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DARRA ADAM KHEL, Pakistan — The Taliban fighters were sitting in the back of a pickup, parked right outside the army fort in Darra Adam Khel, a wild town in Pakistan's troubled northwest that's famous for its arms bazaar. The Islamic militia, linked with al Qaida, has controlled Darra for about six months. Wrapped in head scarves, with just their eyes showing, and bristling with weaponry, its members patrol the streets and impose their own austere rules. They've become such a routine sight in the town that no one pays them any attention. The security forces, when they emerge from...

Phnom Penh, Cambodia (AHN) - The former social welfare minister and the most powerful woman in the Khmer Rouge, Ieng Thirith, 76, on Wednesday appeared for the first time at a U.N.-backed genocide court in Cambodia. Thirith is facing charges of crimes against humanity during Khmer Rouge's brutal four-year reign in Cambodia in the late 1970s that had killed an estimated three million people from torture, starvation and forced labor. She has filed for bail on the charges, but the court has yet to decide on her petition. Earlier, the genocide court denied the petition for bail of three of...

Prosecutors say Chhun could face life imprisonment A US court has convicted a Cambodian-born man of masterminding a failed coup attempt against the Cambodian government eight years ago. Chhun Yasith, 52, was found guilty of four charges relating to the failed attack in November 2000. Dozens of armed men attacked government buildings in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, in a bid to overthrow Prime Minister Hun Sen. Several people were killed but the prime minister escaped unhurt. The court in Los Angeles found Chhun guilty of three charges of conspiracy and one of planning a military expedition against a...

There are some names in the obituary columns that say more than the voices of the living. Such is the name of Dith Pran, who died in New Brunswick, N.J., March 30 at age 65. He was the Cambodian photographer who somehow survived the collection of killing fields that his country became after the Americans abandoned it. And who somehow made his way to the United States to tell the world about it. Millions of his countrymen lost their lives after the Khmer Rouge swept into Phnom Penh and began rounding up unreliable types — i.e., just about anyone who...

A recently disclosed memo gave U.S. interrogators the ability to use harsh methods -- what many call "torture" -- to extract information from terrorist suspects after 9/11. Around the world, critics saw it as another blow to American prestige and moral authority. The 2003 document also invokes wartime powers to protect interrogators who violate the Geneva Conventions, for example, by the use of waterboarding -- when a prisoner is made to think he is drowning. Half a world away, the divisive debate over whether waterboarding constitutes torture comes into sharp relief at the infamous S-21, Tuol Sleng Prison in Phnom...

Two very different stories surfaced this week that add to the hundreds of examples we have of liberalism’s failures and lies. The first involves southeast Asia. Those who lived through the Vietnam War and its aftermath remember how often the left-wing politicos and supporters constantly ridiculed the idea of a domino effect (mass murders throughout southeast Asia) if we left Vietnam abruptly – and have spent the last 32 years denying the killing fields of Cambodia, Laos and Thailand – as well as in Vietnam itself. It is the current generation of these same liars who are calling for an...

Dith Pran... used to say: "I'm not a hero - I'm a messenger." ...[He was] a tenacious survivor of the 1975-79 Cambodian holocaust, when the communist Khmer Rouge slaughtered 1 million people- nearly a third of the nation's population- while the world looked on. He devoted the rest of his life to telling the story- best known through the 1984 film "The Killing Fields." Dith, a translator-photographer for Times correspondent Sydney Schanberg, remained behind after the fall of Phnom Penh to help report the Khmer Rouge takeover. But when Western journalists were forced to leave, Dith became a prisoner, spending...

"He was 'the most patriotic American photographer I've ever met, always talking about how he loves America,' said Associated Press photographer Paul Sakuma, who knew Dith through their work with the Asian American Journalists Association." "The regime of Pol Pot, bent on turning Cambodia back into a strictly agrarian society, and his Communist zealots were blamed for the deaths of nearly 2 million of Cambodia's 7 million people."

NEW YORK (AP) -- Dith Pran, the Cambodian-born journalist whose harrowing tale of enslavement and eventual escape from that country's murderous Khmer Rouge revolutionaries in 1979 became the subject of the award-winning film "The Killing Fields," died Sunday, his former colleague said. Dith Pran founded an awareness project dedicated to educating people about the Khmer Rouge regime. Dith, 65, died at a New Jersey hospital Sunday morning of pancreatic cancer, according to Sydney Schanberg, his former colleague at The New York Times. Dith had been diagnosed almost three months ago. Dith was working as an interpreter and assistant for Schanberg...

Dith Pran, a Khmer Rouge survivor whose experiences in Cambodia were adapted into the award-winning movie The Killing Fields, died early on Sunday at the age of 65, his friend and former New York Times correspondent Sydney Schanberg said. Dith, who had been battling pancreatic cancer since January, died in the early hours at a hospital in New Jersey, with his ex-wife at his side. "Pran was a special person, a very special person. Messages are pouring in from people who met him only once saying that he made a deep impression on them. And he did, on everybody," Mr...

'Killing Fields' survivor Dith Pran dies By RICHARD PYLE, Associated Press Writer Dith Pran, the Cambodian-born journalist whose harrowing tale of enslavement and eventual escape from that country's murderous Khmer Rouge revolutionaries in 1979 became the subject of the award-winning film "The Killing Fields," died Sunday, his former colleague said. Dith, 65, died at a New Jersey hospital Sunday morning of pancreatic cancer, according to Sydney Schanberg, his former colleague at The New York Times. Dith had been diagnosed almost three months ago. Dith was working as an interpreter and assistant for Schanberg in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, when...

CHOEUNG EK, Cambodia (Reuters) - The chief torturer under the Khmer Rouge "Killing Fields" regime wept and prayed on Tuesday as he led the judges who will try him for crimes against humanity around the mass graves for some of its victims. Duch, also known as Kaing Guek Eav, accompanied 80 judges, lawyers and other officials of a U.N.-backed tribunal to the 129 graves, uncovered after a Vietnamese invasion sent the Khmer Rouge back to the jungles in 1979. "I saw Duch kneel in front of the trees where Khmer Rouge soldiers smashed children to death," a policeman told reporters...

SETBO VILLAGE, Cambodia - Being responsible parents, rice farmer Khuorn Sam Ol and his wife might not be expected to be keen on having their child play with a 16-foot-long, 220-pound snake. Yet they are unflustered that their 7-year-old son, Uorn Sambath, regularly sleeps in the massive coil of a female python, rides the reptile, kisses it and even pats it down with baby powder. "There is a special bond between them," Khuorn Sam Ol explained. "My son played with the snake when he was still learning to crawl. They used to sleep together in a cradle." The boy and...

Saving ancient Angkor from modern doomsdayScientists warning on pumping water for tourist hotels Ker Munthit, Associated Press Sunday, February 17, 2008 (02-17) 04:00 PST Siem Reap, Cambodia -- By destroying vast tracts of forest to enlarge their farm land, inhabitants of the wondrous city of Angkor lit the fuse to an ecological time bomb that spelled doom for what was once the world's largest urban area. So believe archaeologists engaged in groundbreaking research into the ancient civilization of Angkor. And they are warning that history could repeat itself through reckless, headlong pursuit of dollars from tourists flocking to see Angkor's...

17th century Japanese village uncovered in Cambodia Thursday, February 14, 2008 at 07:01 EST PHNOM PENH — A site of a Japanese village dating back to the 17th century has been found in the outskirts of Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh, a Japanese archaeologist said Wednesday. Hiroshi Sugiyama, chief research fellow at Japan's National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, said that based on research since 2004 and analyses of excavations and documents, the site in Ponhea Lueu Commune, about 25 kilometers north of Phnom Penh, is a Japanese village dating back to the 17th century. Based on on-site research, excavations and...

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Pol Pot's right-hand man, Nuon Chea, appeared before Cambodia's "Killing Fields" tribunal on Wednesday to request bail, arguing he was not a flight risk and would not try to influence potential witnesses. The octogenarian former Khmer Rouge guerrilla, charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity, also said fears for his safety were overblown as he had been living for years in "peace and harmony" at his home in the jungle along the Thai border. "I have no desire to leave my beloved country," he told a courtroom packed with reporters. "No one is worried about...

Japan team finds ancient Cambodian water siteTuesday, Jan. 22, 2008 SNAY VILLAGE, Cambodia (Kyodo) Japanese archaeologists said Monday they have found a man-made water channel in northwest Cambodia used for rituals as far back as the first century. The archaeologists said they discovered sacred mounds or altars at the ruins in Snay village in Banteay Meanchey Province under a two-year project that began last January. "Before, it was said that Khmer civilization started from the seventh to ninth century AD, but based on our research here, Khmer civilization went back to the first century AD," said Yoshinori Yasuda, a professor...

UN-Backed Genocide Tribunal Arrests Former Khmer Rouge Head Of State Khieu Samphan In Cambodia The U.N.-backed genocide tribunal in Cambodia arrested the former Khmer Rouge head of state Monday following his release from a hospital in the capital, officials said. Khieu Samphan, 76, was the fifth senior Khmer Rouge official to be detained by the long-delayed tribunal ahead of trials that are expected to begin next year. The arrests come almost three decades after the group fell from power, with many fearing the aging suspects might die before they ever see a courtroom. Police escorted Khieu Samphan from the hospital...

Cambodian police have arrested former head of state Khieu Samphan in a hospital in the capital Phnom Penh. The 76-year-old former leader will be the fifth suspect to be tried by the Cambodia Tribunal. Khieu Samphan is accused of being co-responsible for the killing of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians during the years in which the Khmer Rouge ruled the country, from 1975 until the beginning of 1979. Khieu Samphan says he never knew how much the Cambodian people suffered under the regime of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot. He says it was never the Khmer Rouge’s intention to kill...

Women warriors may have battled in ancient Cambodia Thu Nov 15, 2:36 AM ETAFP/HO/File Photo: This handout picture, taken early this year, shows a female skelton buried with metal bracelets... TOKYO (AFP) - Archaeologists have found female skeletons buried with metal swords in Cambodian ruins, indicating there may have been a civilisation with female warriors, the mission head said Thursday. The team dug up 35 human skeletons at five locations in Phum Snay in northwestern Cambodia in research earlier this year, said Japanese researcher Yoshinori Yasuda, who led the team. "Five of them were perfect skeletons and we have confirmed...

Robert Zoellick outlined a vision for the World Bank yesterday, at a speech marking his 100th day as president. His theme: "inclusive and sustainable globalization." Whatever that means. We long ago became accustomed to the toothless catchphrases by which the bank shovels money (now more than $30 billion a year) out the door, and it remains to be seen if Mr. Zoellick's agenda will amount to more than a high gloss on the status quo. To his credit, the former U.S. Trade Rep is emphasizing the importance of free trade to economic development, still a controversial point at an institution...

Phnom Penh (dpa) - A Cambodian man who took off his trousers, tied the legs at the bottom and wrangled a 2-metre cobra into them died when it bit him through the fabric, local media reported Monday. Khmer-language daily Koh Santepheap quoted police as saying Chab Kear, 36, saw the reptile swimming in a river just outside the capital last Thursday during a drinking session and captured it in the hopes of selling it later in the day. He tied the animal inside his trousers and a scarf around his waist, but as he continued carousing the enraged snake managed...

PAILIN, Cambodia (AFP) - The most senior surviving Khmer Rouge leader, Nuon Chea, was being questioned Wednesday by police and officials from Cambodia's UN-backed genocide tribunal, a source close to him told AFP. Police blocked the road to the house of Nuon Chea in northwest Cambodia as the tribunal officials swept in. Shortly after 6:00 am (2300 GMT Tuesday) a convoy of police and Khmer Rouge tribunal vehicles was seen arriving at Nuon Chea's house, where he has lived freely since surrendering to the government in late 1998. "It is the order from the top to block the road and...

Military historians seem to be converging on a consensus that by the end of 1972, the balance of forces in Vietnam had improved considerably, increasing the prospects for South Vietnam’s survival. That balance of forces was reflected in the Paris Agreement of January 1973, and the (Democratic) Congress then proceeded to pull the props out from under that balance of forces over the next 2 ½ years — abandoning all of Indochina to a bloodbath. This is now a widely accepted narrative of the endgame in Vietnam, and it has haunted the Democrats for a generation.

Veteran actress and feminist Jane Fonda has been slammed for not paying her female employees working in the actress' radio network Green Stone Media. The twice Oscar winner and the radio network's co-founder Gloria Steinem have been accused of "putting their own reputations above their female employees' finances." According to the New York Post, Fonda and Steinem are 'refusing to pay severance, and the founders won't file for bankruptcy protection because it would publicly embarrass Jane and Gloria.' However, the 'Klute' star's spokesperson has denied the reports and said that the accusations are unfounded. "This is pure speculation. There is...

CHICAGO (AFP) - Archaeologists using radar imagery have shown that an ancient Cambodian settlement centered on the celebrated temple of Angkor Wat was far more extensive than previously thought, a study released Monday said. The medieval settlement surrounding Angkor, the one-time capital of the illustrious Khmer empire which flourished between the ninth and 14th centuries, covered a 3,000 square kilometer area (1,158 square miles). The urban complex was at least three times larger than archaeologists had previously suspected and easily the largest pre-industrial urban area of its kind, eclipsing comparable developments such as Tikal a Classic Maya "city" in Guatemala....

The researchers disovered at least 74 new temples The great medieval temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia was once at the centre of a sprawling urban settlement, according to a new, detailed map of the area.Using Nasa satellites, an international team have discovered at least 74 new temples and complex irrigation systems. The map, published in the journal PNAS, extends the known settlement by 1000 sq km, about the size of Los Angeles. Analysis also lends weight to the theory that Angkor's residents were architects of the city's demise. "The large-scale city engineered its own downfall by disrupting its...

Sprawling Angkor Brought Down By Overpopulation, Study Suggests Susan Brown for National Geographic News August 13, 2007 Cambodia's long-lost temple complex of Angkor is the world's largest known preindustrial settlement, reveals a new radar study that found 74 new temples and more than a thousand manmade ponds at the site. But urban sprawl and its associated environmental devastation may have led to the collapse of the kingdom, which includes the renowned temple of Angkor Wat, the study suggests. Ever since the late 16th century, when Portuguese traders spied the towers of the monument poking through a dense canopy of trees,...

Australian archaeologists using complex radar and satellite technology to map the medieval city of Angkor have discovered more than 70 new temples scattered across a vast area of farmland and forests in north-west Cambodia. University of Sydney archaeologist Damian Evans said, "It's huge. We've mapped a massive settlement stretching well beyond the main temples of the World Heritage tourist area in Siem Reap. "We've found the city was roughly five times bigger than previously thought." The newly discovered ruins of the ancient Khmer empire metropolis sprawl across 1000sqkm "about 20km in every direction" outside the United Nations listed World Heritage...

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - The former chief of a Khmer Rouge prison is willing to testify about the communist regime's atrocities that led to an estimated 1.7 million deaths in the 1970s, Cambodia's genocide tribunal announced Wednesday. Duch, 64, also known as Kaing Guek Eav, on Tuesday became the first top Khmer Rouge figure to be indicted for offenses committed when the Khmer Rouge held power from 1975-79. He was charged and detained by order of the U.N.-backed international tribunal's foreign and Cambodian judges. Duch headed the S-21 prison in Phnom Penh, where some 16,000 suspected enemies of the regime...

BANGKOK, July 31 — A tribunal in Cambodia charged the commandant of the main Khmer Rouge torture house with crimes against humanity on Tuesday, bringing the first charge in a long-delayed trial in the deaths of 1.7 million people in the late 1970s. The commandant, Kaing Guek Eav, 64, known as Duch, was the leader of the Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh where at least 14,000 men, women and children were tortured and sent to killing fields. Only a handful survived. Two weeks ago, prosecutors announced that they had submitted to the tribunal a list of five potential defendants...

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - Cambodia's international genocide tribunal charged the head of a Khmer Rouge torture center with crimes against humanity on Tuesday, a historic first indictment against a top figure in the communist regime that created Cambodia's infamous killing fields. The suspect, Kaing Guek Eav, has acknowledged heading the S-21 prison, where the Khmer Rouge's suspected enemies were tortured before being taken to killing fields near the capital. An estimated 1.7 million people died from hunger, disease, overwork and execution when the Khmer Rouge was in power in 1975-79. The 62-year-old, also known as Duch, was one of five...

Asean members hope to adopt the charter formally later this year Ministers from South-East Asian countries have reached agreement on a landmark draft charter. The document gives the Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean) a set of binding rules for the first time in the bloc's 40-year existence. The agreement comes after nearly two years of deliberations among members. It includes a contentious provision to set up a commission monitoring human rights in the region - despite strong misgivings from some Asean countries. Credibility boost With governments in the region running the gamut from fully-fledged democracies to a military...

SACRAMENTO (AP) -- Former Laotian Gen. Vang Pao, accused of being the ringleader in a plot to overthrow the communist government of Laos, was freed on bail Friday. U.S. Magistrate Dale Drozd ordered the 77-year-old leader of the Hmong community in America released on a $1.5 million bond after relatives agreed to post four properties in Sacramento, Fresno and Westminster as collateral. Several hundred Hmong gathered outside the federal courthouse cheered as the former general walked out the front door and through the crowd. Most were wearing white, and some held signs and balloons that said "Welcome home." Others waved...

The North Carolina House has passed a resolution asking the Department of Defense to work to get the remains of a Marine killed in 1975 returned to Duplin County. Lance Corporal Joseph Nelson Hargrove was captured by Khmer Rouge forces on the Koh Tang Island in Cambodia and executed in the days after he participated in an assault to free crew members of the ship Mayaguez. Hargrove's gravesite was positively identified on the island in 2001. Representative Russell Tucker, a Duplin County Democrat sponsoring the bill, urged his colleagues to back the resolution so Hargrove's "remains can rest his peace...

Climate change ended Angkor - report Was Angkor Wat abandoned because of climate change? March 14, 2007 Climate change was one of the key factors in the abandonment of Cambodia's ancient city of Angkor, Australian archaeologists said today. The centuries-old city, home to more than 700,000 people and capital of the Khmer empire from about 900AD, was mysteriously abandoned about 500 years ago. It has long been believed the Khmers deserted the city after a Thai army ransacked it, but University of Sydney archaeologists working the site say a water crisis was the real reason it was left to crumble....

A short excerpt about the U.S. abandoning its friends in SE Asia. The letter from the Cambodian Prime Minister is poignant and a lesson for today. Click on the link.

The system allowed individuals and companies to use Iraq's UN-controlled oil-for-food programme to purchase Iraqi oil at concessionary prices and resell it, splitting their huge profits with Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader. Under the programme, the Iraqi regime had to sell its oil under international supervision but could choose its own middlemen. Those intermediaries, invariably sympathetic to Saddam and his money, paid for the oil into a United Nations account at prices agreed by Baghdad. That money was in turn used by the UN to buy food, medical supplies and other essential goods for Iraq. The purpose of the system...

When they found her last week, her father said, she was "bare-bones skinny" and shaking, scuttling like a monkey along the ground to snatch up grains of rice, her eyes "red like tigers' eyes". So when the first pictures of Rochom P'ngieng, the woman supposedly lost in the jungle for 18 years, emerged yesterday showing a calm and apparently healthy young woman rather than an emaciated, feral beast, the mystery surrounding her remarkable story deepened. Sal Lou, 45, a policeman from a remote village on the Cambodian-Vietnamese border, told a local newspaper on Thursday that his daughter, who disappeared, aged...

A Cambodian girl who disappeared aged eight has been found after living wild in the jungle for 19 years, police say. The girl is believed to be Rochom P'ngieng, who disappeared while tending buffalo on the edge of the jungle in remote northern Rattanakiri province. Her father says he has identified her through scars and will have DNA tests taken to prove she is his daughter. But the BBC's Guy De Launey in Phnom Penh says there are other possibilities to her identity. Members of Vietnamese hill tribes often cross into Cambodia through the jungles, he says. Many are seeking...

'Half-human half-animal' found By Sebastien Berger, South East Asia Correspondent Last Updated: 7:47pm GMT 18/01/2007 A Cambodian who emerged naked from the jungle to scavenge for food is thought to have lived in the wild for almost 20 years and to have learnt to live like an animal. Villagers in Rattanakiri province, close to the Vietnamese border, spotted the woman trying to steal food and after she was captured last Saturday a policeman identified her as his long-lost daughter. Her father, Sal Lou, 45, claimed he recognised Rochom P'ngieng by her facial features and a scar. She disappeared in 1988...

Prediction... Just wait and see, 1.5 million dead Cambodian resulting from Congress cutting off funds in Viet Nam are not enough for the Democrats. Now, 30 years later, the Democrat Congress will end up pulling out the rug from under Iraq. The blood on John Kerry's hands can now be passed on to another generation of "compassionate liberals".

Quite frequently, articles on the late Gerald Ford refer to him as the nation's "only unelected president." This is more than a bit misleading. There's no particularly good reason to distinguish Ford from other "accidental" presidents, the vice presidents who have assumed the presidency without being elected directly to it. Strictly speaking, no American president has been elected directly by the people: we vote only for delegates pledged to vote a certain way in the electoral college. Besides, Ford was in a certain sense elected. Knowing full well that he would likely take over the presidency from Richard Nixon, Congress...

Cambodia's National Animal Never Existed, Scientists Say Nicholas Bakalar for National Geographic News November 3, 2006 The national animal of Cambodia probably never really existed, a team of researchers says, at least in the scientific sense. Since 1960 the Southeast Asian nation has claimed the kouprey—an ox with spectacular crescent-shaped horns and a dewlap under its chin—as its national symbol. But after conducting genetic tests, a team of researchers from Chicago's Northwestern University has concluded that the animal was most probably not a unique species at all. The researchers, led by Northwestern biologist Gary J. Galbreath, sequenced the genes of...

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia --An associate of Angelina Jolie has said a lawsuit may be filed on behalf of the Hollywood actress against the head of a Cambodian aid group she alleges misappropriated her donations. "We are considering filing a lawsuit to recover the hundreds of thousands of dollars that is missing and which he was responsible for," Trevor Neilson, who is the philanthropic and political advisor for Jolie and partner Brad Pitt, told The Associated Press in New York Monday.

Today's Democrats are nothing like Presidents Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy, who with courage and decisive action kept on top of their jobs and aggressively confronted one national defense crisis after another .........

Today's Democrats are nothing like Presidents Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy, who with courage and decisive action kept on top of their jobs and aggressively confronted one national defense crisis after another. Jimmy Carter, elected during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, and (1) believing Americans had an inordinate fear of communism, (2) lifted U.S. citizens' travel bans to Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia and (3) pardoned draft evaders. President Carter (4) also stopped B-1 bomber production, (5) gave away our strategically located Panama Canal and (6) made human rights the central focus of his foreign policy. That led...

Residents of a village near Cambodia's capital staged a "Formula 1" race Friday to mark the end of the annual honoring of deceased relatives. The contest wasn't between cars, but water buffaloes...

STUNG TRENG, Cambodia — In the dense humidity of northern Cambodia, where canoes are the common mode of transportation, a foreman from a Chinese construction company directs local laborers to haul stones to the ramp of a nearly completed bridge. [...] China’s generosity to Cambodia has caught Washington’s attention. The United States Navy is planning a port visit to Sihanoukville early next year, a first since the Khmer Rouge seized power in 1975. In the Philippines, China is also making a big splash, offering an extraordinary package of $2 billion in loans each year for the next three years [...]...

New English Review One of the reasons that I worked for many years as an ill-remunerated doctor in a prison, and used earlier in my life to visit countries torn by civil war, is that extreme situations help to clarify what is important in life. I never arrived in the prison but I wondered how I would react to incarceration, whether I would be a stoic and retreat into myself or be someone who kicked against the traces and made trouble for the authorities just to assert my own continuing humanity. Of course, the prison in which I worked was...