Cambodia

I

INTRODUCTION

Cambodia is a country in Southeast Asia, also known as Kâmpŭchéa. More than a thousand years ago, Cambodia was the center of the Khmer (Cambodian) kingdom of Angkor, a great empire that dominated Southeast Asia for 600 years. A monarchy since ancient times, Cambodia was a French protectorate from 1863 to 1953. A republic replaced the monarchy in 1970, and in 1975 a Communist regime known as the Khmer Rouge took power, naming the country Democratic Kâmpŭchéa.
The Khmer Rouge’s brutal repression and radical socialist reforms devastated Cambodia’s society and economy. In 1979 anti-Khmer Rouge Communist forces from Vietnam and Cambodia overthrew the Khmer Rouge and established a more moderate socialist state. In 1989 the country abandoned socialism, and in 1993 a new constitution restored the monarchy. Cambodia’s official name is the Kingdom of Cambodia.

Cambodia is bounded on the northeast by Laos, on the east and southeast by Vietnam, on the west and northwest by Thailand, and on the southwest by the Gulf of Thailand (Siam). The country’s capital and largest city is Phnom Penh.

II

POPULATION

The population of Cambodia is 14,241,640 (2008 estimate). Population growth per year is estimated at 1.8 percent, one of the highest rates in Asia. The rate of infant mortality is also high. The population density is 81 persons per sq km (209 per sq mi), with the densest concentrations on the heavily cultivated central plain. The mountainous regions of the country, where malaria is widespread, are thinly populated, as are the poorly watered northern provinces. During the late 1970s, under the brutal rule of the Khmer Rouge, all of Cambodia’s towns were depopulated, and residents were forcibly relocated to rural areas. A process of reurbanization began in the 1980s. Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, is situated at the junction of the Mekong and Tônlé Sab rivers. Other major cities are Bãtdâmbâng, Kâmpóng Cham, Kâmpôt, and Cambodia’s only deep-water port, Kâmpóng Saôm, located on the Gulf of Thailand.

A

Ethnic Groups and Languages

Ethnic Cambodians, or Khmer, constitute 90 percent of the population. About 5 percent of the country’s inhabitants are of Vietnamese origin, and 1 percent is Chinese. Seminomadic tribal groups concentrated in the mountainous northeast make up the remaining 4 percent of the population.

Cambodia’s official language is Khmer, or Cambodian, which belongs to the Mon-Khmer family of languages. French was formerly an important secondary language in the country, but English gained considerable ground in the 1990s. Other languages spoken include Vietnamese and an assortment of South Chinese dialects.

B

Religion

At least 85 percent of Cambodia’s inhabitants adhere to Theravada Buddhism, which is the dominant religion in most Southeast Asian nations. Buddhism originated in India in the 6th century bc and arrived in Cambodia during the first centuries ad. At first Mahayana Buddhism predominated, but after the 14th century Theravada gradually replaced the older school as the primary religion. Nevertheless, a minority of modern Cambodians still practices Mahayana Buddhism. Other religions practiced in Cambodia include Roman Catholicism and Islam.

C

Education

An estimated 71 percent of Cambodia’s adult population is literate. Public education is free and compulsory for the first 6 years. Primary school attendance increased rapidly in the 1990s, and by 2002–2003 virtually all children were enrolled, as well as many older people who were unable to attend school in earlier years. Secondary education was more limited, with only 25 percent of eligible children enrolled. Seven institutions of higher learning, including the University of Phnom Penh, the University of Fine Arts, and the University of Agricultural Sciences, operate in the country. Only 3 percent of Cambodians of usual university age were enrolled in these schools in 2002–2003.

Perennially handicapped by insufficient funding, Cambodia’s educational system was devastated in the late 1970s when the Khmer Rouge regime closed schools and executed thousands of teachers. The regime viewed intellectuals, among others, as potential sources of opposition to its attempt to create an ideal socialist, agrarian society. In the 1980s thousands more teachers fled the country or sought better-paying work. Ever since then, efforts to revive the education system have been hampered by a shortage of funds and trained personnel.

III

ECONOMY

Cambodia is one of the world’s poorest nations. In 2006 its total gross domestic product (GDP) was $7.3 billion, yielding a per capita GDP of just $511.30, among the lowest in the world.

Even before being plunged into civil conflict in the 1970s, Cambodia lacked significant industrial development, with most of the labor force engaged in agriculture. The country was self-sufficient in food and produced exportable surpluses of its principal crops of rice and corn. In spite of relatively low yields and a single harvest per year, Cambodia annually exported hundreds of thousands of tons of rice.

The civil war from 1970 to 1975, the Khmer Rouge regime from 1975 to 1979, and the Cambodia-Vietnam War from 1978 to 1979 virtually destroyed Cambodia’s economy. By 1974, under wartime conditions, rice had to be imported, and production of Cambodia’s most profitable export crop, rubber, fell off sharply. The civil unrest also disrupted Cambodia’s fledgling manufacturing industry and severely damaged road and rail networks.

In 1975 the newly installed Khmer Rouge government nationalized all means of production in Cambodia. Money and private property were abolished, and agriculture was collectivized (ownership was transferred to the people as a group, represented by the state). The Khmer Rouge Four-Year Plan, a utopian document drafted in 1976, envisaged multiple plantings of rice and a vastly expanded irrigation system. The plan aimed to increase income from exports of rice and other products and to use this income to buy machinery with which to industrialize the country. The Four-Year Plan was poorly thought out, brutally enforced, and unsuccessful. Rice production rose slightly, but between 1976 and 1978, hundreds of thousands of people died from malnutrition, overwork, and mistreated or misdiagnosed diseases. The Khmer Rouge executed hundreds of thousands more people whom they judged to be enemies of the regime. The atrocities of the Khmer Rouge period decimated Cambodia’s labor force.

A

Labor

In 2006 Cambodia had a labor force of 6.9 million. Agriculture was the largest employer, engaging 60 percent of the workers. It is followed by services (27 percent) and industry (13 percent). Underemployment in urban areas is high, and working conditions in developing industries, such as clothing manufacturing, are poor. Efforts to unionize factory workers have encountered significant opposition from factory owners.

B

Agriculture and Fishing

Agriculture is the largest sector of Cambodia’s economy, contributing 30 percent of the GDP in 2006. Rice is Cambodia’s most important crop and the staple food of the Khmer diet. More than one-half of cultivated land—much of it of poor quality—is planted in rice. Rubber, Cambodia’s other important export crop, is grown in plantations in the eastern part of the country. Corn, cassava, soybeans, palm sugar, and pepper are also grown commercially, while cucumbers and fruits, including mangoes, bananas, watermelons, and pineapples, are raised for local consumption. Chicken and pigs are widely domesticated, while cattle and water buffalo are used for agricultural work.

Freshwater fish are an important ingredient of the typical Cambodian diet. Most of the annual catch is consumed locally. Important types of fish caught include perch, carp, lungfish, and smelt. The Tônlé Sap is the most concentrated source of freshwater fish in Southeast Asia. Commercial fishing in the Gulf of Thailand, on the other hand, is relatively undeveloped.

C

Mining and Manufacturing

In 2006 industry, primarily manufacturing, contributed 26 percent of Cambodia’s GDP. Although mining is not a major industry, Cambodia produces limited quantities of zircons, sapphires, and rubies, and exploits commercial deposits of salt, manganese, and phosphate. In the early 1990s Cambodia began exploring for petroleum in the Gulf of Thailand, but Thailand and Vietnam, who claim offshore areas of the gulf, have contested the exploration projects.

Cambodia’s manufacturing base was severely damaged in the civil war of the 1970s and was later mismanaged under the Khmer Rouge. Manufacturing activity recovered slowly in the 1980s and 1990s but still represents a relatively minor sector of the national economy. Manufactured products include bricks, tile, cement, processed rubber, textiles, clothing, and furniture.

D

Services

Services, especially small-scale commercial activities, account for 44 percent of Cambodia’s GDP. Since the late 1980s Cambodia has encouraged tourism as an important source of foreign exchange, and the annual number of visitors rose from less than 1,000 in 1987 to 1,700,000 in 2006. Tourist spending in 2006 was 963 million U.S dollars. Most tourists are from Asian countries, and popular destinations are Phnom Penh and the ruins of Angkor.

IV				HISTORY
A			The Khmer Kingdoms

Early Chinese writers referred to a kingdom in Cambodia that they called Funan. Modern-day archaeological findings provide evidence of a commercial society centered on the Mekong Delta that flourished from the 1st century to the 6th century. Among these findings are excavations of a port city from the 1st century, located in the region of Oc-Eo in what is now southern Vietnam. Served by a network of canals, the city was an important trade link between India and China. Ongoing excavations in southern Cambodia have revealed the existence of another important city near the present-day village of Angkor Borei.

A group of inland kingdoms, known collectively to the Chinese as Zhenla, flourished in the 6th and 7th centuries from southern Cambodia to southern Laos. The first stone inscriptions in the Khmer language and the first brick and stone Hindu temples in Cambodia date from the Zhenla period.

B

Angkor Era

In the early 9th century a Khmer (ethnic Cambodian) prince returned to Cambodia from abroad. He probably arrived from nearby Java or Sumatra, where he may have been held hostage by island kings who had asserted control over portions of the Southeast Asian mainland. In a series of ceremonies at different sites, the prince declared himself ruler of a new independent kingdom, which unified several local principalities. His kingdom eventually came to be centered near present-day Siĕmréab in northwestern Cambodia. The prince, known to his successors as Jayavarman II, inaugurated a cult honoring the Hindu god Shiva as a devaraja (Sanskrit term meaning “god-king”). The cult, which legitimized the king’s rule by linking him with Shiva, persisted at the Cambodian court for more than two hundred years.

Between the early 9th century and the early 15th century, 26 monarchs ruled successively over the Khmer kingdom (known as Angkor, the modern name for its capital city). The successors of Jayavarman II built the great temples for which Angkor is famous. Historians have dated more than a thousand temple sites and over a thousand stone inscriptions (most of them on temple walls) to this era. Notable among the Khmer builder-kings were Suyavarman II, who built the temple known as Angkor Wat in the mid-12th century, and Jayavarman VII, who built the Bayon temple at Angkor Thum and several other large Buddhist temples half a century later. Jayavarman VII, a fervent Buddhist, also built hospitals and rest houses along the roads that crisscrossed the kingdom. Most of the monarchs, however, seem to have been more concerned with displaying and increasing their power than with the welfare of their subjects.

At its greatest extent, in the 12th century, the Khmer kingdom encompassed (in addition to present-day Cambodia) parts of present-day Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar (formerly Burma), and the Malay Peninsula. Thailand and Laos still contain Khmer ruins and inscriptions. The kings at Angkor received tribute from smaller kingdoms to the north, east, and west, and conducted trade with China. The capital city was the center of an impressive network of reservoirs and canals, which historians theorize supplied water for irrigation. Many historians believe that the abundant harvests made possible by irrigation supported a large population whose labor could be drawn on to construct the kings’ temples and to fight their wars. The massive temples, extensive roads and waterworks, and confident inscriptions give an illusion of stability that is undermined by the fact that many Khmer kings gained the throne by conquering their predecessors. Inscriptions indicate that the kingdom frequently suffered from rebellions and foreign invasions.

C

Cambodia’s “Dark Ages”

The four centuries of Cambodian history following the abandonment of Angkor are poorly recorded, and therefore historians know little about them beyond the bare outlines. Cambodia retained its language and its cultural identity despite frequent invasions by the powerful Thai kingdom of Ayutthaya and incursions by Vietnamese forces. Indeed, for much of this period, Cambodia was a relatively prosperous trading kingdom with its capital at Lovek, near present-day Phnom Penh. European visitors wrote of the Buddhist piety of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Lovek. During this period, Cambodians composed the country’s most important work of literature, the Reamker (based on the Indian myth of the Ramayana).

In the late 18th century, a civil war in Vietnam and disorder following a Burmese invasion of Ayutthaya spilled over into Cambodia and devastated the area. In the early 19th century, newly established dynasties in Vietnam and Thailand competed for control over the Cambodian court. The warfare that ensued, beginning in the l830s, came close to destroying Cambodia.

D

Coup of 1970 and the Khmer Republic

In March 1970 Cambodia’s legislature, the National Assembly, deposed Sihanouk while he was abroad. The conservative forces behind the coup were pro-Western and anti-Vietnamese. General Lon Nol, the country’s prime minister, assumed power and sent his poorly equipped army to fight the North Vietnamese Communist forces encamped in border areas. Lon Nol hoped that U.S. aid would allow him to defeat his enemies, but American support was always geared to events in Vietnam. In April U.S. and South Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia, searching for North Vietnamese, who moved deeper into Cambodia. Over the next year, North Vietnamese troops destroyed the offensive capacity of Lon Nol’s army.

In October 1970 Lon Nol inaugurated the Khmer Republic. Sihanouk, who had sought asylum in China, was condemned to death despite his absence. By that time, Chinese and North Vietnamese leaders had persuaded the prince to establish a government in exile, allied with North Vietnam and dominated by the CPK, whom Sihanouk referred to as the Khmer Rouge (French for “Red Khmers”).

The United States continued bombing Cambodia until the Congress of the United States halted the campaign in 1973. By that time, Lon Nol’s forces were fighting not only the Vietnamese but also the Khmer Rouge. The general lost control over most of the Cambodian countryside, which had been devastated by U.S. bombing. The fighting severely damaged the nation’s infrastructure and caused high numbers of casualties. Hundreds of thousands of refugees flooded into the cities. In 1975, despite massive infusions of U.S. aid, the Khmer Republic collapsed, and Khmer Rouge forces occupied Phnom Penh. Three weeks later, North Vietnamese forces achieved victory in South Vietnam.

E

Democratic Kâmpŭchéa

Immediately after occupying Cambodia’s towns, the Khmer Rouge ordered all city dwellers into the countryside to take up agricultural tasks. The move reflected both the Khmer Rouge’s contempt for urban dwellers, whom they saw as enemies, and their utopian vision of Cambodia as a nation of busy, productive peasants. The leader of the regime, who remained concealed from the public, was Saloth Sar, who used the pseudonym Pol Pot. The government, which called itself Democratic Kâmpŭchéa (DK), claimed to be seeking total independence from foreign powers but accepted economic and military aid from its major allies, China and North Korea.

Without identifying themselves as Communists, the Khmer Rouge quickly introduced a series of far-reaching and often painful socialist programs. The people given the most power in the new government were the largely illiterate rural Cambodians who had fought alongside the Khmer Rouge in the civil war. DK leaders severely restricted freedom of speech, movement, and association, and forbade all religious practices. The regime controlled all communications along with access to food and information. Former city dwellers, now called 'new people,' were particularly badly treated. The Khmer Rouge killed intellectuals, merchants, bureaucrats, members of religious groups, and any people suspected of disagreeing with the party. Millions of other Cambodians were forcibly relocated, deprived of food, tortured, or sent into forced labor.

The Khmer Rouge also attacked neighboring countries in an attempt to reclaim territories lost by Cambodia many centuries before. After fighting broke out with Vietnam (then united under the Communists) in 1977, DK’s ideology became openly racist. Ethnic minorities in Cambodia, including ethnic Chinese and Vietnamese, were hunted down and expelled or massacred. Purges of party members accused of treason became widespread. People in eastern Cambodia, suspected of cooperating with Vietnam, suffered severely, and hundreds of thousands of them were killed. While in power, the Khmer Rouge murdered, worked to death, or killed by starvation close to 1.7 million Cambodians—more than one-fifth of the country’s population.

The war with Vietnam went badly for Cambodia, and in the second half of 1978 the DK tried to open the country up to the wider world, inviting journalists to visit and extending diplomatic recognition to several nonsocialist countries. In December 1978 the Vietnamese launched a blitzkrieg assault on Cambodia, using more than 100,000 troops. A group of Cambodian Communist rebels, the Khmer National United Front for National Salvation (KNUFNS), accompanied them. On January 7, 1979, the invading forces occupied Phnom Penh, which the Khmer Rouge leaders had abandoned the day before. Pol Pot, his colleagues, and hundreds of thousands of followers sought refuge over the next few months along the Thai-Cambodian border. There they were protected by the Thai regime, which was hostile to Vietnam.

F

Vietnamese Domination

Vietnam established a satellite regime called the People’s Republic of Kâmpŭchéa (PRK) in January 1979. The new government included many former members of the Khmer Rouge who had defected to Vietnam, as well as some Cambodians who had sought refuge in Vietnam before the Khmer Rouge victory in 1975. After coming to power, the regime restored much of Cambodia’s pre-1975 way of life, including the practice of Buddhism and a nationwide education system. For the time being, however, agriculture remained collectivized. Like all previous regimes, the new government treated its opponents harshly; like the Khmer Rouge, it severely limited people’s freedom of expression. The pro-Vietnamese Kâmpŭchéan Peoples’ Revolutionary Party (KPRP) monopolized political power and swept the 1981 elections for the National Assembly.

Meanwhile, remnants of the Khmer Rouge and other Cambodians who had fled to Thailand formed an anti-Vietnamese government in exile, which continued to be known as DK. China, Thailand, and the United States had disapproved of the overthrow of DK, viewing it as Vietnamese aggression, and encouraged the formation of the government in exile. With the support of these countries, DK retained Cambodia’s seat in the United Nations (UN). Only a few foreign governments, including the USSR and India, recognized the PRK as Cambodia’s legitimate government. Foreign aid to Cambodia was largely limited to the Soviet-led bloc of Communist nations.

Throughout the 1980s, Vietnam maintained more than 100,000 troops in Cambodia. Conflict between PRK and DK forces, combined with Cambodia’s relative isolation, produced continuing economic instability. Thousands of people were killed in battle or maimed by landmines. In 1985 Cambodia’s foreign minister, Hun Sen, became prime minister of the PRK.

I

Cambodia Under Hun Sen

In September 1989, as the Cold War ended and Soviet financing of the Vietnamese forces in Cambodia fell sharply, Vietnam withdrew its troops from Cambodia. The withdrawal left the Cambodian regime, under Prime Minister Hun Sen, in a precarious position, deprived of all substantial foreign aid and threatened militarily by the forces of the Khmer Rouge and their allies on the Thai-Cambodian border. Soon afterward the PRK officially abandoned socialism, renamed itself the State of Cambodia (SOC), and introduced a range of reforms aimed at attracting foreign investment and increasing the popularity of the ruling KPRP, renamed the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP).

A program of privatization, which ended collectivized agriculture, and a headlong rush toward free-market economics from 1989 to 1992 widened the inequities in Cambodian society. Some members of the government became millionaires overnight, while the national economy was still stumbling to its feet. As markets opened in Thailand and Vietnam, exploitation of Cambodia’s gem and timber resources by foreign businesses became widespread. Meanwhile, fighting between government and Khmer Rouge forces intensified, as the Khmer Rouge occupied large areas in the relatively inhospitable northern part of the country.