Surf's Up and Genocide with Bob Dylan's Son in 90s Cambodia

 It was a normal busy day at the AFP Phnom Penh bureau. The generator was acting up so the door was open in a forlorn hope of a breeze. No breeze but suddenly commotion. The guard opens the front gage and a blue Toyota taxi drives in. Nothing really unusual about that. Bat the two surfboards on the roof. It was 1994 in Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge insurgency still raged throughout the country. Nobody was surfing and as we all know, Charlie don't surf. Two guys jump out of the taxi and start unpacking the boards. It's Chris Riley, a regular visitor to the office and a mate of his from LA. They walk in and Chris introduces me to his friend; "Kevin Barrington this is Sam Dylan." I look up from the keyboard where I am belting out a story to meet a deadline and I see this taciturn guy with curly hair and a reserved demeanour. Instantly I think this is Bob Dylan's son. I raise and eyebrow to Chris and he subtly nods. 

It's Dylan's son.

Jesse is there with Chris who is helping out Doug Niven, the AFP photographer, with a grim project.

As the Khmer Rouge revolution descended into violent paranoia and started to turn on itself cadre from local to ministerial level were dragged into the secret prison in Phnom Penh and tortured until they confessed their counter-revolutionary sins. Attached to their confessions was a B/W photograph. These were grim photos of condemned men and their wives and kids.

You can tell from the photos that the victims knew the fate that awaited them.

Some stare in terror, some in total bewilderment that the revolution they sacrificed their lives for was now going to kill them and some, not many, with a look of defiance.

These were spooky photos. They gave you a chill.

The negatives themselves however were rotting in the tropical heat and humidity. So Doug and Chris and various friend decided to clean them up and preserve them for history. Chris and Doug set up a non-profit for the task the Photo Archive Group

And they were doing this in the large AFP office where I was the  Cambodia correspondent.

They cleaned the negs, they printed them, they hung them up and eventually they produced a book of the harrowing photos.

They quickly ran out of wall space in the photographer's part of the ground floor bureau and so the victims started to slowly creep into my office.

There was no shortage of horror in early 90s Cambodia and my job ensured I remained aware of that. A traumatised people with easy access to the weapons of more made more plenty of grisly crime stories. Shoot outs were common and jilted lovers threw grenades the way others threw fists. And that was in the cities. Up country landmines ravaged limbs. Khmer Rouge atrocities were constant giving cover to rogue government units who kidnapped and killed with impunity. Come the dry season battles would break out in north and northwest Cambodia and the government tried to take advantage of the dry terrain to move troops and tanks up to try and seize Khmer Rouge bases. Faced with superior odds, the guerrillas would normally slip back into the jungle and launch ambushes and harry supply lines. Then when government troops got complacent and demoralised and their commanders were more concerned with grabbing loot than manning perimeters, the guerrillas would counterattack, generally with Thai military assistance, and would often rout government forces many times their size.

The stick didn't seem to be working well. The carrot fared better. Khmer Rouge units started to come out of the bush from 93 onwards. Then in 96 their former foreign minister and the one with the sharpest grasp of the goings on in the outside world, Ieng Sary did a deal with the government in Phnom Penh that he would stay on as governor of his resource rich region and could continue to sell timber and gems to the Thai military. All he had to do was to stop the several thousand battle hardened guerrillas in his zone from attacking the government. Instead they would plead allegiance to the government in Phnom Penh. This split the movement in two and was the writing on the wall for the ultra-nationalist movement. There was only the Anlong Veng faction left and even there Pol Pot was ailing and his comrades were turning on him. Still lethal but the Khmer Rouge was imploding. With Pol Pot's death 

But back to Jesse. He worked in Hollywood. Very successful by all account. He had just produced 

American Pie 3. 

He Takes Her Up The Isle.

Hmmm.

Daddy's writing Simple Twist of Fate. Son is taking her up the aisle.

Now I had a relatively famous father. A constitutional lawyer, a Supreme Court judge.

That was a bit of a burden.

But what is like when daddy steals the preserves of youth; when daddy is cooler than son.

Even Jacob may have thought he got free when he released his acclaimed Wallflowers album.

Then daddy drops Time Out of Mind.

So I feel for Jesse.

And I get on with my job.

Then a few days later the photographer finishes early and he and Chris and Jesse and a few others are having a vodka and a joint.

It's a slow news day so I join them.

And I, a huge Dylan fan, sit there thinking that it must be rough to be the son of a global icon etc but the counter voice in the head is going 'this is your show here, he is staying in your office,  you won't be disrespectful etc'.

So I have a drink. I take a toke.

And

"Jesse what's your old man up to these days?"

The room goes silent.

A second passes.

"Still touring," he replies.

Still touring.

Kind of perfect really.

DON'T FUCK WITH THE MAN FROM ATLANTA

Back in the day I used to use Coca Cola as a travel guide or a remote barometer eg how far beyond Coca Cola have we gone. Only ever made it to a day. And that was a Khmer Rouge controlled zone in northwest Cambodia in the early 90s. And the barrier was as much ideological as it was geographical. To get some serious clicks in, you really need to hit the Congo - like the dude who wrote the book retracing Stanleys' footsteps searching for Dr Livingstone. It was some weird trip. And truly bizarre, he noted, was the fact that it was the grandparents en route who remembered "progress" as in motorways and railroads. For the kids, the jungle was back impeding the progress of Coke. In a vivid scene, the author is hacking through the bush when "clang" - his machete hits metal, it's the Belgian rail track concealed underfoot. Trains probably brought more wine and mineral water. But the Coke would have rode in on the back of the new CIA friendly political landscape following the assassination of the Congo's new nationalist Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba. But back to Blood River and the author is taking to a canoe. He's going up river. It's dark. It's hot. The jungle screams. Sayonara Cola. We're way past the DuLong bridge and you can feel him. Sweat, decay, disease. And him. Yeah him. Kurtz. Kurtz has turned his back on Coca Cola. A pox on it and all its carbonated bubbles. Blood River, well worth reading. Anyhow as you'll see, putting a few days between you and the treacly stuff is not for the faint hearted. It's hardcore. For most people it's an academic idea, a folly The shit's ubiquitous and Musk plans vending machines on Mars. But talking about ideological barriers to Coke's conquest. I recall an Asian businessman opening up a Coca Cola bottling plant in Cambodia in the very early 90s as the last one - if the movie the Killing Fields is to be believed - was destroyed as the Khmer Rouge tightened its grip on the capital dooming Phnom Penh to inevitable fall. So here we are 28 years later and someone is trying to get the sweet black stuff flowing again. The main problem, however, was not the Khmer Rouge as Mr Coca Cola was not targeting the more remote provinces where the guerrillas were pridedominant. He was going for the population centres that the KR harried but didn't control. So security would be tight around the big towns and cities with checkpoints everywhere, manned by government soldiers who, if they saw any salary at all, were paid a pittance. So these bored underpaid grunts high on rice whiskey - the sort of shit that takes from sober straight to psychotic without pausing at drunk - and packing serious firepower would see the big bright red truck chugging towards them. Holy consumerism. It's Christmas for kids. And nirvana for Buddhists just to be culturally sensitive. It's the winning ticket. It's the shakedown of shakedowns. Captain America is here with his big fat chequebook. Hey you dumped all those bombs on us, now it's time to drop some dime and some dollar, Dolla, dolla, dolla. Love you long time. Break open a bottle. So we got a gang of kids with AKs. And they got Capt America, got him at gunpoint. Something has gotta give. Back in Phnom Penh Mr Coca Cola ends appealing to the then Prime Minister Hun Sen - himself former Khmer Rouge who bailed when the revolution started to eat its young and who just recently kindly handed over the reins of power to his young, his son, Hun Manet. "Stop the shakedowns," Coke pleaded. it was crippling, the show. was going flat. He threatened shutdowns or closure just as Cambodia was trying to sell peace and stability to investors. The pesky Khmer Rouge kept screwing with that script. So Cambodia Inc certainly did not need the added problem of rogue government soldiers shaking down businessmen especially if they had already been shook. They had paid already, paid on entry. So...Atlanta, we got a problem. But time is on the side of the bubbles. At this stage of the game, that sticky, messy shit is all over the wheels of time, if not progress. So money is on the bubbles cos it is coming. Better not be in the way. By the late 90s the Khmer Rouge has imploded. They were out of harmony, someone said. Then Pol Pot himself died in 98 and was cremated on a mound of old rubbish. It's all over now baby blue. It was a shabby swansong to a spectacular genocide and a low key but dedicated civil war. Coke is here now. The guerrillas as well as rogue government troops and shakedown artists would all be swept up and vacuumed up by the greater power of a gangsta capitalist government. Meet the new boss. He ain't talking Mao or Marx. Nah. he's just speaks fluent dollar. AK in one hand, Coca Cola bottle in the other. Two of the biggest icons of the 20th century. Click click. Now I know we would all like to teach the world to sing. 

In perfect harmony. 

Grow apple trees. 

And honey bees. 

Not to forget those snow White turtle doves. 

But sing along there suckers. 

Here's the real thing: 

Don't fuck with the man from Atlanta .