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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.