Popular Culture Review Vol. 18, No. 1, Winter 2007 | Page 72

68 Popular Culture Review transformed the landscape into an ambivalent zone. Once free roaming Afghans are now subjected to the panopticon of numberless landmines—silent sentinels of death—the product of a globalised order gone mad with excess. Pol Pot’s “Sentinels of Death”: Cambodia Like Afghanistan, Cambodia is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world, with an estimated ten million mines having been planted by the Khmer Rouge. From 1975 to 1979 the Khmer Rouge under the dictator Pol Pot controlled Cambodia. The ideology of the Khmer Rouge was “the result of a mixture of Maoism, Stalinism, underdevelopment theory and sectarian fury.” From an emerging communist group in the 1960’s, the Khmer Rouge grew to ascendancy after the fall of the Sihanouk government."^"^ The country was renamed Democratic Kampuchea, and a feature of Khmer Rouge’s state terror was the transformation of the population into a docile body. The Khmer Rouge undertook a total revision of Cambodian society with the first year of their reign known as “Year Zero”."^^ In this utopian vision the Khmer Rouge attempted to use human power alone to reshape the landscape for the expansion of agriculture, primarily rice planting. The Khmer Rouge looked to the building of Angkor Wat as a model of the strength of ordinary people—it was also a model of slave labor.^^^ Cambodians were gathered into collective farms and forced to work under extreme conditions. This “system of agricultural cooperatives” became a crucible for the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror. Over one million of Cambodians died in these camps, known as the 'killing fields’ due to widespread executions, torture, and physical privations. Starvation became a tool for eroding the people’s will.*^^ In order to maintain their vision of a classless society, the Khmer Rouge enforced a doctrine of uniformity. Personal possessions were abolished, and the mandatory wearing of black peasant clothing. Communal eating was imposed, “currency was abolished,” and religion banned."^^ The Khmer Rouge’s mania to rid Cambodian society of impurity necessitated a doctrine of the ‘enemy’. The use of purges became a key weapon of killing anyone who was considered as dissenting from the party line. As Rinaldo notes: “Such ideological absolutism requires constant enemies, and the KR found them in abundant supply. They carried out purge after purge to achieve the goal of ideological purity; as time went on, the purges reached deeper into Khmer society until no one was safe.”‘^^ The eradication of difference heralded a litany of the bizarre, which included the killing of people who wore spectacles or who did not plough on the correct side. Even minor infringements were punishable by death. Since the outside world was seen as a corrupting force, the Khmer Rouge adopted an isolationist policy. Here, the use of landmines was strategic.