Saturday, August 9, 2014


News Clips For The Day


ISIS Beating Iraqis and Kurds As One Lacks 'Heart' and the Other Ammo – ABC
By LEE FERRAN, JAMES MEEK and MEGHAN KENEALLY
Aug 9, 2014, 6:30 AM ET

The Islamic militia ISIS has been able to roll back both the Iraqi army and the Kurdish peshmerga force because one lacks the "heart" for a fight while the other lacks the firepower, according to Americans familiar with both forces.

ISIS has easily swept the Iraqi army from Anbar province in the southwest of Iraq as well as much of northern Iraq and then blunted attempts by the Iraqi government to retake cities.

The Kurdish peshmerga was expected to be a more formidable force, but they have also lost ground to ISIS, including the vital Mosul dam, in recent days.

"It is not clear whether either the peshmerga or the ISF (Iraq Security Force) can prevent ISIS from seizing villages and outlying infrastructure that ISIS desires to control,” said Jessica Lewis, the research director at the Institute of the Study of War.

On paper, ISIS should be no match for the Iraqi and Kurdish forces. The ISF had more than 270,000 troops and about 340 tanks, while a conservative estimate of the peshmerga force is 80,000.

"ISIS is strategically dividing the military forces of the ISF and the peshmerga in order to compromise their defenses and prevent them from mounting effective offensive campaigns,” Lewis told ABC News.

But the problems go deeper than coordination, particularly with the Iraqi army.

"They are very weak and if it’s left up to them, it’s over," a source who served in the U.S. Army in Iraq and has continued to work there as a contractor told ABC News.

He said that he has found the Iraqi people to be more dedicated to their ancestral ties as opposed to their national identity, saying they "are loyal to their tribes, not their country.”
The army's problems are compounded by the practice of appointing officers based largely on their Shiite backgrounds and their political ties instead of competence.

"They've been a checkpoint army," Lt. Gen. Mike Barbero, the former deputy commander of U.S. Forces-Iraq, told ABC News in June. "If you're not training all the time or maintaining your equipment, you're not going to be effective. Counter-insurgency requires very active and targetable intelligence, which they didn't have, and the skills to go in there and attack the network."

"An army runs on skill and will, and they didn't have the will," Barbero said.

Barbero said that the peshmerga, which roughly translates to mean "those who face death," have the "guts" to fight, but they have very little ammunition. Barbero speaks with Kurdish officials regularly and said that he was told they lost control of the Mosul dam because they ran out of bullets.

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said Friday, "The Kurdish forces have played a critical role in addressing this threat. We understand their need for additional arms and equipment, and are working to provide those as well so they are reinforced. So we are bringing a lot of firepower to bear against this threat, mainly by helping the Iraqis."

The former military source told ABC that the Peshmerga are strengthened by their dedication to their cause.

"They are the kind of guys you want having your back. They are battle-hardened... and mostly U.S. trained. They are actually loyal to their country, unlike regular Iraqi troops," the former military source told ABC. "They are solid. They have been fighting since Saddam era and they have one interest – to have Kurdistan left alone."

The U.S. State Department said Friday that they have been "advising and assisting" both the Iraqi security forces and the peshmerga.

Harf said that the Iraqi army and the peshmerga are working together "in an unprecedented way... to counter this threat together."




Tribal loyalties versus nationalistic – Iraq has been choosing its soldiers according to their Shia religion and political ties. “The army's problems are compounded by the practice of appointing officers based largely on their Shiite backgrounds and their political ties instead of competence.... 'They've been a checkpoint army,' Lt. Gen. Mike Barbero, the former deputy commander of U.S. Forces-Iraq, told ABC News in June. 'If you're not training all the time or maintaining your equipment, you're not going to be effective. Counter-insurgency requires very active and targetable intelligence, which they didn't have, and the skills to go in there and attack the network.' ,,,. Barbero said that the peshmerga, which roughly translates to mean "those who face death," have the "guts" to fight, but they have very little ammunition. Barbero speaks with Kurdish officials regularly and said that he was told they lost control of the Mosul dam because they ran out of bullets.”

A companion article to this one today states that the US has declined to arm the Kurds a number of times, saying that they have to arm the Iraqis instead, and the Iraqis are supposed to transfer some of the armaments to the Kurds. The facts that the Iraqis have failed to do this and have failed to fight courageously against ISIS, has not stopped the Obama administration from maintaining the link through the Iraqi government, despite the obvious need for ammunition and despite the Kurds demonstrated superiority as an army. It doesn't make sense. It's an agreement that has proven to be unsuccessful and unwise.

I suppose the issue is that the Kurds have expressed a desire to have a separate state. I can understand why, since Baghdad used force against the Kurds and may have some tendency to do so at the present time. To me, the Kurds make better allies for the US – they can and will fight, and they have not been hostile to the West. According to Wikipedia they are predominantly Sunni Muslim, but a minority are Shia or Sufi. There are Kurdish populations in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Armenia, Azerbaijan where the territory used to be called Kurdistan, and in various Western European countries as a diaspora. There have been a number of Kurdish groups who banded together as Kurds against their larger neighbors. See “Kurdish Nationalism” in Wikipedia. The US probably doesn't see them as certain to remain loyal to us, but they don't show any sign of being radical Islamists like ISIS. To me that makes them one of the “good guys.”





Incredible trove of ancient bones unearthed in Wyoming cave – CBS
AP August 8, 2014, 11:49 AM

CHEYENNE, Wyo. -- North American lions, cheetahs and short-faced bears: Those are just a few fearsome critters from 25,000 years ago paleontologists already might have found in their first excavation of a bizarre northern Wyoming cave in 30 years.

Good fossils also come in small packages: Exquisite rodent bones best examined by microscope, or even snippets of genetic material from long-extinct species, could be in their haul.

"They're very excited about the potential for what they've found. The analysis, yet, is still very preliminary," Brent Breithaupt, who was among the exclusive group of scientists who recently rappelled down eight stories to excavate the floor of Natural Trap Cave, said Wednesday.

The only way in or out of Natural Trap Cave is a 15-foot-wide hole in the ground that's almost impossible to see until you're next to it. Over tens of thousands of years, several thousand insufficiently wary animals plummeted more than 80 feet into the chilly, dim, cathedral-like cavern.

Their bones lie entombed, layer upon layer, in sediment as much as 30 feet deep.

Over the past two weeks, bucket after bucket, by rope and pulley, some 10-20 paleontologists, their assistants and a few spelunking experts have been hauling bones and bone-bearing sediment up into the sunlight. They used screens to sift out tiny remains from the dirt.

The best stuff has been packed in Rubbermaid containers for shipment to universities in the U.S. and even overseas, to the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA at the University of Adelaide, Breithaupt said.

On Friday, paleontologists from Des Moines University and elsewhere who've been camping out in the scrublands near the western flank of the Bighorn Mountains since July 27 plan to head home.

But the really cool part - positively identifying and dating what they've found - is yet to come, back in the laboratories where they can do more detailed work.

"It's an incredible site. It definitely is one of the most significant sites that BLM manages and it will provide very, very important information," said Breithaupt, a paleontologist for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

Scientists hope the cave's high humidity and temperatures that never top the 40s might even preserve genetic material of extinct animals from the days when massive ice sheets last frosted over much of the North American landscape.

The oldest remains could date back 100,000 years, Breithaupt said.

This was Breithaupt's second visit to the cave. Last time, during the previous excavations between 1974 and 1984, a tall stack of scaffolding helped researchers get in and out.

This time, they've had to rappel in and employ single-rope-technique climbing to get out.

Breithaupt said he saw a few bones down there. He declined to speculate on which species they belonged to: Field identification in paleontology is iffy, he said.

Anyway, this was more of a reconnaissance trip than a comprehensive excavation.

"The plan was to get a sense of the lay of the land above ground and below ground so they could proceed on this project in a very expeditious manner in future years," Breithaupt said.

Soon, the BLM will once again shut and lock a metal grate over the cave entrance to keep out modern-day animals and any more curious folks - at least until scientists can return for more detailed work next summer.




“North American lions, cheetahs and short-faced bears: Those are just a few fearsome critters from 25,000 years ago paleontologists already might have found in their first excavation of a bizarre northern Wyoming cave in 30 years.” I had no idea cheetahs had ever roamed in the New World. Could such animals have ranged all over Europe, Asia as well as Africa and then come across the Bering land bridge during one of the ice ages? “'They're very excited about the potential for what they've found. The analysis, yet, is still very preliminary,' Brent Breithaupt, who was among the exclusive group of scientists who recently rappelled down eight stories to excavate the floor of Natural Trap Cave, said Wednesday.... Over tens of thousands of years, several thousand insufficiently wary animals plummeted more than 80 feet into the chilly, dim, cathedral-like cavern. Their bones lie entombed, layer upon layer, in sediment as much as 30 feet deep.”

Scientists hope the cave's high humidity and temperatures that never top the 40s might even preserve genetic material of extinct animals from the days when massive ice sheets last frosted over much of the North American landscape. The oldest remains could date back 100,000 years, Breithaupt said.”

It would be so cool if some Neanderthal or Homo Sapiens bones were found there. So far the earliest human bones found in North America go back to 30,000 BP, and that is speculative, as some archaeologists dispute it. One genetic study on those bones from the Pacific Coastal area did say 30,000 years, however. Homo Sapiens were traveling by boat to several islands including Australia earlier than 30,000 BP, so it is very likely that they were in North America.







Iraq official: Hundreds of women refugees taken captive by militants
CBS/AP August 8, 2014, 3:22 PM

BAGHDAD -- The spokesman for Iraq's human rights ministry says hundreds of women from the Yazidi religious minority have been taken captive by militants from the Islamic State group.

Kamil Amin says the women are below the age of 35 and some are being held in schools in Iraq's second largest city, Mosul. He said the ministry learned of the captives from their families.

Tens of thousands of Yazidis fled when the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, also known as ISIL) earlier this month captured the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar, near the Syrian border. Amin's comments were the first Iraqi government confirmation that some women were being held by the group. The Yazidis practice an ancient religion that the Sunni Muslim radicals consider heretical.

"We think that the terrorists by now consider them slaves and they have vicious plans for them," Amin told The Associated Press. "We think that these women are going to be used in demeaning ways by those terrorists to satisfy their animalistic urges in a way that contradicts all the human and Islamic values."

Iraqis on Friday welcomed the U.S. airlift of emergency aid to thousands of people who fled to the mountains to escape Islamic extremists and called for greater intervention, as U.S. warplanes struck the militants for the first time.

CBS News senior defense correspondent David Martin said the Pentagon would authorize strikes if the ISIS militants didn't retreat from both the Sinjar mountains, where thousands of minority Yazidis have fled to avoid their advance, and from the area around Erbil, the capital of Iraq's Kurdish region.

Tens of thousands of Yazidis have been trapped in the mountains since the Islamic State overran Sinjar. The militants issued an ultimatum to the Yazidis, telling them they must convert to Islam, pay a religious tax, flee or face death.

Faced with the threats, about 50,000 Yazidis - half of them children, according to U.N. figures - fled to the nearby mountains, where they were running out of food and water.

The Yazidis are a small, misunderstood and long-persecuted religious sect rooted in the town of Sinjar, in northern Iraq, and also in parts of Syria and Turkey.

No one knows the exact size of the Yazidi population. Estimates range from tens of thousands to 500,000 or more. Over centuries, they have been the target of violence and purges, including during the Ottoman empire, and have survived as a close-knit community that does not proselytize.

Much confusion surrounds their beliefs, but scholars say Yazidi teachings are a mix of several traditions, borrowing from Christianity and Islam, and including some practices resembling ancient traditions in Persia.

The Yazidi believe that a supreme being created the world but does not rule it. Instead, his will is carried out by seven angels, chief among them the Peacock Angel, known as Malak Taus. Yazidis believe continual rebirth leads to purification, and therefore the sect does not believe in hell. The tomb of Sheikh Adi, in the town of Lalesh north of Mosul, Iraq, is a Yazidi shrine and pilgrimage site.

Yazidis pray to Malak Taus, who is also known by the sect as "shaytan," which is the Arabic word for the devil as defined in Islam and Christianity. This is the source of the belief among many Iraqi Muslims that Yazidis worship the devil, and it is among the reasons Yazidis are being targeted by the militant Islamic State group.




"'We think that the terrorists by now consider them slaves and they have vicious plans for them,' Amin told The Associated Press. 'We think that these women are going to be used in demeaning ways by those terrorists to satisfy their animalistic urges in a way that contradicts all the human and Islamic values.'... CBS News senior defense correspondent David Martin said the Pentagon would authorize strikes if the ISIS militants didn't retreat from both the Sinjar mountains, where thousands of minority Yazidis have fled to avoid their advance, and from the area around Erbil, the capital of Iraq's Kurdish region. The militants issued an ultimatum to the Yazidis, telling them they must convert to Islam, pay a religious tax, flee or face death.”

“The Yazidi believe that a supreme being created the world but does not rule it. Instead, his will is carried out by seven angels, chief among them the Peacock Angel, known as Malak Taus. Yazidis believe continual rebirth leads to purification, and therefore the sect does not believe in hell. The tomb of Sheikh Adi, in the town of Lalesh north of Mosul, Iraq, is a Yazidi shrine and pilgrimage site.... Yazidis pray to Malak Taus, who is also known by the sect as 'shaytan,' which is the Arabic word for the devil as defined in Islam and Christianity.”

Continual rebirth is one of the beliefs of Hinduism and Buddhism, and perhaps of other ancient religions. The Wikipedia article on Yazidi links them with ancient Persian religion. See yesterday's blog for more Wikipedia information on the Yazidi. I'm personally impressed to find that a truly ancient religion going back perhaps farther than the Jewish religion, has survived in the midst of the ever warlike Islamic believers and retains its cultural characteristics. They aren't free of the mistreatment of women, however, according to Wikipedia, which mentioned “honor killings.” That prejudice goes back to the times of the hunter-gatherers, I expect.







Egypt Court Dissolves Muslim Brotherhood Party – ABC
CAIRO – August 9, 2014

Egypt's administrative court dissolved Saturday the political party of the banned Muslim Brotherhood and ordered its assets liquidated, in the latest move against the 86-year old Islamist group.

The decision against the Freedom and Justice Party comes ahead of parliamentary elections expected this year and prevents the group from trying to rejoin politics a year after leading member, President Mohammed Morsi, was overthrown by the military.

The party was founded by the Brotherhood, Egypt's historic Islamist movement founded in 1928, in 2011 after President Hosni Mubarak was deposed in a popular uprising and it went on to dominate subsequent legislative elections.

The court's decision comes after a recommendation by its advisory panel that noted the party's leaders had already been accused, and in some cases convicted, of murder and inciting violence. The recommendation added that the prosecutors' investigation revealed that the party headquarters and offices were used to store weapons.

The Middle East News Agency said the decision is final and can't be appealed.

Many members of the party and the group are in jail or have fled Egypt to evade prosecution, part of the government crackdown against the Brotherhood that also included drying up its finances and freezing its public outreach programs.

The party's online website quoted an unnamed senior member of the party saying the ruling was "vindictive" because it had refused to endorse the post-Morsi political order. The official criticized the fact that the court decision can't be appealed, adding that the party was unaware of any investigation in the case, and was surprised with the date of the ruling.

The government declared the Brotherhood a terrorist group late last year, accusing it of orchestrating a wave of violence to destabilize the country after the military overthrew Morsi in July of last year. Militant attacks against the police and military have surged since the coup.

The group denies it adopts violence as a tactic, saying the government is scapegoating the group, Egypt's strongest and oldest political organization that gained support because of its large network of social programs that mostly target the poor.

After coming to power, however, the group faced public anger over what critics said were its attempt to monopolize power, enshrine Islamic laws in the country's legislation and allying with more radical Islamist groups.

Since Morsi's ouster, the group has kept up its protests against the government, though they have been decreasing in size amid the security crackdown. Morsi himself is in jail facing a slew of charges, including conspiring with foreign groups to destabilize Egypt.



Freedom and Justice Party (Egypt)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) (Arabic: حزب الحرية والعدالة‎, Ḥizb Al-Ḥurriya Wal-’Adala) is an Egyptian Islamist[4][5] political party. The ex-president of the party, Mohamed Morsi, won the 2012 presidential election,[7] and in the 2011 parliamentary election it won more seats than any other party. It is nominally independent, but has strong links to the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, the largest and best-organized political group in Egypt.[8]

The 2011–12 Egyptian Parliamentary election resulted in the FJP winning 47.2 per cent of all seats in the country's lower house of parliament, with fellow Islamist parties al Nour and al Wasat winning 24.7 and 2 per cent, respectively.[9][10][11] Both the FJP and the SalafistAl Nour Party have since denied alleged intentions of political unification.[12][13]

The FJP originally stated that it would not field a candidate for the 2012 Egyptian presidential election,[14][15] but in fact did so, first running Muslim Brotherhood leader Khairat al-Shater, and then after he was disqualified running Morsi.[16] The Muslim Brotherhood has been declared a terrorist group by the interim government, leaving the status of the FJP unclear.[17] A court ruling on the dissolution of the party is set for 4 August 2014.[18] The party might sever its ties with the Muslim Brotherhood; by doing so, it will be able to run in the 2014 parliamentary election.[19] On 15 April 2014, the Alexandria Court for Urgent Matters banned current and former members of the Muslim Brotherhood from running in the parliamentary elections.[20]

The Freedom and Justice Party is based on Islamic law, "but will be acceptable to a wide segment of the population," said leading MB member Essam al Arian.[30]The party's membership is open to all Egyptians who accept the terms of its program.[31] The spokesperson for the party said that "when we talk about the slogans of the revolution – freedom, social justice, equality – all of these are in the Sharia (Islamic law)."[32] There is rivalry between the Freedom and Justice Party and the Salafis, who regard the Freedom and Justice Party as having 'watered down' its values.[33]

In an interview with Al-Alam TV that aired on 22 August 2012, Ahmad Sabi', the Freedom and Justice Party's media advisor stated (as translated by MEMRI) that the 1979 Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel were "a mark of shame upon the Egyptian people" and was "undermining Egypt's sovereignty" and "projects for the development of the Sinai." Sabi' also stated that the Accord "is an unjust and unfair agreement, which has isolated Egypt from its Arab and Islamic environments, and from the pan-Arab effort to liberate the land of Palestine and to support Palestinian resistance."[34][35]

In the same interview, Sabi' stated:

In addition, carcinogenic pesticides were imported from the Zionist entity, and Egyptian agriculture was made available to the Zionist entity. This led to the destruction of various sectors in Egypt. Egypt now suffers from endemic diseases, such as various types of cancer, hepatitis and kidney infections. All these and other diseases are the result of the carcinogenic pesticides, which were brought here along with that agreement.[34]




“Egypt's administrative court dissolved Saturday the political party of the banned Muslim Brotherhood and ordered its assets liquidated, in the latest move against the 86-year old Islamist group. The decision against the Freedom and Justice Party comes ahead of parliamentary elections expected this year and prevents the group from trying to rejoin politics a year after leading member, President Mohammed Morsi, was overthrown by the military.... The court's decision comes after a recommendation by its advisory panel that noted the party's leaders had already been accused, and in some cases convicted, of murder and inciting violence. The recommendation added that the prosecutors' investigation revealed that the party headquarters and offices were used to store weapons.”

Spokesmen for the FJP said it has been scapegoated. It came to power bringing a large network of social programs that benefit the poor. “After coming to power, however, the group faced public anger over what critics said were its attempt to monopolize power, enshrine Islamic laws in the country's legislation and allying with more radical Islamist groups.” It's candidate, Morsi, is in jail accused of a number of crimes including conspiring with foreign powers to destabilize the Egyptian government. They continue to protest against the government. The FJP is strongly against the Egyptian connection with Israel, and is sympathetic with the Palestinian cause. It is probably good news for the US that the FJP has been ousted.






Rare Diary Gives Details of Life Under Khmer Rouge – ABC
By Todd Pitman AP
Phnom-Penh Cambodia
August 9, 2014

Nearly 40 years ago, hunched on the floor of the wood-and-leaf hut he was forced to live in away from his children, Cambodian school inspector Poch Younly kept a secret diary vividly recounting the horrors of life under the Khmer Rouge, the radical communist regime whose extreme experiment in social engineering took the lives of 1.7 million Cambodians from overwork, medical neglect, starvation and execution.

Acutely aware that he could be killed if discovered, Younly hid the diary inside a clay vase. In those dark days, when religion and schools were banned and anyone deemed educated was a threat, he had no right to own so much as a pen and paper.

"Why is it that I have to die here like a cat or a dog ... without any reason, without any meaning?" he wrote in the spiral-bound notebook's last pages.

Four decades later, that question still haunts Cambodia.

Younly did not survive that era. But his diary did. It was part of the vast case file which this week helped convict the only two surviving Khmer Rouge leaders still facing justice — 83-year-old former president Khieu Samphan and 88-year-old Nuon Chea, right-hand man of the group's infamous late leader, Pol Pot. On Thursday, a U.N.-backed tribunal sentenced both men to life in prison for crimes against humanity — a verdict that many believe was too little, and far too late.

Made public for the first time last year, the diary is astonishingly rare — one of just four known firsthand accounts penned by victims and survivors while the Khmer Rouge were in power, compared to 453 such documents written by communist cadres at the time.

It is "the story of all of us who survived," said Youk Chhang, who runs the Documentation Center of Cambodia, which has amassed millions of documents, photographs, films and verbal testimonies from the Khmer Rouge era. When the Khmer Rouge were in charge, everything belonged to the revolution, he said. "You owned nothing. Not even your life story."

Younly's account is vital because people like Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea have tried to cast doubt over atrocities committed during their rule. The majority of Cambodians living today were born after the Khmer Rouge were ousted in 1979, and even those who survived can forget how bad it was.

"People forget how hungry we were," said Youk Chhang, who still has dark scars on his legs from shackles he was held in by Khmer Rouge soldiers for two months. "It's hard to describe to young people what starvation felt like. But the whole nation was starved ... and this story is rarely told."

Written in Khmer, the diary fills about 100 pages and is divided into two sections. The first summarizes Younly's family history, an era spanning French colonial rule, the Japanese occupation during World War II, and his arranged marriage to his then 15-year-old wife. The rest, written as a letter addressed to his children, describes life under the Khmer Rouge and is dated only at the start and the end — Feb. 9 and July 29, 1976, with a final post-script entered a few days later.

When Khmer Rouge forces seized Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975, the couple was living with eight of their children in a rural town called Kampong Chhnang. Three days later, the guerrillas arrived and residents — including Younly — cheered, relieved the war was finally over, his 86-year-old widow Som Seng Eath recalled.



Pol Pot
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pol Pot (/pɒl pɒt/; Khmer: 19 May 1925 – 15 April 1998),[1][2]born Saloth Sar (Khmer: សាឡុត ស), was a Cambodian communist revolutionary who led the Khmer Rouge[4] from 1963 until 1997. From 1963 to 1981, he served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea.[5] As such, he became the leader of Cambodia on April 17, 1975, when his forces captured Phnom Penh. From 1976 to 1979, he also served as the prime minister of Democratic Kampuchea.

He presided over a totalitarian dictatorship[6] that imposed a radical form of agrarian socialism on the country. His government forced urban dwellers to relocate to the countryside to work in collective farms and forced labor projects. The combined effects of executions, forced labor, malnutrition, and poor medical care caused the deaths of approximately 25 percent of the Cambodian population.[7][8][9][10] In all, an estimated 1 to 3 million people (out of a population of slightly over 8 million) died due to the policies of his four-year premiership.[11][12][13

In 1979, after the Cambodian–Vietnamese War, Pol Pot fled to the jungles of southwest Cambodia, and the Khmer Rouge government collapsed.[14] From 1979 to 1997, he and a remnant of the old Khmer Rouge operated near the border of Cambodia and Thailand, where they clung to power, with nominal United Nations recognition as the rightful government of Cambodia. Pol Pot committed suicide[15] in 1998 while under house arrest by the Ta Mok faction of the Khmer Rouge. Since his death, rumours that he was poisoned have persisted.[16] The Khmer Rouge (/kəˈmɛər ˈruːʒ/; French: Khmers rouges "Red Khmers",French pronunciation: ​[kmɛʁ ʁuʒ]; Khmer: ខ្មែរក្រហម Khmer Kraham) was the name given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea in Cambodia. It was formed in 1968 as an offshoot of the Vietnam People's Armyfrom North Vietnam.




“...Cambodian school inspector Poch Younly kept a secret diary vividly recounting the horrors of life under the Khmer Rouge, the radical communist regime whose extreme experiment in social engineering took the lives of 1.7 million Cambodians from overwork, medical neglect, starvation and execution.... In those dark days, when religion and schools were banned and anyone deemed educated was a threat, he had no right to own so much as a pen and paper.”

Partly as a result of that diary and three others, Khmer Rouge officials 83-year-old former president Khieu Samphan and 88-year-old Nuon Chea have been convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life in prison. “It is 'the story of all of us who survived,' said Youk Chhang, who runs the Documentation Center of Cambodia, which has amassed millions of documents, photographs, films and verbal testimonies from the Khmer Rouge era. When the Khmer Rouge were in charge, everything belonged to the revolution, he said. 'You owned nothing. Not even your life story.'.... 'People forget how hungry we were,' said Youk Chhang.”

One of my favorite tapes from my TV documentaries is about the memories of a dance instructor who was put into forced labor under Pol Pot. She hated him, but she didn't rage. She just absorbed the pain like a true Buddhist, and told her story in a very poignant way, while showing her modern day dance studio and the young girls she still teaches. It is a true story of the resilience and strength of humans living under great stress. It reminds me of the story of the Jews as told in the movie Schindler's List.