From the archive, 15 November 1991: The Prince of ploys [-The king who got caught in a golden cage]

Monday 15 November 2010
The Guardian

Originally published in the Guardian on 15 November 1991

So the saviour of Cambodia has returned to revive his people. Or, put a slightly different way, the old rascal has finally made it home again. In the very specific mix of shifting global and regional politics which have made the new Cambodian settlement possible, Prince Norodom Sihanouk may have a very important role to play: but his previous stage parts have been deeply equivocal. As President of the Supreme National Council, he will exercise his all too familiar skills in balancing off pressures from one side against the other whilst ensuring that his own person remains at the fulcrum. The pomp and ceremony also serves a purpose for older Cambodians who hunger dimly for the past, and younger Cambodians who think it is all good fun.

But for the sake of those who have died unnecessarily since Vietnam drove out the Khmer Rouge, let us pause and remember one simple historical fact. Sihanouk acknowledged that his people were better off under Vietnamese tutelage than under Khmer Rouge tyranny. But he found it expedient to fall in with Chinese plans (plus some US prodding) and join the bogus "Coalition Government" set up to revive the fortunes of Pol Pot. True, long-held rivalry with Vietnam also influenced the choice. "We have to choose between being eaten by Khmer or being eaten by Vietnamese. We prefer the Khmer because we are nationalists." But the Vietnamese would have withdrawn if Sihanouk had instead returned to Phnom Penh and revived the neutrality destroyed by the US during the Vietnam war.

The greater responsibility attaches to the perverse Washington-Beijing entente which sponsored the coalition, with supine support from Britain. The coalition conveyed international legitimacy for eight years of murderous war which hit the civilian population hardest, while thousands of refugees were denied the chance to go home and the Phnom Penh government was starved of foreign aid. Only when the international net began to unravel with Sino-Soviet rapprochement, while the US relaxed its Hanoi vendetta, was Cambodia allowed an escape route. With the Khmer Rouge now permitted a legitimate political future, it is still a very shaky way forward, but better than war.

Sihanouk commuted between desirable residences in Beijing, Pyongyang and France, issuing his interminable hand-written reproaches and textual commentaries with an obsessive concern for anything said about him. The cute old operator still fancies his royal role. But the royal touch will not cure the severed limbs and shattered lives which, in his own delightful and mercurial way, Prince Sihanouk helped bequeath to Cambodia.