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About Cambodia
A child sits on part of the ancient ruins of Angkor, home to the famous Angkor Wat temples.
About Cambodia
Modern-day Cambodia glows with the embers of a rich civilization nearly burned out through genocide and decades of war. Since 1993, the Cambodian people have tried to build their democratic nation despite sporadic outbreaks of violence, overwhelming economic and social problems that blight most fledgling nations, and unsettled ghosts from a horrible civil war.
The ancient Khmer kingdom was once Southeast Asia's vast empire. Its holdings included the modern day Thai capital of Bangkok, much southern Vietnam, and the Laotian capital Vientiane. Cambodia began first as a Hindu nation that later embraced Buddhism and is home to one of Asia’s great wonders: the Angkor temples in Siem Reap.
But by the mid-1800s, Cambodia had been slowly whittled away by its rivals until it faced the real threat of being gobbled up by its Thai and Vietnamese rivals. In 1964, to save his kingdom, Cambodia’s king sought status as a French protectorate. In 1884, Cambodia became a French colony.
But in 1954, Cambodia won its independence from France through a long campaign by King Norodom Sihanouk. For the next 15 years, King Sihanouk would represent his tiny nation with countries such as North and South Vietnam, China and the United States – all of which had interest in the region.
But Cambodian was drawn into the United States’ conflict in Vietnam. The Americans began bombing section of Cambodia that bordered Vietnam. In 1970, a Cambodian military general named Lon Nol overthrew King Sihanouk and sent his lightly armed and untrained military forces to fight the North Vietnamese and Cambodian communists, the Khmer Rouge.
The American military bombing expanded to all of Cambodia. King Sihanouk threw in his lot with the Khmer Rouge, calling for Cambodia to join the communists to overthrow Lon Nol’s regime.
By 1975, the United States had withdrawn from Vietnam and Cambodia, the North Vietnamese conquered the South and the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia.
In the next four years, roughly 2 million of Cambodia’s 10 million people would die through starvation, torture and murder. The Khmer Rouge sought to return the country to “Year Zero,” killing the educated population, anyone with affiliation to the former government, banning religion and neglecting or destroying books. They emptied major cities and created a completely agrarian society with no monetary system. King Sihanouk was isolated in Royal Palace away from Khmer Rouge leaders such as Pol Pot.
The Khmer Rouge leaders, hoping to regain the glory of the ancient Khmer Empire, began border raids with neighboring Vietnam to recapture a section of Southern Vietnam lost more than 200 years before.
Vietnam invaded and occupied Cambodia in 1979, beginning a 10-year occupation of the country and a continued civil war. The country was isolated from all but a small segment of communist countries and the Vietnamese and some Cambodian counterparts fought three rebel groups: the Khmer Rouge, a pro-King Sihanouk army, and a third republican group call the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front. Western nations and China in some way backed all of the rebel groups.
In 1989, the Vietnamese withdrew from Cambodia and two years later, the United Nations announced plans for the first democratic elections involving all Cambodian factions in the recent civil war. The Khmer Rouge, however, later withdrew because they would not agree to the requirements of a peace accord between each group.
The election, marred by violence and intimidation, resulted in a coalition government of the royalist rebel group, Funcinpec, and the Cambodian People’s Party, which had sided with Vietnam during the 1980s occupation.
Over the next decade, both sides would compete for power and money while at the same time attempting to rebuild a country completely devastated by more than 30 years of war. They had much to do: hundreds of acres of farmland are covered with land mines, roads are impassable, clean water is scarce, illiteracy is high, and there are few doctors or other trained personnel.
Gun-battles would break out between the two main factions in the country. In 1997, Cambodian People’s Party leader Hun Sen ousted his coalition partner, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, in a military coup.
Cambodian was isolated again until Prince Ranariddh returned to the country and a second election was help in 1998. Hun Sen’s party won the plurality of the votes and, through a coalition with Prince Ranariddh, Hun Sen was named prime minister.
What are the challenges of this 5-year-old democracy? The United Nations hopes to try the surviving members of the Khmer Rouge in a war crimes tribunal; its pristine forests are being slowly stripped by illegal logging gangs; acres are still unusable from land mines; child trafficking is rampant; AIDS is killing thousands; roads are impassable; electricity and clean water are rare in rural areas; the legal system is fragile and barely effective in the cities; the education system is brittle; bribery in the military and police bear down on everyday workers; and recent floods and droughts have battered available farmland.
“Weak government comrpomises the felivery of services to the poor and makes them more vulerable," Eva Mysliwiec, director of the Cambodia Development Resource Institute, told The Cambodia Daily.