Third World Quarterly, Vol 18, No 4, pp 673± 686, 1997

Development in a wartorn society:

what next in Cambodia?
OZAY MEHMET

The publication of Cambodia’ s First Socio-economic Development Plan, (FSEDP)

1996± 2000 is a signi® cant event representing a major step in the country’ s
re-emergence from Pol Pot’ s Killing Fields and long years of civil war.
Moreover, the document is, technically speaking, a competent, realistic product,
crafted by Cambodia’ s donors, to put that unfortunate country back on the road
to reconstruction and sustainable development. Technical quality aside, however,
Cambodia is bedevilled by deep-rooted political, cultural and historical problems
which cast serious doubts about future prospects. Indeed, precisely because these
problems remained unresolved, and in particular because the donors assume that
aid alone can save Cambodia, the country could, once again, slide back into
chaos and civil war. Before sustainable development can take hold in Cambodia,
its history, culture and political legacies need to be analysed realistically, and the
lessons of the past must be effectively incorporated into its development
strategy. This paper is a small contribution towards that end.
The paper is organised in ® ve parts. After this introduction, part two brie¯ y
highlights the principal targets and priorities of the FSEDP 1996± 2000. Part three
is a brief historical survey to provide the bare-bones context for the genocide of
1975±79, dealing with its external and internal causes. The fourth part presents
an analysis of Cambodia’ s present coalition politics, which contain the same
seeds of disunity that led to the civil war in the early 1970s and the tragedy of
Pol Pot. The ® nal part concludes with a brief review of challenges and future
prospects.

Cambodia’s development plan 1996± 2000: a good technocratic job

Structurally, the Cambodian economy is a simple, traditional rice economy.
There is an extremely small manufacturing and a rather top-heavy services
sector. No less than 44.6% of the 1995 GDP originated in agriculture, rice
farming being the most important activity, followed by livestock and rubber. In
the secondary sector, construction is by far the largest subsector, while in
services, wholesale and retail trading accounted for 14.7% of GDP (Table 1).
According to the plan, the Cambodian economy grew rather impressively
during 1990±95, registering an average annual growth of 5.9%. Most of the
growth occurred in the modern sectors, especially in construction and the hotel

Ozay Mehmet is at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By
Drive, Ottawa, Canada K1S 5B6

0143-6597/97/040673-14 $7.00 Ó 1997 Third World Quarterly 673

 OZAY MEHMET

TABLE 1.
Structure and growth of Cambodian GDP, 1990± 95

Average annual Share in

Sector growth (%) 1995a

Agriculture 2.6 44.6

Crops 2.2 25.4
Rice 2 0.1 14.8
Rubber and others 7.1 10.6
Livestock 3.8 12.7
Fisheries 0 3.8
Forestry 5.2 2.7
Industry 10.9 18.7
Mining and quarrying 7.4 1.2
Manufacturing 7 7.4
Electricity and water 9.9 0.2
Construction 15.2 9.6
Services 8.3 36.7
Transport and communication 10.8 3.2
Wholesale and retail 9.7 14.7
Hotels and restaurants 20.8 0.6
Administration, education and health 3.2 3.9
Home ownership 6.6 6.7
Other 8.8 7.3
Gross domestic product 5.9 100

a
Projected.
Source: FSEDP, p 86, Table 7.2, p 103, Table 8.2.

and restaurant subsectors. By contrast, agriculture lagged and the all-important

rice economy declined in absolute terms.
What are the plan’ s priorities and strategies? Table 2 provides the sectoral
allocation which is particularly important in specifying the broad development
priorities of Cambodia over the next ® ve years. The plan places top priority on
poverty reduction, human resource development and employment generation
through the private sector. The high proportion of public investment for
education and training (11%), with 75% earmarked for rural areas, is only
second to infrastructural investments to rebuild the war-damaged economy.
The Development Plan is an ambitious one, aiming at an overall 7.5% growth
rate per annum (compared with 5.9% during 1990±95). As an investment
programme for 1996±2000, the FSEDP budgets US$5 billion in total, with about
75% of this expected to be ® nanced from foreign sources. The projected public
investment amounts to US$2.2 billion, of which 65% is earmarked for the rural
and 35% for the urban sector. The high priority assigned to the rural sector is
commendable, given Cambodian realities and challenges. But plans are one
thing, implementation quite another. There are severe constraints, not just
because of the extremely weak institutional capacity of the central government,
bedevilled by factional rivalry and political violence, but also because signi® cant
parts of the countryside remain mined and un® t for productive use, while other
parts are still controlled by the Khmer Rouge who, though much weakened, are
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TABLE 2.
Sectoral allocation targets for public investment, 1996± 2000 (%)

Total
Sector Rural Urban Sector (US$ million)

Agriculture 97 3 10 220
Manufacturing and mining 25 75 4 88
Transport and communications 85 15 23 506
Electricity 26 74 8 176
Water supply and sanitation 25 75 8 176
Education and training 75 25 11 242
Health 75 25 10 220
Social and community services 70 30 7 154
Religious and cultural affairs 60 40 3 66
Administration, special programme 50 50 11 242
Unallocated 65 35 5 110
Total 65 35 100 2200

Source: FSEDP, p 108, Table 9.2.

hoping to return to power. That would be a tragedy, but it cannot be assumed

that the Cambodian civil war is ® nished.

The historical roots of the Pol Pot revolution

The Pol Pot revolution in Democratic Kampuchea 1975±79 was a misguided
utopian development experiment based on forced labour and total autarky,
without money, markets or private property. What forces produced it? What
moral justi® cation did these revolutionary leaders have? What model were they
relying on? Why did they undertake such an inhuman action as the total
evacuation of the towns and cities?
The Pol Pot phenomenon was a product of a demented mind-set shaped by a
tragic Khmer history. This human tragedy had external causes originating in
neighbouring countries, in particular the brutalizing bombing of the country in
Nixon’s secret war during 1969±1972 as a `sideshow’ to the Vietnam con¯ ict.1
But internal determinants must be given primacy. For, as we shall see below, Pol
Pot’ s utopia was Angkor Wat, long buried in Khmer history, but still very much
alive as the soul of `Khmerness’ .
For anyone who was fortunate enough to have visited Angkor Wat before
1970, in its prewar state, it is not dif® cult to understand the Khmer yearning for
the glory that was theirs in ancient times. But times move on, and a people living
in the past can easily ® nd itself victim of its own mythologised grandeur.
Cleansing a culture of alien `impurities’ , seeking revenge for `wrongs’ commit-
ted long ago, and above all, remaining `bottled up’ in permanent `mourning’ for
past civilisations, are no substitute for realistic analysis as a precondition for
progress and development.
The primary explanation for Pol Pot’ s Killing Fields lies in Khmer history and
culture. As FrancËois Ponchaud has put it: `Without in any way seeking to justify
the excesses of Pol Pot, it appears that this revolution bears the stamp of Khmer
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culture: it is the revolt of the hinterland against the foreigners; it is the rising up
of the youth against their elders and their ancestors’ . 2 No doubt considerable
blame must be attributed to external actors such as the Thais, Vietnamese,
French and Americans who, at various times in the last 500 years of Cambodian
history, invaded the country and brutalised its people. But the primacy of
internal over external determinants must be acknowledged, because one has
to concur with Marie A. Martin, a longtime friend of the `martyred Khmer
people’ , whose judgment was that `the Khmer people also produced the Pol Pots,
the Ieng Sarys, the Khieu Samphans, the barely adolescent yothea (combatants)
who ¼ [made] the Khmer revolution so terrible when ª the children were in
powerº ’ .3
Chief among internal determinants has to be the Khmer idea of kingship and
power. It is of course not unique, manifesting, for example, some remarkable
parallels to the Javanese idea of power,4 which I have examined elsewhere.5
Linked to divine or supernatural power, the Khmer±Sanskrit idea of devaraja
(god king or king of gods)6 legitimises a tradition of cult worship, or `legitimacy
by divine royalty’ 7 which, by putting emphasis on form rather than substance
and ritual rather than accountability, places a huge social distance between the
ruled and the ruler, elevates the patron±client relationship to the divine order and
ends up sheltering injustice and exploitation. This divinely-sanctioned inequality,
justifying caste and slavery for example, periodically bursts into horri® c viol-
ence, as repeatedly demonstrated in Cambodian history. Human suffering in this
hierarchical and fatalistic web of order and disorder is part and parcel of the idea
of karma (predestination) and the concept of neak mean bonn (he who has
merit). Khmer society has always been conservative and elitist: there is a
relatively small (15%) urban and a large (85%) rural population living in quite
different worlds, but each further subdivided by great inequalities. At the bottom
of the social pyramid is the poor peasantry, dependant on rice cultivation in an
ecological and feudal order little changed since the heyday of Angkor Wat. The
peasantry is extremely conservative, living a simple and precarious life shaped
by the endless cycle of seasons and monsoon rains. Superstition is part and
parcel of this ® xed world-view in which the idea of a King of Cambodia is the
essential core of Khmerness. The Khmer peasant equates kingship with legiti-
macy and submits to higher authority as something supernaturally determined
without question. Khmers are taught to live by neak chuo, knowing one’ s place,
with silent dignity, but always in awe of higher authority. In brief, it adds up to
a structure that appears to be incompatible with the idea of modern development
and economic growth.
But that would be too hasty a judgment. Other Southeast Asian nations, with
similar cultural values, are now emerging as Tigers. So it is necessary to probe
deeper into the soul and structure of Cambodian society to analyse and
understand `its horrifying uniqueness’ .8
This is where Cambodia’ s past, speci® cally the Angkor Wat civilization,
comes in. For it still de® nes the Cambodian soul. Khmer society is structured,
like a Buddhist temple, in layer upon layer of groups and classes, each exploiting
those below, in a massive process of rent-seeking atop mass poverty at the
bottom of the social pyramid. In earlier days, this society was simply reduced to
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two unequal parts: ruler and subjects, a few patrons in control of a mass of
slaves or persons in bondage. It is important to remember that Angkor Wat, the
Cambodian Parthenon, was built by slave labour! In the last 500 years, little
seems to have changed in the basic, hierarchical structure of Khmer society.
Now women, either unpaid rural family workers or those subsisting on petty
trading in the urban informal sectors, are at the bottom of this socioeconomic
pyramid.
Are there precedents for the Pol Pot model in Cambodian history? The short
answer, sadly, is yes. Many, besides Pol Pot, have sought to change the
seemingly ® xed structure of inequality throughout Cambodian history. The
Chams were perhaps the earliest wave of invaders with a cultural agenda.
Originating from present-day Indonesia and Malaysia, these Muslim conquerors
overran Angkor Wat in 1177 and sought to Islamise the Khmers. The Chams
were ® nally defeated in 1191. The great Khmer hero, the victorious King
Jayavarman VII, chose, at the pinnacle of his power, to break with the Khmer
past, and imposed, in a brutal and totalitarian way, a Hinduisation programme on
his people, forcing them to convert from the Mahayana to the Theravada variant
of Buddhism. The eminent historian of Cambodia, David Chandler, has com-
pared this cultural transformation to Pol Pot’ s genocidal revolution during
1975±79.9
During the next couple of centuries Angkor Wat declined, weakened intern-
ally from moral decay and attacked by powerful neighbours. It was ® nally
abandoned in the 14th century; literally left to be consumed by the jungle, the
Khmer civilisation shattered. The nationalism of the Pol Pot clique was the
product of this shattered civilisation, a mind-set so deluded that it believed it
could recreate a self-suf® cient rice economy with forced labour, copying the
Angkor Wat civilisation `in order to show that today’ s tiny Cambodia could
create great works’ .10 Pol Pot used to boast: `If we can build Angkor, we can do
anything’ .11
In the ® ve centuries after the abandonment of Angkor Wat, Khmers lived in
constant war and violence. Their larger neighbours, Siamese (Thais) to the west,
and Vietnamese to the east, have sought repeatedly to invade, subjugate and
transform the Khmers, with frequent cycles of destruction and violence. Ulti-
mately, Phnom Penh physically replaced Angkor Wat as the national capital. But
in the Khmer psyche the glory of Angkor survives as the soul of Khmerness,
symbolised by a paradox of extremesÐ the smiling Buddha engulfed by the
seven-headed Serpent. The silent outward dignity of the Khmer discloses a latent
fury similar to a Malay running amok or an exploding volcano, indiscriminately
destroying everything around it.
The Khmer history is tragic, Cambodia a scene of non-stop war and con¯ ict.
The 19th century was an especially traumatic period. The Cambodian royal
house and the Okya, the high-ranking mandarins, were always divided, ready to
deal with the stronger Siamese or Vietnamese, or whoever offered better aid and
protection for self-aggrandisement. During 1835±40 the Khmers suffered a
particularly brutalising Vietnamisation programme. Finally, in 1863 the French
colonialists arrived, at the invitation of the Khmer king, imposing yet another
foreign domination. Driven by their `mission civilisatrice’ , the French `discov-
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ered’ Angkor Wat but then proceeded to destroy the Khmer culture by forcing
on the Khmers a totally alien language, education and values.
The end of French colonialism in the mid-1950s did not lead to a patriotic
revival or post-colonial national development. On the contrary, the country slid
into political chaos, with a succession of weak royalist, republican and military
governments. Phnom Penh became a den of decadence (the `cognac and
concubine circuit’ 12). In 1970 the military strongman Lon Nol, supported by the
Nixon administration, decided to overthrow the playboy Prince Sihanouk (his
latest passion was ® lm-making) who seemed oblivious to the agony of his
nation. Lon Nol’ s republic was initially popular among the urban Khmers but
confused the peasantry, who continued as always to venerate the kingship,
though it was now falling into the hands of the Communists. Sihanouk, in exile
in Beijing and under Chinese protection, felt obliged to enter into a marriage of
convenience with his earlier enemies the Khmer Rouge against Lon Nol and his
US backers. The marriage won the Khmer Rouge royalist legitimacy in the eyes
of the Cambodian peasantry, who in `liberated’ areas were designated by the
Khmer Rouge as `the old people’ , while giving Sihanouk the chance to wage war
against the US puppet Lon Nol.
During 1970±75 the Cambodian nation suffered not only from the civil war
between the Khmer Rouge and republican forces, but also from the extension of
the war in Vietnam into Cambodia. Nixon’ s illegal war in Cambodia and carpet
bombing by US B52s, ostensibly targeting Vietcong sanctuaries, devastated
eastern provinces bordering Vietnam. Finally, the Americans pulled the rug from
under Lon Nol’ s feet. The US Congress decided to terminate aid and end
Nixon’s illegal war in Cambodia. As a result, two weeks before the fall of
Saigon, the Cambodian capital, now overcrowded with half a million half-starv-
ing and demoralised refugees, fell into the hands of the Khmer Rouge. As its
army of child soldiers marched into Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975 claiming
victory over US imperialists and `the oppressive, blood-sucking and bone-
gnawing regime of the traitorous Lon Nol clique’ ,13 the Pol Pot clique took the
destiny of the Cambodian nation into its hands.
In April 1975, then, this was the sorry state of Cambodia: a deposed Sihanouk
in exile in Beijing, busy stoking the ® res of a bloody civil war at home, yet still
venerated by a peasantry now controlled by a brutal clique allied to the
Vietcong, which was ® ghting a US-backed puppet military regime and found
itself parachuted into power with no agenda other than a concoction of Marxist±
Leninist ideology and a desire for revenge against the urban Khmers who, as `the
new people’ , became the slave labour of the Khmer Rouge revolution.
Within days of taking power, the revolutionary clique, known mysteriously
only as the Angkar (the organisation) and led by the equally mysterious Saloth
Sar, alias Pol Pot, a leader obsessed with secrecy and security preferring simply
to be known as `Brother Number One’ ,14 began a reign of terror directed at the
`new people’ (ie the urban population), in contrast to the `old people’ in the
`liberated areas’ , punishing them with immediate mass expulsion from Phnom
Penh and other towns to mark the start of the `Total Revolution’ for the
construction of a Kampuchean utopia.
The evacuation order was not purely vindictive punishment in¯ icted on the
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enemy, the `new people’ . There was a demonic rationality behind it, indeed it
was a calculated, revolutionary step: It was designed to provide forced labour for
the regime’ s agricultural strategy. Somewhat surprisingly in view of the anti-
intellectual bias of the Pol Pot regime, its development strategy was designed by
well educated leaders who had themselves been teachers. While Pol Pot did not
complete higher education, Ieng Sary, Hu Nim and Khieu Samphan had
extensive university education in France, where they learnt their Marxist±
Leninist theories. Khieu Samphan, who was widely regarded as the `intellectual’
among the Khmer Rouge leadership, received his PhD in agricultural economics
in 1959.15
Rice cultivation was to be the centerpiece of a classless and entirely autarkic,
self-reliant society. The `new people’ became the slaves of the new Angkor Wat.
They were organised into production teams on the collective farms and com-
munes, under the strict control of cadres, to produce surpluses and meet
impossible production targets by leaders ignorant of rice cultivation methods or
irrigation hydrology.16
Formally, the economic strategy of the regime was outlined in the Four Year
Plan, announced by Pol Pot in August 1976.17 The plan followed no outside
model. It was an ideologically driven exercise in utopian agrarian socialism
centred on rice production, as in the Angkorian period. Pol Pot was obsessed
with rice. He believed that `if we have rice, we have everything’ . Accordingly,
the plan’ s central aim was the totally unrealistic target of `three tons of rice per
hectare’ by 1980. This was expected to produce an exportable surplus of 26.7
million tons of paddy over the life of the plan, and to earn $1.4 billion in foreign
exchange. The income would then be utilised to purchase modern farm machin-
ery, tools and fertiliser and to enable Cambodia to industrialise, ultimately
acquiring heavy industries, even developing tourist resorts ` ¼ as places to
relax’ .18
The three ton per hectare implied a tripling of rice production within four
years, a technically impossible task since past Cambodian yields had averaged
a mere one ton per hectare. What is more, the plan did not rely on any modern
farm technology, or massive investment in agricultural infrastructure. The sole
`development resource’ was the labour of more than one million `new people’
forced into slavery on collective farms and irrigation works. As a technical
document, the Four Year Plan was `slapdash, naive and uninformed’ .19 It
substituted ideology and party slogans for technical know-how and investible
resources. Pol Pot’ s ideology was party dictatorship in the extreme. The
`collectivized revolutionary will’ became the tool of a deluded leadership set to
eradicate individualism.20 Suffering from extreme paranoia, the leadership
equated any adverse news or discontent as anti-revolutionary sentiment amount-
ing to treason. After 1976 rice production fell and starvation emerged as waves
of purges within the party and the military were matched by massive human
rights violations in the cooperatives and collectives. The reign of terror blocked
any effective plan implementation or monitoring at grassroots. The party
leadership was totally isolated from actual realities in the rice ® elds and the
irrigation works. Cadres and subordinates only fed it what the central leadership
wished to hear, thereby `causing false optimism at the top even as rice
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production faltered and workers died’ .21 In short, the Four Year Plan was a
crude and brutal prescription for forced labour mobilised to produce an export-
able surplus. In return, the only material incentive explicitly promised to the
people in the plan was increased frequency of `desserts’ in future: `In 1977 there
are to be two desserts per week. In 1978 there will be one dessert every two
days. Then in 1979, one desert every day, and so on’ .22
Seen in this tragic context, Pol Pot and his collaborators appear as demonised
products of Cambodian history, arrogant and deluded Khmer nationalists, in-
spired in part by Mao’ s Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, but
with minds distorted by a misreading of the radical French ideology of mass
violence aÁ la Franz Fanon and Georges Sorel.23
In one fell swoop Pol Pot sought to copy King Jayavarman VII, to break with
the past, to cleanse all injustice and oppression and to rebuild Khmer society
afresh, with surplus rice and correct ideology. `The DK regime differed pro-
foundly [from the earlier regimes of Sihanouk and Lon Nol]. Its commitment
was to the total transformation of Cambodia’ s economy and of people’ s ways of
working, thinking and behaving.’ 24 Revolutionary ideology was suddenly discov-
ered in the authentic Khmer worker-peasant, the source of all technical knowl-
edge required to manage the rice cooperatives and communes under the brutal
control of cadres who were themselves expected by their superiors to be models
in every respect, perfectly implementing the will of the organisation. In their
utopian rice economy, the arrogant Democratic Kampuchea (DK) leadership had
no room for intellectuals or technical knowledge. As Khieu Samphan, the
`intellectual guru’ of the Khmer Rouge and Chairman of the State Presidium put
it, `Our worker-peasant class, under the leadership of our revolutionary organi-
zation, immediately grasped technical expertise after it seized political power’ .
While the slave-workers on collectives perished from undernourishment, over-
work, disease and death, rice production fell and rations had to be cut, Khieu
Samphan deluded himself into thinking ` ¼ that technical skill is not the
determining factor (of ef® ciency). The determining factor is in fact the political
and ideological stand of our fraternal dock workers.’ 25
State terror became a puri® cation instrument of the Total Revolution. Mass
executions for `wrongdoing’, torture of counter-revolutionaries, waves of purges
within the organisation itself increasingly emerged as the necessary tools to
extract sacri® ce on the altar of national reconstruction and defence. In 1977,
against the background of an intensifying war with Vietnam, purges increased
dramatically, consuming some of Pol Pot’ s closest friends and leading ® gures of
the regime including Hu Nim, the Minister of Information and Propaganda. Pol
Pot lived in constant fear of losing power and his mass execution centre at SC21
worked overtime to eliminate spies and agents suspected of working for the CIA,
Vietnamese and other enemies of the regime. This chronic fear was combined
with traditional Khmer pride and a hatred of the Vietnamese, who were
constantly expected to invade the country. The result was extreme xenophobia
and an ideology of the most puritanical autarky, known as `independence-
mastery’ 26, which surpassed even that of Enver Hoxha’ s Albania in cutting
itself off from the rest of the world.
The DK revolution was to be a uniquely Khmer development, totally self-
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reliant, ® nanced out of the labour and blood of the people. Labour and sacri® ce
were deemed to be suf® cient inputs in building a collectivised rice economy.
Rice surplus was to be the means of ® nancing future industrialisation on the road
to modernising the country. This purely domestic and autarkic development,
never attempted elsewhere, was only comparable to the glorious Angkor Wat.
In their zeal for their utopia, the megalomaniac DK leadership believed that it
neither needed, nor followed, any outside models. Pol Pot’ s `independence-
mastery’ required rejection of all foreign aid, save a limited quantity from the PRC.
Thus cut off from the rest of the world, the Pol Pot clique monopolised
and maintained power with unbelievable arrogance. The ex-teachers, now turned
totalitarian rulers of Cambodia, destroyed schools and education, eliminated
intellectuals and technical personnel. Skilled human resources were viewed with
disdain and considered dangerous to the regime; persons wearing reading glasses
were targeted as parasitical intellectuals and punished. Money was abolished and
replaced by barter, private property was banned. Family, education and religion
were all declared illegal to make room for the one virtue which the clique
prizedÐ party loyalty, extracted by state terror. The ultimate contradiction was
that the regime attempted to build a new Angkor Wat, with slave labour, in
pursuit of a classless utopia.
State terror had manifold uses in Democratic Kampuchea. It became the
inversion of justice and morality, the means of settling scores and imposing
social change on the decadent and corrupt parasites such as the feudalists,
royalists, mandarins and petite bourgeoisie.27 Any rival authority from the past,
such as religion or education, was exterminated. Temples, churches and mosques
were destroyed or converted into warehouses. Marriages, now strictly regulated
by the fearful organisation, were solemnised by vows of loyalty to the Angkar.
No longer needed, Buddhist monks, teachers and students were herded into the
rice ® elds to join thousands of nameless others cut off from their social, family
or individual identity. Schools were converted into centres of state torture and
mass executions, such as the notorious Tuol Sleng (Security Centre 21) in
Phnom Penh,28 and Cambodia was turned into a `Killing Fields’ in an uncontrol-
lable passion for the blood of traitors, counter-revolutionaries and enemies of the
regime who seemed to lurk everywhere. The only equality in Democratic
Kampuchea was that everyone had an equal chance of arbitrary death at the
hands of Pol Pot’ s henchmen under the leadership of Brother Number One.

Western guilt and delayed response to the genocide: the NGO invasion
With the defeat and departure of Americans from Indochina, the Western
response to Pol Pot’ s mass-scale human rights violations was initially one of
total indifference. The Cambodian genocide was ignored. `Even the UN turned
a deaf ear.’ 29 Western human rights organisations, including Amnesty Inter-
national, were indifferent,30 even after the overthrow of the DK leadership in
early 1979 which, at least partially, removed the Khmer Rouge entry barriers.
From the late 1980s onwards Western indifference and guilt ® nally resulted in
the arrival of a new invading force in Cambodia: Western NGOs. Now they are
everywhere, managing and delivering essential services to the large rural
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population neglected by a restored royal government in Phnom Penh, which is

led by greedy coalition politicians and self-serving of® cials, as always, busy
getting rich. Gambling, prostitution and rent-seeking are, once again, spreading
alarmingly through the country, while Cambodia remains, in fact, a divided,
arti® cial nation, with little governmental authority outside the capital. The
royalty, politicians and of® cials have no more concern for the poor than before,
content to leave them in the care of Western NGOs, now willing to deliver. The
danger in all of this is that the present fragile peace can easily turn into anarchy,
plunging Cambodia back into the dark days of the past.
How did this situation come about? The historical evolution can quickly be
sketched out. The fall of Democratic Kampuchea in January 1979 came rather
predictably as a result of invasion from Communist Vietnam. The principal
consequence of the Vietnamese occupation over the next 10 years, unpopular as
always, was the rise of Hun Sen, who had defected from Kampuchea to Vietnam
in 1977 and is the present leader of the Cambodian People’ s Party (CPP).
Sihanouk, in exile and under Chinese protection in Beijing, opposed the
Vietnamese invasion. During the 1980s, after several meetings with Hun Sen and
several other factions in Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN) capitals
and France, Sihanouk managed, with international and ASEAN help, to promote
a political compromise between the royalists and ex-Communist Hun Sen’ s
forces, which paved the way for Vietnamese withdrawal and the UN Transitional
Authority (UNTAC) in Cambodia. Finally, following the UN supervised elections
in 1993, Sihanouk was enthroned as a constitutional King of Cambodia.
Sihanouk returned home with great expectations. He was initially popular, but
his popularity was short-lived as he quickly broke his promise of neutrality and
non-interference in politics. Surprisingly, he had campaigned openly for the CPP
in the general elections and against FUNCINPEC , the party he had created, now led
by his son Prince Ranariddh. In the eyes of the people, Sihanouk’ s meddling was
inconceivable for a divinely ordained King; among the peasantry, in particular,
Sihanouk possessed supernatural powers capable of in¯ uencing ¯ oods and
harvests. Once he started playing politics, Sihanouk’s popularity plummeted.31
Hun Sen’ s pro-Vietnamese past, never popular among the Khmers, prevented a
CPP victory at the polls; it lost the election to FUNCINPEC . Sihanouk then crafted
an uneasy coalition between FUNCINPEC and the CPP, which is as venerated as a
two-headed Buddha; it is limping along towards inevitable break-up, leading the
country once again into a political abyss. Sihanouk, now an old man, has no
clear heir apparent and factionalism, the Khmer sickness, is ever-present.
What happened to Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge clique? Disgraced but not
eliminated, it went whither it had reared its ugly head: back to the jungle near
the Thai border, running a pro® table crossborder trade in gems, logs and
anything else, still able to exercise power in the western provinces of Cambodia,
hoping someday to return to power.

Coalition politics: what next?

Could Cambodia relapse into another genocidal civil war in future? Sadly, it
could happen again. There are three main reasons for this: cultural, historical and
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political. By culture Cambodian people have an in® nite capacity to endure

suffering. Khmer culture cultivates silent submission, not resistance, to higher
authority, even when it is tyrannical. This is an ideal breeding ground for
misrule. When misrule reaches a climax it produces dictators with grandiose
ideas ready to utilise state terror to implement their blueprints. Khmer history,
unfortunately, reinforces this tendency. For, in the last 500 years, the Cambodi-
ans have known little else but misrule and suffering. This has been most aptly
expressed in 1979 by none other than Sihanouk: `The humble people of
Cambodia are the most wonderful in the world ¼ Their great misfortune is that
they always have terrible leaders who make them suffer. I am not sure that I was
much better myself, but perhaps I was the least bad.’ 32
Sihanouk’s dominance of Cambodian political destiny since the 1940s, how-
ever dysfunctional, has provided an umbilical cord for the Khmers. But Si-
hanouk is old, sick and now in his twilight years without an heir apparent.
Vainglorious as always, his last wish, apparently, is: `Before I die I want to have
a good name as the father of a new, genuine democracy [in Cambodia]’ .33 The
vacuum after him will not be ® lled by either of his two sons, Prince Rannariddh,
head of FUNCINPEC , and Prince Chakrapong, living in exile in France, who loathe
each other.
The next general elections are not due until November 1998. However, it is
unlikely that the present fragile FUNCINPECÐ CPP coalition will last that long.
Recently, FUNCINPEC threatened to leave the coalition. Hun Sen has countered
with an even tougher line, threatening to send the royal family back into exile.34
The ambitious Hun Sen hopes that his CPP will emerge as the sole, or at least the
senior, party in power. In the summer of 1996 some high-risk negotiations with
Khmer Rouge `defectors’ , ostensibly for national reconciliation, led to a pardon
for Ieng Sary from Sihanouk. But it is uncertain whether this will lead to real
reconciliation or simply a deal between his Khmer Rouge faction and Hun Sen
at the expense of Prince Rannariddh. On the sidelines the majority of Cambodi-
ans are terri® ed of the Khmer Rouge, distrust Hun Sen’ s own Communist past
and view with growing cynicism his emergence as the richest man in Phnom
Penh. This high-risk manoeuvering is occurring against a rising tide of political
violence by the so-called A-teams in Phnom Penh, reminiscent of the earlier
1992 pattern when the Hun Sen regime relied on intimidation and murder against
its enemies, particularly FUNCINPEC. Signs of anarchy now exist in the capital,
where criminal elements (generally thought to be members of the armed forces)
roam the streets at night, and during the day the rich and the powerful travel with
well armed private bodyguards. There are political ® ghts and killings between
rival factions. In March 1997 a grenade attack killed at least 10 people and
injured more than 100 at a political rally in Phnom Penh, apparently targetting
the opposition leader Sam Rainsy, who blamed Hun Sen for the attack. The
ambitious Hun Sen may ultimately win the power struggle to emerge as the sole
prime minister, but at a tremendous social cost to the fragile democratic
experiment. Outside Phnom Penh large parts of the country are mined or under
the control of Khmer Rouge or local warlords, some linked to Thai or
Vietnamese interests. Poverty and underdevelopment reign unchecked.
The present ruling coalition is inept and seems incapable to tackle the
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 OZAY MEHMET

fundamental problems of Cambodian society. Feudalism has little changed,

poverty remains endemic, and virtually no development has taken place to heal
the wounds almost two decades after Pol Pot. The only developmental bene® ts
for the bulk of the people are incremental, generated by projects run by hundreds
of Western NGOs doing their own thing.

Conclusion: what is and is not development?

At a deeper, psychological level, two simple conclusions emerge from the above
analysis with ominous foreboding for Cambodians. Simple though these conclu-
sions are, they provide us with some fundamental guidelines about what
development is and is not.
First, development cannot be based on slavery or forced labour. Human and
socioeconomic development must ¯ ow out of free labour and personal choice.
Angkor Wat and Pol Pot’ s grand collectivisation scheme were both based on
slave labour, and, for this reason, cannot be regarded as models of development.
Of course, the Pol Pot revolution had its defenders and sympathisers. Thus
Michael Vickery, who wrote a scholarly book on the Cambodian Revolution in
the early 1980s, concluded that the DK experiment was not based on slavery, but
an `extreme form of voluntarism on the way to, not socialism, but capitalism’ .35
He also argued that Khieu Samphan’ s agricultural collectivisation plan `was not
Marxist ¼ It failed because he had not accurately assessed the real conditions
in the country’ .36 These judgments are simply unacceptable: the one million
people who died at the hands of Pol Pot’ s regime in just four years did not die
for voluntarism.
Second, grand, utopian designs for development using state terror are the
ultimate antithesis of human development, ending in genocidal catastrophes.
Whether in Hitler’ s Germany, or Stalin’ s USSR or Pol Pot’ s Democratic
Kampuchea, history provides a sad testimony to the insanity of using state terror
and forced labour to build a new society. Development is a slow, patient,
long-term, but above all, peaceful process with voluntary labour. It needs to be
crafted from within, evolving out of genuine consultation and compromise to
solve problems, not imposed from above or outside with force and mass
violation of human rights.
In Cambodia, the root causes of the national tragedy are yet to be remedied.
They lie in economic injustice, social inequalities and obsolete feudal structures
in the country. The ruling elites, exploiting the trust of the peasantry in the
divine right of kingship, are too sel® sh and insensitive to the poverty of the
masses. The politicians, bureaucrats and military are consummate rentiers living
off aid in¯ ows ostensibly designed as development assistance, while the donors,
for their own reasons, keep pledging more. These `gatekeepers’ , along with the
Khmer Chinese-dominated commercial sector, are enjoying prosperity and lux-
ury, oblivious to mass poverty all around them, while the country slides back
towards the past.
The theoretical requirements of national salvation can be spelled out easily
enough: the critical need is building social capital (trust, responsibility and a
willingness to share) through slow accumulation of human capital, starting with
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primary education for young girls. Women constitute the majority of the labour
force, but they are the most neglected, oppressed and vulnerable part of the
shattered Cambodian society. Young women (as well as boys, of course) need
to be encouraged to stay in school, to be educated with a modern curriculum
taught by quali® ed teachers. They must be equipped with productive skills and
assisted with ef® cient credit for self-employment and high-paying jobs in
industry, tourism and the service sectors. Subsistence agriculture, and informal
sectors in urban centres, are no substitute for schooling; they are recipes for
persistent poverty.
The First Socio-economic Development Plan, 1995± 1999, for Cambodia is a
good start. It promises to devote two-thirds of the total public investment of
US$2.2 billion in rural areas to expand the physical and social infrastructure,
with a high priority for education, especially at the primary level. The plan,
which requires 100% external ® nancing, can only be put into practice if
Cambodia’ s donors provide the funds. For the sake of Cambodians, the supply
of these funds must be on the basis of effective accountability rules, to ensure
effective plan implementation that actually bene® ts intended target groups and
not the rent-seeking gatekeepers.
On this basis, the plan deserves to be given a chance and external support.
Even then, however, its future remains in doubt. For one thing, it awaits political
endorsement from a paralysed parliament in Phnom Penh, where elected politi-
cians are boycotting the legislature as part of the ongoing power struggle
between the CPP and FUNCINPEC .37 Even with the best of goodwill, domestic
action is unlikely to be suf® cient for the Plan’ s successful implementation. The
fact is that Cambodia’ s destiny is not entirely in its own hands. Its larger
neighbours, who have a great stake in regional stability, have a crucial role to
play. It is hoped that this role will be positive and constructive, leading to
Cambodia’ s integration within ASEAN. But such an integration must be tied to
effective implementation of the Development Plan.
Beyond the regional level, in the international arena, the most important
requirement is to provide development assistance with effective rules of account-
ability and transparency to ensure that investment in Cambodian development
actually bene® ts those in need, especially rural target groups, rather than the
gatekeepers.
Postscript: Since this article was written, a year ago, events in Cambodia have,
sadly, evolved much as predicted, especially after Hun Sen’ s `coup’ of July 1997
ousting the ® rst PM Prince Ranariddh. The collapse of the CPP-FUNCINPEC
coalition has renewed the civil war which has alarmed Cambodia’ s donors and
ASEAN neighbours. The future is grim and uncertain.

Notes
Grateful thanks are due to Din Merican for help in writing this paper, which also bene® ted from the comments
of participants at a seminar at the National University of Malaysia, Bangi on 12 August 1996. The author alone
is responsible for all opinions expressed in the paper.
1
William Shawcross, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia, New York: Simon and
Shuster, 1979.

685
 OZAY MEHMET

2
Karl D. Jackson (ed), Cambodia 1975± 1978: Rendevouz with Death, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1989, p 152.
3
Marie A Martin, Cambodia: A Shattered Society, Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 1994, p xix.
4
Benedict Anderson, `The idea of power in Javanese culture’ , in Claire Holt (ed), Culture and Politics in
Indonesia, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972.
5
Ozay Mehmet, `Rent-seeking and gate-keeping in Indonesia: a cultural and economic analysis’ , Labour,
Capital and Society, 27 (1), 1994, pp 56±89.
6
See David, P Chandler, A History of Cambodia, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993, pp 34±36.
7
Martin, Cambodia: a Shattered Society, pp 23±24.
8
David P Chandler, The Tragedy of Cambodian History: Politics, War and Revolution since 1945, New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991, p 236.
9
Chandler, A History of Cambodia, pp 68±69.
10
Martin, Cambodia: a Shattered Society, p 205.
11
Quoted in Chandler, The Tragedy of Cambodian History, p 6.
12
As described in Jackson, Cambodia 1975±1978, p 7.
13
Quoted in ibid, p 56.
14
David P Chandler, Brother Number One: A Political Biography of Pol Pot, Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silkworm
Books Boulder, CO: Westview, 1992.
15
Martin, Cambodia: A Shattered History, pp 158±165; and Twinning, in Jackson, Cambodia 1975± 1978,
pp 110±114.
16
Charles H. Twinning, `the economy’ in Jackson, Cambodia 1975±1978, pp 109±150.
17
Chandler, Brother Number One, pp 120±128.
18
Ibid, p 125.
19
Ibid, p 128.
20
Ibid, p 123.
21
Ibid, p 124.
22
Four Year Plan, quoted in Chandler, Brother Number One, p 126.
23
Kenneth Quinn, `the pattern and scope of violence’ in Jackson, Cambodia 1975±1978, pp 231±233.
24
Chandler, The Tragedy of Cambodian History, p 240.
25
Quoted in Jackson, emphasis in the original.
26
Chandler, Brother Number One, pp 121±122.
27
FrancËois Ponchaud.
28
See David Hawk `the photographic record’ and Quinn, in Jackson, Cambodia 1975±1978.
29
FrancËois Ponchaud, Cambodia, Year Zero (translated from the French by Nancy Amphoux), London: Allen
Lane/Penguin Books, 1977, p 215.
30
For a scathing attack on Amnesty International, see Martin, Cambodia: A Shattered Society, Appendix 12,
pp 339±341.
31
Ibid, pp 288±289.
32
Quoted in Shawcross, Sideshow, p 392.
33
Quoted in William Shawcross, `A new Cambodia’ , review of Chandler, Brother Number One, New York
Review of Books, 12 August 1993, p 40.
34
Jason Barber, `Hun Sen takes hard line at party summit’ , Phnom Penh Post, 26 July±8 August 1996, p 1.
35
Michael Vickery, Cambodia 1975±1982, Boston, MA: South End Press, 1984, p 267.
36
Ibid, pp 267±268.
37
Ker Monthit, `MPS busy passing 106 words a fortnight’, Phnom Penh Post, 12±25 July 1996, p 2.

686