The Best of Cambodia & Laos

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CAMBODIA IN DEPTH
2
LOOKING BACK
Who Was Pol Pot?
Pol Pot (aka Saloth Sar) was the enigmatic and chillingly ruthless leader of the
Khmer Rouge. He took the name Pol Pot upon coming fully to power in 1975.
It most likely comes from a phrase translated into French that the Chinese
leadership used to describe him, “Politique Potentielle,” though that is only a
theory. Pol Pot and his equally despotic cronies—Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan,
Son Sen, Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith, Ta Mok, and a host of others—were the architects
of a horror so total that the world is still reeling at man’s capacity to be so
inhumane to his fellow countrymen. Torture was an everyday tool employed
by this regime. Toddlers and infants were as callously killed as adults were. The
killing was run like a mundane bureaucratic procedure, and Pol Pot was the
chief executive calling the shots.
Born in 1925, Saloth Sar was part of the tiny Phnom Penh middle class and
he had royal connections. His sister was a palace concubine, while he was sent
to Paris to be educated as an electrical engineer. He wasn’t very good, repeatedly
failing his exams and returning to Phnom Penh in 1954. While in Paris he
fell in with a group of committed Cambodian leftists dubbed the “Cercle Marxiste.”
At this time, Saloth Sar was not in any way the leader of this group and
people such as Ieng Sary, who later became Khmer Rouge foreign minister,
were far more important.
Saloth Sar may not have been very successful academically, but by the mid-
’60s as leftists fled the increasingly repressive Sihanouk regime, he was showing
a considerable talent for organization and had an utterly ruthless ambition.
Over time, he came to be the de facto leader of the movement. His actions in
that role set the tone for the brutality, the arrogance, and the intense paranoia
that marked out the Khmer Rouge regime. Although other Khmer Rouge leaders
such as Khieu Samphan and Ieng Sary were far more academic ideologues
and theorists for this poisonously lunatic bunch, Pol Pot remained very much
in control. This was until international support for the Khmer Rouge waned, the
movement fractured, and he was toppled by Ta Mok, one of the few of his
longtime lieutenants who had not either defected or been murdered on his
orders. His death in 1998 was an ignominious one: He is said to have been
interned in a seedy shack deep in the jungle, and his body burned atop a pile
of car tires.
the Paris peace accords, implemented by
the five permanent members of the UN
Security Council. A deal was hammered
out that suited both Hun Sen’s government
and the forces of the Sihanouk “alliance.”
The United Nations Transitional
Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) would
create and oversee the conditions under
which elections could be held. Sihanouk
was rewarded for all his years of politicking
and plotting by being put back on the
throne.
There was a merciful break in the fighting,
but the period saw an influx of foreign
troops and money into the country.
Phnom Penh became a Wild West–like
boomtown awash with money, fourwheel-drives,
and rampant prostitution.