Royal Pawns Between The Tiger and The Crocodile

Re-post
Grave secrets

Then Prince Sihanouk and Princess Monique

First published at KI Media Thursday, August 05, 2010
Op-Ed by MP

THOSE of us who have been keen observers of Cambodian politics within recent decades are more or less used to idiosyncratic reminiscences emanating from N. Sihanouk's camp. There's no real cause for doubting KI Media's sincerity in rendering this kind of anecdotes, which has been profusely produced by the former monarch himself and accumulated in abundance, no doubt, in his Royal Library.

What should interest any independent, fair-minded observer is to what extent and how much of an influence had our Royal Princess Monique who formed the other Half of the Khmer Royal pair been part of Sihanouk's decision-making throughout his long convoluted political career and, through that, her own personal involvement in the making of Cambodian history - its salvation and tragedies alike - in the course of the same period. In his own memoir, Sihanouk recalls how Monique was persistent in 'begging' him - following his overthrow by Lon Nol - to join forces with the 'Khmer Rouge' who were then still under de facto influence or domination of the North Vietnamese whose troops remained on Khmer soil even after April 1975 and would have remained there longer had it not been for Beijing's mounting pressure on Hanoi to withdraw.


Perhaps, China did exert pressure on the exiled Khmer royals to return to reinforce Sihanouk's erstwhile opponents (Red Khmers) whom he now described as ‘patriots’ or maybe the Royal Couple themselves were counting on the Vietminhs repaying them in gratitude for what the latter owed the former for that vital assistance provided prior to the 1970 coup. What is beyond debate is the fatal 'mistake' committed by Sihanouk in his decision to embrace the Red Khmers so soon after that coup; an error which he subsequently himself publicly acknowledged in an off-guard moment to a journalist. If Monique did sway this historical decision then she may have, even with her youth and legendary beauty in mind, reduced more than a couple of Soviet leaders to helpless victims by the power of her spells. 

With the benefit of hindsight and with our bitter taste of what was to follow as a direct outcome of this course of action and gamble by Sihanouk one could not help but wonder what course history might have taken instead had he not allowed his Royal name and presence to be used by cold-hearted men and revolutionary groups whose ideology the US ambassador to Cambodia at the time described as ‘un-Cambodian’. And he was not simply referring to the North Vietnamese.

But even without the benefit of hindsight, it is plausible to take the view that there would have been no logical need for the Prince to plunge his small kingdom that had no real quarrel with the US into full blown armed conflict by embracing the Communists. Lon Nol might have grave difficulties holding out against the battle- hardened Vietminhs, but at least he would not have to dispense so much energy killing – or trying not to be killed by – his own compatriots in the Red Khmers who were now responding to Sihanouk’s call to bear arms against the ‘traitorous’ Khmer republicans with alarming fanaticism and zeal. The Vietnamese might also have eventually achieved their ultimate ambition of bringing the Indochina-coursing Mekong under their control by one means or another, but the most likely scenario that would have prevailed would have been the absence of executions and killings that had been a most salient and grim pattern in Cambodia’s ‘civil wars’ in recent decades. 

 

 February 1973: General Vo Nguyen Giap and his wife visit Norodom Sihanouk and Princess Monique in their residence located in a discrete location in Hanoi (Photo: NorodomSihanouk.info)

 

Even the systematic executions of between 40-60,000 defeated Lon Nol soldiers, most of whom had once been Sihanouk’s ‘children’ and subjects – the part of that mass killings to only have been openly acknowledged by Pol Pot - would have been too much a price for Cambodia to have to pay. The survival of trained non-Communist military personnel would have provided the country with a much better material with which to resist outright foreign domination in later years. Even the North Vietnamese recognised the pragmatic benefit of incorporating former South Vietnamese soldiers and officers into their unified national military rank, some of whom were subsequently dispatched as ‘volunteers’ to Cambodia and Laos. This familiar mistake – committed again by the CPP in 1997 to neutralise Funcinpec’s military threat - should never be repeated. It is a senseless waste of human resource in the glaring face of the nation’s much lamented numerical handicap with relations to its neighbours, never mind the charge of rights violation against captured military personnel in time of war.

As a keen reader of world history, Sihanouk would have taken note with some personal trepidation of the massacre of the entire Russian royal family carried out by the Bolsheviks to ensure that the monarchy could never again re-emerge to reclaim the political throne in Russia. That he overlooked this personal risk and made a decision to throw in his lot with the Communist camp does seem to testify to his overall misplaced (and perhaps, reckless) optimism that the North Vietnamese and their Khmer Rouge allies would save his nation and people from any likely catastrophe - which they singularly failed, by force of their own respective motives and in line with their own ulterior agendas (and are arguably failing still) to do. Not only that. Once their common Foe – the US - had been overcome traditional distrust resurfaced between the North Vietnamese and their Pol Pot-led Cambodian communist allies, leaving Sihanouk in a precarious position as he was now caught between the Tiger of the Khmer Rouge and the Crocodile of the Vietminhs in his Unholy Royal Alliance with them both, who by way of their own imperceptible metamorphoses and un-evolved predatory traits, continue to keep him through his ceremoniously enthroned royal heir firmly between their threatening jaws - a tragic fate and dilemma, furthermore, to which by way of perverted extension the Khmer people and nation are presently being condemned.

 

Then [Comrade?] Princess Monique capturing the moment for posterity. Sihanouk posing with KR leaders including Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, Khiev Samphan and Pol Pot's wife [white hair] Khiev Ponnary - image reproduced.

 

To his last breath Sihanouk himself had never assumed moral responsibility for all the catastrophic errors and the reckless nature that distinguished his oft-quoted 'one-man show' and patently idiosyncratic leadership style. If he indeed had a sense of remorse or regret over the "unparalleled" pain and suffering his own decisions and mistakes had undoubtedly caused to the millions of Cambodians, to the loss of national independence and sovereignty still experienced by their nation, neither he, nor Monique or their son and heir now placed on this ceremonious of throne have been thus far inclined to make manifest this sentiment in any meaningful way. On the contrary, Sihanouk and his loyal followers have continued to pin the blame for all the crises and upheavals upon those generals who had the stupidity and temerity to stage the fatal coup against him. 

In the same aforementioned memoir, Sihanouk reasoned and justified his co-operation effort and political alliance towards the North Vietnamese by the premise of his sanguine logic and expectation that coming to their aid in their hours of need would ensure, in his words: 'They will never touch us again.' Yet, he would have lived subsequently to regret having allowed himself such a dose of so spectacular a trust and optimism on the leadership of a nation that has never entertained or given weight to any such sentiments and trivialities where the overriding ambitions and advancement of state policies are concerned. That this is so is evident in his decision to mobilise and lead his own anti-Vietnamese resistance effort in the 1980s and in his own unflattering description of the Vietnamese ["Yuon"] as 'crocodiles'; a creature that in Khmer folklore denotes savagery, betrayal and unthinking ingratitude in the vilest of manner possible.  

All this is what we and history know of the late former Cambodian monarch who once compared himself [as an authoritarian ruler and nationalist] to contemporaries of a more benign and liberal kind, notably Gamal Nasser of Egypt. The secrets that Sihanouk's surviving royal spouse Monique has [and had shared with him, if any], on the other hand, remain much murkier, and will most likely be taken to the grave with her...