A Change of Guard

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Saturday 25 June 2011

Cambodia After Year Zero


Jay Mather
Live pigs being transported to a market in Kompong Thom, Cambodia.

By JOEL WHITNEY
The New York Times
Published: June 24, 2011

In the preface to “Cambodia’s Curse: The Modern History of a Troubled Land,” Joel Brink­ley recalls his first encounter with Cambodia. Brinkley was reporting for The Louisville Courier-Journal from a refugee camp near the Thai border in 1979, in the aftermath of Pol Pot’s reign. “As they tell of years of horror and misery,” Brinkley wrote, “their faces are expressionless and dull . . . as if they’re talking about a dull day of work. Their tales end with a nodding acknowledgment of the death of their nation and culture.” Brinkley, who later worked for The New York Times, finds little has changed in the 32 years since then. As the title suggests, his book is an unabashed plea to refocus international aid and diplomacy on a suffering people. It is also an attempt to hold some of those responsible for that suffering accountable — but not all.Cambodia lost a quarter of its population under the Khmer Rouge. For many, survival meant 14-hour days of backbreaking work, often on little more than a cupful of rice or a smattering of gruel. You could be killed on the least suspicion you sympathized with the Vietnamese. The effects of this period have proven hard to shake.

CAMBODIA’S CURSE

The Modern History of a Troubled Land

By Joel Brinkley

Illustrated. 386 pp.PublicAffairs. $27.99.

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Cambodia is one of the world’s poorest countries. “Among Southeast Asian nations,” Brinkley writes, “only Burma is poorer, on a per capita basis.” At least 30 percent of Cambodians live on less than a dollar a day. About 40 percent of children suffer from stunting (failure to develop because of poor nutrition). In 2010 only 30 percent of Cambodian middle-school-age students were enrolled in school. Asia’s self-described “longest ruling prime minister,” Hun Sen, is a murderous kleptocrat, Brinkley shows. Corruption is rife. The sick may die waiting for treatment if they cannot pay doctors’ bribes in hospitals.

Statistics of suffering aside, “Cambodia’s Curse,” when it is at its most thorough, acknowledges the role of rich countries in this disaster. Every year for more than a decade, Brinkley recounts, donor organizations and states made toothless pleas that Hun Sen pass an anticorruption law. But once money was pledged, the law would stall another year. As a result of this annual pas de deux, donors had given Hun Sen $18 billion by 2010, essentially with no strings, before the law was enacted. And when it finally did pass last year, it had been gutted into meaninglessness.

“Some Cambodians and others remained astounded by the donors’ behavior,” Brinkley writes. Why didn’t they withhold aid? Echoing the economist Dambisa Moyo, Brinkley suggests that the corruption is symbiotic. “If they cut off aid to the government, as the human rights groups were demanding, many donors would lose their jobs.”

Cambodians also suffer from widespread post-traumatic stress disorder. A study by the Cambodian psychiatrist Muny Sothara found PTSD “in 47 percent of the population”; another study, of Cambodian refugees in Massachusetts, found that 60 percent of PTSD victims there suffered from sleep paralysis, a half-conscious state of catatonia. Even Hun Sen shows signs of the malady. One official, describing his own PTSD, relives his experience of starvation: “I would like to inform you that I am very, very hungry.” Social scientists are finding that PTSD is being passed from one generation to the next. Has this become Cambodia’s curse?

Or is impunity the curse? In the aftermath of Pol Pot’s death in 1998, the United Nations partnered with Cambodia’s judges to try the surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge. Brinkley explains the logic of the costly proceedings. “If nothing else, Ieng Sary fed the state’s omnipresent culture of impunity,” he writes of one Khmer Rouge leader. “If he, with the blood of two million people on his hands, faced no penalty, no censure, no retribution, how hard was it to accept the killing of a journalist here, a trade-union official there?” On June 27, three Khmer Rouge leaders will face trial. Last July, Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, was sentenced to 19 years.

Americans too frequently seem to enable monsters abroad, then recommend policies to reverse the damage. The United States did not directly foist the Khmer Rouge on Cambodia. But Brink­ley describes how Lon Nol, who was friendly to Washington, overthrew Prince Sihanouk in a 1970 coup, and how the prince, in frustration, implored Cambodians to join the Khmer Rouge.

Brinkley disputes any further American complicity, even though the United States continued a secret carpet bombing campaign until 1973. But two scholars, Taylor Owen and Ben Kiernan, have seized on data on the bombing released by President Bill Clinton; beginning under Lyndon Johnson, the United States dropped more bombs on Cambodia than the Allies dropped in all of World War II.

Brinkley seems to dismiss the argument that the extensive bombing, with its tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, might have added urgency to Sihanouk’s plea to join the Khmer Rouge. Yet Owen and Kiernan report that former C.I.A. and Khmer Rouge officers affirmed the American bombing helped the Khmer Rouge win support.It seems clear that “Cambodia’s Curse,” apart from providing a portrait of a “troubled land,” holds implications for other American interventions that are worth serious debate. Brinkley portrays Cambodia from what some may see as a postpartisan humanitarian standpoint. But given Washington’s role today in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, it might have been braver if he had chosen to hold Americans, and not just Cambodians, accountable for the suffering he so movingly describes.

Joel Whitney is an editor of Guernica: A Magazine of Art& Politics.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have read many book; this book is amazingly accurate and the best book that I ever read. At first, I was upset to see the title of the book and in my head, I thought it probably another book written by Westerner to put Cambodia into the mud or Westerner that went there as tourist and claims that they know everything about Cambodia. Althought my thought was corrected about the perception foriegner paint its picture about Cambodian. The author comparison from the Ankor era to current system is very accurate. I was hook on the book; it took me 2 days to finish the book. I was determine to know the hidden stories that Cambodian general public didn't know. I strongly recommend this book to be published in Khmer language. If the author need help with translation; I am willing to help. I must warn the Cambodian that some of the truth in this book will hurt you but it is fact so you really cannot hide it rather accept it and make a determine to change. anGovernment official including opposition party needs to own their flaws and improve self for better future of Cambodia. This book spare no one including the USA.

Anonymous said...

I haven't read the book, but from reading reviews and testimonies from those who have read it, I would imagine that is quite a hair-raising book to read. The author is a long-term observer of Cambodia and it seem he knows what he was talking about. I'm keen to read it.

Anonymous said...

sambo
Joel Brinkley’s curse!
He write this book in order to embarass cambodia. I think this person is nervous and his conlusion in order to blame Khmer is lazy and stupid, so cause Khmer living in poorest.
Brinkley want to know why Khmer linving in poor, please ask Nikson and his government why he bombed B52 destroy cambodia and push cambodia into tumoil by support Lon nol running coup d’etat.
Brinkley want tell us that he know Khmer charateritics and living condition very well rather than Khmer. oh! Alien believe him.
He wrote that he want donors stop aid to cambodia because of the corruption. in this case, I think that he wish the cambodia people still living in the poorest condition, and he want tell the world that he know very well about using donor’s money in cambodia rather than the donors. please noted that the donors fund to cambodia alway having their repective projects and contains the workplan and activities in detail. The cambodia implementor alway respect this condition. if the project implementor don’t follow the donors, the donors will stop the fund. so far the donors alway admire the cambodia implementor follow the aid conditions. Brinkly has a best opion but he has a bad idea! He angry camdodian living in pease and development. He is angry cambodia people why don’t push the country into uprising in order to show his book is correct. cambodia’s curse!
Ours history show that cambodia is smart as the world know that we built Angkor Wat and 1000 temples. Cham, Nanchao(Tai), Cholar, Mon and Chhiey, Khmer neighbors, lost their lands and the world delect their names out of the list of the nations but Khmer still stand here forever.
If America is a nation withow corruption why America fall into financial crisis in 2008. you should write why America fall into financial crisis in 2008 or America’s curse?