It is early evening and Phnom Penh’s open-air riverside bars are filled with well-heeled tourists, sharply-dressed business types and trendy proponents of the city’s newly minted middle class. The vista from their terraces is soothing: small freighters and fishing boats chugging gently upriver, or drifting silently downstream, and saffron-clad monks or young lovers strolling the banks of the Tonle Sap. But this tranquil, prosperous atmosphere is deceiving. The United Nations’ sponsored experiment with an imposed democracy in the 1990s has proven a dismal failure, instead Cambodia has reverted to a kleptocratic oligarchy whose ambitions threaten catastrophe, in a country all too familiar with the premise. “Before we had the Khmer Rouge, now we have the Khmer Riche,” says Lao Mong Hay, a Cambodian political analyst who has advocated representative government for 30 years. A small, quietly spoken man, his candour is unusual in a country shrouded by fear, where a reference to politics can stop a conversation in its tracks. “Our institutions are a facade – the parliament, the legal system, the administration – a charade,” he says. “They are controlled by the prime minister and his cronies, and their hubris will bring disaster again to this country.” Hun Sen is among the world’s longest-serving political leaders . Since becoming prime minister in 1985, he has been relentless in creating a cult of personality to rival that of Norodom Sihanouk, the revered “King Father” of post-colonial Cambodia. Highly intelligent, disciplined and ruthless, Hun Sen has consolidated power through the violence with which he reacts to opposition and the generosity with which he rewards support. Hun Sen’s remaking of Cambodia in his own image began in earnest in the late 90s as billions of dollars in foreign aid poured into the country after decades of conflict. His patronage since has been sustained by a Chinese-led global economy that responded when Cambodia’s long denied peace opened the spigots of foreign investment. The prime minister revels in his self-proclaimed official title “Samdech Akka Moha Sena Padei Techo Hun Sen”, which translates most closely as “princely exalted supreme great commander of gloriously victorious troops”. Hun Sen has referred to himself as the “five-gold-star general to infinity”. Emptied of its population and left derelict by the Khmer Rouge during the 70s, Phnom Penh had by the mid-2000s once again become a place of palaces, pagodas, parks and gardens, of tree-shaded streets and French colonial architecture that once earned the city its epithet as a “Paris of the East”. But much of Phnom Penh has lost the charm it briefly regained. Its wide boulevards are gridlocked with traffic, the once leafy sheen of its tamarind and mahogany trees dulled by dust from ubiquitous construction sites. A decade-long building boom has transformed large parts of the once low-rise city into a forest of towers, with scores of new projects either approved or under way. The frenzy of building activity defies rational explanation. Phnom Penh is the capital of Southeast Asia’s second-poorest country, its economy 20 times smaller than neighbouring Thailand. For the vast majority of Cambodians, living anywhere but the squalid fringe of the city is unaffordable. The flash apartments of its soaring condominiums are sold mostly to foreign, often absentee owners. For Phnom Penh’s approximately 100,000 relatively wealthy expatriates, life in the city is blighted only by the cacophonous building activity, clogged roads, increasing snatch thefts and other crimes of opportunity. Many have access to luxurious housing, air-conditioned shopping malls, a bewildering choice of trendy restaurants, bars and nightclubs, and should they choose it, a debauched nightlife fuelled by cheap drugs and alcohol. “You can have a lot of fun and live well here,” says one long-term foreign resident. “And … please don’t quote me … you can make a lot of money if you are able to hold your tongue and pinch your nose against the stink of corruption.” The West, and the US in particular, has for decades looked at Cambodia through the prism of human rights and democracy Sebastian Strangio, author But there are signs that the economic boom is ending. Construction is slowing in lockstep with the country’s China-focused online gambling sector, which was made illegal this year . The European Union, meanwhile, recently cut benefits under its Everything but Arms trade concession in response to the regime’s unceasing assault on civil and political rights. The EU accounts for nearly half of Cambodia’s exports, and the cuts are expected to have a significant impact on the garment, footwear and light manufacturing sectors, which employ more than 700,000 people. The United States has made significant cuts to its Cambodian aid budget and is also considering cancelling trade privileges. Amid bipartisan loathing of Hun Sen in Washington, the US passed legislation last year that allows sanctions to be imposed on cronies of the prime minister who have been implicated in rights abuses. “The West, and the US in particular, has for decades looked at Cambodia through the prism of human rights and democracy,” says Sebastian Strangio, the author of Hun Sen’s Cambodia (2014) and a long-term resident of the country who recently relocated to Thailand. “But the criticism of Cambodia’s record on human and civil rights is keenly felt by Hun Sen and his allies, who complain standards are demanded of Cambodia but are not expected of other authoritarian regimes.” I first arrived in Cambodia 25 years ago when the legacy of the Khmer Rouge and three decades of conflict remained in plain sight. I was met at the capital’s Pochentong Airport by surly men loitering in helmets and olive-drab uniforms, burdened with assault rifles, grenades and bandoliers of ammunition. It was just two days before I witnessed my first killing, a would-be motorcycle thief shot in the head by police outside Phnom Penh’s Phsar Thmei central market. The country I came to know over the next four years was by turns seductive and repellent, the locals mostly good humoured but also indifferent in the way they treated each other. It was, in the words of one Western diplomat, reminiscent of William Golding’s 1954 novel, Lord of the Flies : its people were childlike, both in their apparent innocence and their capacity for cruelty. Awash with weapons, Cambodia was a place of ubiquitous inhumanity: annual dry season offensives against the Khmer Rouge, which remained active in much of the country; assassinations of political rivals; business and personal disputes resolved with guns, grenades and bottles of acid. Much productive land was rendered useless by landmines and unexploded ordnance, evident in amputees – farmer-soldiers on crutches in grimy fatigues, mutilated women and children. Phnom Penh was a mess, with garbage in rotting piles on street corners picked over by half-naked children, pot-bellied with malnutrition and blighted by respiratory and skin diseases. At night the capital was owned by bandits and drunken soldiers, the eerie quiet punctuated by gunfire. The many roadside brothels, illuminated only by dull strips of pink neon on near deserted streets, were places to be avoided. The girls who called out in ribald invitation came mostly from the countryside, frequently sold by parents unable to afford the luxury of care. Half were HIV positive. “Prolonged war and the Khmer Rouge period in particular created a brutalised society that functioned in pure survival mode,” Lao Mong Hay says. “It destroyed trust, empathy … any system of values. You still see that in our leaders, who seek only power and wealth, and the impunity these things bring.” For 20 years, Cambodia’s economic growth has been among the world’s highest, but that growth has favoured the country’s small middle class and enriched its even smaller political and business elite. Studies suggest poverty reduction has slowed in recent years, particularly in the countryside, where a third of children remain stunted from malnutrition. On average, a Cambodian child will spend less than five years at school. Last year, the United Nations Development Programme ranked Cambodia 146 of 189 countries on its Human Development Index, calculating one in 10 city dwellers is poor, a figure rising to four in 10 outside the cities, where most Cambodians live. Another 20 per cent exist on the precipice of poverty. The country’s agricultural production and fish catch are under pressure from prolonged drought and record low water levels in the Mekong River , the lifeblood of Cambodia’s food supply, whose flow has slackened with the upstream construction of hydroelectric dams . Small land owners struggle with indebtedness, ironically, to anti-poverty programmes. A 2019 report found 2.4 million rural families owe on average US$3,500 in outstanding microloans, the world’s highest when measured against income. The report said debt is driving families in growing numbers into bonded labour. “There is a lot of wealth in Cambodia, but very few people are wealthy,” says a Cambodian friend and former colleague. “Of course, life is better than it was – but how could it not be?” Today’s Cambodia is the product of a complex recent history, a Gordian knot of colonialism, authoritarianism, domestic division, regional and great power rivalry. Most Cambodians reimagine the post-colonial reign of Norodom Sihanouk as a golden age. But his was an oppressive regime, jostled by cold war hostility, and within 20 years of independence he had been ousted and Cambodia devoured by conflict. Many with the means fled abroad, escaping the 1975 Khmer Rouge victory and subsequent violence that claimed at least two million lives and likely many more. The Khmer Rouge was driven from power just four years later, the invading Vietnamese establishing the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK). But by 1989 the PRK was spent, its Soviet-backed patrons exhausted from a Khmer Rouge-led, internationally supported insurgency that became Vietnam’s Vietnam. As the Soviet Union imploded, Hanoi withdrew and Cambodia’s squabbling factions reluctantly agreed to UN supervision. Costing US$2 billion and involving 21,000 troops and advisers, the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) was tasked with imposing stability and supervising elections. Just 15 months after UNTAC’s deployment and amid a festive atmosphere, 90 per cent of eligible voters cast their ballots in a poll that would prove a betrayal. “Cambodian politics is about total control, even if that requires force,” says one observer whose relationship with the country goes back to the 1960s but who requested anonymity lest his comments create trouble for his Cambodian friends. “The belief that democracy would take root was monstrously naive, and to expect that elections would wash away what had gone before was deluded.” The Khmer Rouge boycotted the election and the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), briefly the apparatchiks of the State of Cambodia and essentially the apparatus of the PRK, rejected a convincing opposition win led by Funcinpec – a party headed by Norodom Ranariddh, Sihanouk’s second son, whose physical resemblance to his father was uncanny. A compromise was reached: the CPP would share power with its Funcinpec opponents, the leaders of which soon proved themselves corrupt and incompetent. The coalition quickly unravelled as Funcinpec, mostly consisting of émigrés who had returned to reclaim what they considered theirs by right, faced off against the CPP, an organisation dominated by former Khmer Rouge cadres determined to retain what was now theirs by might. As the Khmer Rouge insurgency ground on, the coalition was consumed by violence: grenade attacks, assassinations and shoot-outs between rival police and military units. In July 1997, mutual loathing degenerated into open warfare and months of lawlessness from which the CPP emerged victors. The Funcinpec machine was emasculated, scores of its leaders murdered. An “election” the following year left the CPP, now personified by Prime Minister Hun Sen, unequivocally in charge. With the final capitulation of the Khmer Rouge, in 1999, Hun Sen and his allies began to recreate something remarkably like Norodom Sihanouk’s Cambodia, the authoritarianism, corruption and inequality of which had made the country so vulnerable to the evil that earlier had consumed it. “Cambodians expect their leaders to be powerful, unforgiving, even if that means killing people,” says the long-time Cambodia watcher. “That was how Sihanouk ruled, and Hun Sen mimics Sihanouk: his populist approach, his patronage of supporters, his intolerance of opposition.” Soon after his 1998 election win, Hun Sen set to work orchestrating a series of intergenerational marriages. The prime minister’s five children and a number of his nieces and nephews wed the scions of Cambodia’s powerful, while other strategic unions saw Hun Sen and his allies strengthen their grip on the administration, security apparatus and economy. The NGO Global Witness began documenting the plundering of Cambodia’s resources in the late 1990s, reporting on how individuals close to the prime minister have appropriated an ever larger proportion of the country’s riches. Hostile Takeover , an exposé by Global Witness published in 2016, calculated the wealth of Hun Sen’s family at US$500 million to US$1 billion. Global Witness and other organisations have also identified the main benefactors of Hun Sen’s largesse, individuals who command or fund the security forces and who routinely use them to further their own business interests. Among them are Ly Yong Phat, a CPP senator implicated in some of Cambodia’s most violent land seizures; Try Pheap, a tycoon accused of systematic land grabbing; Mong Reththy, a CPP senator who has evicted thousands of people to make way for property developments; and Kith Meng, an adviser to Hun Sen once described in a US embassy cable as “a ruthless gangster”. The list goes on. NGO Human Rights Watch has meanwhile identified Hun Sen’s Praetorian Guard, a “dirty dozen” of senior military and police commanders it says have been close to the prime minister for decades, are rich beyond their means, and have long records of complicity in the seizure of property, and the harassment and killing of journalists, opposition figures, rights activists and ordinary people. There are few reliable indicators of popular support for Hun Sen and the CPP, and there is no space from which Cambodia’s political status quo can be critiqued. In 2018, the country’s last independent media outlets were shut down or sold to interests considered sympathetic to the regime, social media is closely monitored and online dissent quickly punished. Commune elections in 2017 saw the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) win close to 45 per cent of the vote, despite the polls being broadly condemned as manipulated by the CPP. The ruling party’s response was to ban the CNRP, expel its members from parliament and arrest its Cambodia-based leader, Kem Sokha , on charges of treason. The 2018 national election saw the CPP win all 125 National Assembly seats. Self-exiled CNRP co-leader Sam Rainsy faces arrest on multiple convictions and charges if he returns to Cambodia, but continues to goad Hun Sen from exile. Feted by many as the country’s saviour, Sam Rainsy also has a reputation as a martinet, as vainglorious and typical of Cambodian leaders in his personal ambition. “The CNRP remains a party of personalities, and significant cracks have opened within it,” says Strangio. “Rainsy is widely seen as a demagogue, and there is considerable friction between the Rainsy and Sokha factions. But the CNRP remains popular as the only alternative for the many Cambodians for whom the CPP has done little.” Many Cambodians in unguarded moments express their anger at the corruption and rapaciousness of the country’s oligarchy. But it is incontestable, if unpalatable, that a significant number have thrown in their lot with Hun Sen, and that others are simply resigned to the way Cambodian politics works. Sam Rainsy’s recent theatrical and subsequently aborted plan to return to Cambodia and lead anti-government protests was condemned across the spectrum as a cynical exercise, the true objective of which was to needle Hun Sen into deeper repression at a time when his authoritarianism is under closer international scrutiny. But it also exposed the insecurity of the Hun Sen camp. The risk of challenge has long preoccupied the prime minister and his supporters, and a recent white paper circulated among them spoke of agents provocateur fomenting unrest from Western embassies and arming the opposition using CIA money channelled through foreign businesses. Sam Rainsy’s threatened return prompted the deployment of large numbers of troops, while pseudo-documentaries televised by state-controlled media warned Cambodia was again on the brink of civil war. “These are people convinced there are powerful forces working against them, and to whom the threat of a coup seems very real,” says the long-time Cambodia watcher. “They subscribe to a winner-takes-all political tradition, and any serious popular attempt to overthrow the Hun Sen regime would be bloody indeed. But it is just as likely that the biggest threat to the regime will emerge from within.” As Western countries have become more critical of Hun Sen, he has turned increasingly to China , which over the past decade has built close political, security and defence ties with Cambodia, and is now its largest foreign investor. But playing the China card is a tactic fraught with risk: China’s high profile and economic influence is enormously unpopular, fuelling anti-government sentiment at home and an increasing willingness by the US to use sanctions as a diplomatic weapon. Several of Hun Sen’s close associates have already been targeted, with Washington in December freezing the US assets of Try Pheap and 11 companies owned or controlled by him. It also sanctioned Cambodia’s former armed forces joint chief of staff General Kun Kim and three of his relatives for alleged corruption and deployment of troops to seize land sought by a Chinese state-owned entity. Earlier, the US Treasury sanctioned Hing Bun Hieng, head of Hun Sen’s bodyguard unit, a formation of 10,000 troops supported by its own armour and artillery, after he was implicated in attacks on opposition figures. Both the construction and gambling sectors have been identified as highly exposed to money laundering and other financial crimes, and last year, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) again placed Cambodia on its “grey” watch list. The FATF cited among other concerns the country’s failure to prosecute a single money-laundering case amid high levels of institutional corruption. “Being grey-listed by the FATF gives international banks pause for thought in their own dealings with Cambodia’s ‘overbanked’ financial system,” says an expatriate entrepreneur and former banker. “The implications for Cambodia’s dollarised economy are potentially very severe.” Cambodia’s wealthy elite have a lot to lose if the political status quo were to change, but by recreating a state that is essentially a web of patronage with one man (himself) at the centre, Hun Sen has also perpetuated the worst aspects of Cambodian political culture: corruption, nepotism, impunity and the thwarting of reform. Sihanouk was overthrown when his clients no longer believed he could meet their insatiable needs for wealth and power. That could easily be the fate of Hun Sen Trying to analyse Cambodia from the viewpoint of Western values is ultimately fruitless, as the dynamics of power are those that have prevailed in Cambodia and much of Asia for centuries: a ruler’s continued legitimacy depends on his capacity to reward support, which is in turn built on the conditional loyalty of self-interest. It is ultimately a self-destructive system, locking its patron-in-chief into a cycle that steadily erodes his own position. The CPP has proven extraordinarily disciplined in keeping the lid on internal rivalry and intrigue, but Hun Sen is arguably under more pressure now than at any time in the past 20 years. Anecdotally at least, the warlord class he has empowered – which by definition is stacked with ambitious potential rivals – is showing increasing signs of disunity as its members squabble over access to an even greater share of the country’s wealth. “Sihanouk was overthrown when his clients no longer believed he could meet their insatiable needs for wealth and power,” says the long-time Cambodia watcher. “That could easily be the fate of Hun Sen or any other Cambodian leader under the current system.” With no other mechanism for a peaceful transfer of power, Hun Sen is widely reported to be preparing for a dynastic succession that would see his eldest son, Hun Manet, take over as Cambodia’s prime minister. Already a senior CPP member, and currently the deputy commander-in-chief of the Cambodian armed forces, Hun Manet’s public profile has recently risen adding credence to the succession rumours. But the success of any such plan will require all of Hun Sen’s guile to eliminate or co-opt potential rivals, and will in any event leave winners and losers among his current supporters. It is by no means clear that Hun Manet has the confidence of veteran CPP figures, or his father’s cunning and willingness to use threats and actual violence that will undoubtedly be factors in ensuring any succession endures. “Hun Manet is actually a very nice man,” says Lao Mong Hay. “But does he have the will to reform Cambodian politics, or the agility and ruthlessness of his father that has kept ambitious rivals in check? I fear he does not, and I fear for Cambodia.”