0 50 miles THAILAND LAOS The Dragon’s Tail 0 50 km Samrong Anlong Veng Cheom Ksan ODDAR MEANCHEY Siempang Tbeng Virachey National Park BANTEAY Meanchey MEANCHEY STUNG Banlung TRENG Poipet SIEM REAP PREAH VIHEAR g RATANAKKIRI n a o Sisophon Boeung Per k e Angkor Wat r Stung Treng Lumphat Phnom Wildlife Sanctuary e A M Malai t Siem Reap s e r Battambang o F Tonle g Sandan n PAILIN BATTAMBANG Sap a L KAMPONG THOM y e Pailin r MONDULKIRI Moung P KRATIE Roessei Kampong Thom Samlaut Kratie Sen Monorom Pursat Peam Koh Snar Kampong PURSAT Chhnang KAMPONG KAMPONG CHAM Snoul Ca CHHNANG Kampong Cham rd a Kang Meas Memot m o m KAMPONG Koh Kong M SPEU KANDAL o Phnom Penh u n Prey Veng KOH KONG ta PREY VIET NAM in Kampong Takhmao s VENG Speu SVAY RIENG Sre Ambel Neak Svay Rieng TAKEO Loeung KAMPOT Bavet Takeo PREAH SIHANOUK Bokor National capital Kampot M ek Provincial capital on Sihanoukville Kep g The Parrot’s (Kampong Som) KEP Beak Town, village Provincial border Major road Gulf of Thailand Rail Map of Cambodia. xvi 1 “Brother Number One”: Pol Pot, Cambodia’s Robespierre and the architect of the Khmer Rouge revolution, photographed shortly after taking power in Phnom Penh in April 1975. 2 Women toil on a communal worksite in Democratic Kampuchea. 3 Supporters of the Vietnamese-backed Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation celebrate the collapse of Democratic Kampuchea in Chhbar Ampov, Phnom Penh, on January 25, 1979. The sign in the photo reads, “Bravo, Cambodia is fully liberated!” 4 The new masters of Cambodia: Heng Samrin (center) and Pen Sovan (left) greet a state media delegation from the Mongolian People’s Republic at Pochentong International Airport on March 15, 1979. Two years later, Pen Sovan would be appointed the first post-Khmer Rouge prime minister of Cambodia, before being purged, arrested, and imprisoned in Vietnam. 5 The world’s youngest foreign minister: Hun Sen, then 26 years old, meets with a Mongolian delegation in Phnom Penh on March 15, 1979. 6 Chea Sim, the PRK’s Interior Minister, with Cambodian schoolchildren, c. 1984. 7 Echoes of a nightmare: a classroom-cum-torture chamber at S-21 prison, photographed shortly after the fall of Phnom Penh in January 1979. 8 Cambodian peasants carry international food aid back to their farms via the “land-bridge” connect- ing Nong Chan refugee camp on the Thai border to the interior of the country, December 1979. 9 Like father and son: Sihanouk and Hun Sen toast their landmark meeting at Fère-en-Tardenois, near Paris, in December 1987. The meeting between the two men helped pave the way towards a diplomatic settlement of the Cambodian conflict. 10 Hun Sen swimming at Teuk Chhou Resort during a tour of Kampot province in January 1989. 11 A Vietnamese tank rolls past the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh on September 25, 1989, part of state-sponsored celebrations marking the Vietnamese withdrawal from Cambodia. An estimated 23,000 Vietnamese troops lost their lives during the decade-long occupation. 12 From left to right: Chea Sim, Sihanouk, and Hun Sen celebrate shortly after the prince’s return to Phnom Penh on November 14, 1991, a month after the signing of the Paris Peace Agreements. 13 Cambodia collides with the new world order: a UN helicopter takes off near a temple complex in Kampong Cham on March 1, 1992. At a total cost of more than $2 billion, the UNTAC mission was the largest peacekeeping mission mounted to that point and was seen as a “critical test for the post-Cold War world.” 14 With friends like these…: First Prime Minister Norodom Ranariddh and Second Prime Minister Hun Sen attend a Funcinpec congress in Phnom Penh on March 21, 1996. Despite Funcinpec’s victory in the UN-organized 1993 election, royalist officials quickly found themselves with little effective power—“shuffling meaningless documents, attending vacuous meetings, reading newspapers.” 15 Former DK foreign minister Ieng Sary in his fiefdom of Pailin in October 1996, during a ceremony finalizing his defection to the government—a move that spelled the beginning of the end for the Khmer Rouge revolution. 16 “Utter, final defeat”: Pol Pot during an interview with a Thai journalist at Anlong Veng on January 4, 1998. Pol Pot spent his last months in custody, a miserable ward of the movement he helped establish. He died in April 1998, just as his captors reached a deal to hand him over to an international tribunal. 17 The bloody aftermath of the grenade attack that tore its way through a Khmer Nation Party rally in front of the Cambodian National Assembly on March 30, 1997, killing sixteen people and injuring more than 100. Nobody has ever been brought to justice for the attack. 18 A government soldier walks passed a burned-out tank at a street corner in Phnom Penh on July 7, 1997, two days after Hun Sen ousted his coalition partner, Prince Ranariddh, in bloody street battles. 19 The reluctant king: Great Supreme Patriarch Tep Vong, the CPP-appointed head of the Cambodian Buddhist monkhood, bathes Norodom Sihamoni during his coronation as king on October 29, 2004, two weeks after Sihanouk’s abdication. 20 Sam Rainsy, the main political challenger to Hun Sen, had many faces: gadfly, technocrat, democratic reformer, old-style Cambodian nationalist. 21 Deputy Prime Minister Sok An, the former diplomat and aide who later became Hun Sen’s grand vizier and consigliere. His control of the Council of Ministers and literally dozens of other offices allowed him to amass a large personal fortune. 22 The new royal couple: Prime Minister Hun Sen and his wife Bun Rany cut the ribbon on a school for blind and deaf children in Phnom Penh on April 6, 2011. 23 Mourners converge on the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh shortly after the death of Norodom Sihanouk on October 15, 2012, two weeks short of his 90th birthday. The former king’s passing sealed the end of the monarchy’s involvement in Cambodia’s political life. 24 Angkor Wat: Cambodia’s symbol and talisman—and a major tourist drawcard. An estimated 4.2 million foreigners visited Cambodia in 2013, many drawn to witness the wonders of the country’s powerful premodern empire. 25 Garment factory workers travel home after a shift in Russei Keo district on the outskirts of Phnom Penh on September 7, 2010. With around 400 factories employing some 475,000 workers, the apparel sector is Cambodia’s largest industry, earning $5.5 billion annually and making up the lion’s share of its exports. 26 Cambodia’s new rich: the Norodom Boulevard mansion belonging to Oknha Sam Ang and Madame Chhun Leang, founders of the Vattanac Bank. 27 Development and displacement: sand and water inundates the lower floor of a building awaiting demolition on the edge of Boeung Kak lake in Phnom Penh on December 25, 2010. 28 A man sits beside a bulldozer in a rubber plantation clearing at the heart of Prey Lang forest in Kampong Thom province in June 2013. 29 Tep Vanny, a Boeung Kak resident and anti-eviction activist, confronts police during a protest at Phnom Penh’s Independence Monument on April 22, 2013. 30 The mirage of justice: Kaing Guek Eav, alias Comrade Duch, confers with his defense lawyer during closing arguments in the first trial at the ECCC, Cambodia’s war crimes tribunal, on November 26, 2009. Duch was eventually sentenced to life in prison for his role as the head of S-21 prison, where he oversaw the interrogation, torture, and execution of at least 12,272 people. 31 Accused war criminal and former DK Social Affairs Minister Ieng Thirith (center) attends her husband’s funeral in the former Khmer Rouge stronghold of Malai on March 21, 2013. In September 2012, judges at the ECCC ruled that Thirith was unfit to stand trial due to age-related dementia, and released her from custody. 32 A Buddhist monk watches on as a mob sets fire to a military police truck during riots following national elections on July 28, 2013, which saw a surge of support for Sam Rainsy’s Cambodia National Rescue Party—and widespread accusations of vote-rigging by the ruling CPP. 33 Cambodia’s future prime minister? Sam Rainsy greets supporters at a CNRP forum in Kampong Chhnang province in March 2014. .