A Western diplomat in Phnom-Penh recently described the Khmer Rouge as "the most mysterious of the world's successful revolutionary movements." Few if any Westerners know which of the principal elements in the insurgent force—Cambodian nationalist, Cambodian Marxist or doctrinaire Communist—will emerge triumphant. Moreover, their leaders are enigmatic figures whose views and personalities, for the most part, are far less understood than those of their political counterparts in Hanoi, Moscow or Peking.
A notable exception is exiled Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the titular head of the Khmer insurgents and unquestionably the most popular man in Cambodia to this day. He is "chief of state" of the Royal Government of National Union of Cambodia—acronymically known in French as GRUNK—the shadow government nominally based in Peking. Most observers agree that Sihanouk has little power within the Khmer Rouge organization. If he should ever return to Cambodia as head of state, it would be as a figurehead who might serve to unite the Cambodian people around a Khmer Rouge government. Sihanouk himself has acknowledged this fact and repeatedly declared that in the event of a Khmer Rouge victory, he might spend eleven months of the year abroad, serving as a traveling good-will ambassador on behalf of the new government.
Undone by Popularity. Sihanouk's "Deputy Premier" and commander-in-chief of the Khmer Rouge fighting forces is Khieu Samphan, 43; he is the most prominent figure in the movement. Born in Cambodia's Svay Rieng province, Samphan studied from 1954-59 in France, where he earned a doctorate in economics at the University of Paris. In 1962, after Sihanouk brought him into the government as Secretary of State for Commerce, Samphan became a hero to young Cambodian intellectuals who opposed the corruption of the existing government. He drove to work on a motorbike and after long hours at the office would go home to work at night in a small upstairs room at his mother's house, while other ministers wallowed in the pleasures of life in the easygoing capital.
In a sense, Samphan's popularity was his undoing. Sihanouk forced him to resign in 1963, charging him with incompetence. Three years later, though, Samphan was elected to the National Assembly. One April evening in 1967, during a peasant uprising in Battambang province that had set off an antileftist witch hunt in the capital. Khieu Samphan simply vanished. According to his family, he told his mother that he was going out for a breath of fresh air before dinner and never came back.
Two other Khmer Rouge leaders have backgrounds similar to Samphan's:
Information Minister Hu Nim, 42, and Minister of the Interior Hou Youn, 45. Both studied in Paris in the 1950s, served in Sihanouk's Cabinet briefly in the 1960s, fell out with the Prince and escaped into exile. Together, the three came to be known as the "three ghosts" of Cambodian politics because it was long believed that Sihanouk had ordered them executed in 1967 for alleged complicity in the Battambang uprising. But in May 1970, two months after Sihanouk's overthrow, the three announced, from somewhere in Cambodia, their support of Sihanouk's new "national front," which opposed the new government of President Lon Nol.