7 The 100 Most Influential World Leaders of All Time 7

After leaving office, Carter served as a sort of diplomat

without portfolio in various conflicts in a number of coun-

tries. His efforts on behalf of international peace and his

highly visible participation in building homes for the poor

through Habitat for Humanity established in the public

mind a much more favourable image of Carter than had

been the case during his presidency. Carter also became a

prolific author, writing on a variety of topics. Two books

on the Middle East were Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid

(2006) and We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land: A Plan That

Will Work (2009).

Pol Pot

(b. May 19, 1925, Kompong Thom Province, Camb.—d. April 15, 1998,

near Anlong Veng, along the Cambodia-Thailand border)

P

ol Pot was a Khmer political leader whose totalitar-

ian regime, which lasted from 1975 to 1979, imposed

severe hardships on the Cambodian people. His radical

Communist government forced the mass evacuations of

cities, killed or displaced millions of people, and left a leg-

acy of brutality and impoverishment.

The son of a landowning farmer, Saloth Sar, as he was

originally named, was sent at age five or six to live with an

older brother in Phnom Penh, where he was educated. A

mediocre student, he failed the entrance examinations

for high school and so instead studied carpentry for a year

at a technical school in Phnom Penh. In 1949 he went to

Paris on a scholarship to study radio electronics. There

he became involved with the French Communist Party

and joined a group of young left-wing Cambodian nation-

alists who later became his fellow leaders in the Khmer

Rouge. In France he spent more time on revolutionary

activities than on his studies. His scholarship was cut short