The
Burden of Cambodia's Past
David
P. Chandler
Introduction
For a historian writing of Cambodia in early 1998 there is
little reason for optimism about the country's future. A pessimistic--even
alarmist--stance seems justified by recent political events
as well as by the persistence of problems, such as Cambodia's
runaway birth rate, declining natural resources, short-sighted
environmental policies, and failure to enact and enforce effective
civil and criminal codes. In addition the last thirty years
have been bleak, and for Cambodians the weight of the recent
past in particular has been difficult to bear.
Almost twenty years after the end of the Khmer Rouge era (1975—79),
Cambodia's society and people continue to suffer from the
physical and psychological traumas of that period. In less
than four years, over 1.5 million Cambodians died from malnutrition,
overwork, misdiagnosed diseases, and executions. The real
number will never be known and could easily be higher. The
regime's anti-urban, anti-"bourgeois" purges decimated
Cambodia's small elite and destroyed the fragile trust that
existed among different segments of the population. Its dogmatic,
vengeful policies and ham-fisted administration hastened the
deaths of hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children.
Tens of thousands of others were executed as "class enemies"
or "spies." When the regime was driven from power,
fear of the Vietnamese, weariness, socialism, and the promise
of safety drove half a million survivors to seek asylum overseas.
Cambodia's institutions, not robust in the best of times,
were smashed or abandoned and had to be rebuilt from scratch.
Progress in the 1980s was extraordinary, considering the magnitude
of what had happened and the scarcity of resources available
to the new, Vietnamese-sponsored regime, isolated by the quarantine
imposed on it by allied nations hostile to Vietnam. At the
same time, the new government treated its opponents harshly,
and for several years Cambodia was closely monitored by Vietnamese
officials.1 In the meantime, tens of thousands
of Khmer Rouge soldiers, refugees, and dependents were encamped
along both sides of the Thai-Cambodian border. They posed
a baleful threat to Cambodia, inflicted thousands of casualties
on Vietnamese and Cambodian forces sent to oppose them, and
were a source of unfocused but severe anxiety for millions
of Khmer. The discredited Khmer Rouge and their unrepentant
leaders flourished for a decade under the patronage of China,
Thailand, and the United States. Calls from smaller nations
to bring Pol Pot and his colleagues to justice for their crimes
against humanity were repeatedly brushed aside in the interests
of realpolitik. Recent calls for a trial of the Khmer Rouge
leadership emanating from some of the people who stonewalled
the idea for many years may ring a little hollow.
Since the 1970s hundreds of thousands of land mines, strewn
across the landscape by the Khmer Rouge and their opponents,
have been another source of trauma. The mines have maimed
and killed thousands of people. They also have made thousands
of hectares of land uncultivable, roads hazardous, and marketing
goods a perilous undertaking. The mines continue to cripple
and kill dozens of Cambodians every month. Twenty years of
internecine warfare have left Cambodia with one of the world's
highest numbers of widows as heads of families. The psychic
damage of these wars and of the Khmer Rouge era on survivors,
certainly of mammoth proportions, can never be assessed.
Cambodia continues to stagger under the weight of a range
of fundamental problems that are rooted in the nation's location
and history. These problems--which collectively constitute
the heavy burden of Cambodia's past--include its physical
vulnerability, the deceptive lure of its history, and its
volatile political culture, which suffers from a bizarre blend
of tyranny and dependence. This chapter will address the sources
and major implications of these problems.
Cambodia's Historic Vulnerability
At least two of the obstacles to peace and progress in Cambodia--its
physical vulnerability and its location between Thailand and
Vietnam--are insuperable givens that have affected the country
for several hundred years. Cambodia's borders have always
made it vulnerable to invasion and accessible to immigrants.
Its limited resources--timber, fish, gemstones, and so on--can
be exploited relatively easily and quickly. Cambodia's geographic
vulnerability, along with the small size of its population,
heightens its people's sense of insecurity vis-à-vis
their neighbors and restricts Cambodian governments to a cautious,
evenhanded foreign policy.
Since the 1780s, if not earlier, Cambodia has been harassed,
dominated, protected, exploited, and undermined by Thai or
Vietnamese regimes. The involvement of these two countries
in Cambodia's affairs intensified in the early nineteenth
century as the newly installed dynasties in Bangkok and Hue
grew strong, competitive, and ambitious. In the 1830s and
1840s the wars fought between them on Cambodian soil devastated
the smaller kingdom and weakened its fragile institutions.
Had the French not imposed their protection in 1863, Cambodia
might have disappeared as an independent state, with its territory
divided into Thai and Vietnamese zones of influence, perhaps
by the Mekong.2
With French intervention, Thai influence diminished. Vietnamese
involvement persisted in another guise. France quarantined
Cambodia from Siam and tied the country's export economy to
that of southern Vietnam, which the French called Cochin China.
Ethnic Vietnamese had greater access than Cambodians to French-language
education and occupied favored positions in the protectorate's
civil service. "Indochina," made up of three segments
of Vietnam plus Laos and Cambodia, was a French concoction
dominated by its Vietnamese components. The idea that Vietnam,
with independence, might inherit a Vietnamese-controlled federation
was pleasing to many Vietnamese nationalists and to the Indochina
Communist Party (ICP) founded by Ho Chi Minh in 1930.
For a decade or so, the ICP pursued a purely Vietnamese agenda.
Until armed struggle against the French broke out in 1946,
very little was done to activate party branches in Laos or
Cambodia. As the struggle gathered momentum, the ICP's leaders
started to think in Indochinese terms, and Laos and Cambodia
became battlefields. Indigenous communist parties were founded
by the Vietnamese in both countries in 1951. Statutes for
them were drafted in Vietnamese. At the time most Lao and
Cambodian cadres were already fluent in the language. Cambodian
communists, like the Lao, were told that their struggle was
part of a wider international revolution and they would benefit
from ongoing Vietnamese guidance. Many young Cambodian recruits
enjoyed being empowered in this way.3
Cambodian nationalists, on the other hand, were suspicious
of Vietnamese intentions and sometimes fanned anti-Vietnamese
feelings among fellow Khmer. In altered form the tension between
such racially fueled rhetoric and the internationalist, protective
agenda that Vietnam fostered among Cambodian radicals engendered
the factionalism of the coalition government that existed
until July 1997.
Relations with Thailand in the colonial era were insignificant,
especially after 1907 when France made Thailand relinquish
the provinces of Battambang and Siem Reap, which Cambodia
had ceded in the l790s. In 1941, after France's defeat in
Europe, the Thai reoccupied most of the lost territory. They
were forced to give it up again five years later; but when
Cambodia became independent in 1954 Thailand was reluctant
to accept that its satellite of the 1840s was now a sovereign
state.
In the Norodom Sihanouk era (1941—1970) the Thai government
supported several plots for his overthrow. One was led by
Sam Rainsy's quixotic father, Sam Sary. Thai support for General
Lon Nol, who deposed Sihanouk in 1970, was halfhearted, despite
his anti-communist credentials. As good students of realpolitik,
the Thai maintained polite relations with the Khmer Rouge.
When the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia in 1979, Pol Pot and
several thousand Khmer Rouge troops found refuge on Thai soil.
The Thai government, by then allied with China, welcomed the
newcomers, hoping to please China and destabilize the Vietnamese
protectorate in Phnom Penh. Under Sino-Thai patronage, uncontested
by the United States, the Khmer Rouge rebuilt its army, attracted
international support (e.g., from the United Nations), and
waged war against the Vietnamese. In the 1990s the Thai—Khmer
Rouge alliance enabled Thai entrepreneurs to exploit Cambodian
gem and timber resources worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
With this unsavory, instrumentalist record, it seems likely
that Thailand's policies toward Cambodia in the future will
have a more harmful impact than any that might be developed
by Hanoi. Vietnam's once grandiose political interests in
Cambodia seem to have faded along with any dreams the Vietnamese
may have had of a socialist grouping of Indochinese states.
"Indochina" is dead. Vietnam, like Cambodia, now
seems more interested in becoming a good citizen of Southeast
Asia, sharing the benefits that may accrue from joining ASEAN.
At the same time Vietnamese exploitation of forests in eastern
Cambodia and immigration into the country will probably maintain
present levels or increase. In the process, ethnic tensions
are bound to erupt, intensified by demographic pressures and
fanned by irresponsible politicians.
Historical relations between Cambodia and its neighbors will
not determine Cambodia's future, but there are aftereffects.
Many Cambodians believe that Vietnam poses a greater threat
to Cambodia than Thailand and suggest that while Thai exploitation
is a case of "what you see is what you get" the
Vietnamese agenda is deeper and more devious. Evidence for
such beliefs is hard to locate but the suspicions remain in
force. "The Vietnamese are most dangerous," a Cambodian
recently told a friend of mine, "when they are invisible."
Military threats to Cambodian sovereignty have diminished
but Cambodia will never be militarily strong enough or populous
enough to withstand pressures from Vietnamese immigrants and
foreign entrepreneurs. In the process, its resources will
be wantonly depleted. From an environmental point of view,
the prospects for Cambodia's medium term future are bleak.
The Misleading Lure of the Past
The lure of the past in Cambodia, a second reason for caution,
has often misled many Cambodian leaders, and affects political
culture in Cambodia today. The problem stems from colonial
times. Beginning in the 1870's, French savants "discovered,"
mapped and dated hundreds of medieval Cambodian temples and
deciphered hundreds of medieval inscriptions written in Sanskrit
and Khmer. In the process they constructed a sumptuous, half—forgotten
history. Cambodians were informed that their ancestors had
built "Angkor" (as indeed they had) and that at
one time Cambodia had dominated a large part of mainland Southeast
Asia. In the same breath they were told that because of Cambodia's
subsequent "decline," they were incapable of governing
themselves.
The French claimed that the Khmer lacked the "vigor"
of the Vietnamese. Like the Lao, they were seen as "children"
who needed ongoing protection; what the Vietnamese "needed"
is less clear. In Cambodia, the volatile mixture of bestowed
grandeur and bestowed incompetence gave Cambodian nationalism
a peculiar, edgy character. Many monks, intellectuals and
political figures who found it easier to see themselves as
the heirs of Angkor (and thus superior to the supposedly "vigorous"
Vietnamese) than as inhabitants of a small Southeast Asian
colony that needed to live within its means and to remain
at peace with nearby powers.
Sihanouk, Lon Nol, and Pol Pot were prisoners of these illusions.
Convinced of Cambodia's incomparability, they assumed that
its native grandeur (enhanced by foreign help) could deliver
it from the "evil" of Vietnam. All three men embarked
on reckless foreign policies that drew on their folie de grandeur.
Sihanouk, the most realistic of the three, tried to outwit
the Vietnamese; Lon Nol and Pol Pot sought to defeat them
in battle. All their scenarios were applauded by obsequious
hangers-on and foreign patrons for whom Cambodia played a
small but helpful part in the global confrontation in which
its foreign patrons were wholeheartedly engaged.
Dependence on Foreign Patrons
Another reason for pessimism about Cambodia's future is the
perennial dependence of its leaders, until very recently,
on foreign powers. Some of the protection imposed by Thailand,
Vietnam, and France between the 1790s and 1953 was sought
by Cambodia's kings; some of it was thrust upon them. When
Cambodia emerged from its colonial cocoon, its leaders, emboldened
by what they thought was independence, embarked on a series
of relationships with less responsive patrons.
The process of patron seeking began under Sihanouk in 1955,
after he abdicated and became a private citizen. Fearful of
his neighbors, unsympathetic to the United States, flattered
by foreign statesmen, and egged on by his advisers, the prince
chose the Soviet bloc and China as Cambodia's new patrons
while prudently retaining friendly ties with France and accepting
aid from the United States.4 Helped by these
faraway powers he hoped to outwit so-called U.S. imperialism,
meet Cambodia's financial obligations, finesse the Vietnam
War, and remove the menace of socialism at home.
The game worked for ten years or so, but it was dangerous
to play. It contained elements of tragedy, too, for Sihanouk
seems to have been aware, as Lon Nol and Pol Pot were not,
that patrons make the rules. In all three cases, as throughout
Cambodia's history, no patron was willing to jeopardize national
interests on Cambodia's behalf. In 1970, despite Lon Nol's
expressions of neutrality, Cambodia was flung head first into
the Vietnam War. From then on Sihanouk's patrons dropped away.
China plotted to set up a Maoist regime in his place; the
Soviet bloc offered him nothing; and France merely proposed
political asylum. The Vietnamese communists, supposedly his
allies in 1970, soon reneged on the agreements they had made
with the prince to honor Cambodia's borders. The behavior
of patrons in duress should have been a warning to Lon Nol
and later to Pol Pot.
It is worth asking in hindsight, however, what else the beleaguered
ruler could have done. An alliance with his anti—communist
neighbors in the 1960s would have brought Cambodia into the
Vietnam War almost at once. A full-blown alliance with the
United States would have had the same effect, and one with
North Vietnam probably would have provoked a South Vietnamese
invasion.
Sihanouk's "neutral" policies, which stemmed from
patriotism, vanity, wishful thinking, and wariness, were not
as far-fetched or as mercurial as many cold warriors depicted
them at the time. The Thais gave the prince no reason to trust
them; neither did the warring governments of Vietnam. The
United States was unwilling to berate or discourage the anti—Sihanouk
policies of its anti—communist allies. Frightened of genuine
independence when he was militarily so weak, Sihanouk established
networks of dependence through which Cambodia hoped to gain
some freedom to maneuver. He compromised his country's sovereignty
but did not surrender it. He undermined his neutrality but
avoided bloodshed for a while. By 1968, if not sooner, he
had run out of room to maneuver.
Dependence also had compromised those who resisted the Sihanouk
regime. Those who took a conservative, nationalist perspective,
like Sam Sary, Dap Chhuon, and Son Ngoc Thanh, were soon entangled
in demeaning alliances with Cambodia's neighbors. Those who
hoped to install a socialist regime and eventually did so
were held in check by Sihanouk's police and by their indifferent
patrons in Hanoi.
When the hapless Lon Nol, came to power in 1970, he was even
more dependent. He had an almost mystical faith in the man
he called his "personal friend," Richard Nixon,
who had written him a few cautiously worded letters of support.
Lon Nol believed that Nixon personally could remove the threat
of the Vietnamese who he saw as non-Buddhist "unbelievers"
and thereby save the Cambodian "race." He also counted
on open-ended U.S. military support. In the process he failed
to notice that his so-called personal friends were disengaging
from the region, never to return, even as they promised their
heartfelt, continuing assistance.5
Dependency on China dogged the Khmer Rouge leaders after they
seized power in April 1975 and sought to escape the party's
long-standing subordination to Vietnam. The interplay between
communism and nationalism as well as their relation to foreign
patronage are such enduring features of Cambodian politics,
even today, that the background is worth examining.
In 1954, after the Geneva Peace Conference several thousand
resistance fighters and ICP members were evacuated to North
Vietnam, pending what their patrons told them would be the
collapse of the pro—Western regimes throughout Indochina.
Most of the evacuees remained in North Vietnam until 1970.
Some stayed even longer. During this time they were nominally
led by a veteran Cambodian revolutionary, Son Ngoc Minh, but
were not encouraged to develop national policies. Many took
Vietnamese revolutionary names, married Vietnamese women,
and were seconded to the Vietnamese army.
During the First Indochina War (1946-1954), Vietnamese patronage
seemed natural and rewarding to most of these Khmer revolutionaries,
and those who took up residence in North Vietnam did so willingly
enough. The ones who stayed behind to carry out the political
struggle, led by Tou Samouth, were not particularly antagonistic
toward Hanoi. For a time, they were optimistic about seizing
power. In 1954—55 the collapse of the pro-Western regimes
that had just been established in Indochina seemed a distinct
possibility to these experienced fighters. The collapse was
delayed by U.S. intervention in Laos and Vietnam and by Sihanouk's
dexterity, popular appeal, and security apparatus in Cambodia.
By 1956 radicals in Cambodia were on the defensive, cut off
from their patrons in Hanoi and harassed by Sihanouk's police.
It was at this point that the movement received an infusion
of new members returning from university study in France.
Several of these men and women--including Saloth Sar (alias
Pol Pot), Ieng Sary, and Son Sen--had been drawn toward communism
and joined the French Communist Party. When they came home,
most of them took up careers in teaching or the civil service
and joined the clandestine communist movement. As well-educated,
patriotic revolutionaries, they were unwilling to await developments
in Indochina or to take guidance from abroad. Political struggle
as enjoined by Hanoi offered these ambitious men and women
the unpalatable alternatives of inactivity, compromise with
Sihanouk's "feudal" regime, or arrest. At the same
time, because they lacked weapons, armed struggle was out
of the question.6
When Tou Samouth died under mysterious circumstances in 1962,
Saloth Sar became the leader of Cambodia's small, underground
Communist Party. Soon afterward he went into hiding with a
handful of colleagues, including Son Sen and Ieng Sary, in
"Office l00," a Vietnamese communist military base
that shifted back and forth across the Vietnamese-Cambodian
border. In the camp, where he lingered for nearly two years,
Saloth Sar and several other Khmer Rouge luminaries first
encountered hands—on Vietnamese patronage and protection.
Summoned to Hanoi for consultations in mid-1965, Saloth Sar
was told when he got there--after a four-month trek up the
Ho Chi Minh Trail--that his party's agenda was irrelevant,
amateurish, and chauvinistic. The Vietnamese document reporting
the event noted that Saloth Sar "said nothing" in
reply. After lingering for several months in Hanoi, Sar proceeded
to Beijing where he was warmly welcomed by party spokesmen
who were about to embark on the Cultural Revolution. His appreciative
new patrons told him that his notions of independent revolution
were more authentic than the wait-and-see policies suggested
by Vietnam.
Back in Cambodia Sar secretly maneuvered his followers into
a Maoist political position. He was careful to keep his fences
mended with Hanoi, knowing that when the time came to embark
on armed struggle, his party would need Vietnam's assistance.
The opportunity came in 1970 when Sihanouk fell from power.
Vietnamese help was crucial in arming the Cambodian communists,
training their forces, and destroying Lon Nol's army, but
at the end of 1972 the Vietnamese withdrew their troops as
part of their peace agreement with the United States.
Sar and his colleagues, who refused to join the cease—fire,
felt abandoned and betrayed. By this time, if not before,
they shared Lon Nol's racist antipathy toward Vietnam. Instead
of attacking Vietnam directly, however, they secretly purged
over a thousand "Hanoi Khmer" who had come from
Vietnam in 1970 to help them.
The cease-fire meant, in the words of CIA Director William
Colby, that Cambodia was now "the only game in town."
For the first nine months of 1973 the country was subjected
to intense U.S. aerial bombardment. The bombing had the intended
effect of digging a trench around the capital and thus postponed
a Khmer Rouge victory. (It took the Khmer Rouge two more years
to win the war.) But it also inflicted thousands of civilian
casualties, intensified the fervor of Khmer Rouge soldiers,
and some have argued, hastened the ascent of Sar's faction
within the Cambodian Communist Party. Only the last of these
effects is subject to debate.7 After dropping
half a million tons of bombs in a campaign where American
lives were not endangered, the U.S. Congress called it off.
In spite of choosing "independence" and "self-mastery"
as their mottoes, the Khmer Rouge, when they came to power,
could not stand on their own feet--especially after 1977,
when Sar, now going by the name Pol Pot, chose to wage war
against Vietnam. Once the Khmer Rouge attacks had been launched,
the regime needed open-ended Chinese assistance to survive.
As previous Cambodian rulers had discovered to their detriment,
however, the patronage turned out to be limited and contingent.
Pol Pot's regime collapsed when his patrons in Beijing found
that the risks of supporting him militarily had become too
high. Luckily for the Khmer Rouge, however, China's patronage
continued after 1979, with Beijing letting go of its clients
only in 1990, in the run-up to the Paris Peace Accords.
In early 1979, in the wake of Vietnam's invasion, Hanoi established
a protectorate over Cambodia that shared many characteristics
with the French protectorate, including a somewhat altered
"civilizing mission" whereby the deserving but "childlike"
Cambodians were trained to honor and respect the Vietnamese.
Once again, however, foreign patronage proved costly for the
patrons, and in 1989 the Vietnamese withdrew. After a transitional
period (1990—92) in which Hun Sen rose to power, the Paris
Peace Accords ended the era of foreign patronage for Cambodia,
but a final flurry of protection--a sort of encore after two
centuries of dependency--occurred in 1992—93 under the United
Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC).
In 1993, in the aftermath of the UNTAC-brokered elections,
the newly established Cambodian government found itself without
a political patron for the first time in centuries, although
substantial aid from a range of donors continued to pour into
the country. In the mid-1990s the economic dependence of Cambodia's
political elites on selected foreign powers, including Thailand,
Taiwan, and Malaysia, seems to have replaced political dependence,
but the national and political aspects of patronage have become
less important. From an ecological and economic point of view,
however, the exploitation of Cambodia by outsiders shows no
signs of letting up.
Political Culture
Cambodia's political future also might be impaired by its
enduring political culture. For hundreds of years absolute
rulers have confronted factional opponents, and factions have
confronted one another, scrambling to serve their own interests
in a volatile, high-stakes game. A winner-takes-all political
culture based on endemic distrust has impeded the development
of a civil society, stifled free expression, encouraged cronyism
and violence, and exacerbated people's tendency to distrust
and fear those in power. Seen in this light, Cambodia's strong
man, Hun Sen, despite his modern trappings, remains very much
a traditional political leader.
In classical Cambodia power was thought of as a finite, expendable
commodity.8 The verb "to govern" was the
same as the verb "to consume." There were no legal
constraints on the conduct of those at the top. Similarly
there was no recourse other than flight or rebellion for people
who were exploited. The Cambodian legal code, such as it was,
was designed to protect the rich and powerful, particularly
the king, against crimes of lèse-majesté.
Under the protectorate, the French froze Cambodia's institutions,
including the potentially absolute monarchy, in place and
did little to develop the rule of law. When Sihanouk took
power in 1955, he paid little attention to laws that impeded
his power and rode roughshod over Cambodia's constitution.
Political prisoners, held without trial, were frequently executed.
None of Sihanouk's successors (nor any of their opponents,
for that matter) have felt that they owed much to the electorate
or that power was something to be shared or balanced in the
interests of the country. Instead Lon Nol, Pol Pot, Hun Sen,
and Prince Ranariddh have tended to identify the welfare of
the nation with themselves and have seen dissent as tantamount
to treason.
Over the years most Cambodian politicians and officeholders
have focused their attention on neutralizing their enemies.
In modern times none has gone so far along these lines as
the Khmer Rouge. Following a Maoist model Pol Pot and his
colleagues allowed political warfare to direct Cambodian life.
The colossal costs of this fiery experiment are still being
measured. One of its very few benefits was to make Cambodians
aware that politics was something that impinged on their daily
lives and demanded participation. Most Khmer had traditionally
associated politics with rich people, corruption, and exploitation;
they had not had a voice in political decisions or any power
over the nation's political life. The depredations of the
Khmer Rouge, for one thing, made it easier for people in the
1990s to conceptualize tyranny, lawlessness, and human rights.9
Very few Cambodian leaders (Sihanouk in his heyday was an
exception) have thought it necessary to be popular, flexible,
or responsive. By and large, injustice and government have
gone hand in hand. The people's loyalty is supposed to be
unquestioning; power is its own reward. No ruler allowed himself
to be doubted. Very few have listened to advice, and none
before Pol Pot questioned the distribution of power among
haves and have-nots. Pol Pot's response to these imbalances
was to kill the haves and empower the have-nots while divesting
everyone of possessions. That he felt himself uniquely endowed
to do so placed him firmly within Cambodian political culture.
The inequities and corruption in Cambodian society under Sihanouk
and Lon Nol, combined with the buffeting Cambodia took from
the cold war, were enough to draw thousands of Cambodians--especially
intellectuals and young, poor peasants--into the ranks of
the communist movement, which, when it took power, swiftly
became the least responsive, most unaccountable, and least
transparent regime in Cambodia's history.
Similarly widespread resentment against government abuses
in the early 1990s, rather than the vague and nostalgic programs
offered by the opposition, led millions of voters in 1993
to vote against an armed, incumbent regime for the first time
in Cambodian history. Ironically the election produced a form
of government (i.e., a coalition), which, while ineffective
in many instances and inimical to Cambodia's political culture,
postponed the outbreak of civil war, made the losing party
somewhat more responsive to people's material needs than it
had been, and for a time provided a facade of stability sufficient
to placate most donor nations. Since the July 1997 coup these
positive aspects of coalition government have all but disappeared,
and the two most prominent factions have embarked on a confrontation
aimed to eliminate the other. Cambodian history seems intent
on perpetually repeating itself as a tragicomic farce.
There seems to be a contrast in many Cambodians' minds between
politics as practiced and an imagined form of government based
on pure-mindedness, detachment, and justice. In precolonial
times, the savior was someone thought to be endowed with merit
and magical powers. More recently the ideal government leader
has usually been construed as someone personable, detached,
and incorruptible. In the 1960s Khieu Samphan's reputation
for incorruptibility and responsiveness was a major contributor
to his sub-rosa popularity among students, intellectuals,
and some of the rural poor. During the same period Pol Pot
was admired by his students and colleagues--and, if defectors
can be believed, was still admired in the 1990s--for his smoothness,
patriotism, and kindly manner, which contrasted sharply to
the relentless egotism of Cambodians then in power.
Conclusion: Future Prospects
Hun Sen's July 1997 coup d'état averted the possibility
of civil war but also may have foreclosed the possibilities
for pluralism in Cambodian political life. Given the power
equation in Cambodia today, there seems little likelihood
of increased harmony and compromise on the part of those in
power or increased freedom of expression and association for
ordinary people. The prospects for a genuinely free and fair
election in 1998 are as dim as the prospect that the current
regime will feel it necessary to reform to gain the voters'
trust. In fact, as the country drifts toward elections, and
as it loses the favored position it enjoyed with many donor
nations, it seems likely that violent incidents like the March
1997 grenade attack will occur whenever anyone in power, especially
Hun Sen, feels threatened. Outbursts of violence against the
Vietnamese minority cannot be ruled out, although this is
less likely than in the recent past. Finally while it is also
possible that the armed forces of the former coalition partners
will engage in a full-scale conflict--using surrogates enrolled
from the ranks of defecting Khmer Rouge--scattered confrontations
are more likely than a full-scale civil war.
Are there any countervailing forces in sight? It is possible
that modernization, which is impacting so unevenly on Cambodia
today, will provide moderating effects through increased access
to information, education, and income for larger segments
of the population. There are also signs of restiveness, courage,
and resiliency among journalists, workers, and nongovernmental
organizations pressing for change in, among others, the fields
of human rights, industrial relations, and the rights of women.
So far the government's response to these pressures has lurched
between violence and indifference, but in spite or because
of this nongovernmental organizations, their allies, and the
causes they work for are increasingly gaining respect.
Perhaps changes will come about as a result of pressure, discreetly
applied, from donor nations, although it is impossible to
predict what form this pressure might take, the conditions
under which it might be applied, or how Hun Sen and Prince
Ranariddh might respond.
There are also grounds for some optimism about Cambodia's
future, but not much, in what appears to be the disappearance
of the Khmer Rouge as a political or military threat. As this
is written, the effects of the Khmer Rouge implosion are impossible
to predict, but the disappearance of Pol Pot from the nation's
psyche may be that baleful figure's first act of kindness
to the Cambodian people.
In the short term, however, it is difficult to see how the
men and (much more rarely) women who have profited enormously
from Cambodia's violent and autocratic political culture so
far, and who cling so tenaciously to power, would be willing
to see the culture altered. Still such alterations are urgent
from the point of view of delivering equity to the Cambodian
people, who are, as so often in the past, poorly governed
but stubbornly refuse to be "consumed."
Notes
1. See Eva Mysliwiec, Punishing the Poor:
The International Isolation of Kampuchea (Oxford: Oxfam, 1988),
and Michael Vickery, Kampuchea: Politics, Economics and Society
(London: Frances Pinter, 1986). Hun Sen, Cambodia's second
prime minister, gained power in this period. He is fluent
in Vietnamese.
2. For a discussion of this period, see David
Chandler, A History of Cambodia, 2d ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview
Press, 1996), pp. 118—32.
3. Author's interviews in Phnom Penh (January—February
1997) with five Cambodians who joined the ICP and spent the
period 1954—70 in North Vietnam.
4. For discussions of Cambodia in this period,
see Roger Smith, Cambodia's Foreign Policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University, 1965), and David Chandler, The Tragedy of Cambodian
History (New Haven: Yale University, 1991).
5. For a perceptive political history of the
Lon Nol period, see Justin Corfield, Khmers Stand Up! (Clayton,
Australia: Monash University, 1995). The best discussion of
U.S. policy in that era remains William Shawcross's Sideshow:
Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1979).
6. For a persuasive study of Vietnamese-Cambodian
relations between 1946 and 1975, and documentary support for
this part of the essay, see Thomas Englebert and Christopher
Goscha, Falling Out of Touch (Clayton, Australia: Monash University,
1994). See also Ben Kiernan, How Pol Pot Came to Power (London:
Verso, 1985).
7. See William Shawcross, Sideshow, and Ben
Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime (New Haven: Yale University, 1996).
8. For an interesting discussion, see Benedict
Anderson, "The Idea of Power in Javanese Culture,"
in Language and Power (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1990),
pp. 17—77.
9. For a discussion of political culture in
the UNTAC era, see Steve Heder and Judy Ledgerwood, eds.,
Propaganda, Politics, and Violence in Cambodia (Armonk, NY:
M.E. Sharpe, 1996), especially pp. 114—83.
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