The Khmer Rouge leadership managed to stay united after invading Vietnamese forces drove the group from power in 1979, but the rifts reappeared over a 1991 U.N.-sponsored peace agreement, widened during elections two years later and eventually led to the latest breakup.Īging, infirm and publicly accused by his former comrades of "treason," Pol Pot, who is believed to be at least 69, effectively has been reduced to a bargaining chip in negotiations between the Khmer Rouge remnants and a faction of the Cambodian government under Prince Norodom Ranariddh, one of the country's two rival but jointly ruling prime ministers. The infighting reflects splits that first opened decades ago and fueled purges that devoured thousands of Khmer Rouge cadres, historians say. In a twist of history, he may now be sharing the same uncertainty that gripped countless victims of his rule, not knowing whether he is also destined to share their fate. Now, according to a Cambodian general who reports having seen him twice in the past 2 1/2 weeks and to military intelligence reports from Thailand, Pol Pot is under guard north of the Khmer Rouge village of Anlong Veng, held by fighters loyal to a feared, one-legged commander and longtime Pol Pot stalwart code-named Ta Mok. The reclusive leader known during his pitiless regime as "Brother Number One" launched one purge too many, triggering a revolt by Khmer Rouge remnants at his last remaining stronghold in northern Cambodia. What seems clear at this point is that Pol Pot's long run is over. How did this outwardly cheerful bon vivant become one of the world's most vilified men, the engineer of a holocaust that claimed the lives of more than 1 million Cambodians in less than four years? And how, after being driven from power, did he survive for so long as the murky master, unseen by outsiders for 17 years, behind what was arguably once the deadliest and most feared guerrilla army in the world? Certainly, their early friendship and political affiliation did not save Mey Mann from being forcibly evacuated from the capital when his former classmate came to power, nor from having three children and a son-in-law taken away and killed during the brutal Khmer Rouge regime that Pol Pot presided over from April 1975 to January 1979. Now 75, with thinning white hair, Mey Mann is hard-pressed to explain what happened to his friend, who is better known to the world by the "revolutionary name" he later adopted: Pol Pot. Over the next 14 years, as both men became fellow communists and high school teachers in Phnom Penh, Mey Mann said, "I didn't see any cruelty in him. That was in 1949, when Mey Mann, Saloth Sar and 20-odd other Cambodian students sailed to France to continue their educations. As Mey Mann remembers him, Saloth Sar was "a joyful, pleasant boy who loved life," a friendly and warm-hearted "bon vivant" with little interest in politics.
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