Volume 45, Number 13 · August 13, 1998
The Cambodian Calamity
By Henry Kamm
Only by comparison with the worst that Cambodia has suffered since it was plunged into the Indochina war in 1970 can the notion of progress be applied at all to this tormented country. The four calamitous years of Pol Pot's rule by maniacal murderers, who extinguished or damaged forever the lives of untold numbers of their own people, blighted Cambodian society and culture and shattered the bases of its economic survival. They established a nadir so low that any change meant an improvement. But some two decades have passed since those brief days of hope when Cambodia emerged from the Khmer Rouge nightmare, thanks to the Vietnamese invasion in 1978 and conquest in early 1979. And today, what is the condition of the country, now numbering more than ten million people?
Feature, 1508 words
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