- Cambodia’s Curse: The Modern History of a Troubled Land
This is a heartbreaking book to review because so much of it is excellent reportage (for example, the Preface and Chapters 2 to 16) while other parts of it lapse into an ugly Orientalist mould (e.g. the Introduction, Chapter 1, Chapter 17 and the Epilogue). The author, Joel Brinkley, is a journalist who won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting on Cambodia in 1979 for the Louisville Courier-Journal in Kentucky. It often reads breezily like a very long magazine article, pockmarked with factual blunders (many errors — such as a reference to a non-existent national oil company on page 347 or implying China invaded Vietnam in 1989 on page 62 — have already been uncovered by other reviewers: Douglas Gillison for Time, 11 April 2011; Elizabeth Becker for the San Francisco Chronicle, 17 April 2011; Sebastian Strangio for Asia Times, 13 May 2011; Geoffrey Cain for The Wall Street Journal, 19 May 2011; and Eng Kok-Thay for The Truth, June 2011). Reading Cambodia’s Curse, one cannot help but feel that Brinkley’s curmudgeonly style and dry commentary (often at the expense of his subject, the Cambodian people, though not always — he actually uses the word “Chinaman” on page 19 to describe Zhou Daguan a Chinese chronicler who visited in the thirteenth century) come across as arrogant and detached.
His dependent variable is the failure of Cambodia to develop and democratize, and while he marshals several perfectly valid independent variables like impunity, domestic violence, deforestation, narcotics, corruption, elections, hunger, education, health, etc. he ultimately settles rather bafflingly on one that is least convincing: Cambodians are just cursed by a millennium of history and culture, and the Killing Fields of 1975 to 1979 only made it worse. Needless [End Page 259] to say, this argument has won him few friends among Cambodia scholars and Cambodians because what he has essentially done is to insult everyone he has ever come in contact with while writing this book.
On the positive side, Brinkley provides some quality reporting and condenses historical and political events into a readable format for most audiences, which reflects his strength as a journalist. All the while, he manages to capture the political tension of many events, such as the United Nations-organized election in 1993 and power struggles among Hun Sen, Prince Ranarridh and Sam Rainsy. Brinkley also delves into aid dependence and the donor culture of Cambodia. He highlights the recurring process of donors coming together, making empty threats, and then pledging more money than Cambodia requested, a problem of credibility that has been highlighted for several years now. A new approach is needed for genuine reform to occur, for example increasing domestic revenues (primarily tax collection) to increase accountability and national ownership. Bribe taxes (unofficial revenues), if converted to official revenues, could make up much of this difference. But solutions are not part of Brinkley’s dominant narrative, which is the hopelessness of Cambodia and its people.
Although one of his inherent strengths is the ability to write engaging prose, fact-checking is not one of them. Aside from making sweeping generalizations about Cambodians’ alleged laziness and lack of ambition throughout the book, and occasionally obsessing over human cannibalism, several of his facts are just plain wrong (in the span of 47 continuous pages alone, I could find at least four errors): in 2005–06, more than two human rights activists were jailed (p. 267) unless he was referring only to Cambodian Center for Human Rights Director Kem Sokha and his deputy, there was also independent radio owner Mom Sonando, NGO head Yeng Virak (whom Brinkley interviewed), and labour union leader Rong Chhun; the site of the 1997 grenade attack against Sam Rainsy has not since been renamed “Hun Sen Park” (p. 268), Hun Sen Park is next door; the Phnom Penh Post was a fortnightly newspaper under Michael Hayes’ ownership, not a weekly paper (p. 302); Pol Pot did not die a free man (p. 314), he was...