Cambodia and the World
One of the 14 nations of Southeast Asia, Cambodia lies at the bottom of the Indochinese Peninsula, a body of land that juts out from the great bulk of China. On the west, the Bay of Bengal separates the peninsula from India. On the east, the South China Sea separates it from the Philippines and the Pacific Ocean. On the south lie the island chains of Malaysia and Indonesia.
This peninsula takes its name of Indochina from its position between the two huge nations of India and China. The five nations that make up Indochina—Burma (or Myanmar), Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia—share many historical and cultural experiences. In recent years, they have suffered from drought, floods, and famines; from conflicts among themselves; and from the widespread destruction brought by the Vietnam War. But although each of the nations has many problems, Cambodia's plight now is perhaps the worst.
 Once Cambodia was the heart of a mighty empire of the ancient world, the home of the Khmer people, who ruled much of Indochina from the 9th to the 13th centuries. After a long period of decline, during which the country had little contact with the outside world, Cambodia fell under French control for nearly a century. Following World War II, it gained independence as a modern nation in 1953.
    For much of the next 40 years, confusion reigned in Cambodia. The nation had four governments, each of which overthrew the previous government and seized control by force. Larger and more powerful nations, including the People's
     Republic of China, the United States, the now-disbanded Soviet Union, and Vietnam, vied for control. Decades of civil war, dictatorship, and turmoil destroyed Cambodia's once-thriving farmlands. The destruction brought about dire poverty, hunger, and disease that continue to this day. The country's darkest years were the period from 1975 to 1979, when it was ruled by a dictator named Pol  Pot. His systematic destruction of millions of Cambodians has been compared to the horrors of Ado lf Hitler's Third Reich.
    At times, even the country's name was in doubt. For centuries, it was called Cambodia, a version of "Kambuja," the name of the old Khmer kingdom. After it won independence from France in 1953, it became known as the Kingdom of Cambodia. Then a new government took control in 1970  and renamed the country the Khmer Republic. When Pol Pot seized power in 1975, he outlawed the name Cambodia because it had been used when the country was controlled by the French. He renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea (DK), originating from another version of "Kambuja." Four years later, Vietnam invaded Cambodia, routed the armies of Democratic Kampuchea, and set up a new government called the People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK), which was supported by Vietnamese troops.
    By that time, no one group effectively governed the entire country. Besides the remaining DK forces, at least two other guerrilla organizations fought against the PRK in various parts of the country. Because of Cambodia's fractured government, other nations of the world adopted various attitudes toward the country. Vietnam and the former Soviet Union recognized the PRK as Cambodia's official government. Other nations, including China, believed that the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia was
   illegal and felt that the DK was the true government of Cambodia, even though it had lost most of its power. The United States did not recognize either the DK or the PRK.
  In 1989, when Vietnam fulfilled a promise to pull out of Cambodia, a peace process finally began in earnest. Under U.N. sponsorship, elections for a National Assembly were held in 1993, and a new constitution was adopted, establishing a democratic form of government within the mold of a constitutional monarchy. Many observers hoped the country might be on the road to a stable peace at last. But by 1997, when the tenuous coalition of parties broke down in a sudden coup, the country seemed to be heading into another round of political confusion and violence.