Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The result is more than an aid economy; it is an aid society, marked by relationships
of dependence at every level, between donors, government officials, NGOs, and ordinary
people. In the villages, far from the foreign capitals where donors tally up their indicators
and publish their annual reports, this pattern is nothing new. For centuries Cambodian
farmers and rural folk have depended on those more powerful than they are, whether they
are government chiefs or NGO workers offering handouts and training sessions. From the
perspective of the village, the distinctions are cosmetic. One treats the people as a subject
of charity, the other as a subject of “capacity building.” Both see the rural population as a
malleable entity, traumatized by the Khmer Rouge and subsequent years of conflict, and
so in desperate need of guidance from the outside.
Since the poor are rarely asked for their opinion about development, they are often the
first to suffer its unintended consequences. Far from “empowering” local people, the de-
velopment complex and its templates of betterment have merely reinforced an age-old
pattern, in which well-dressed outsiders drive into a village, briefly break the surface
of rural life with gifts and promises, and then vanish back to where they came from. If
people there are lucky, the ripples subside quickly.
*
Of the original group of 22 Uighurs, two managed to slip away prior to the deportation.
