Like most of the men in former Khmer Rouge areas, 38-year-old Lao Bun Sieng has put down his rifle and turned his hand to business to make a living in these recently silenced battlefields.
A Khmer Rouge soldier for more than 15 years, Lao Bun Sieng said life is better since the 1996 peace was brokered and his small filling station in Malai town is doing well.
Married with two children, Lao Bun Sieng, who is a nephew of former Khmer Rouge Leader Nuon Chea, said the important thing now is making money.
His only regret is fighting for so long.
“I’d be very rich, 100 percent richer than I am now if the fighting had stopped earlier,” he said. “I should have done it sooner.”
“The Khmer Rouge always said, ‘Victory over Phnom Penh first. Then you can make money.’ Now the commanders have changed their minds… [Fighting] was such a waste of time. If we had taken that time to make business we would be 100 percent better.”
While he enjoys a growing business, he said the new-found profits from peace are not being equitably distributed across former rebel territories, leaving many disillusioned and unhappy.
And none more so than in Pailin, he said.
“The commanders…had enough [during the fighting]. We only had food and clothing. Nothing more. Now the commanders are rich from timber and gemstones,” he said. In the developing economies of former Khmer Rouge zones, the leaders do not remember the sacrifices of the people and now only the very fittest, well connected, are benefiting, he claimed. “No one thinks about the war anymore,” he said.
Three decades of fighting left many people dead, but there are few good reasons why those people died, Lao Bun Sieng reflected.
“No one thinks about the war anymore. The people who died got only death,” he said.
