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 Conflict

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 Conflict
Journeys through war and terror
in Southeast Asia

Nelson Rand
Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders of material
reproduced in this book. In cases where these efforts have been
unsuccessful, the copyright holders are asked to contact the publishers
directly.

Published in 2009 by Maverick House Publishers.

Maverick House, Office 19, Dunboyne Business Park, Dunboyne,

Co. Meath, Ireland.
Maverick House Asia, Level 43, United Centre, 323 Silom Road,
Bangrak, Bangkok 10500, Thailand.

info@maverickhouse.com
http://www.maverickhouse.com

ISBN: 978-1-905379-54-5

Copyright for text © 2009 Nelson Rand.

Copyright for all pictures Nelson Rand.
Typesetting, editing, layout, design © Maverick House.

54321

The paper used in this book comes from wood pulp of managed forests.
For every tree felled, at least one tree is planted, thereby renewing natural
resources.

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or
by any means without written permission from the publisher, except by a
reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review
written for insertion in a newspaper, magazine or broadcast.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
 To Tyrants and Oppressors:
Lest we forget what threatens your sound sleep.
 Contents

Acknowledgements 9

Preface 11

Chapter 1: Cambodia:
The death of the Khmer Rouge 17

Chapter 2: Burma:
T h e K a r e n ’s e n d l e s s s t r u g g l e  69

Chapter 3: Laos and Vietnam:

T h e p l i g h t o f A m e r i c a ’s f o r g o t t e n a l l i e s  137

Chapter 4: Thailand:
Te r r o r i n t h e S o u t h  209

 Acknowledgements

The idea for this book began in March 2007 from a

meeting I had in Bangkok with Jean Harrington, the
managing director at Maverick House Publishers.
Many thanks go to Jean for her advice, encouragement
and support, without which this book may have never
been written.
During the writing process, several people provided
me with valuable feedback, input, and editorial advice,
for which I am very grateful. Many thanks go to
George McLeod, Ross Milosevic, Oliver Talbot, Russ
Iger, Paul Murray, Robert Petit and Matt Wheeler.
Countless other people deserve thanks, many of
whose names I don’t even know. From guides who
smuggled me into forbidden areas, to people who let
me document their suffering, to soldiers who watched
my back in battle: thank you for sharing your world—
and at times your nightmares—and thank you for
showing me the resilience of the human spirit.

9
 P r e fac e

Driven by youthful ambition and an addiction for

adventure, in January 1998 I travelled to the northwest
Cambodian town of Samrong in search of war. Just
north of the town, government forces were battling
Khmer Rouge guerrillas and troops loyal to the
recently deposed first prime minister, Prince Norodom
Ranariddh, who was ousted the previous July in a coup
by his co-prime minister, Hun Sen.
Immediately upon arriving in Samrong on
motorbike from the tourist town of Siem Reap, I met
a Japanese war photographer named Toru Yokota who
would give me my first and only lesson in combat
photography. We ordered some food at an outdoor
restaurant and he began to brief me on the current
situation when we were interrupted by the sound of
an incoming mortar. Instinctively, I hit the ground for
cover, and by the time I looked back up, all I could see
was Toru grabbing his camera bag and running as fast
as he could towards the explosion. While the mortar
landed off in the distance, Toru’s lesson had a direct

11
 Conflict

impact: in combat photography, as in life, the reward

lies not in turning away from the fire, but in going
towards it.
This book spans a decade, beginning in Cambodia
in 1998 during the final months of the country’s long
and torturous civil war. Government forces had just
taken over the last Khmer Rouge stronghold of Anlong
Veng when I arrived at the town during late April with
the aim of launching my career as a journalist. Drawing
mainly on my two trips to Anlong Veng in April and
June 1998, chapter one focuses on the collapse of one
of the most brutal revolutionary movements the world
has ever known.
In August 2000 I moved to the Thai town of Mae
Sot on the Thai-Burmese border in order to document
a little known war between ethnic guerrillas of the
Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) and one
of the world’s most repressive military regimes. Over
the next three years, I made several trips into Karen
State with the KNLA, accompanying them into
battle on numerous occasions and witnessing the
endless struggle of Karen civilians trying to survive
the onslaught of brutality being waged against them
by Burmese government forces. This is the subject of
chapter two.
In April 2004, after much planning and organizing,
I visited a remote group of Hmong guerrillas and
their family members in northern Laos who had been
holding out against Lao government forces since 1975.
In one of the most tragic legacies of the Vietnam War,
about 15,000 Hmong soldiers who fought in a CIA-
backed secret army in the 1960s and 70s fled to the

12
 Conflict

jungles with their family members after the communist

takeover of the country in 1975. Some are still living
there, desperately struggling to survive as government
forces continue to hunt them down. Like the Hmong,
many of Vietnam’s Montagnards also fought alongside
US forces during the Vietnam War, only to later be
betrayed and forgotten. About 10,000 Montagnard
soldiers fled into the jungle in 1975 with promises of
US support and fought on for another 17 years. While
no longer engaged in an armed struggle, Vietnam’s
Montagnards continue to be repressed and persecuted
by their government. Between 2001 and 2003 I made
several trips to Vietnam’s Central Highlands and to
Cambodia in order to document the plight of the
Montagnards, including those who had recently fled
Vietnam to seek sanctuary in Cambodia. The tragic
betrayal and abandonment of the Hmong of Laos and
of Vietnam’s Montagnards—two of America’s most
loyal wartime allies ever—is the subject of chapter
three.
The final chapter of this book is set in southern
Thailand where government security forces are
battling an Islamic insurgency. This chapter is mainly
set in March 2008 when I spent a month in the area,
including a week in which I was embedded with a
company of the Thai army.
While this book draws heavily on my personal
experiences, the aim is not to tell my story, but the
story of these conflicts and of the people caught up
in them. It is by no means a general book about war
in Southeast Asia (for there are many conflicts that I
haven’t covered here), but rather, it is a book about

13
 Conflict

the particular conflicts of Southeast Asia that I have

journeyed through.
Nelson Rand,
Bangkok, April 2009.

14
 Chapter 1

Cambodia:
t h e D e at h o f t h e K h m e r R o u g e
 Cambodia

It was April 1998 and one of the most brutal

revolutionary​ movements the world has ever known
was on the verge of collapse. Mass defections and a
concerted military offensive by the Royal Cambodian
Armed Forces were threatening to do to the Khmer
Rouge what the radical movement had done to
Cambodia: destroy it.
Pol Pot, the tyrannical despot who had led the
communist group until he was ousted in June 1997,
was dead by the middle of the month. All that was left
of his movement was a dwindling band of committed
insurgents holed up in the rugged mountains straddling
the Thai-Cambodian border, just north of the town of
Anlong Veng.
Since the early 1980s, Anlong Veng and its
surrounding area had been a Khmer Rouge enclave
and one of its main guerrilla bases from which it tried
to retake Cambodia and launch a second revolution.
Few outsiders had ever made it to Anlong Veng, and
of those who did, several never returned. While some

19
 Conflict

journalists had made it to the town since July 1997, it

was still shrouded in mystery that April as government
forces were battling to take control. It was both a town
under fire and a town undergoing change; history was
unfolding in the flames of war. It was a town I had to
get to, and a fire I had to see.

I arrived in Cambodia about a week after Pol Pot’s

death on 15 April 1998, with the aim of traveling to
Anlong Veng to launch my career as a journalist. This
wasn’t my first trip to Cambodia or my first time to the
frontlines of its civil war. I had been living in Vietnam
for much of the past year, studying Vietnamese and
navigating my way through a doomed relationship,
and often visited Cambodia—lured by its danger,
excitement, political instability and, ultimately, by its
war.
Cambodia pulled me, while Vietnam pushed me
away. So when I finished my final exams at Vietnam