Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
opposition's message, it also sped the distribution of anti-Vietnamese screeds. Some ana-
lysts even compared the atmosphere to the early 1970s, when euphoria after the fall of
Sihanouk gave way to a wave of pogroms against the Vietnamese. A few months later an
ethnic Vietnamese man was beaten to death by a mob after a traffic accident in Phnom
Penh. It was a sobering sign. After many years suspended in an aspic of fear, change was
coming rapidly to Cambodia. But there was no guarantee it would follow a peaceful or
democratic script.
When Cambodia's isolation came to an end in the early 1990s, the country's fate con-
verged with a global narrative of endless progress, an expectation that history had reached
its logical democratic end. Cambodia fit the template perfectly. Its experience under the
Khmer Rouge dramatized the human cost of Cold War realpolitik. With the coming of the
UN, the land of the “killing fields” came to embody a narrative of suffering and redemp-
tion through the good offices of Western aid workers and a well-intentioned “interna-
tional community.” As a myth, one aid worker told William Shawcross, Cambodia “had
everything. Temples, starving brown babies and an Asian Hitler figure—it was like sex
War era, it has also reflected the disappointment that set in as the world, starting out for
Fukuyama's democratic Elysium, found itself in the land of the mirage.
For all its messianic overtones, the international intervention of the early 1990s was
merely the latest in a long line of frustrated outside incursions into Cambodia's affairs.
After the decline of Angkor, a weak Cambodian state was the subject of repeated foreign
schemes, from the nation-building efforts of the Vietnamese imperial court to the
mission
civilisatrice
of the French, from Hanoi's socialist project to the UN's own civilizing mis-
sion. Powerless to resist these interventions, Cambodian rulers became skilled in playing
off outside powers and manipulating foreign interests. Sihanouk and Hun Sen, the most
successful modern Cambodian leaders, were masters in this art of political balancing. In
response to foreign demands they turned a mirror outward, so that foreigners arriving in
an exotic land very often saw their own preoccupations reflected back at them.
In 1993, the French sociologist Serge Thion wrote that “Khmer reality lies shrouded
Vietnamese (again), and the “international community”—all left their mark on Cambod-
ia, but none had much success imposing their own norms or fundamentally altering the
mindset of its leaders. From long experience, Cambodians knew that foreign influences
would always be fleeting. Behind a succession of mirages, Cambodian ways had a way
of stubbornly persisting.
This is not to deny that the international presence has brought obvious benefits to the
Cambodian people. For one thing, foreign scrutiny imposed limits on Hun Sen. It en-
