The Second Revolution - Hun Sen's Cambodia - page 37

ward transplant into the world of international diplomacy. In his 27 years he had known
nothing but war and political struggle. He had never been outside Cambodia or Vietnam,
and spoke no other foreign languages. On the whole, his outlook was heavily conditioned
by his poor rural upbringing in Kampong Cham. But Hun Sen was intelligent, and he had
the practical bent of a soldier who had endured years of service in a civil war marked
by relentless B-52 bombings and cruel violence on both sides. He now embarked on his
political career with all the focus and preparation of a soldier embarking on a military op-
eration.
Le Duc Tho and the Vietnamese leadership immediately sensed Hun Sen's potential
and invested in his development. His first political mentor was Ngo Dien, Vietnam's am-
bassador to the PRK. Dien was a suave figure, standing out from the suited ciphers of the
party bureaucracy in Hanoi. On his arrival in Phnom Penh in December 1979, Ngo Dien
took charge of Hun Sen's political education. He received the foreign minister at his em-
bassy each morning, schooling him in diplomacy and global politics. 25 At first Ngo didn't
let his young charge stray too far, accompanying him to press briefings and interviews
with foreign journalists. 26 “Their relationship was like a body and its shadow,” recalled
Pen Sovan, the former prime minister. Ngo and his team of advisors dictated every de-
cision made by Hun Sen's ministry, making sure they chimed with Hanoi's foreign policy
objectives. Voeuk Pheng, a retired Foreign Ministry official, told me that the Vietnamese
advisors “wanted all the officials, all the cadres, under their feet.”
Hun Sen accepted these limitations and set about his education with rigor and discip-
line. Another who observed his early progress was Igor Rogachev, the director of South-
east Asian affairs at the Soviet Foreign Ministry. Rogachev first met Hun Sen during a
fact-finding visit to the shattered Cambodian capital in February 1979, during a banquet
that was held in the garden at the crumbling Hotel Le Royal, now dubbed the Sammaki,
or “Solidarity.” Sitting at a table in the overgrown hotel garden, the seasoned diplomat
gazed across the chipped crockery at the world's least experienced foreign minister, his
shirt hanging loosely from his thin frame. But as they spoke, he later told Elizabeth Beck-
er, he was surprised by Hun Sen's sharp mind and probing questions. “I was impressed
with him right away,” Rogachev said.
Throughout the 1980s, as Rogachev made return visits to Cambodia, he would pay
a call on his young protégé and was ever more pleased with his progress: “I watched
how he broadened his vision, not only on external affairs but internal affairs as well.
He became an outstanding politician.” 27 From the opposite side of the Cold War divide,
Timothy Carney, a former US diplomat who met Hun Sen several times on visits to Cam-
bodia in 1979 and 1980, recalled a green but self-confident leader surrounded by “clear
fuddy-duddies” intoning Marxist-Leninist jargon. Meeting Hun Sen in the early 1980s,