Michael Hayes: Afghanistan and memories of the Khmer Rouge
[Michael Hayes is senior editor of the Phnom Penh Post, a paper he co-founded in 1992.]
The lodge where I stay in Kabul was badly damaged on Oct. 8 when a suicide car bomb exploded 80 meters down the road near the Indian Embassy. Seventeen Afghans working in photocopy shops near the embassy were killed and another 60 wounded. The Indian diplomats were unharmed.
No apologies were offered by the perpetrators for the killings.
Nobody was hurt at my lodge, but 75 windows were blown out. The next day I was talking with the owner, who, for the third time in three years, had to fork out $3,000 to fix his windows. I asked him what would happen if NATO pulls out of Afghanistan? He replied without hesitation, looking me straight in the eyes and obviously referring to the Taliban and their allies: “They will kill us all.”
His comment struck a still-raw nerve. Thirty-five years ago, in November, 1974, I was in Siem Reap, Cambodia. As a young backpacker I was foolhardy enough to spend six weeks poking around a country at war. At the time, the U.S. Congress was debating whether to cut off aid to the beleaguered and corrupt Lon Nol government. After more than four years of civil war and the disaster in Vietnam, Congress and the American people were fed up with everything to do with both countries.
In Siem Reap I met a Cambodian man who spoke English. He graciously offered to show me around the few parts of the town still under government control. The Khmer Rouge controlled the Angkor temples and the surrounding countryside. There were intense firefights at night.
At one point my host turned to me and said: “I hope America doesn’t abandon us. If they do, the Communists will kill us all.”
As an erstwhile anti-Vietnam War protester in the United States, I brushed off his comments, thinking how could anything be worse than the corrupt, U.S.-backed Lon Nol government.
I was dead wrong. The United States cut off aid and, five months later, the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh, imposing a reign of terror unsurpassed in modern history...
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The lodge where I stay in Kabul was badly damaged on Oct. 8 when a suicide car bomb exploded 80 meters down the road near the Indian Embassy. Seventeen Afghans working in photocopy shops near the embassy were killed and another 60 wounded. The Indian diplomats were unharmed.
No apologies were offered by the perpetrators for the killings.
Nobody was hurt at my lodge, but 75 windows were blown out. The next day I was talking with the owner, who, for the third time in three years, had to fork out $3,000 to fix his windows. I asked him what would happen if NATO pulls out of Afghanistan? He replied without hesitation, looking me straight in the eyes and obviously referring to the Taliban and their allies: “They will kill us all.”
His comment struck a still-raw nerve. Thirty-five years ago, in November, 1974, I was in Siem Reap, Cambodia. As a young backpacker I was foolhardy enough to spend six weeks poking around a country at war. At the time, the U.S. Congress was debating whether to cut off aid to the beleaguered and corrupt Lon Nol government. After more than four years of civil war and the disaster in Vietnam, Congress and the American people were fed up with everything to do with both countries.
In Siem Reap I met a Cambodian man who spoke English. He graciously offered to show me around the few parts of the town still under government control. The Khmer Rouge controlled the Angkor temples and the surrounding countryside. There were intense firefights at night.
At one point my host turned to me and said: “I hope America doesn’t abandon us. If they do, the Communists will kill us all.”
As an erstwhile anti-Vietnam War protester in the United States, I brushed off his comments, thinking how could anything be worse than the corrupt, U.S.-backed Lon Nol government.
I was dead wrong. The United States cut off aid and, five months later, the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh, imposing a reign of terror unsurpassed in modern history...