Cambodia

The adjectives Cambodia’s Prince Norodom Sihanouk dislikes most are “mercurial” and “unpredictable.” They arc, of course, the adjectives most frequently applied to him by Western writers. But the Prince, with a wan smile, says he is sadly misunderstood and that his policy never changes. True, his objective remains constant: the preservation of Cambodia’s sovereignty and integrity in a troubled and war-ravaged part of Asia. To achieve this objective he has adopted a policy of neutralism, which is supposed to keep everybody at arm’s length.

But even within the framework of neutralism there are some bemusing zigs and zags. As the Prince himself said recently: “We do not change our policy. But we do sometimes have to shift from “central’ neutrality to ‘leftist’ or ‘rightist’ neutrality, according to external political circumstances.”

All smiles

External political circumstances at present seem to dictate some nifty diplomatic maneuvering on Prince Sihanouk’s part. Till now he has kept Cambodia an island of relative tranquillity. Pnompenh, with its broad uncluttered boulevards, its gay bougainvillaea trailing down the walls of pastel villas, and the royal elephants padding about the palace grounds, is one of the most charming and relaxed capitals in Asia.

But there is change in the air. The Americans, think many Asians, may be going home from Vietnam. The British are pulling out of Southeast Asia. The Russians, all smiles, trade, and culture, are coming in. When, for instance, the Russians sent a new ambassador to Cambodia, they chose Sergei M. Kudryavtsev. Once named as the probable head of a Soviet spy ring in Canada, Mr. Kudryavtsev was also Soviet ambassador in Cuba during the missile crisis. He is said to be sixth-ranking ambassador in the Soviet foreign service, and nobody thinks that such a high-powered diplomat has been assigned to Cambodia merely to observe the ruins at Angkor. Meanwhile, what the Chinese Communists will be up to in Southeast Asia after picking up the pieces of their Cultural Revolution, nobody can be sure.

With all this uncertainty, Prince Sihanouk has been obliged to abandon his hopes for the neutralization of the whole of Southeast Asia from big-power interference. Like France’s De Gaulle, he still thinks the idea is desirable. But unlike De Gaulle, he recognizes it is no longer practical. So he has turned to what he calls the balance concept. In other words, if the big powers cannot be kept out of Asia, he wants to try to balance them off so that no single one becomes dominant.

When American correspondents were permitted their annual visit to Cambodia in November, Prince Sihanouk made sure they got his new message. “Not gladly, but with realism,” he said he would favor a continued American presence in Southeast Asia after the Vietnam War, to balance off the various other forces. He wasn’t, he said, going to have American troops in Cambodia, but he didn’t mind them conveniently nearby, say in Thailand or the Philippines or even Japan. Sihanouk aides also let it be known that privately the Prince was eager for resumption of diplomatic relations with the United States, broken in 1965. For a man who has consistently berated American “imperialism” in Asia this was an interesting zig indeed.

Sihanouk’s footwork

It was a shift compelled by the ominous necessities of the day. For ironically, although the Vietnam War has posed serious problems for Cambodia, its ending may bring the sharpest danger. In part, Cambodia has escaped embroilment in the war because of Sihanouk’s fleet-footed diplomacy. But in part it is also because the warring factions have been preoccupied in Vietnam itself, and Cambodia has been of only secondary interest. North Vietnam’s and the Viet Cong’s interest in Cambodia has been in using the country as a transit route for their troops. The Americans’ interest has been in trying to bottle the route up. Neither side has been trying to seize or hold Cambodian territory.

With the end of the war, this situation may change. The Cambodians regard the Vietnamese, whether Communist or non-Communist, as their traditional foes. When peace comes. Prince Sihanouk could be left with thousands of Communist Vietnamese troops on his soil.

North American weathervanes are from European Folk Art, edited by H. J. Hansen. McGraw-Hill, New York. © 1968 Thames and Hudson, Ltd., London.

Throughout the war, Sihanouk has consistently minimized the extent of Communist troop traffic through his country. But American correspondents visiting Pnompenh in November were intrigued to find diplomats of all hues discussing not whether there was Communist infiltration, but specifically how many North Vietnamese and Viet Cong divisions were bedded down in Cambodia. American military authorities in Saigon set the number of divisions at five. There seemed to be widespread agreement that the North Vietnamese commander. General Vo Nguyen Giap, far from marching all of his troops back north, was holding some of them in Cambodia and Laos, following their apparent withdrawal from South Vietnam.

Both North Vietnam and the National Liberation Front, political arm of the Viet Cong, maintain diplomatic missions in Pnompenh. On the surface, Prince Sihanouk smothers them with charm. But privately, according to his confidants, he is agitated about the mounting number of their troops on his soil. The agitation is warranted. For though the Americans, or certainly most of them, will go home after the Vietnam War, those Vietnamese divisions may just decide to stay on in Cambodia as did many Vietminh after the Indochina war. The Cambodian Army of 34,000 men has little hope of ousting the battle-experienced Vietnamese units. But there is, apparently, new emphasis on controlling them. The Vietnamese do not always do what the Cambodians request, and there are reports of clashes between Cambodian troops and the Communist intruders, with deaths and injuries.

“Ever greater hostility”

There is also more Cambodian outspokenness about Vietnamese infiltration. The Cambodian Defense Ministry recently cited infiltration by “armed Vietnamese.” The Ministry listed nine villages in Svay Rieng Province where “armed Vietnamese continued to install themselves on our territory near the border . . . and are showing ever greater hostility toward provincial and district authorities and toward the village inhabitants.” Privately, military officials made it clear the “armed Vietnamese” they referred to were Communists, not South Vietnamese forces. Sihanouk himself has mentioned Communist infiltration in the remote northern border country inhabited by Montagnard tribesmen. “Vietnamese Communists,” he said, “who do not recognize our frontiers are occupying part of our territory. They are infiltrating, and we lack the forces to control them in a region covered with dense forest. They are forcing the local Loeu tribesmen to stage ambushes against us and claim that Rattanakiri Province is not Cambodian territory.” Accordingly, Sihanouk has given priority to a border-settlement project. Ex-convicts and ex-army men are being encouraged to settle in and develop some of the more remote areas along Cambodia’s boundaries.

Heavy weight

Despite their role as former rulers of Cambodia, the French enjoy a cordial relationship with Sihanouk. Yet some of the gloomiest predictions about the country’s future come from French veterans of the Indochina war. The French fear the eventual partition of Cambodia after the Vietnamese War is over. They see Communist Vietnamese occupying the eastern part of the country, leaving the rest to a nonCommunist Cambodian administration.

Observers of even gloomier frame of mind think the Cambodians will be lucky to get off with that. They say that what the Vietnamese do not take on the one side, Cambodia’s other traditional enemies, the Thais, will swallow up on the other. Thus Cambodia as such would simply disappear. Sihanouk apparently has few illusions about these possible threats. He says he welcomes the return of peace to Vietnam. But he knows this “will eventually lead to the reunification of Vietnam.” Obviously, a “reunified Vietnam and a Communist Vietnam, as the case will most likely be, would be a somewhat heavy weight for us.”

If his prediction proves incorrect, and a non-Communist administration survives in South Vietnam, Sihanouk hardly expects to live in amity with it. If the Communists triumph, the Prince hopes to avoid receiving the full brunt of their “somewhat heavy weight” by continued diplomatic dodging and maneuver. But his overture to the Americans indicates he is taking out a little insurance in case that tactic fails.

Enemies within

Though Sihanouk is best known as a manipulator on the international scene, he is also confronted by some less publicized but no less worrisome internal problems. Sensing early in his reign the direction of events in Asia, he surrendered his crown to become a popular leader. There is no question that among the majority of Cambodia’s 6 million people he is just that. When he travels, the crowds throng about him, and he plunges into their midst, apparently oblivious of any assassination danger.

Nevertheless, the threat to Cambodia’s security is not only from beyond its borders. From within there are flurries of revolt and subversion from several quarters. The Montagnard minority in Cambodia is apparently just as independent as are the hill tribes of South Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos, all of them hostile to central authority. The Loeu tribesmen in the northeastern part of his country have been cutting roads, destroying bridges, and even attacking provincial guard posts, according to the official publication Kambuja.

Beyond this there is insurrection from underground organizations, both right-wing and leftist. On the right is the Khmer Serei, whose members are opposed to Sihanouk’s rule, and who mount nibbling attacks, mainly in the border areas. They are said to cooperate at times with straight bandit outfits. Prince Sihanouk charges that they also have the support of both the Thai government and the American Central Intelligence Agency.

From the left, Sihanouk has been getting trouble from Cambodia’s own Communists, the Khmer Rouges. They kicked off a sharp little insurgency in Battambang Province in 1967 and have since been harassing government forces with some audacity. Little is known of the Khmer Rouges leadership, policy, or goals. The organization is not, at this stage, thought to be getting substantial support from abroad. Khmer Rouges terrorists do not seem to have been particularly well armed, and many of their missions have been launched against police posts to seize weapons stored there. Nevertheless, observers say there were upward of a hundred clashes between Khmer Rouges terrorists and government forces in 1968. Government casualties are not publicized, but government publications contain telltale announcements of payments to dependents of government officials who have fallen in the service of their country.

The Khmer Rouges destroy bridges, ambush army officers, and are presumed to be responsible for the mysterious burning in November of the house at Kirirom of Cambodia’s defense chief, General Nhiek Tioulong. The organization apparently has support in high places. I he director general of one of Cambodia’s two state banks, the Inadana Jati Bank, was detained in 1968, on suspicion of supporting the Communists, along with two subordinates. Three left-wing assemblymen, Hou Youn, Khieu Samphan, and Hu Nim, are missing. They are charged by Prince Sihanouk with being ringleaders of a Communist conspiracy. Some say they are fighting with the Khmer Rouges, others that government agents have quietly done away with them.

Prince Sihanouk’s domestic antiCommunist policy stands in contrast to the appearance he gives of accommodating foreign Communists. He has ordered the Khmer Rouges insurrection crushed. He is emphatic that it draws its inspiration from Communist Vietminh cells installed in Cambodia between 1947 and 1954, and that it is a straight Communist subversive organization. He is particularly sensitive to any suggestion that the Khmer Rouges movement is supported by peasants, unemployed youths, and intellectuals discontent with his own rule.

Fiscal fitness

Sihanouk clearly faces the same challenge as many another Asian leader in trying to satisfy the expcctant and increasingly restless young. Cambodian universities turn out about 2500 graduates a year. The country’s primarily agricultural economy (rice and rubber) cannot absorb all of them, or at least it cannot provide them with the sophisticated and well-paying jobs for which they feel their education has fitted them.

The Prekhnot dam scheme, part of the overall Mekong development scheme, has been getting under way. It lies about forty miles from Pnompenh on the Bassac River, a tributary of the Mekong. This is a multilateral-aid project under the supervision of the United Nations; principal contributors arc Japan, Australia, Canada, Britain, Italy, West Germany, and the Netherlands, with Cambodia itself meeting about a third of the $27 million cost. A dam and hydroelectric complex, Prekhnot will in addition ultimately irrigate more than 150,000 acres of riceland. But the land area benefiting initially is only about 11,000 acres, and clearly it will be years before the full impact of the Prekhnot scheme is felt.

If Cambodia is to build a partway affluent society, it must encourage industrialization. This in turn demands foreign investment. Despite his royal background, Prince Sihanouk has embraced socialism, but he does now seem anxious to attract foreign investors and guarantee them security from nationalization. Investment regulations are being streamlined. At the port of Sihanoukville he has set aside a freetrading zone where foreign manufacturers are being invited to set up factories. There seems new flexibility and pragmatism in Cambodia’s fiscal policies. The Prince has decided that Cambodia should join the International Monetary Fund.

Pan American Airways has been dickering with the Cambodian government over landing rights and hotel development. Air France, which already lands in Cambodia, is also going into the hotel business there. But industrialists have yet to be convinced that the politics and the small population of Cambodia offer them better prospects for profit than such fast-growing Southeast Asian countries as Thailand and Malaysia. Also Cambodia would probably have to undergo currency stabilization, the experts’ word for devaluation. Thus with new tensions at home and abroad, and economic development still in the planning stages, the tightrope which Prince Sihanouk walks so flamboyantly looks ever more slippery.

— John Hughes