no dream justifies war

No, there is no such thing as a "good war". The picture of Cambodia we get to see, in this beggining of 2005, has to make us wonder though: what is worse than a civil war? Women, children, fathers, cousins... entire parts of population stuck in the middle of a war that has left its marks: visible ones easily detectacle to the travelers that we are, and some probably less visible...

This war - or these wars rather if we start with Lon Nol's coup in 1970 and the exile of Sihanouk, followed by the Pol Pot regime from 75 to 78 that saw close to 1/4 of the Cambodian population killed, followed after that by about 20 years of civil war between the Phnom-Penh government supported by the Vietnamese, and Sihanouk's coalition, including, in its majority, the khmer-rouges themselves - the more we try to understand it, the less sense it makes, the more it seems so futile. But isn't that the case with all wars? For years, weapons were sold, exchanged, traded from one side to the other, the fighter selling to its ennemy because there was some money to be made. The Thais, Vietnamese, Chinese, but also Malays, Singapourians, English, Americans... (the list could go on) have financed, supported and helped with the training of the actors of this war...There were different motives, but the "red" threat was definitely an important one. So, in order to kill the "red" threat, or on the other hand to promote the "red" philosophies, one has killed, put landmines everywhere around the country, executed without trial, without reason, one has created the right environment for starvation to happen, and has made thousands of Cambodians, of all ages and gender, work to death... The big losers have been, as always, the Cambodians themselves: a whole generation decimated, years of war and today, a country that is truely struggling.

Pol Pot is now dead, and there's never been a true accounting for what happened at a national level. Opinions are divided on the topic: there have been so many horrors instigated by so many, on all sides, that one predominant thesis today is to encourage the creation of the right environment for national reconciliation to happen. So that, at last, this country can get back on their feet.

Because this country, if it is to be judged by what we see - even down to small details -, is still lying down! The roads, first: the majority are unsealed, more or less decent to drive/ride on, and the bridges are either missing or temporary (we are actually able to go faster than the trucks on quite a few parts of the highway...!). There is no more public lighting in provincial towns (we haven't been to Phnom-Penh, the capital city), many work at candle light once the sun is down - a real difference with Malaysia, Thailand or even Laos where we are now. Cooking is not on gas anymore, but on woodfire, practically everywhere we have been. The food is less varied, and more scarce. There are close to no irrigation systems that would allow more rice harvests in the year (we haven't seen any). Toilets are a rare thing, impacting greatly on public hygiene and health (diahrroea is the first cause of child mortality in Cambodia). It seems that less children go to school, if we are to judge by their numbers on the streets and in villages during the day. Very few women that we meet at the market or in eateries can read. It is true that the Khmer-rouges, when they were running the country, made sure that the extermination of teachers and the educated part of the Cambodian population (as well as the buddhist community) was a priority. With success - most of them either died or ran away abroad. The decades of civil war that followed did not allow for the renewal of this part of the population, not yet. Cambodia greatly suffers from this today. Very few TVs and karaokes around: one of the first signs of development around South East Asia it seems! And finally, on the road, we do not get passed by motorbikes as often (there are less on the road), but rather, we find ourselves racing other bicycles - thousands of them! - the wheels of the poor in this part of the world...