Deafening similarities in flawed US foreign policy: Will Taliban tread in Khmer Rouge's footsteps?
Jul 04, 2022
Kabul [Afghanistan], July 4 : Vaccum created by the US after its exit from Vietnam destabilized the region leading up to Khmer Rouge provocations and atrocities in Cambodia and this raises concern if the US' exit from Afghanistan will prompt the Taliban tread in the footsteps of Khmer Rouge.
Khmer Rouge was every bit as ideological as the Taliban, with a hatred equally deep toward those they saw as cosmopolitan or corrupted by Western culture, point out analysts.
And, like the Taliban who persecute the Hazara minority without mercy, the Khmer Rouge combined their ideological animus toward the West with more traditional racism, often targeting Cambodians whose blood they believed to be polluted by Vietnamese ancestry.
The deafening similarities between US foreign policy in Vietnam and in Afghanistan reveals that it was not about the defeat of US military rather the poor state of American politics and diplomacy.
Many have drawn parallels between US exit from Vietnam and withdrawal from Afghanistan. With many fault lines in US foreign policy, not much is different in when Saigon (Vietnamese city) fell and when Kabul fell, reported National Interest, a foreign policy think tank.
The U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam was not the last chapter for Southeast Asia, just as the re-establishment of the Taliban's emirate will not be the last for South and Central Asia.
US Vietnam war destabilized the Vietnam region. The Viet Cong were the South Vietnamese supporters of the communist National Liberation Front in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
The overwhelming majority of the Viet Cong were subsequently recruited in the South, but they received weapons, guidance, and reinforcements from North Vietnamese Army soldiers who had infiltrated into South Vietnam.
Through an elaborate system of mountain and jungle paths and trails the infiltration of troops and supplies took place in South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos during the Vietnam War.
This establishment of supply routes in Cambodia and Laos precipitated a massive American bombing campaign. In March 1969, in an effort to disrupt North Vietnamese supply lines, US conducted an extensive bombing campaign in eastern Cambodia.
The US dropped bombs on Cambodia. Amid the bombings, from the ashes of rural Cambodia rose Khmer Rouge or Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) regime, which was led by party general secretary Pol Pot.
This conflict went on to kill or starve to death more than a million Cambodians from 1975 to 1979.
The Khmer Rouge ultimately murdered almost two million Cambodians. Given the opportunity, the Taliban might do similar.
