By Ben Kiernan
In 1990 Roger Normand, field work editor of the Harvard Human Rights Journal, obtained the contents of some of Pol Pot's confidential speeches in 1988, recorded in briefing notes taken by Khmer Rouge commanders who later defected. They show a conscious use of the veto the West has given Pol Pot over the negotiation process, through its push for a unanimous "comprehensive settlement".
In 1988, Pol Pot secretly revealed plans to "delay elections" until his forces "control all the country", when his officials "will lead the balloting work".
In this secret briefing to Pol Pot's commanders, Khieu Samphan, his delegate to the negotiations added: "The outside world keeps demanding a political end to the war in Kampuchea. I could end the war now if I wanted, because the outside world is waiting for me, but I am buying time to give you comrades the opportunity to carry out all the tasks ... If it doesn't end politically, and ends militarily, that's good for us."
Here Pol Pot interrupted, saying that "to end the war politically" would make his movement "fade away": "We must prevent this from happening." The Khmer Rouge defectors quote Pol Pot as saying also that, in the event of a settlement, "Our troops will remain in the jungle for self-defence". What might this mean for Cambodia's future?
In another secret 1988 briefing to his commanders, Pol Pot blamed most of his regime's 1975-79 killings, when 1.5 million Cambodians perished, on "Vietnamese agents". But he defended having massacred the defeated Lon Nol regime's officers, soldiers and officials. "This strata of the imperialists had to be totally destroyed", he insisted. In "abandoning communism" now, Pol Pot added, his movement discards its "peel", but not the fruit inside. "The politics has changed, but the spirit remains the same."
In June 1990, Khmer Rouge forces stopped a passenger train in the Cambodian countryside south of Phnom Penh. They fired directly into the carriages. One witness, Svay Pech, "saw eight people killed in her carriage alone", reporting that "the shooting went on a long time".
The Khmer Rouge shot the two soldiers guarding the train, and then separated the state employees from the rest. Svay Pech saw five more people, several working for the railway company, shot dead. Those still alive were forced to carry the booty for the Khmer Rouge into the hills. Some too weak to march were abandoned for
dead along the way.
In a second train massacre south of Phnom Penh, in mid-October 1990, the Khmer Rouge murdered another 50 people. A Khmer Rouge source unconvincingly explained that "its soldiers had probably confused a civilian carriage with an armoured one". In fact, they target civilians and soldiers indiscriminately.
Recent media speculation that the Khmer Rouge have "changed" stems more from official US attempts to legitimise the Khmer Rouge return to Cambodia than from any understanding of their current activities.
In late January 1991, Khmer Rouge artillery shelling near Battambang, in north-west Cambodia, killed at least three civilians and wounded 12, including "an eight-year-old girl ripped by shrapnel", according to an official of Médecin sans Frontières there.
The Khmer Rouge warned the civilians of Battambang, Cambodia's second largest city, to flee. Khmer Rouge radio proclaimed on February 12, 1991, that after heavy attacks, "Battambang town was set ablaze nearly the whole night". This was an exaggeration, like the claim of January 1990, when Battambang was proclaimed to be "burning brightly" under a Khmer Rouge barrage. Neither boast, however, suggests that the Khmer Rouge intentions have changed much since they forcibly emptied the town for the first time, in April 1975.
The Khmer Rouge predict their return with this slogan: "When the water rises, the fish eat the ants, but when the water recedes, the ants eat the fish."
Ben Kiernan is associate professor of history at Yale University and author of How Pol Pot Came to Power.