Poor Cambodia. News of the death of Pol Pot brings back foul but vivid images of the estimated two million deaths by murder, starvation and disease for which he and other leaders were responsible in the 1975-8 period when his Khmer Rouge Maoist guerrillas were in power. That he survived with impunity for 20 years thereafter can be explained only by the cynicism of Cambodia's international partners and lately its faction-ridden and frequently murderous domestic politics. Overhanging it all is the sheer trauma and underdevelopment imposed on the country's people by these dreadful events.
Pol Pot came to epitomise that trauma and his passing is a reminder of its shocking inhumanity. His death came just as the United States mounted yet another initiative to capture him and bring him before an international tribunal. But in interviews before his trial and humiliation last year by his erstwhile Khmer Rouge colleagues, Pol Pot refused to accept personal blame for the genocide, which he blamed on foreign enemies and antagonists. His attitude is partly to be explained by his experience, after he lost power, with those who befriended him as a means of preventing Vietnam and the Soviet Union from expanding their influence in the region.
They included China especially, but also Thailand and several other members of ASEAN, more concerned with the regional balance of power than with prosecuting the Khmer Rouge for war crimes. The Khmer Rouge coalition enjoyed wider international support from the United States and European powers at the United Nations. It took the end of the Cold War to loosen up these allegiances, culminating in the UN-brokered peace agreement and elections in 1993.
At that time Pol Pot's forces controlled an estimated 40,000 men and perhaps 15 per cent of Cambodian territory, so that their refusal to participate in the polls posed a real threat. Since then, their international support has dwindled away. Many of the Khmer Rouge leaders, and most of its forces, have negotiated comfortable niche arrangements or defected to the regime in Phnom Penh after unconvincing statements renouncing their past.
As documented recently by the Far Eastern Economic Review, these include several commanders who now hold government office "despite abundant evidence that they were guilty of committing atrocities during the movement's three years in power". Their correspondent claims that the bulk of the Khmer Rouge are now members of Cambodia's government, and concludes: "That raises the question of who is to be defined as Khmer Rouge and who can be brought before an international tribunal - if it were ever to be held". This week the news magazine reports that rump elements of the organisation were preparing to hand Pol Pot over for trial, while Dr Henry Kissinger has speculated that other elements may have killed him for fear of their being exposed themselves.
In the meantime, the byzantine and brutal competition between Hun Sen, who seized power in a coup last year, and his erstwhile co-premier Norodom Ranariddh, continues as elections called for July loom. It is very much to be hoped Pol Pot's death can herald a new chapter for the Cambodian people, who have for so long been pawns in other people's cynical power games.