Just found this. Looks interesting.
http://www.academia.edu/686246/Foreign_ ... _Civil_War
Foreign Aid-Corruption Nexus in Cambodia: Its Consequences on the Propensity of Civil War
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I can scarcely believe Cambodia is any more inclined to civil war than any of its Indochinese neighbors. Cambodia is one of the most homogeneous nation-states in the world -- at least 95% of Cambodians are Khmer-speaking, Buddha-worshiping Mon-Khmer peoples who had a little melanin copulated into them by itinerant Indians (of the subcontinent variety) during the Angkorian era -- the only "others" are the Vietnamese, nee subversive yuon, and their community is of little threat to the established order because the established order has been Vietnamese suzerainty over Cambodia post-1979.
Now you may ask "What about the last civil war that ended some 25 years prior?" and I'd say "spillover"; the Khmer Rouge war was a product of the Vietnam War which was itself a product of the Vietnamese Colonial War with the French. The Khmer Rouge, once the most zealous and brutal communist faction the world had ever known, defaulted to banditry and other malfeasance in the impoverished provinces bordering Thailand after being banished from the halls of power by the Vietnamese; the partisans' focus on the exceedingly mercantile gem trade was conspicuously incongruous with their aforementioned agrarian-communal dogma, leading one to believe the ideology was a pragmatic method of motivating a starving peasantry to do the bidding of a cabal of educated post-colonial opportunists. Lon Nol was, in effect, just a Khmer meat-puppet with a colonialist hand lodged firmly up his proverbial and directing his actions.
Civil wars in the post-colonial era were nothing unique. The majority of African states underwent similar conflicts in which numerous indigenous factions, masquerading behind a cornucopia of philosophies, quarreled over who would inherit the reigns to control the leviathan. Weber describes the state as having a "monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force" and any impuissant administration installed by colonialists will be displaced by an ambitious man who desires their power. Cambodia has already undergone this process and it cultivated the CPP; a near-autocratic, quasi-plutocracy that gently ushers the peasantry to partisanship and not-so-gently ushers rival functionaries and activists into imprisonment or exile.
Now we return to the homogeneity of Cambodian society. Civil wars in an established nation-state usually occur along a stress fracture caused by religion, race or culture. The potential for a Thai civil war has been discussed at length -- Isaan and other Northern peasants against the Bangkok elite -- the stress fracture in this situation is resultant from the mid-19th century conquest and imperial politicking that lead to the annexation of the Isaan region and has recently been exacerbated by socioeconomic differences between the two regions. Thailand is also experiencing an active civil war with Malay Muslim militants in the South; a much deeper stress fracture as the Southerners have very little cultural similarities with broader Thailand and were annexed much more recently.
The war in Southern Thailand illustrates the final, and perhaps most influential cause, of civil war; foreign geopolitical influence to facilitate logistical and financial support. The conflict in the South only exists because the Muslim region borders Muslim-majority Malaysia and the militant groups receive funding from the Gulf Arabs like every other Muslim separatist movement extant in the world. If the Cham were to be whipped into a frenzy by foreign provocateurs and provided with the capital to launch a militancy, the movement would likely suffocate many thousand miles away from any sympathetic territory that could provide material support.
Now you may ask "What about the last civil war that ended some 25 years prior?" and I'd say "spillover"; the Khmer Rouge war was a product of the Vietnam War which was itself a product of the Vietnamese Colonial War with the French. The Khmer Rouge, once the most zealous and brutal communist faction the world had ever known, defaulted to banditry and other malfeasance in the impoverished provinces bordering Thailand after being banished from the halls of power by the Vietnamese; the partisans' focus on the exceedingly mercantile gem trade was conspicuously incongruous with their aforementioned agrarian-communal dogma, leading one to believe the ideology was a pragmatic method of motivating a starving peasantry to do the bidding of a cabal of educated post-colonial opportunists. Lon Nol was, in effect, just a Khmer meat-puppet with a colonialist hand lodged firmly up his proverbial and directing his actions.
Civil wars in the post-colonial era were nothing unique. The majority of African states underwent similar conflicts in which numerous indigenous factions, masquerading behind a cornucopia of philosophies, quarreled over who would inherit the reigns to control the leviathan. Weber describes the state as having a "monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force" and any impuissant administration installed by colonialists will be displaced by an ambitious man who desires their power. Cambodia has already undergone this process and it cultivated the CPP; a near-autocratic, quasi-plutocracy that gently ushers the peasantry to partisanship and not-so-gently ushers rival functionaries and activists into imprisonment or exile.
Now we return to the homogeneity of Cambodian society. Civil wars in an established nation-state usually occur along a stress fracture caused by religion, race or culture. The potential for a Thai civil war has been discussed at length -- Isaan and other Northern peasants against the Bangkok elite -- the stress fracture in this situation is resultant from the mid-19th century conquest and imperial politicking that lead to the annexation of the Isaan region and has recently been exacerbated by socioeconomic differences between the two regions. Thailand is also experiencing an active civil war with Malay Muslim militants in the South; a much deeper stress fracture as the Southerners have very little cultural similarities with broader Thailand and were annexed much more recently.
The war in Southern Thailand illustrates the final, and perhaps most influential cause, of civil war; foreign geopolitical influence to facilitate logistical and financial support. The conflict in the South only exists because the Muslim region borders Muslim-majority Malaysia and the militant groups receive funding from the Gulf Arabs like every other Muslim separatist movement extant in the world. If the Cham were to be whipped into a frenzy by foreign provocateurs and provided with the capital to launch a militancy, the movement would likely suffocate many thousand miles away from any sympathetic territory that could provide material support.
- Barang_doa_slae
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^Very interesting and sounds accurate to me.
Are you a scholar in the matter ?
Are you a scholar in the matter ?
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The first three years of my tertiary education were well spent majoring in alcoholism and minoring in contemporary Asian studies; the latter was rather more post-Vietnam-War than today's coursework and views on China were still more red scare than achromatic capitalist superpower. From my observation the CPP is not nearly as dominant as it was following the Khmer Rouge and FUNCINPEC conflicts, which was my education in Cambodian politics at the time. I will monitor how the CNRP performs during the next election and subsequently whether Cambodia becomes one of the few South East Asian states to achieve genuine multi-party democracy.Barang_doa_slae wrote:^Very interesting and sounds accurate to me.
Are you a scholar in the matter ?
As for being a scholar, I made the particularly facile decision that there was too little money in being an intellectual and did post-graduate study in finance. I'd like to think I'm in the high-fidelity first class traveling set, but I'm still closer to the EasyJet than the Lear jet. I was posted in Singapore following the financial crash and did the 'Bodge as a tourist, around the time of Y2K and when they were cleaning up the last of Pol Potty’s men. The changes over 15 years have been quite immense, and the nation has progressed from African-quality failed state flush with Soviet surplus to what feels like a continuation of the Thai provinces but dustier and with fewer highways for the locals to suicide on.
- Lucky Lucan
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The war didn't end 25 years ago. That's just the often-repeated myth that the Paris Peace Accords ended the war.loy division wrote:
Now you may ask "What about the last civil war that ended some 25 years prior?"
Romantic Cambodia is dead and gone. It's with McKinley in the grave.
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The war struggled on until Pol Pot died, I think that was the same year as the final "Battambang offensive" that was characteristic of the post-1979 Khmer Rouge. UNTAC was the beginning of the end and every Cambodian 18 or under was born in a nation at peace. You are correct though, people were dying violently up until the dry season of 1998/1999.Lucky Lucan wrote:The war didn't end 25 years ago. That's just the often-repeated myth that the Paris Peace Accords ended the war.loy division wrote:
Now you may ask "What about the last civil war that ended some 25 years prior?"
Here's a list of refugee camps, many of which existed until 1999:
http://www.websitesrcg.com/border/border-camps.html
Approximately 57,000 people were still residing in the camps as late as 1997:
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