slowly rising again from Khmer Rouge killing fields, Cambodia is on steady but uncertain path to future success

Cambodia slowly rising again from Khmer Rouge killing fields
Country on steady but uncertain path to future success

Saturday, December 8, 2007

I recently returned from a 10-day trip to Vietnam and Cambodia,
courtesy of a journalism fellowship sponsored by the German Marshall
Fund. Before embarking on the trip, I sought questions from the
Chronicle's "Two Cents" pool of contributors. What did they want to
know about the two countries with whom the United States had such a
tortured experience in the not-so-distant past? Interestingly, it was
the impact of that past, and America's contribution to it - almost as
much as what the two countries look like today - that concerned
readers who responded.

Below are some impressions I gained from my all-too-brief visit,
beginning with Cambodia, along with answers, to readers' questions, to
the best of my ability. Next week: Vietnam.

- Andrew Ross, Chronicle

interactive editor


Up from Year Zero
Cambodia, whose path to a proletarian paradise was paved by a hell on
earth (Year Zero, the Khmer Rouge called it), is trying - oh, how it
is trying - to rise up from the funeral pyre to which it was reduced a
mere generation ago.

In 2007, Cambodians say, they are only in their "ninth year of peace,"
emerging from decades of carpet bombing, invasions, civil war and,
finally, a coup in 1997, into a period of unaccustomed tranquility.

That it has come as far as it has, compared to other "post-conflict
countries" - an economic annual growth rate of 10 percent, sometimes
more, over the past decade - is quite remarkable in the opinion of
experts. The World Bank, one of the chief financiers of Cambodia's
rebuilding, thinks the nation is on a path to become a "middle-income
country" in just eight years.

Many of these same experts, however, including World Bank officials,
say it is far from a sure bet. "It will take another generation to get
things right here," said one official. "But the future is tomorrow."

Fueled in large part by postwar reconstruction, international aid and
the presence of about 1,000 well-meaning if not always helpful Western
nongovernmental organizations, there was more of the future than the
ghost town I initially expected to see. Lots of Toyota Camrys and
night life in Phnom Penh. Many hotels and houses going up there and
along the highway north to the temples of Angkor Wat, which are
expected to attract 3 million tourists next year. Optimistic
statements from government officials - to be expected, of course - but
also, if somewhat more guarded, from Western nongovernmental
organizations, which naturally tend to see the grimmer sides of
economic life.

If one were to "review" Cambodia like Cnet reviews high-tech products,
or The Chronicle reviews restaurants, mine might go something like
this:

The good:

-- Strong presence in the international garment business, thanks in
good measure to investments made early on by San Francisco-based Levi
Strauss and the Gap, and a binding agreement to observe international
labor standards.

-- Explosive growth in tourism, powered by foreign investment in
resort developments around Phnom Penh, Siem Reap and the sandy beaches
of Sihanoukville, in the south.

-- The distinct possibility of significant future wealth generated by
bauxite and gold (the Australians are already drilling); oil and gas
off its own coast (where San Ramon-based Chevron has major exploration
rights) and, even more significantly, in offshore fields straddling
the Thai-Cambodian border.

-- An increasingly powerful Asian economy that is pulling Cambodia
along in its wake. As one government minister put it hopefully,
"Cambodia is at the center of gravity" of the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN), which is taking steps to greater political and
economic integration.

-- A strong, commonly shared desire to "get things right."

The bad:

-- 3.5 million Cambodians, one-third of the population, in dire
poverty. Even more do not have regular access to electricity, clean
water or roads. Such inadequacies of infrastructure aren't the most
attractive lures for outside investors.

-- An enormous dropout rate in schools that mars a reasonably high
literacy rate (74 percent) and solid primary school enrollment. A low
level of skills (increasingly critical to participate in a rapidly
modernizing global economy), and some cracks in labor practices that
include the far-too-frequent bumping off of union leaders. According
to a recent survey by the International Trade Union Confederation,
attacks on workers by "police and thugs" have been occurring on a
monthly basis.

-- Overdependence on the garment business - estimated to support 3
million Cambodians, through direct employment and family remittances -
which this year started to show indications of decline amid growing
competition from elsewhere in Asia. "The only people with real U.S.
influence here," said U.S. Ambassador Joseph Mussomeli, "are Levi
Strauss and the Gap. If they pulled out, it would be a disaster for
the country."

-- Endemic corruption, ranging from government officials - who control
access to construction contracts and to what Cambodia may have
underground and under the sea - to low-level teachers who demand
payments (bribes, actually) from their students.

-- Patronage and greed, a specialty of Cambodia's plutocratic, so-
called "50 families."

-- Thuggery. Blatant land grabs involving the expulsion and dumping of
poor communities, often into makeshift camps surrounded by barbed
wire. The next time you're lying on the beach at Sihanoukville, it may
have come at the expense of what one Asian magazine last month called
the brutality of evictions of local residents that have reached
"alarming levels."

Bottom line:

The downsides, and the challenges they pose, are no secret. Prime
Minister Hun Sen, at an investor conference last month, said as much.
It's the implementation of needed reforms that is more problematic.
Apart from vested interests, traditions and the universal instinct to
take short cuts, illegal and otherwise, Cambodian society has the
added burden that its most fundamental structures - governance, law,
administration, education - were utterly destroyed in Year Zero, along
with trust. All of which have to be painfully rebuilt. So long as the
Asian economic tide continues to rise, Cambodia will probably be
lifted along with it. But what if the tide ebbs, and integration gives
way to more fierce competition?

As I look at my notes from the trip, peruse various economic and other
reports, and pace around thinking about what I saw, heard and read, I
can only come up with the vague, unsatisfactory cliche - that the
country's future hangs in the balance.

But if there's any justice at all, Cambodia deserves to make it.

Online Resources
Economic and Social


World Bank Reports, web.worldbank.org/kh


Private-sector reports: International Finance Corporation,
links.sfgate.com/ZBSL


Labor conditions: International Trade Union Confederation report,
September 2007, links.sfgate.com/ZBSM


Agriculture: Oxfam reports and programs, links.sfgate.com/ZBSO


Center for Social Development (Phnom Penh): www.csdcambodia.org


Womyn's Agenda for Change (Phnom Penh): www.womynsagenda.org

Phnom Penh Post: www.phnompenhpost.com

U.S. relations


Congressional Research Service report, July 2007 (pdf):
links.sfgate.com/ZBSP


Khmer Rouge/War Crimes Trials/Khmer Rouge


War Crimes Tribunal ("Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of
Cambodia"): www.eccc.gov.kh


Cambodia Tribunal Monitor: www.cambodiatribunal.org


Documentation Center of Cambodia: www.dccam.org

Cambodian Genocide Program, Yale University: www.yale.edu/cgp
.

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