfully defeated all government attempts to destroy it in recent years - is largely unaffected. It is this area that the leadership moved its political operations several years ago.

It is cogent to remember that the Sary's forces have given no sincere indication that they are willing to join the government, or indeed that peace and national reconciliation was ever their aim in breaking away.

In scores of interviews with defectors by this reporter in recent years, few cited political disagreements with the KR as a motive for leaving. Most said that they were treated well by the commanders and were proud of their role in defending the country against the Vietnamese threat. That is the case with those loyal to the Pailin commanders.

It is likely that, for the time being, the Pailin rebels will remain a "third force" - with a shaky tactical alliance with the government - unless a confrontation between the new "allies" is forced.

For the rest of the KR, many government officials acknowledge that they have little to offer in the eyes of the average guerrilla, and that life in the "liberated zones" is often better than that of his counterpart across government front lines.

Hardline KR elements - who have long advocated no contacts with the enemy and who support an increase in guerrilla warfare and terrorism - are now in greater control of their faction.

In a 1994 KR document issued to northern forces, Ta Mok warned: "We have continued to exist with them, eat with them, peacefully allied with them to the point that some of our cadres and ranks have been repeatedly put in danger... in some of our units, enemy elements comprise 50-60 percent."

Ta Mok warned that "pacifism has entered our cadres" and that "there is a confusion, a blending our essence and our enemies."

He reminded cadre of "our absolute duty to smash and sweep away the enemy."

An October 1995 internal KR military strategy document outlined their emphasis on avoiding "tricks of the enemies", especially the "peaceful relationship scheme".

The document also urged the KR to target foreigners, particularly Americans.

"The resistance forces are everywhere. We can attack the two heads and their American boss everywhere. We can cut highway four anywhere, any bridge, any culvert on the road. We are going to cut it over and over until the two-headed government will not be able to use it and until the Americans and their construction on highway four turn their tails and run back to Phnom Penh...the short reminder of historical events is nothing more than a desire to caution that the strategic supply lines are the life and death key to winning or losing a war...cut the enemy' throat! Cut the enemy's throat! Cut the enemy's blood arteries! Tragic fit, tragic death to all enemies near and far!"

The US Army has detachments of military engineering units involved in road construction on Route 4 and special forces units training Cambodian deminers elsewhere in Cambodia. Western intelligence sources say they have information that the KR are targeting Westerners in Cambodia, and have issued at least three confidential "threat alerts" in recent months.

Similarly, other internal documents and references on radio push the same line: that the KR must guard against all enemies, and remain at a distance from corrupting influences.

One document said: "Our first responsibility is we must be clean. Our major responsibility is to clean up our act. We must be clean. Our ranks, especially our cadre, must be clean, our skin clear, free of all smell, no peaceful relationship scheme, no spying activity, no internal undermining, nothing to be compromised at all..."

With the recent events, those elements of the KR who have been warning of the "peaceful relationship scheme" are likely to be saying "I told you so" - and be that much more intent to strengthen their hands with the remaining ranks.

 

(Nate Thayer, correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review, is currently a Visiting Scholar and Fellow at the School of Advanced International Studies, Foreign Policy Institute, Johns Hopkins University in Washington, DC.)

Hell on the Ho Chi Minh Trail: SOF Finds Elephants, Tigers and Khmer Rouge--but No Cow Nate Thayer

Hell on the Ho Chi Minh Trail: SOF Finds Elephants, Tigers and Khmer Rouge--but No Cow

Soldier of Fortune magazine

By Robert K. Brown & Robert MacKenzie

August 1994

Photos by Tim Page

Lurch, jolt, lurch, jolt. Riding elephants for 12 hours a day at three klicks an hour was proving to be a mind-and but numbing experience as we moved through the desolate Cambodian Savanna-type jungle. Ant-covered bamboo slapped our faces in rhythm to the lurching gait of the elephants. Thank God and Gargoyle sunglasses we still had our eyes.

It was becoming another pointless, painful misadventure. There had been a point to it all, but at this juncture, after hours on the back of a "lurch, jolt" elephant, we found the purpose growing less and less noble.

Like most adventures it initially sounded more intriguing and glamorous than it was turning out to be--like jumping from a perfectly good airplane, where, while shuffling to the door, the bile trying to claw its way up your throat, you ask yourself once again, " Why am I doing this?"

It all started a few months ago when Nate Thayer, a young journalist whose career SOF helped launch, called the office.

"Brown, how ya doin'? How'd you like to go on a scientific expedition...to locate a species of cow that was thought to be extinct for 50 years?"

Well, we always thought cows were for eating, or if wild, e.g. Cape buffalo, for shooting and then eating. And a scientific expedition? Ho, hum. Dullsville. Maybe we are getting along in years, but the notion had as much appeal as Kissing Hillary Rodham on the ear.

The ever-resourceful Thayer has been pushing the envelope for years: He's had malaria 16 times; keeps a motorbike hidden on the Thai-Cambo border and periodically drives unannounced into Khmer Rouge country. He has also managed to get blown up when his truck hit a land mine, killing 10 of the other 12 passengers; and when he positioned himself to the right-rear of a recoilless rifle shooting Burmese from a Karen bunker, instead of a Pulitzer-prize winning photo he got a snap of the bunker ceiling and lost 95% hearing in one ear...you, know, that sort of envelope-pushing. Thayer must have sensed we were less than enthusiastic. So he started upping the ante.

"Brown, we'll chopper into the base camp; use elephants to recon."

On an interest level of one to 10, that's about a two.

"We're going into KR country in eastern Cambodia, near the Vietnamese border, along the Ho Chi Minh trail."

Interest level now at five.

“We’ll be carrying AKs and whatever else is necessary.”

Interest level six.

“Our tracker/scouts will be former FULRO (United Front for the Struggle of Oppressed races) Montagnards who fought the NVA for 17 years after Saigon fell,” he continued.

“If we find that extinct cow, we will all be famous.”

Thayer sensed Brown wavering.

“And there are marauding tigers in the AO. We’ll need someone to deal with that threat. An AK, even on full auto, won’t do the job quick enough. We need a big caliber gun and someone who knows how to use it.”

Bingo! Level 10.5 Brown bit and Thayer sank the hook, but, now, as our elephantine convoy continued to lurch and jolt through the bamboo like a sailor on leave, we both wished he had spit it out.

PHOTO LEFT: Nate Thayer, former SOF author and presently Cambodian correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review, organized ‘scientific’ expedition to locate species of bovine, the Kouprey, thought extinct for 50 years. Thayer, AKA Col Kurtz, was so disorganized he made RKB look like role model for German General Staff

PHOTO LEFT: One of Thayer’s more bizarre concepts was to place rubber masks, modeled here by ‘Col, Kurtz’ himself, with lights behind them on trees facing away from camp to frighten tigers. Cooler heads determined it was unnecessary to implement this concept.

PHOTO TOP: Maj. Robert Mackenzie, ten-year veteran of Rhodesian SAS, and Robert K. Brown logged more ‘elephant time’ than anyone could possibly want. Only access was by foot and elephant; Promised helicopters never materialized. MacKenzie carries Chinese Type 56-1 AK and Brown, whose mission was to summarily terminate any marauding tigers, is armed with Ruger .375 H&H Magnum with 1.5x-6x Bausch and Lomb scope

After losing several thousand dollars’ worth of camera gear to thieves who work at the pricey Sukhothai Hotel in Bangkok, we arrived in Phnom Penh to be greeted by Tim Page, a crazy Brit film shooter who made his bones big time as a combat photographer in the ‘Nam, and Thayer, whom we quickly labeled “Colonel Kurtz.” Thayer bamboozled Brown’s Ruger .375 H&H through customs, prattling about being a friend of the King; a close friend of the Prime Minister. Whatever works.

PHOTO ABOVE: Thayer was/is an operator par excellence. Who else could lay on the Cambodian equivalent of Air Force One to transport our motley crew from Phnom Penh to jump-off point at Sen Monorom, dreadful capital of Mondolkiri province of eastern Cambodia. This particular aircraft serves as personal transport for King Sihanouk, who had blessed expedition. Dude with parasol—just what you need for Khmer Rouge territory—is Mike Hayes, editor of the Phnom Penh Post

PHOTO ABOVE: Team plots next elephant recon at insect-farm base-camp located on Ho Chi Minh trail about 20 klicks from Vietnamese border. Leader of Montagnard scout/tracker team, in yellow T-shirt, fought NVA for 17 years after Saigon surrendered.

 

We headquartered on the second floor of an old mildewy French villa that serves as an office for the English-language daily, the Phnom Penh Post.

As we dumped our gear on the floor, Thayer popped beers and said, “Welcome to the freest country in the world!”

Our puzzled glances prompted him to open a large cabinet containing an old French MAT-49 sub gun, a selective-fire Chinese M-14, several AKs, an M-79 grenade launcher and cases of ammo. Obviously no 4473s required here.

As if too reinforce his assertion, Thayer rolled and lit up a joint, continuing, “Anything you want. You can get a 50-kilo bale of pot at the market; there is an opium den down the street and you can pick up a case of AIDS without much difficulty.” Hmmm.

One might define freedom that way: all in the light of what you are smoking. The arsenal was intriguing, but we passed on the offer of dope and communicable disease.

Thayer’s prior planning primarily consisted of drinking, smoking, and banging the local bimbos. Even though Tim Page had assumed S-4 responsibility and acquired a fair amount of equipment, there would be considerable delay. Food, weapons, communications and transport were among ‘minor details’ not resolved for our 25-man foray into the KR-controlled, tiger-infested jungle.

PHOTO ABOVE: Brown examines wreckage of U.S. aircraft shot down over Ho Chi Minh trail. U.S. POW/MIA search teams had already visited crash site. Photo; Robert MacKenzie

PHOTO ABOVE: MacKenzie administers first aid to results of Brown’s folly—failure to apply moleskin when hotspots started to develop from new boots. Lesson learned.

Over the next days, we cleaned weapons and scrounged equipment in Phnom Penh markets, and met other expedition members. An experienced Italian veterinarian and author of the definitive book on camels, Maurizio “Mo” Dioli was the scientific member. Mo, Phnom Penh Post publisher Mike Hayes, his reporter Ker Munthit, and a Thai TV cameraman Praparn were ready to go. We awaited the four-man team of FULRO Montagnards with American escort from stateside.

We marked time visiting the battle-zone at Pailin (watch for a sit-rep next issue) and catching some rays. As we tanned, the plan evolved to final form. Alternative transportation had to be organized: The three Cambodian choppers Thayer promised were not to be—the Cambodian army only has three choppers. But continued shopping/scrounging had us at operational status when the Montagnards arrived.

Thayer had convinced Cambodia’s Prime Minister of the expedition’s merit, so we had a government airplane. The first staging point was at Sen Monorom in Mondolkiri province, where the governor organized a truck for the next leg and provided a 12-man detachment of Cambodian paramilitary police because of Khmer Rouge in the area. The governor issued the Montagnards AK-47s to increase expedition firepower. The SOF team members brought their own.

The next morning our party and supplies boarded a clapped-out truck and headed north on a dirt road. Most Cambodian roads boast only dirt and potholes; this road ran more to potholes and less to dirt. The plan was to drive until we ran out of road, to be met by elephants arranged by the provincial governor.

But, no elephants. By the time some showed up, we had lost another day.

We hung out at the trail head in hammocks, impressing local villagers. They were so impressed the headman invited us for rice wine (as Third-World villages go, it could have been worse) and a pitch for American aid, lest his village vanish. The chief had three wives and the village was knee-deep in children and pregnant children; vanishing didn’t seem imminent.

At daybreak we continued north. All walked except the overweight American who escorted the Montagnards. By mid-afternoon, it approached 100 degrees. We became separated into two groups, since elephants walk more slowly than men. The command element, the English speaking Montagnard and Thayer, were two hours behind. We were told to expect a river a couple hours out. By 1400 there was still no river, so we stopped and waited for “the leaders.” When they appeared at 1600, the priority was water, so we moved west towards the nearest watercourse.

PHOTO ABOVE: Members of Montagnard team pose with MacKenzie and RKB prior to patrol. Cambodian (center) in olive drab is member of 12-man security unit provided by provincial governor

BELOW PHOTO: Another member of the Cambodian security team, less than thrilled with his assignment. These troops, who had fought for the communist Cambodian/Vietnamese-supported government, did not inspire confidence. They were responsible for the only round fired-an AD which resulted in their giggling a great deal.  ’Nuff said.

An hour of bush bashing brought us to the blue line on their map, and huge pools of water. Soon elephants were in one pool, Cambodian soldiers in another and the expedition was drawing water from a third. A Third-World car wash was underway in the elephant pool with much splashing and frolicking as the mahouts scrubbed their charges.

We reached the proposed base site the next day and pitched camp. The following day we split into two groups to search for the cow. Both groups saw herds of Banteng, another wild ox with which the legendary Kouprey often cohabits. One group also saw packs of wild dogs and wild boar, but no cow yet. The next morning, as we were getting ready to leave our overnight site, Thayer’s walkie-talkie crackled with the words we didn’t want to hear—a sentry had spotted a Khmer Rouge soldier, who had also spotted him. The sentry returned to camp firmly convinced the KR was not alone and that this did not bode well for our mission.

 Despite Thayer’s assurance from the KR representative that the area commander was aware of and approved our mission, there was no certainty all local Khmer Rouge commanders had the word. On return we had a hurried conference to discuss options.

We could continue stumbling through the bush looking for the Kouprey; we could try to talk to the KR and assess the situation we could bugger out. The SOF mission opted for the second choice since the KR surely knew we were there and showed no hostile intent. Prevailing sentiment, however, was that no one wanted to get killed looking for a cow, so everyone upped sticked and returned to base camp: The KRs reputation for ferocity and unpredictability was enough to tip the scales in favor of flight.

 

PHOTO: Robert MacKenzie: Elephants are primary transport in isolated areas of eastern Cambodia. Tenderly cared for by their mahouts, elephants are their only major possession, only means of livelihood, and are passed from father to son. Our elephants ranged in age from 25 to 50, their mahouts from 18 to 70.

Elephants came equipped with box of wood slats and bamboo about three feet square and 18 inches deep. Carved in the shape of elephants back, box sits on thick cushion of fibrous bark, secured by bamboo cables, one of which runs around the tail, with another around the chest; a plaited rope of bark and bamboo goes around the neck. Cargo capacity is about 500 pounds, including the mahout. Elephants walk all day, foraging as they go, but need 12 hours rest between marches to relax and forage. “Speed” on trail is about 3 klicks an hour, during which time they eat everything from grass to tree roots.

At night elephants were loosed to forage, encumbered by a 13-foot chain heavy enough to gouge a furrow in the ground, making it easy to track them if the wandered off.

Boarding the ponderous critters is accomplished in one of two ways, depending on agility of boarders: if nimble, like Mackenzie, the mahout would have elephant extend front foot and passenger would step on and climb up. If old and decrepit, like Brown, elephant would belly down in the dirt—front feet forward and read feet backward—at which point passenger could be shoved into box by available bystanders.

Things were not well back at camp. Suffering from the heat, Page had convinced himself he was in serious danger of dying and needed a helicopter casevac. News of KR in the area corroborated his premonition and strengthened his demand to go home. The American Montagnard advisor was also down with excess heat and poundage—another candidate for casevac. With no radios to call the non—existent helicopter, we sent them out by elephant the next day. The TV shooter—with several hours of footage already, and the Post reporter with a deadline, also returned with three of the elephants and four of the Cambodian cops.

The remaining crew spent the next several days looking for the Kouprey in an area clearly devoid of any animal life (but far from the KR), as there was neither hoof print or cow pie anywhere in the barren landscape. But, as we could not convince the semi-intrepid Montagnard leader to go back where we had seen herds of cows and the lone rifleman, we ended the futile search and returned to base. We broke camp in the evening in order to get an early start back to Sen Monoram.

PHOTO BELOW: Another member of the Cambodian security team with RPG-7. Maybe we would run into armor-plated elephants?

Photo above: Maurizio Dioli, only ‘scientific’ member of the abortive expedition, is Italian veterinarian with 10 years of experience in northern Africa and the author of definitive books on camels. His sad/PO’d demeanor sums up the whole trip

PHOTO ABOVE: Elephants take a dunk with assistance from their mahouts. Riding elephants was an interesting experience—but once is too often

 

Late that night, the dry season ended and in the next hour more than three inches of rain inundated our campsite, now devoid of tarps. Amid curses and mutterings around the camp, our hammocks took water in at a slow but constant rate and did not let out.

As the noise of the storm faded, it was replaced by a din such as we had never heard during many campaigns on many continents: The rain was reveille to all the frogs in Cambodia, who had been waiting underground for the monsoons. Hundreds of thousands of frog voices in varying tones, timbres, pitches and strengths joined in a vast jungle cacophony loud enough to elicit sympathetic vibrations in the intrepid expeditioners’ chest cavities. It was an incredible, surreal experience—national geographic should have been there to record it.

Musing on the phenomenon, MacKenzie tipped more water from his hammock and wrapped himself in a sodden but still effective poncho liner, finally drifting off into a broken sleep to dream of giant frogs. We won’t be back again for a second try.

Robert K. Brown is SOF’s Publisher/Editor. Robert MacKenzie is an SOF contributing Editor for Unconventional Operations. They’re still friends.

Khmer Rouge smell victory Cambodian rebels enjoy strong backing by China-By Nate Thayer

Khmer Rouge smell victory

Cambodian rebels enjoy strong backing by China

By Nate Thayer

July 21, 1990

The Associated Press

SIEM REAP PROVINCE, Cambodia — Khmer Rouge guerrillas have seized large areas deep inside Cambodia in recent months and say they will fight as long as needed if they are shut out of a political settlement.

A recent five-week, 450-mile trip through the country's north by this reporter found the Khmer Rouge have strong Chinese support and have stockpiled caches of weapons, ammunition and funds in case foreign aid is cut. The United States announced Wednesday it was withdrawing recognition of the guerrilla coalition dominated by the Communist Khmer Rouge. The coalition also includes the non-Communist forces of Prince Norodom Sihanouk and Son Sann.

The U.S. move was prompted by fears of a return to power of the Khmer Rouge. The Communist group killed hundreds of thousands of people in forced agrarian reform in the 1970s until Vietnam invaded and installed a new government in early 1979.

The 30,000-man Khmer Rouge army already controls hundreds of villages in the country's south, west and north, and it operates in virtually all parts of the country.

In their jungle command posts, senior Khmer Rouge commanders said recently they were stepping up the fight to force the Vietnamese-backed government into political concessions. "The Khmer Rouge have everything they want from China. They don't need any more guns or money," said Col. Khan Savoeun, a commander of Sihanouk's army. "U.S. support for the non-Communists is very important psychologically for the non-Communist resistance. But it means nothing to the Khmer Rouge."

Ta Pok, a Khmer Rouge brigade commander in this northwestern province, said he listened to the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia for news on peace and hoped for progress. But he said the guerrillas cannot wait around for documents to be signed. "The Vietnamese will only listen to strength, and if they don't listen they will lose everything," he said.

The guerrillas have seized large quantities of weapons in recent fighting. Dozens of hidden jungle bases are full of ammunition, and captured heavy weapons were seen in the north.

The Chinese aid is channeled through the Thai border. But as the guerrillas push deeper into the country, they rely on the hidden caches and food from recently seized villages. Thousands of soldiers and civilian supporters were seen moving freely through newly seized areas. Heavy fighting between Khmer Rouge and government troops holed up at several key forward outposts defending Siem Riep city was heard every day. The guerrillas mined roads, attacked supply convoys and overran government artillery bases.  “ We are winning more easily than we expected. There is nothing that can stop us," said Khmer Rouge division commander Mit Lot, in charge of areas around the ancient temples of Angkor Wat in Siem Reap province. "If (Cambodian Prime Minister) Hun Sen is not flexible, we will fight and for sure we will win," he said.

The guerrillas appear to have substantial popular support. Many villagers say the Khmer Rouge are not forcing them to fight, and that they pay those who help carry ammunition and supplies. The guerrillas also pay a high price for rice. However, some villagers said they were afraid to refuse guerrilla requests for help.

As part of preparations in case foreign aid is cut, the Khmer Rouge have seized large gem-mining areas in the south and collect more than $500,000 monthly in taxes from miners, said Western intelligence analysts in Bangkok. In the north, they have created a sophisticated logging operation, trucking teakwood to Thailand. The guerrillas now have a network of thousands of miles of roads snaking from areas under their control to new front lines deep in the interior.

A young rebel relaxes near Ankor Wat: Photo: Nate Thayer

Refugees con Americans with MIA information: AP by Nate Thayer

Refugees con Americans with MIA information

Editor's note: The writer has lived for more than two years along the Thai-Cambodian border, and has been offered numerous artifacts and data about alleged American MlAs in Indochina.

By Nate Thayer

July 21, 1991

Associated Press Writer

BANGKOK, Thailand -"I have bones from dead American pilots," the Cambodian refugee whispered to this reporter, handing over a small packet of teeth, bone chips and a serviceman's identification number. "Is it true I can get $1 million from the Americans?" he asked.

The episode took place recently at a refugee camp along Thailand's eastern border with Cambodia, and the identification turned out not to belong to any of the 2,274 U.S. serviceman missing in action, or MIA, from the Vietnam War. But the offer illustrates the rumors —some based in fact — that have spread for years through rebel-held camps bordering Communist Laos and Cambodia, of huge rewards awaiting those who can show that U.S. servicemen are imprisoned in Indochina or those who can lead to their bodies.

The release of a photo this week purporting to show three U.S. prisoners of war has renewed debate over whether Americans are still held 16 years after the Vietnam War. Families of the three missing men say the men are in the photo. The three countries strongly deny they are holding prisoners. Numerous refugees and guerrillas have emerged from the jungles carrying bones, maps, letters purported to be from U.S. prisoners, and "dogtags" — military identification neckchains. They also talk of foreign captives in jungle hideouts. Refugees are often keen to provide stories about Americans in hopes of enhancing their chances of being resettled in the United States. Guerrillas are eager for cash.

The information is usually passed through relief officials or other foreigners to the U.S. Joint Casualty Resolution Center office at the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok. Most is immediately dismissed as fraudulent or irrelevant. The packet which the reporter received at Site 2 was sent to the center, but the identification number did not belong to anyone on the Pentagon's list of Americans missing in action.

Most of the "evidence" turns out to be scams engineered by hucksters and conmen, although some is credible. But none has been proven. No prisoners have been brought out.

Still, many remain convinced that Americans remain captive. Teams of privately funded Americans have offered huge rewards, set up safe houses along the Thai border, and sent agents into remote jungles in efforts to obtain remains or bring back Americans alive.

Billionaire H. Ross Perot in 1986 offered $4.2 million to obtain a videotape purportedly showing POWs in Laos. Many of the private American teams' investigating reports accuse their government of dragging its feet, ignoring. evidence and conspiring to stifle efforts to bring back prisoners.

Lighting the darkness: FULRO's jungle Christians

Lighting the darkness: FULRO's jungle Christians     

Phnom Penh Post

Friday, 25 September, 1992

By Nate Thayer

MONDULKIRI - Accompanied by a chorus of crickets and the steady drumming of rain on the leaf roofs of their huts, scores of Montagnard fighters and their families gather in the jungle darkness each night to pray and sing.

Having long ago fled ideological restrictions in Vietnam for a religious sanctuary deep in the forest, the soldiers are members of FULRO-the United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races-which has fought for a separate homeland in Vietnam for their hilltribe people since 1964.

Lamps fueled by chunks of slow-burning tree resin give light to the few shared tattered bibles and hymnals as Christian songs of worship echo through the otherwise uninhabited forest. Familiar gospel hymns are sung in the tribal dialects of the mountains.

For many at FULRO's scattered guerrilla bases, the ability to pray freely was a main motivation to flee their villages in Vietnam's central highlands 17 years ago.

"The communists will not let us pray. They say that Christianity is an American and French religion, so we came to live in the jungle," said Lt.-Col. Y Hinnie. "In our land under the communists, people pray at home secretly or in the ricefields. They cannot worship together like we do in the jungle. Here we are free."

Each of the five jungle encampments in the FULRO rear base area have an Evangelical church, while there is a lone Catholic church in the main guerrilla camp. Nearly 40 people share a single bible for the daily Catholic Mass and at weekend services. The church consists of pews of wooden logs lined neatly in a clearing, a towering rough-hewn cross behind the altar.

Similar Evangelical churches, cut into clearings surrounded by 30-meter high hardwood trees, are packed with more than 350 worshippers for the daily two-hour evening service and brief early morning prayers. Each church has its own pastor, and worshippers bring large green leaves as hassocks to kneel on the damp forest floor.

These believers are the legacy of Christian missionaries who lived in the Central Highlands until 1975, when the last of them were expelled by the current government in Viet-nam. Many of the missionaries had mastered the local dialects, translating Bibles and hymnals into the region's Rade, Jarai and Koho languages.

The guerrillas also tune into weekly radio sermons delivered in their native languages by a powerful shortwave radio station in Manila operated by the Christian Missionary Alliance.

A guerrilla congregation reels off the names of "their" missionaries like a litany: "In Pleiku, Mr. Long and Mr. Fleming and in Dalat, Helen Evans, she is from America too. Ken Swain from Darlac, he preaches in our language on the radio every Saturday now."

FULRO officials say some of the missionaries' involvement with the Montagnards went beyond simply bringing the scriptures to the area. They said some of them were active in the waning days of U.S. involvement in the early 1970s in running guns to the guerrillas.

Following the collapse of the South Vietnamese regime in 1975, FULRO leaders say, the communists set about systematically dismantling Christian churches. Many of the Montagnards' religious leaders were arrested and killed after the communist victory in 1975, they say.

"They take our pastors, preachers and Christians and put them in jail," said FULRO's military Commander-in-Chief Col Y Peng Ayun. "We don't hate any one man because we are Christians, but we can never trust the communists," he added.

Two prominent Montagnard pastors from Ban Me Thuot, Y Ham Nic Hrah and Y Lico Nie, died in the early 1980s after many years of harsh conditions in prison, according to the guerrillas. "Here, we worship no matter what," said Pastor Budar Su Khong, 52, from Dalat. "Jesus said 'Come to me whoever is tired, and I will bring you rest.' We are very tired. Please take a message to Christians in other countries to pray for us, and we will pray for them."

(On Sept. 19, UNTAC deployed three soldiers from Sector IV headquarters in Stung Treng to FULRO' encampment. They will be permanently based there to provide protection until the U.N. decides how to respond to FULRO's requests for help.)

Montagnard Army Seeks U.N. Help:Vietnam War Era Renegade Army Discovered In Mondulkiri

Montagnard Army Seeks U.N. Help

Vietnam War Era Renegade Army Discovered In Mondulkiri

Phnom Penh Post

Saturday, 12 September 1992

By Nate Thayer

MONDULKIRI, Cambodia-Abandoned for years by their own leaders and former foreign military backers, an anti-Hanoi Montagnard army based in northeast Cambodia has approached the United Nations with a plea for protection.

The military combatants of FULRO-the United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races-have waged a lonely battle for a separate homeland in Vietnam for their hilltribe people since 1964.

The recent discovery of the Montagnard army in Mondulkiri province prompted Phnom Penh's Interior Ministry to inform U.N. peacekeeping forces that unless the group-formerly given sanctuary by the Khmer Rouge-is disarmed they would attack them.

On Sept. 4 a joint mission of officials from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) met with the fighters to discuss their request for sanctuary.

"We have to be very cautious because they may be in danger," said UNHCR Press Officer Annick Roulet.

Previous discussions with UNTAC military officials at their remote jungle camp near the Vietnamese border have resulted in conflicting impressions as to whether or not FULRO troops want to give up their struggle and apply for refugee status or continue to wage war against Vietnam.

Under threat from the Phnom Penh regime, expelled by the Khmer Rouge, and a thorn in the side to Vietnam, FULRO is presenting an interesting if not painful dilemma to U.N. officials in Phnom Penh.

UNTAC-mandated to verify the withdrawal of all foreign forces in Cambodia-may be obligated to ensure the return of the group to Vietnamese soil if they insist on continuing to wage war.

But UNHCR-responsible for protecting people with a "well founded fear of persecution"-may have to offer asylum to the fighters if they are in danger of being sent back to Vietnam, where they certainly would face imprisonment.

That, in turn, could open the floodgates to thousands of requests for political asylum from Vietnamese living in Cambodia.

"We have enough problems in Cambodia dealing with the four factions, and now this army we never even heard of turns up," said one UNTAC military official.

American diplomats in Phnom Penh and U.N. military officials in Cambodia are urging that UNHCR grant the group refugee status to begin the process of third country asylum, and give them temporary protection from military attack.

But FULRO Commander-in-Chief Y Peng Ayun and his forces are reluctant to accept giving up their fight without first getting U.N. protection.

"If we give up our weapons, they will take us back to Vietnam or the Vietnamese will come get us," Ayun said. "If I go to the U.S., I don't want to stay a long time there, because I have responsibility to liberate my country."

Frozen in Time

When two correspondents from the Phnom Penh Post visited FULRO's remote guerrilla headquarters last month, they found an army unaware of the world around them and desperately seeking instructions and resupply from their leadership.

Col. Ayun and his lieutenants gathered around the Post reporters, hungrily seeking information.

"Please, can you help us find our president, Y'Bham Enuol?" Colonel Ayun asked. "We have been waiting for contact and orders from our president since 1975. Do you know where he is?"

Neither Ayun nor his troops, who gathered around to meet the first journalists to find them since they fled to the jungles after the American defeat in Indochina in 1975, knew that their leader was executed 17 years before by the Khmer Rouge.

They fell silent when informed; some wept quietly.

Situated in a string of five villages carved out of dense forest along a raging river, the group of 407 guerrillas and their families have no access to even the smallest luxury items except from fighters returning from Vietnam.

There is no medicine or schools, and many of the soldiers and their families have only the clothes they wear and rifles. Bamboo huts with roofs of leaves provide shelter.

"The food we get from the forest. The forest belongs to FULRO." said Lt. Col. Y Hinnie. "We don't have food or medicine, so it is difficult. But with food and medicine the jungle is a very nice place. We are used to it."

The rivers nearby abound with crocodiles, huge catfish, and fresh water porpoises and the surrounding jungle-thick with mosquitos-is home to elephants and a host of deadly snakes.

The combatants and their families are traditionally rice eating people, but they are unable to farm rice here with the enemy constantly forcing movement.

A staple of corn, with jungle cucumbers, pumpkins, and hot green peppers are all they have. For part of the year they survive on poisonous potatos that must be carefully processed for five days to extract a deadly toxin.

"We must eat it slowly until our bodies get used to it or it will kill you," Hinnie said, "But the poison is also the medicine we use to cure snakebites." Nearby a soldier lay paralyzed from a snakebite he received three months before.

"This tree has the medicine we use for malaria and this one here we can use to treat diarrhea," Hinnie said, pointing.

The army has no maps or compasses. "But we can guide ourselves by stars and winds of the seasons. We can tell by which side of the tree is wet during different months exactly which direction we are going," he said.

Hinnie spoke credible English from his days as a young boy with Christian missionaries, as well as Khmer, Vietnamese, and French, and several tribal dialects, and translated for others who spoke in Rade. His skills have given him the title of "the FULRO Military Delegation's Representative of Foreign Affairs."

But his knowledge of world events is spotty. "We would like you to take a message to U Thant," he said, referring to the former U.N. Secretary-General. Asking about the cold war, he said, "I hear that President George Bush now contacts with the Russians."

He is charged with listening to the shortwave radio each morning, tuning in VOA, BBC, Christian radio, and Radio Vietnam to keep the group abreast of foreign developments.

Hinnie told amazed fighters of the fax machine: "You take a letter and put it in a telephone and it comes out in one minute in America," he explained.

The Forgotten Army

A number of soldiers appeared to introduce themselves in English as having fought with the Americans.

"You are the first foreigner I have seen since 1975," said Bhong Rcam, 47, "The Americans usually call me Tiny."

Like many of the fighters of FULRO, he worked with the U.S. Special Forces during the Vietnam War. After the U.S. withdrawal he was jailed by Hanoi, before joining FULRO in the jungle in 1976.

During the Vietnam War FULRO was supplied with millions of dollars of U.S. equipment, and before that, used as allies to further the objectives of the French and various Vietnamese regimes.

When the North Vietnamese launched decisive offensives in March 1975, FULRO leaders say that senior U.S. officials in Saigon promised continued support for the Montagnards and pledged to covertly support their fight.

Well equipped with American weapons and promises of more as South Vietnam crumbled in the spring of 1975, FULRO waited for the Americans who never returned, eventually re-grouping in the jungle.

"The Montagnard people and the Americans are like one family," said Lt. Col. Hinnie. "I am not angry, but very sad that the Americans forgot us. The Americans are like our elder brother, so it is very sad when your brother forgets you."

FULRO continued to launch attacks on Vietnam for four years after the U.S. withdrawal, fielding a fierce army of 10,000 fighters. But by 1979 they were running low on ammunition and had suffered huge casualties, with more than 8,000 of their fighters killed or captured.

In 1979 FULRO abandoned their bases in Vietnam and moved to the jungles on the Cambodian side of the Vietnamese frontier, switching to underground networks and small guerrilla strikes in their four regions of operations in Vietnam-Quang Duc, Darlac, Pleiku, and Kon Tum.

Previously given sanctuary by the Khmer Rouge in areas under their control, FULRO was expelled from Khmer Rouge zones in January to a remote area of Mondulkiri province. Khmer Rouge officials in Phnom Penh say they had given FULRO sanctuary since 1979, despite having fallen out with their leadership in 1986.

"They had no political vision. Their fighters are very, very brave, but they had no support from any leadership, no food, and they did not understand at all the world around them," said one senior Khmer Rouge official.

Jungle Christians

Col. Ayun complained bitterly of the treatment of his people by the Hanoi government.

"My people suffer terribly under the Vietnamese communist regime," he recounted from a thatched hut in the forest. "They came and took our land, and made it theirs. They try to erase our language and force us to speak Vietnamese. They have taken our fertile land and forced us to the bad land.

"They say they have come to build progress for my people, but they have come to kill, arrest, and oppress my people."

For many at FULRO's scattered guerrilla bases, the ability to pray freely and practice Christianity was a main motivation to flee Vietnam. Each of the five villages in the FULRO area have an evangelical church, while there is a lone Catholic church in the main guerrilla camp.

"The Communists will not let us pray," Col. Hinnie said. "They say that Christianity is an American and French religion, so we came to live in the jungle."

Col. Ayun requested to meet with the American ambassador to seek advice on whether his group would get the aid he said was long promised and to seek proof of the death of their leader.
"We are the troops of President Y Bham Enuol," he said.

"If he has died, we want proof from the United Nations. The Americans had a whole plan for Indochina. I want to meet face to face with the American ambassador. I have a plan for the future, and they should know clearly our position for the revolutionary struggle. We want to know whether they will help us or not."

But the chances of U.S. support for Ayun and his forces are dim, and FULRO faces a whole new series of difficulties.

Montagnard leaders now living in the U.S. appealed to Col. Ayun to give up the fight. "Due to unfavorable circumstances, I suggest it is time to stop fighting, to find different ways to reach our ultimate goal," said Pierre K'briuh in a recent message to the FULRO fighters.

K'briuh is a leader of the former FULRO troops now in the United States and he himself was jailed by Hanoi until the early 1980s.

"President Y-Bham Enuol and his entourage were executed by the Khmer Rouge in 1975," he wrote.

"Therefore, based on common sense, lay down your weapons and appeal at once to the U.N. for political asylum to join us here. We don't have any other choice."

Col. Ayun and his troops say that if they have proof that Y Bham Enuol is indeed dead, they will consider going to the U.S.

"But even if we go to another country, our resistance will continue until we get our own land, until we get back the land that belonged to us before," Ayun said.

"I don't want to go to a free nation," he added. "I want to stay here because this is my battlefield. It is my responsibility. But I have no supplies or help from free countries."

- Michael Hayes contributed to this report.

MIA-POW ISSUE SLOWS U.S.- VIETNAM ACCORD

MIA-POW ISSUE SLOWS U.S.- VIETNAM ACCORD

Albany Times Union (Albany, NY)

July 29, 1991

Byline: Nate Thayer Associated Press

The United States will not establish diplomatic ties with Vietnam until the issue of Americans missing there is resolved and a Cambodian peace accord is signed, a U.S. official said Sunday.

The official, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Solomon, is in Bangkok for discussions with Vietnamese Deputy Foreign Minister Le Mai on the diplomatic issue. The two are to meet on Tuesday.

Vietnamese officials are expected to argue that recent progress toward a peace settlement in Cambodia makes this issue no longer relevant to the question of U.S.-Vietnamese relations.

But Solomon, in an interview, said Washington would not change its long-held position.

"The three primary issues for normalization are a solution to the Cambodian problem, the MIA-POW issue and the people still held in re-education camps in Vietnam," he said. MIA-POW refers to servicemen in the Vietnam War who are listed as missing in action and prisoners of war.

The recent release of a grainy photo that purportedly shows Americans still held captive in Indochina has renewed the debate on 2,274 Americans unaccounted for from the wars in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

Meanwhile Sunday, Senate Republican leader Bob Dole urged President Bush to appoint a presidential commission to investigate whether the three missing Americans are still alive in Southeast Asia.

Appearing on NBC-TV's "Meet the Press" in Washington, D.C., Dole was asked about a statement Friday by National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft that he is convinced no Americans missing from the Vietnam conflict are still living.

"I don't know, and I don't think Brent Scowcroft knows," Dole said. "I think what we should do, and what I would like to see happen this week, is for the President to say, 'I'm going to have a presidential commission. We are going to take another look.'"

"Let's raise this to the highest level to see if we can't address it," the Kansas senator said. "That might in effect help some of the families who are distressed."

In addition, Dole said, "We might be able to weed out some of these people who, I think, have got something pretty good going here. They indicate to families that they can find their sons or husbands. A lot of money is being spent."

American officials say they have serious doubts about the authenticity of the photo, but a vocal lobby in the United States contends that the Vietnamese continue to hold American prisoners.

Kenneth Quinn, a deputy assistant secretary of state, traveled to Vietnam and Laos last week to investigate the photo.

The third issue on the American agenda is the imprisonment of former officials of the pro-American government in re-education camps. Washington has long criticized this, but most of the former officials reportedly have been released.

A senior U.S. government official familiar with Quinn's talks in Hanoi said the Vietnamese were worried that the purported MIA photo would damage efforts to normalize relations.

Now the Vietnamese are going out of their way to open up as never before and this could make it easier to resolve the MIA issue, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Before the photo was released, analysts said Vietnamese-U.S. relations were improving, and hopes were high for peace in Cambodia and progress on the MIA issue.

The United States and Vietnam now are conducting their 14th joint search for Americans missing in Vietnam. On Thursday the United States is to open an MIA liaison office in Hanoi.