Pol Pot Part 3: Vietnam War, Cambodian Revolution
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It's dawn on January the 18th, 1968. A small village of Bay Damran lies a few miles south of Cambodia's third largest city, Battambang. In the early morning heat, a band of Khmer Rouge rebels snakes silently along the banks of the tranquil Sangi River. The smell of mint growing in the nearby fields carries on the breeze. They're led by a man called Khong Soe Paul, a former schoolteacher turned revolutionary.

He in turn is acting on the orders of Salot Saar, the man who will become known as Pol Pot, the enigmatic head of the Khmer Rouge. Saar has decided the time has come to launch an armed uprising against the government of Norodom Sihanouk, Cambodia's former king, who gave up his crown to enter the political fray. Saar has identified the Battambang region as the ideal place to start his offensive. The previous April, there were revolts here,

The local peasants grew angry at Sihanouk's heavy-handed rule, especially when they were forced to sell their crops to the government at reduced prices. That uprising did not last long once Sihanouk sent in his troops. Ringleaders were butchered and villages burned down, while the air force rained down bombs from the sky. But this military intervention has been something of an own goal. Several thousand locals have since fled into the forests, many of them right into the arms of Sa and his movement.

The Khmer Rouge had been unprepared for those revolts, unable to capitalize on the opportunity they presented. But now, the Communist Party of Kampuchea, as their official name reads, is ready. Bay Damran is the perfect first target. Traditionally it's a sleepy sort of place, but more recently, it's home to an army outpost.

Saar does not trust radio communications. Instead, he and his men tend to communicate using shrill wooden flutes. To any unsuspecting enemy, the screech is terrifying as it cuts through the air. Tonight, however, silence is the order. The only sound is a faint clicking and chirping. Glancing up, the rebels notice bats nestling in the trees. Just like these creatures, Saar's men are difficult to spot in the early morning light.

Dressed head to toe in black, they hurry forward, covering the final stretch to the army post, confident they carry the element of surprise. But their plans are thrown into disarray. An informer has betrayed their mission. They are expected. What was planned as a smash and grab descends into a pitched battle. They manage to seize a few weapons before retreating, but the haul comes at a price. Two of their number are killed.

Disconsolate, they regroup amidst the trees and limp back to their jungle bases. But Salad Saar certainly isn't going to let the truth get in the way of this story. With a little tweaking of the facts, Bay Damran will become a significant milestone on Pol Pot's rise to power. This ignominious and bungled raid will go down in Khmer Rouge legend as the start of the revolution. Besides, Saar's rebels will have greater successes in the coming days.

For a while, Noradom Sihanouk's forces are on the back foot. By April, it seems the government has regained the upper hand, but something is changing in the country. Cambodia's peasant farmers are losing patience with the status quo, with Sihanouk and his agents, with the city dwellers who seem to have it so much better. True, the Communist Party of Kampuchea is an unknown quantity,

Some fear what kind of rule it will bring, but others see it as the only viable alternative to a broken system. They might not be sure what the Khmer Rouge stands for, and they certainly don't know much about Salah-Tzar, but sometimes your enemy's enemy is your friend. This is part three of the Pol Pot story, and this is Real Dictators.

These incursions by the Khmer Rouge in early 1968 are relatively small in scale, but Noordam Sihanouk is spooked. He begins to speak of an all-out civil war. He decides to bring his former minister Lon Nol back into government, this time as Minister of Defence. Lon Nol is a hardliner. He hasn't always seen eye to eye with Sihanouk. Nol has been off the political scene for a few months, since suffering injuries in a road accident.

Though there are rumours he was actually hurt in one of the recent civil disturbances. His reappointment signifies a totally uncompromising response to dissent. Stomach-turning stories become everyday currency. For Cambodia's communists, Lon Nol soon overtakes Sihanouk to become their principal enemy. The government offers a bounty for the head of any insurgent. Soldiers, eager to claim their reward, take to killing anybody they can get their hands on, regardless of whether or not they're Khmer Rouge.

In one instance, two children are accused of acting as messengers for the revolutionaries. Government troops decapitate them, using the jagged leaves of a nearby palm tree. Day by day, slowly but surely, Cambodia's people are inured to such random acts of brutality. The government's scorched earth approach makes headway against its enemies. Sihanouk's forces come perilously close to Khmer Rouge headquarters.

Salazar and his inner circle decide it's time to relocate deeper into the jungle, moving to a new base near where the borders of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam converge. Named Camp K5, this will become Saar's personal fiefdom. His accommodation is a camp within a camp, staffed by hand-picked individuals and patrolled by his elite personal bodyguard.

If anyone wants to see him, they must make an appointment and be accompanied by a designated escort. Ostensibly, the Khmer Rouge is run by a council of senior figures, but increasingly, Sa is the font of authority, and he's finding a rural Cambodian population that is receptive to his message. Professor Alex Hinton

When they were trying to convey their ideology, Marxist-Leninism, to masses in the countryside, to a rural base, they had this sort of problem because you can't really start talking about Das Kapital or something like that.

with Marx, you have to frame it in ways that resonate with their lives. And so one thing they could easily tap into, for example, was money lending. Most people were cultivating rice and it's seasonal and it's extremely hard labor. There was a problem that sort of grew over time where people became indebted. The Khmer Rouge focused on money lending. This sort of emerged as a theme in terms of how the rich exploited the poor.

And in addition, there was a sense of resentment against people in urban areas, condescension that people might feel at different times being treated as lesser. All of this provided a basis that the Khmer Rouge could tap into when they were trying to foment class consciousness and gather support for their revolution. Cambodia's head of state for life, Noordam Sienuk.

has been walking a tightrope for years, trying to play various factions off against each other at home and abroad. For now, his biggest immediate threat is not actually the Khmer Rouge, it's the Viet Cong, the South Vietnamese communist rebels. They are still raiding across the border to disastrous effect. Chan-Ri-Thi Hiem is author of When Broken Glass Floats, Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge.

She remembers the specter of the Viet Cong and the terror their raids inspired. My mom, one night she just came, you know, just came and woke us up, you know, and then she said, "There's a comet!" And we follow her and from the right side of the house to the left side until we find it. And I remember we were all excited because we could see the tail, the tail of the comet. There's all superstition.

The folk superstition said something like, when the tail of the comet points to a certain country, Cambodia will be drawn into war with that country. Suddenly I could see that my mom wasn't excited anymore. She was scared and all that. And I remember asking her, "Ma, what does war mean?"

And of course she didn't answer, "What does country mean?" And she didn't want to answer me. And then that was like a precursor to what came next with the Vietcong.

And I remember my pa told my older sister, Chia, to get all my siblings to go to the bunker. And I would scream, you know, every bomb exploded. And soon after that, we had to leave that home because the Viet Cong was so close. We had to leave that home and go to the capital city. Actually, me and my father and my brother came back and the home was destroyed.

Hold up in Phnom Penh, Sihanouk largely leaves it to Lon Nol and his fellow right-wingers to lead the fight against the communist insurgencies. He's got enough on his plate. Through the late 1960s, America's war in Vietnam still rages. Sihanouk initially regards the Americans as a block to Vietnamese aggression, but his own country is suffering from US bombing raids, waged in pursuit of the South Vietnamese communists, the Viet Cong. At the same time,

The United States is conducting lengthy peace talks with the North Vietnamese. Since 1954, North Vietnam has been recognized as an independent socialist state, its government heavily backed by the Soviet Union. Sihanouk must keep the authorities there sweet. He is convinced the Americans will lose the war before long, and he does not want to be daggers drawn with Hanoi when that happens. Sihanouk has fostered close ties with China, but relations there have been strained too.

He suspects, quite rightly, that behind his back, Beijing is also lending support to Cambodia's leftist insurgents. It's hard to keep up. There are so many agendas and rivalries at play. It's some ask for Sihanouk to hedge his bets in such circumstances. Events will shortly overtake him to make it almost impossible. On March 18, 1969, 60 American B-52 Stratofortress bombers cruised through the night sky.

Having taken off from their base on the Pacific island of Guam, they are, or so they believe, destined for South Vietnam. They are part of an operation codenamed "Breakfast" after the early morning session at the Pentagon where the raid was planned. A few days ago in the Oval Office, President Richard Nixon had signed off the mission. Nixon had been angered by recent bomb strikes committed by communists against Saigon and other urban targets in South Vietnam.

These attacks, he says, jeopardize Washington's continued participation in peace talks. Nixon wants to demonstrate that he is not a man to be trifled with, but his hands are tied. The American public is weary of this overseas war. Nixon cannot afford to derail the peace talks. Any retaliatory assaults on Vietnamese soil would do just that. But if he pivots the point of attack to Cambodia, then that's a different matter.

It should scare off the Vietnamese communists, and might even strengthen Washington's hand at the negotiation table. It's what Nixon calls his "madman theory." If his enemies consider him a loose cannon and appreciate the ginormous resources at his disposal, then they will be more inclined to reach a compromise. Nixon tells his closest advisers to do something they will understand.

The decision is made to carpet bomb regions of Cambodia suspected of harboring Vietnamese communists. The mission is to be kept entirely secret. Congress is not even advised, let alone asked, to authorize the attacks. On the night of March 18th, 48 of the 60 B-52s are diverted into Cambodian airspace. For those on the ground, the roar from the approaching planes is deafening, a complete assault on the senses.

The bombers drop a payload of some 2400 tons. As they fly off, the sonic mayhem gives way to an eerie silence. The land is pockmarked by huge craters. Giant, ancient teak trees have been uprooted and shredded into matchsticks. Fires rage, and the air clouds with smoke. Death has swept a scythe across the landscape. The Viet Cong camp in their crosshairs has been utterly destroyed,

Truong Huu Tang, a justice minister of the Viet Cong, will later observe: "It was not just that things were destroyed. In some awesome way, they had ceased to exist." Back in Washington, in the corridors of power, the raid is regarded as a great success, so much so that Operation Breakfast is followed up by lunch, snack, dinner, supper, and dessert.

all individual courses in the overarching operation menu. Over the next 14 months, the United States will run 3,630 B-52 raids over six target areas. In total, they will drop 110,000 tons of bombs. The number of civilian casualties is never accurately established, but likely runs into the thousands. For Salah Tsar and the Khmer Rouge, the raids are a mixed blessing.

On the one hand, no one would invite such an event on their homeland. But on the other, it brings yet more people to his cause. Ordinary country folk, terrified by this existential threat that appears without a moment's notice. Journalist and author Elizabeth Becker. In 1968, the new incoming president, Richard Nixon,

He and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger think by broadening the war into Cambodia, they will be able to hit finally the Vietnamese communist headquarters and allow them to withdraw American troops and end the war in a dignified way. So essentially Cambodia paid the price for the American withdrawal. There's no question. I mean, historically, that's what happened. If the war had stopped in '68, we would not be having this conversation.

For a while now, Salazar has been operating under a pseudonym: Puk. It means "Mattress." It supposedly reflects the idea that he is a figure who looks to soften conflict. In truth, Puk is long past thinking that softness represents the way forward. America's intervention only confirms to him that his movement must be self-disciplined and utterly uncompromising. As one of Salazar's own bodyguards describes, "This is a struggle without pity."

Noradom Sihanouk, Cambodia's supposedly all-powerful ruler, now finds himself trapped in a corner. The US attacks are, in theory at least, targeted at the very same Vietnamese insurgents, who are his enemies too. But the collateral damage to civilians has been extraordinary. Sihanouk judges that at this delicate moment, he simply cannot afford to make an enemy of Washington. In the end, he does not even offer words of protest against the bombing.

For his opponents, this is sheer cowardice, unforgivable. In March 1970, Sihanouk is out of the country on a visit to France. His pleas to the Vietcong to back off, or at least show some discretion in their cross-border activity, has fallen on deaf ears. Still they invite the ire of the United States.

So, on his way home from Europe, Sihanouk plans to drop in on Moscow and Beijing, in the hope that these superpowers might pressure the Vietcong on his behalf. Sihanouk has left Cambodia in the hands of the trusted Lon Nol. Nol has recently supplemented his position as Defence Minister with the additional roles of Chief of Staff and Acting Prime Minister. On Sunday, March 8, large-scale protests break out in the provincial city of Sfairiang

The demonstrators are furious at the continued Viet Cong presence in Cambodia. A few days later, in Phnom Penh, a crowd gathers outside the National Assembly. Before long, protesters are overturning vehicles and lobbing stones at the embassy of the South Vietnamese revolutionary government. Then it's the turn of the North Vietnamese embassy. But all is not quite as it seems. The protesters have actually been encouraged to take to the streets by government agents working on behalf of Sihanouk.

His hope is that such a public display will make Moscow and Beijing recognize that he needs assistance. Sihanouk, however, has miscalculated. He had not bet on the protests becoming quite so impassioned. As the violence picks up, speaking from Paris, he condemns the demonstrators and vows to root out those responsible. He is scrambling to position himself as the man of law and order against the rabble-rousers on the streets.

Lon Null and his coterie are taken aback. Haven't they just delivered the civil unrest that Sihanouk himself requested? Null fears he has fallen into a trap, set up as a scapegoat. His concerns are shared by his deputy, Sirik Matak, a cousin of Sihanouk's, who has become the former king's long-standing rival. Then, a stroke of political inspiration. Lon Null and Sirik Matak decide to pivot, to move against Sihanouk.

While he sits on the fence, they position themselves firmly behind the protesters. They call on all Vietnamese forces in Cambodia to leave the country within a week. It's a clear flexing of their political muscle. This would surely be the moment for Siena to abandon his foreign tour and return home. He needs to be seen among his people, to reassert his own authority, but, perhaps numbed to reality by a lifetime of power, he decides to keep to his original itinerary.

Matak ups the ante. He makes a personal call on Lon Nol. On the doorstep, he insists that now is the time for Sihanouk to go. In his hand, Matak holds a draft decree, a motion to remove Sihanouk from office. But it requires the acting Prime Minister's signature. Lon Nol is unsure. They may have had their differences, but he owes Sihanouk his career.

Matak sees his colleague is wavering. "Nol, my friend," he says, "if you don't sign this paper, we'll shoot you." Holding back tears, Lon Nol takes up a pen and shakily scrawls his name. Now the coup attempt swings into action. Armoured cars surround the radio station in Phnom Penh. Tanks are positioned outside parliament. The country's telecommunications are cut. The airports are closed.

At 9:00 AM, the National Assembly convenes for an extraordinary session. For some two hours, speaker after speaker takes to the floor to reel off the faults and failings of Sihanouk, all building to a vote of no confidence. One MP walks out in protest, but the other 91 all cast their ballots against their former king. As of 1:00 that afternoon, Norodom Sihanouk is stripped of his powers. His temporary absence has cost him dear.

Lon Null is now the big man on campus. At the time of his unseating, Sihanouk is in Moscow as per his plans. He then heads on to Beijing. Chairman Mao advises him to take a breather, mull over the options. After a short period of reflection, Sihanouk comes out swinging. He uses Radio Beijing to make a public address, announcing that he will fight to reclaim power and to right this great injustice.

He vows to establish a new political party, the National United Front of Campuchia. There is perhaps an echo of the old French resistance leader, Charles de Gaulle, inspiring his country folk to resist the occupying Nazis in 1940. Then comes a truly unexpected twist. Live on the radio, Sihanouk declares that he will now work alongside the Khmer Rouge.

The very organization that has been seeking to topple him, that he has been persecuting across the land, will now become his bedfellow. Needs must. It is time, he says, for a campaign of civil disobedience and guerrilla attacks against Lon Null and his illegitimate government. It's an incredible reversal, one which reveals Sihanouk's utter pragmatism and political flexibility. But this is the most unholy of alliances.

Everyone has their own agenda. Trust is in pitifully short supply. Sihanouk has announced this new partnership, this unity of the monarchists with the communists, pretty much on the fly. The Khmer Rouge have taken aback, to say the least. Their nemesis is now extending an olive branch. For now, Salah-Tzah opts to keep his counsel, waiting to see what might materialize. Withholding comment on this new plan puts the onus on Sihanouk to find a way forward.

or the better for Tsar to continue to pull the strings in the shadows. Tsianouk declares that his new movement will be nationalistic and progressive. In other words, broad enough that no one can disagree with it. Tsianouk throwing his lot in with the Khmer Rouge is a game-changer for the revolutionary cause. Tsar sees his rank swollen not by committed ideologues per se, but by peasants who maintain a loyalty to the man who once held the throne. Professor Sopo-Ir,

Prince Tionnuk supporting or lending Cretans certainly helped. I mean, he was considered a god-king, right? So anything the prince says is coming from God, essentially, for some rural Cambodians at that point. And so they hear his voice piping through the jungle on shortwave radio, and they think, yes, our king wants us to join the movement. The battle lines have been drawn. Every Cambodian now has a choice to make.

Are you for Lon Nol or against him? The coup does little to dampen the savagery of the civil war. A week after Sihanouk is deposed, in Kampong Cham in the east of the country, anti-Lon Nol protesters beat two officials to death. Government troops open fire. Two local MPs arrive to mediate, but they are grabbed by the mob and murdered. Their livers are then cut out and taken to a local restaurant, where they are cooked and dispersed among the crowds.

Many of the peasants may support Sihanouk, but plenty in Phnom Penh welcome the advent of Lon Nol. Many students, for example, are willing to fight for this new regime. They crowd onto buses. When they fill up, Coca-Cola vans are requisitioned. Dressed in jeans and sandals, and armed often only with sticks, they're bussed out to face the revolutionaries. Meanwhile, the Viet Cong continue to launch guerrilla attacks against Lon Nol.

He retaliates by seeking out Vietnamese civilians living in Cambodia. On just a single morning, 400 bodies, hands tied, riddled with bullet holes, are dumped in the Mekong River. Over the next year, a quarter of a million Vietnamese residents of Cambodia are forced to abandon their homes and are put into concentration camps. These are racially motivated war crimes, bloodletting rooted in centuries of national enmity.

The Viet Cong respond in kind, exacting vengeance on Khmer communities within their purview. Salot Sa has to tread carefully. He has pursued revolution for years, but now he fears it's moving too fast. The Viet Cong are degrading his enemy, but associating with them risks undermining his own patriotic credentials. By April 1970, Viet Cong troops have pushed back Lon Nol's forces to such an extent that they are now within sight of Phnom Penh itself.

This makes Salat Sa extremely nervous. If the Viet Cong topple Lon Nol right now, the South Vietnamese will become a default occupying force. As An Co Wat, the historic temple complex falls, Sa knows the optics are terrible. The quintessential symbol of Khmer nationhood has been taken by the old enemy from over the border. Sa's dance is not made any simpler. One of the most virulently anti-Vietnamese people he knows is his own wife.

Kieu Ponnery is convinced that Vietnamese assassins are trying to kill her and her husband. Kieu is diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. There has been a growing distance between the couple for some time. Their cook, Young Mo Yen, has shown Kieu kindness, caring for her in her darkest moments. But Sa has neither the time nor the inclination to nurse her through her convalescence, cruelly turning his back on his wife. He is also giving up any semblance of domestic life.

His commitment to revolution is almost pathological. There is nothing else. In the face of Viet Cong advances, the South Vietnamese government and the United States decide to put boots on the ground. They flood Cambodia with some 70,000 troops. It's described as a limited incursion to prop up Lon Nol's faltering administration.

Salah Tzar now finds himself a bit-part player in a civil war, increasingly conducted by foreign armies. And what if his side emerges victorious anyway? With Sihanouk still on the scene, what will the new political landscape look like? Could they really work together in power? Tzar's state of mind at this time is reflected in his decision to adopt a new pseudonym. In July 1970, he demands to be known as Pol-Tzar.

The pot is added simply for its aural aesthetics. Tellingly, "Poll" is an old Khmer word for a royal slave. Through 1970, it seems the tide is turning against Lon Nol, but there is no quick victory for the rebels. The conflict grinds on, and with added ferocity as the American B-52s return to the scene. Over the next three years,

Cambodia is hit with a volume of bombs larger than that dropped on Japan during the entirety of World War II. Cambodia becomes the most heavily bombed nation state in history. The terror incurred by the raids does not lessen, even as their familiarity increases. Operation Menu, it turns out, was just a taster. The attacks often occur at dawn.

Missions routinely fly off target, the result of accidents, inaccurate intel, and increasingly congestion in the skies. On the ground, the bodies of young and old are shattered by shrapnel. Gathering shattered limbs becomes a routine part of clear-ups. The precise impact of the bombing on the rise of Pol Pot, to what extent this helped him gain power, has long been debated.

There's no doubt that the US bombing helped the Khmer Rouge recruit lots of people. What's called the Vietnam War, at least in the US, destabilized the entire region, upended the economy. So that was another big factor, a sort of economic factor. When people see their lives upended, they want explanations, they want a better way. And the Khmer Rouge offered a different future.

In fact, they claimed it would be a glorious future where people would be equal, they would live together. As they said in some of their propaganda, everybody would be able to enjoy dessert. So they had this fantasy. Some people try and say, well, you know, the U.S. caused the genocide because of the bombing. Those sorts of explanations are absurd. The truth of it is the U.S. contributed to what took place because of their involvement in Cambodia.

But in the end, the bottom line is that Khmer Rouge made the decisions that led to mass suffering and mass death. And that needs to be very much pointed out and noted because even before they were deposed, they've been facilitating and promoting and propagandizing different narratives that deny their culpability. As the B-52s do their damage, Pol Pot remains deep in the jungle, flying under the radar.

The Khmer Rouge has grown, in Pol Pot's own words, from fewer than 5,000 poorly armed guerrillas scattered across the Cambodian landscape to 50,000 operatives by the year 1972. As his movement grows, so does Pol Pot's paranoia. Several bouts of serious gastric problems do little to lift his mood. Perhaps spooked by his wife's grim predictions, he lives in constant fear of being poisoned.

He increases his personal security, filling his bodyguard with recruits from Vietnam's central highlands. He distrusts pretty much anyone who is not an impoverished peasant. City dwellers and intellectuals are persona non grata. When students do attempt to join the Khmer Rouge, he turns them away. They must first take steps to prove themselves, beginning by dropping out of their studies.

Paul's celebration of suffering is, in a way, a twisted interpretation of those lessons he received as a young boy at the Buddhist monastery. But whereas the monks viewed suffering as something to be endured, even mastered through serenity, Paul positively revels in pain and distress. The ancient teachings of self-discipline and self-reliance, too, are reinterpreted. He places extraordinary demands on his followers.

They must forgo material goods, not for their own spiritual betterment, but to make them malleable. Desperate people make committed followers. Even peasants with enough to feed their families all year round are rejected from party membership. They are tied, Paul considers, to the twin evils of materialism and individualism. Areas seized by the revolutionary forces are referred to as "liberated zones", although for many that seems a rather ironic label.

Where there is resistance to the Khmer Rouge, the punishments are as brutal as anything the government forces offer up. In one village, three Khmer Rouge cadres are attacked and killed. In retaliation, Khmer soldiers identify the three ringleaders, gather 24 of their relatives including young children, and publicly beat them to death. But for many, life under the Khmer Rouge, for now at least, is no worse than it has been recently.

even if it's not noticeably better. From 1970 to 1975, the US-backed regime that had undertaken the coup in 1970, March of 1970, was extremely corrupt, right? So you've got all this American money slushing around, armaments, weapons, etc. Some of them will even sell to the enemy, to the Khmer Rouge themselves.

Corruption, of course, makes people feel like society has been destroyed and it has been destroyed. And maybe this other regime or these other people talking about cleansing society have a point.

They don't know what the real plans of the Khmer Rouge are, so they just think that, well, we got to get rid of this cancer that has destroyed Cambodian society. This is a country where you still had farmers who had never been in automobiles. And the fire comes down from the sky. They don't know what it is. You have a displacement of people. You have a destruction of agricultural land.

They were miserable. They had nothing. There's not enough food to eat. The corrupt government would take American aid and sell it on the black market. I did so many corruption stories. Just the sadness of what was going on to this country. It was falling apart in front of your eyes. In 1972, Saar embarks on a tour of the liberated zones. It's the first occasion in almost a decade that he's spent any significant time away from his own camps.

It's time to start looking beyond the initial period of national revolution and onto the social revolution, where his full program of communist reform will be rolled out. An extensive scheme of land redistribution begins. There is a crackdown on all forms of private property. Households are required to give up all but the most rudimentary furniture. Lavish wedding ceremonies are banned. Even bottled beers and imported cigarettes are prohibited.

Only locally sourced palm wine and roll-ups are allowed. Anyone living in an area under Khmer Rouge control is instructed to dress like a poor peasant in a default all-black uniform, red and white Kramer scarf, plus a pair of car tire sandals. The same look that Pol Pot long ago adopted for himself. A far cry from the young man who scoured the markets of Paris for a winter wardrobe. Meanwhile, at least once a week,

Khmer Rouge personnel must attend meetings where criticism and self-criticism are the order of the day. That's not to say that everyone is subject to the same kind of scrutiny. Speaking in 2011, Pol's infamous deputy, Nguyen Chia, will recall the moment he dared to criticize the leader himself. After racking his brains, all Nguyen can come up with is that Pol is too trusting and doesn't do enough to look after his health. Hardly a damning critique.

By the end of 1972, Pol Pot senses that the US-Vietnam peace talks are approaching a conclusion. Once the Americans are out of Vietnam, pressure will mount on Cambodia to end its own civil war. Sure enough, the Paris Accords that begin the process of ending the Vietnam War are signed on January 27th, 1973.

Almost immediately, Hanoi and Beijing pressurize Sihanouk and the Khmer Rouge to reach an accommodation with Lon Nol. They refuse, opting to press on, confident that Lon Nol's regime will be all the weaker once the US forces leave. The White House, however, is determined to make one last stand in the region. Nixon is not prepared to leave with a whimper. Between February and August, America's blanket bombing takes on a new level of intensity.

A final flourish from the Madman's playbook. For now at least, Lon Nol clings to power. In May 1973, Pol Pot announces another new policy. Agriculture is to be forcibly collectivized in the liberated zones. Whole villages are uprooted and relocated to more agriculturally efficient locations. Their old homes are burnt to the ground. There are plans too for the emptying of the cities.

to take all those intellectuals, foreigners, and urbanites that Pulse so distrusts and move them into the countryside where they can do something worthwhile. In the liberated zones, a barter system comes in to replace cash. Who needs money anyway when the fruit of the land is to be shared equally? It soon goes disastrously wrong. Farmers kill their livestock rather than see them become common property. Crops fail, and farm equipment falls into disrepair.

Living standards plummet. By the end of 1973, some 60,000 people have fled from the zones to take their chances in government-controlled areas or over the border. The Khmer Rouge has control of two-thirds of Cambodian territory and about half the population. But Pol Pot knows that control of the country will only come when Phnom Penh falls. The capital is creaking. He just needs patience. He will strangle the city into submission.

The Khmer Rouge moved to cut off routes in and out of Phnom Penh, until it becomes almost entirely reliant on US supply drops. Rocket attacks become a daily occurrence. The heaviest hit areas tend to be suburbs, peopled by refugees from the countryside, living in slums. Pol Pot feels no mercy. These are the folk who raced off to the capital when they could have stayed in their villages and helped him build his utopia. In times to come, he will authorize a new national anthem,

Its verses will extol the bright red blood covering the towns and plains, the sublime blood of the workers and peasants that frees us from slavery. At 3 o'clock in the morning of March 3rd, 1974, the Khmer Rouge launch an attack on Aodong, to the northwest of Phnom Penh. Its capture will serve as a dry run for the attempt on the capital. Its defenders are soon driven back and contained within the temple compound.

They endure a three-week siege before they finally give way. Several thousand military and civilian officials are slaughtered. Fearing what fate awaits them, many turn their guns on their own families and then themselves. A further 20,000 civilians are put on a forced march out of the city, relocated to rural cooperatives. Phnom Penh holds out for another year, but it's collapsing from the inside out. Food and medical supplies are critically low.

Lon Null is on borrowed time. Pol Pot moves his headquarters to Sedoc Tuol, a village about 20 miles from the city. From here, he can oversee the endgame. He watches on as Khmer Rouge troops gather on the surrounding plains. By April 1st, Lon Null knows that the game is up. Spirited out of the city, he flees, heading for exile in Hawaii.

Not long after Lon Nol's exit, Washington extracts its diplomatic personnel from Phnom Penh. The White House has spent $9 billion on its Cambodian adventures. On April 17th, the city's defenses yield and the Khmer Rouge sweep in. Year Zero has arrived, and most people still have no idea who Pol Pot is. April 17th, 1975, that's when the Khmer Rouge took over.

But before that, you know, they were shelling in the city. And as a child, I was wishing that, you know, that war stopped. And when the Khmer took over, in my nine-year-old mind, you know, I thought, oh, perhaps since there's no war, that, you know, there's no more killings, you know, people will be fine. But soon they told us to leave Phnom Penh.

Almost immediately, Pol Pot puts into action the next phase of his plan. He wants to empty the city entirely, and he wants it done quickly.

It's always the case that a resistance movement, whether you call them freedom fighters or terrorists, depending on which side you stand, hasn't been in power, right? Until they actually get in power. And at that point, it's not about how do you terrorize people? It shouldn't be at least about how you terrorize people, but about how you are going to then lead, do the functions of government, provide services and such.

But here, the narrative, the ideology was such that it was all about how do we grow the country by leaps and bounds, by returning to an almost ancient way of practicing rice cultivation. And somehow with our hand-dug irrigation systems, we will be so productive that we will export our way out.

They thought that they had it figured out. Of course, they, being communists, also used metaphors like, "We, the Khmer Rouge, are 50-horsepower cars," versus the Romanian communists are just two-horsepower cars. So they use all these crazy car metaphors to say that their communism was more powerful than another brand of communism, or that somehow they had figured out the solution to fixing everything.

With Lon Nol out of office, watching on from Hawaii, the inevitable cracks in the rebel leadership are beginning to show. Pol Pot and Norodom Sihanouk have been uncomfortable bedfellows, but they've piggybacked each other all the way to Phnom Penh. Remarkably, given his Khmer Rouge have just taken the capital, Pol Pot as an individual remains little known in the country at large.

His fiercely guarded anonymity has brought him to the precipice of power without his name or his face appearing in the headlines. Sihanouk, on the other hand, retains huge popularity amongst the peasants who remember him wistfully as the former king, with almost divine status. When Sihanouk threw his lot in with the Khmer Rouge, he didn't have anything to lose. He also had no real grasp of Pol Pot's extremism. As the uncontested public face of the anti-government movement,

Sihanouk thought he'd be able to ride that wave. His expectation was that the removal of Lon Null would see him reclaim the role of beloved national figurehead, but Pol Pot will not play second fiddle any longer. Therein lies another motive for Pol's imminent mass urban clearance. He knows that Sihanouk's main pocket of support resides in Phnom Penh. By disrupting them, Pol weakens his rival. Moreover,

Foreign intelligence operations work out of the capital. If there is no one left in the city, there will be no intelligence to gather. At a stroke, Pol can cement his dominant position and close off the country from foreign scrutiny. He will have all the power he desires to execute his social revolution, but he needs to act fast. Such a massive undertaking will only be possible with the element of surprise.

Khmer Rouge troops go from street to street, house to house, telling everyone that they must pack up and leave the city immediately. The Americans, they say, are planning to bomb. You'll be back in a couple of days, three at the most, but there is no time to lose. The roads fill. It's the hottest time of the year. Vehicles break down. No one has been spared the order to leave. Some have come direct from the hospitals, shuttled along in their beds, still attached to drips.

And I remember just how devastated my parents were and how we tried to pack everything. And I remember my older brother, Thon, who was two years older than me, went to try to get my aunts and uncle to go together and they weren't allowed to come back so we had to leave without him. And I remember her holding inside me, wondering whether I would be able to see him again.

And just the whole street just packed and the Khmer Rouge on their jeeps or on their trucks watching with gun rifles and looking ahead there was just avalanche of human on the freeway. The human caravan covers just eight miles over five days. The roadsides fill with the abandoned, sick and elderly. Then there are the bodies of those executed by impatient Khmer Rouge cadres.

Pregnant women give birth on patches of rough ground, keeping their distance from the corpses. Others identified as military or civil officials are sent back to the city, told they are needed to assist in setting up the new administration. Instead, they're led to waste grounds where they're beaten to death. This is what Year Zero looks like. By the time this death march is complete, some 20,000 people will have perished. But this is just a taste of what is to come.

In the next episode of Real Dictators, in the final part of the Pol Pot story, the Khmer Rouge exercises power from Phnom Penh, refusing to compromise even as the death toll rockets. Pol Pot launches a murderous crackdown on all opposition, both real and imagined. A quarter of Cambodia's population will die in pursuit of his peasant ideal. Finally, pressure on his position will tell. But how does a man with so much blood on his hands manage to evade true justice?

dissolving back into the jungle from whence he came. That's next time on Real Dictators.