The Best of Cambodia & Laos

As Hun Sen darkly quipped years later,
UNTAC should really stand for “United
Nations Takes AIDS to Cambodia.” Originally
the Khmer Rouge were included in
the peace process following the delusional
and criminal logic that caused the international
community to support them
through the ’80s. They soon realized that
this would not suit their ends (largely
because no one would vote for them) and
they returned to their jungle bases and
went back to what they knew best—killing
and war.
The election took place in 1993 and
Sihanouk’s FUNCINPEC party very narrowly
won the vote. This didn’t suit Hun
Sen, who remains to this day a Machiavellian
strongman. The UN, in its wisdom,
caved in to Hun Sen, appointing him and
FUNCINPEC’s Prince Norodom Ranariddh
as joint prime ministers. They both
had armies, they both wanted exclusive
power, and they both hated each other
with a vengeance.
Meanwhile, the UN left town thinking
Cambodia was now a job well done. All
that effort and money left Cambodia in
continued chaos, and once again the wider
world had failed ordinary Cambodians.
The inevitable happened—conflict
between the two prime ministers worsened
and the Khmer Rouge went on the
offensive yet again.
THE END OF THE
KHMER ROUGE
The key to the beginning of the end came
from the Khmer Rouge itself. In 1996,
Ieng Sary, former head of the Cambodian
Cercle Marxiste and Pol Pot’s foreign minister,
broke with Pol Pot’s center. Ieng’s
forces were in the Western town of Pailin
where they were becoming very rich as a
result of logging and gem mining. Pol
Pot’s center was based in the northern
area of Anlong Veng, and they felt that not
enough of the money was making it
their way. In the end, what broke this
murderous Marxist movement was a
squabble about cash. The issue of Khmer
Rouge defections exacerbated the already
fragile peace between the two prime ministers
as both attempted to attract enough
former Khmer Rouge forces to their own
cause and wipe out their rival.
This came to a head in 1997 when Hun
Sen seized absolute power in what was
wrongly called a “coup,” but was actually
simply a stand-up fight and settling of
scores. FUNCINPEC forces were defeated
and Prince Ranariddh fled.
Meanwhile things started to look bleak
for Pol Pot. He murdered his old and close
friend, Son Sen (and his wife and children)
by having them run over by a tank.
Pol Pot was in turn ousted by his own
brutal one-eyed lieutenant, Ta Mok,
dubbed “The Butcher.” Ta Mok, quite
rightly, probably thought he was next and
decided to get in his retaliation first. Pol
Pot was convicted in a Khmer Rouge show
trial and put under house arrest. He died
in a malarial jungle hovel in 1998 and his
body was burned on tires with no autopsy
being done. A long and painful era of
Cambodian history died with him.
A MEASURE OF
STABILITY
There were elections in 1998 and in 2003.
Hun Sen and the CPP won both times
and his grip on power remains almost
total. Whether that’s a good thing or not is
often a point of debate, but the fact is that
since 1998 the hard-won stability that
now exists has benefited ordinary Cambodian
people.
There have been problems. In 2003, an
enraged mob torched the Thai embassy
over a misquote from a Thai soap opera
star claiming that Angkor Wat was Thai.
She never said it, but the Thai ambassador
had to flee for his life as the mob rampaged
through Phnom Penh, burning
anything that smacked of Thailand. The
Thais simply closed their borders and
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CAMBODIA IN DEPTH 2
LOOKING BACK