The Xenophile Historian

1975 to 2000 for Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam; 1957 to 2000 for everybody else

	Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore: Success Despite the Odds
	Burma/Myanmar: A Ne Win Situation
	Cambodia: The Killing Fields
	Indonesia Under Sukarno
	Indonesia Today: Life in the Fasting Lane
	Laos: The Land of Feeling Good
	The Philippines: A Dictatorship Made For Two
	The Philippines: People Power
	Thailand: The Unconquered Kingdom
	Vietnam: The Phoenix of Asia
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Singapore had a dynamic nationalist movement, the People's Action Party (PAP). It developed so quickly in the postwar years that it was sharing rule of the city with the British by 1948. When the PAP gained full authority over local affairs in 1959, Singapore's colonial era was all but over. A Malayan state without Singapore in it looked a little odd, but the Tengku of Malaya wanted nothing to do with the busy port. The reason was racial; the Malays still feared drowning in a sea of Chinese. Malaya was successful because its Malay, Chinese, and Indian communities had carefully worked out a system that clearly spelled out what each group could have. Singapore's population was 76% Chinese, enough to upset the balance and turn Malaya into a new Chinese state if the city was included in the federation.

In 1961 the Tengku astonished the public by reversing his stand and proposing the union of Malaya and Singapore into one state. His reasoning was that an independent Singapore, with a leftist or socialist government, would pose a greater danger to Malaya than the incorporation of the island into an expanded Malayan state. The mayor of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, accepted the proposal, since he did not think the city could stand on its own. After negotiations and a plebiscite, Singapore joined Malaya in 1963.

The three territories on Borneo presented different problems. The tribes that lived in the interior of the big island did not get along well with the Malays living on the coast, but they were too primitive to go it alone, so union with Malaya seemed inescapable. The local politicians were won over by promises to protect their interests, so in August 1963 Sarawak and Sabah were united with Malaya to create a new nation, called Malaysia. To resolve the issue of how the people of Borneo felt about union, a UN fact-finding team went to Sarawak and Sabah; to nobody's surprise, it reported two months later that virtually everyone approved of the merger.

Brunei was also supposed to become a part of Malaysia, but the sultan of that tiny state balked at the prospect. A year earlier, there was an unsuccessful revolt that made him nervous about losing British support. He also had much to lose if he joined Malaysia's royalty club. If he was placed at the back of the line in Malaysia's rotating monarchy, he might have to wait as long as 45 years before he could take his turn as king of the whole country. Finally Brunei has sizeable oil reserves, the profits of which would have to be shared if Brunei was part of another country. In short, Brunei was peaceful and prosperous under British rule, and chose to remain that way for another 20 years.

The birth of Malaysia was denounced by Indonesia and the Philippines, both of which have ethnic Malay populations. The Philippines resurrected an old and dubious claim to Sabah; Sukarno claimed all of Borneo and denounced Malaysia as a "neo-colonial" idea. Between 1963 and 1966 Indonesian guerrillas infiltrated Sarawak and Sabah, while thousands of regular troops massed along the borders. Military aid from Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand kept Malaysia alive during this critical period, now known as the "Malaysian Confrontation." After Sukarno fell from power Malaysia and Indonesia quietly ended the conflict, which was getting both of them nowhere.

Philippine president Macapagal proposed uniting all three nations into a Malay superstate called "Maphilindo," but Malaysia and Indonesia didn't care for the idea. More successful was the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, an organization founded in 1967 to promote cooperation between the pro-Western countries in the region. The original five members of ASEAN were Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Singapore. Brunei joined when it became independent, and in the 1990s membership was extended to four countries that aren't pro-Western: Laos, Vietnam, Burma and Cambodia, making it an organization that truly represents the region.

Despite the best of intentions, Singapore remained a part of Malaysia for only 23 months. During the 1964 elections Lee Kuan Yew tried to extend his influence by sponsoring nine candidates for parliamentary seats that represented the mainland, not Singapore. Only one of them won, while the Alliance maintained power by winning 89 seats. Lee could not get along with the Alliance leaders after that, so with their consent, he exercised his right to secede on August 9, 1965.

As it turned out, both Malaysia and Singapore were better off without each other. The Tengku retired in 1970, and his successors have maintained Malaysia's ethnic, economic and political balance to this day. The only time it threatened to fail was after the 1969 elections, when bloody riots against the Chinese and Indian communities killed at least 200. The government declared a state of emergency, which lasted until 1971; Parliament did not meet during that time.

The new prime minister, Tun Abdul Razak, broadened the Alliance into an organization called the National Front, which included some opposition parties. The National Front won the 1974 elections decisively and also, under Prime Minister Datuk Hussein Onn, the 1978 elections. Ethnicity, however, still dominated the political scene, and two major opposition parties opposed the National Front: the Pan-Malayan Islamic Party and the Democratic Action Party. When Hussein Onn retired in 1981, he was succeeded by his deputy, Mahathir bin Muhammad.

A 1983 constitutional conflict between the prime minister and the hereditary sultans led to a compromise restricting the power of the sultans to veto some legislation. In 1987 the Mahathir government responded to the alleged threat of rising tensions between Malays and Chinese by arresting opposition leaders and suspending four newspapers. Constitutional amendments passed in 1993 and 1994 further restricted the powers of the head of state. The amendments prohibited the nine hereditary rulers from pardoning themselves or their families from criminal charges and removed their power to delay legislation. The National Front, having won three consecutive victories in 1982, 1986, and 1990 with Mahathir as prime minister, gained an even greater majority in the elections of 1995. Mahathir again retained his position as prime minister. Since the early 1990s the centerpiece of the Mahathir era has been "Vision 2020," his program to propel Malaysia into the ranks of developed industrial nations by 2020.⁽¹⁾ The recent completion of the world's largest skyscraper in Kuala Lumpur is the most visible aspect of this plan.

A major problem in the 1970s and 80s was the arrival of tens of thousands of refugees from Vietnam. Since most of these "boat people" were ethnic Chinese, the Malay government threatened to shoot them on sight. Most of them ended up being held on small offshore islands until other nations agreed to take them in. Since April 1989 the government has not accepted any more Indochinese refugees.

Still largely dependent on two industries, tin and rubber, the Malaysian economy has grown more slowly than that of its neighbors. Even so, it is doing better than average for a Third World nation. Because the Malays are still mostly farmers, most of the profits from the tin and rubber go to the Chinese and Indians instead. In 1968 the government announced a rural development program, called the New Economic Policy (NEP), in the hopes of raising the Malay standard of living to a level closer to that of the Chinese and Indians. The government also continues to discriminate in favor of the Malays for the same reason; for example, the civil service is required by the constitution to hire four Malays for every non-Malay hired. If Malaysia can develop new industries and keep ethnic tensions to a minimum, it is likely to remain one of Southeast Asia's happiest nations.

The way Singapore both survived and grew under Lee Kuan Yew is one of the success stories of the modern era. To deal with the problems his city-state faced, Lee increased his own and the PAP's powers. A master politician, Lee smashed the opposition every time elections were held, effectively making Singapore a one-party state. From 1968 to 1981, the PAP held all seats in Parliament. As time went on, he took an increasing interest in managing even the smallest details of daily life. In 1971 he closed two newspapers, charging that communist Chinese agents bribed the editors. To limit congestion he taxed everyone who owned cars, as well as parents who had more than two children. In 1983 he offered the government's services to help educated women find educated husbands, and ads were placed in overseas newspapers, offering inducements to professionals who immigrate. In 1991 his successors outlawed gum, declaring it a public nuisance to clean up, especially in the subways.

Of course there have been abuses when so much power is concentrated in the hands of one person. Foreign organizations like Amnesty International occasionally accuse the People's Action Party of imprisoning or torturing dissidents. Drug pushers are punished by hanging, and the 1994 caning of an American teenager for spray-painting cars got worldwide attention. But most Singaporeans do not object, because in return they have been given unprecedented prosperity. The economy grows at a rate of 5.8% per year (lower than in the 1980s but still well ahead of the birthrate), and the per capita income is $16,500, the third highest in Asia after Japan and Brunei. The main industry, as always, is commerce, since Singapore is situated right on the world's busiest shipping lane. But the fortunes of commercial states rise and fall with those of their trading partners, so in the 1980s Singapore diversified its economy by building an oil refinery and factories. This farsightedness paid off when the Asian currency crisis struck a decade later; Singapore suffered far less than its neighbors did.

After years of hinting he would leave, Lee Kuan Yew retired in 1990, choosing Goh Chok Tong as his successor. One of Goh's first acts was to add an amendment to the constitution that gave some power to a Singaporean president. Besides serving as head of state, the president's jobs were to control the treasury and choose key civil service appointments. Officially this was a safety measure; by splitting power between two people at the top, it would be less likely for a "rogue government" to take over from the PAP and spend the country's cash reserves. The PAP candidate for president, Ong Teng Cheong, expected only token opposition but won with just 60% of the vote, nearly a dead heat by Singaporean standards (August 1993). Running against him was the former head of the Post Office Savings Bank (POSB), who had to be persuaded by the PAP to stand in the election. The votes he garnered were not only protest votes against the PAP, but also a "thank you" message from the common people, because he had protected their savings by maintaining the savings account interest rates during economic downturns.

Singapore watchers expected Ong to be a party loyalist, who would not make waves. Instead, he chose to be an activist, taking his job seriously. Almost immediately, Ong, Goh and Lee (who remained around as party chief) argued about what the president could and could not do, in a rare show of disunity. Then personal problems doomed Ong to a one-term presidency. His wife died of cancer in 1998, and though he recovered from lymphoma in the same year, the PAP used these ailments as an excuse to announce that it would support somebody else in the 1999 elections. Ong chose not to run, but spooked the PAP by waiting until the last minute to announce his decision. The government chose S. R. Nathan, a former ambassador, head of the secret service, and a member of the Indian minority, to become the next president. He enjoyed a one-candidate race, because the PAP had set strict standards on who could run; a presidential candidate had to be "a person of integrity, good character and reputation," and have experience either in high public office or in running a company worth at least 100 million Singaporean dollars (about US $58.5 million). No suitably qualified opponent appeared to challenge him, so Nathan won easily.

Brunei (pronounced Broon-eye) finally became independent on January 1, 1984. As expected, the state has done very well, sharing large oil revenues among a small population of 300,000. Most of the oil money, however, does not go to the people but to the sultan, Haji Hassanal Bolkiah. He celebrated independence by unveiling a brand-new $250 million royal palace, containing two gold-plated domes, 2,000 rooms, air-conditioned stables, and an 800-car garage. From 1987 to 1997 he was the richest man in the world, until Microsoft chairman Bill Gates replaced him in the top spot. But he does not keep all the revenue for himself; the people are kept happy with various building projects (new mosques, schools, bridges, etc.) plus free education and health care, all done with no income tax levied on them. In 1996 he celebrated his 50^th birthday by building an amusement park, with free admission for his subjects.

The sultan of Brunei is one of the last monarchs in the world with real power. Most of the ministries are run by his family; no elections have been held since 1965; the only known opposition leader is in exile. In 1990 the sultan warned against opposition to the government, Islam or himself, and announced that the laws of the sultanate would be changed to conform more closely with Islamic law. As is the case in Singapore, few people protest the lack of freedom because the country is wealthy; they feel that as long as the system works there is no need to fix it.

Burma/Myanmar: A Ne Win Situation

On domestic issues, however, U Nu was only a mediocre leader. The economy never recovered to its pre-World War II levels, and he had to postpone indefinitely his plans to make Burma the first welfare state in Asia. In 1954 he proposed a constitutional amendment making Buddhism the state religion, a move that offended the country's Christian and Moslem minorities. To placate them he offered equal time for the teaching of all three religions in the schools. That caused so much trouble from the monks that he banned all religious instruction, a move that caused demonstrations all over the country. He was forced to capitulate and allow only Buddhist instruction; one observer commented that he became a victim of the very sentiments that, as a patron of Buddhism, he had fostered.

In 1958 the AFPFL split into two factions, known as the "Clean" AFPFL and "stable" AFPFL. The Shans were also threatening to secede, now that the ten-year waiting period they had promised Aung San was over. Faced with losing control over the country, U Nu turned to General Ne Win for help. For the next 18 months Ne Win led a caretaker government that put Burma's house back in order. At the end of that time new elections were held, and Ne Win returned the government to civilian rule. Once U Nu was back, however, the old problems came back with a vengeance. This time Ne Win did not wait for permission to take over. In March 1962 he arrested U Nu, scrapped the constitution, dismissed Parliament, and ruled by decree. The disorderly AFPFL was replaced by the Burmese Socialist Program Party (BSPP), which now became the only legal political party in the land.

Burma since 1962 can be described as one-man misrule. Ne Win imposed socialism more aggressively than U Nu did, by nationalizing all land, commerce and industry. Rice marketing was made a government monopoly and peasants were paid less than a third of the market value for their crop. Ne Win also had a puritanical streak; he closed dance halls, prohibited beauty contests and horse racing, and insisted on punctuality and industriousness. Such behavior did not go over well with the easygoing Burmese, and the economy went from bad to worse. Per capita income sank from $670 in 1960 to a low of $200 in 1989 (it's $530 as of 1995), and most of the population practices subsistence farming to avoid starvation. Once the world's largest exporter of rice, Burma stopped exporting rice in 1973; now it is known as the world's largest grower of the opium poppy. The country is rich in farmland, teak, rubies, even oil, but is classified as one of the poorest nations in the world. Most homes are bamboo huts; electricity is a rarity; buildings seem to crumble before one's eyes. Keith Laumer, a former US diplomat stationed there in the 1950s, described Rangoon this way a generation later: "Once the garden city of the East, now the garbage city of the East."

Before Ne Win took over, Burma had isolationist tendencies; under him they became downright xenophobia. Few countries are harder to get into. In the 1960s tourists were not allowed to stay in Burma for more than 24 hours--now they are allowed 30 days, but the entire country still has fewer hotel rooms than the Las Vegas Hilton. Burma has even quit the Nonaligned Movement that it helped get started, charging that the 1979 meeting hosted by Cuba's Fidel Castro was tainted by superpower politicking. Ne Win locked out the modern world everywhere; under him Burma had no high-rises, nightclubs, or neon signs; even Coca-Cola was unknown. Offices kept their records in nineteenth-century style ledgers, because they couldn't get computers or typewriters. Most of the cars in Rangoon were built during the U Nu years, and the Burmese are mechanical geniuses when it comes to maintaining them, since a new Nissan--if it is available at all--costs $40,000 on the black market.

To give one example of Ne Win's thinking, he outlawed all forms of birth control to make sure that Burma's population is never absorbed into one of its two big neighbors, India or China. Since the Burmese are outnumbered by nearly 47 to 1, their mothers have been given a formidable assignment.

There weren't many things the Ne Win regime did well, but putting down dissent was one of them. In 1974 student strikes erupted at the funeral of U Thant, an old rival of Ne Win, and the students were put down so forcefully that scarcely a murmur of dissent was heard for a decade. Ne Win was less successful in dealing with the various rebels (mostly Karens, communists and opium warlords) on the periphery of the state, but since they were too weak to threaten Rangoon, most of the country enjoyed peace.

In 1981 the 70-year-old Ne Win handed over the presidency to a like-minded general, San Yu. In July 1988 he resigned as head of the BSPP, appointed police chief Sein Lwin as his successor, and legalized political parties. The people, already seething from a 1987 decree that made 60% of the nation's currency worthless, exploded in a wave of pro-democracy demonstrations. Sein Lwin was so unpopular that he resigned after only three weeks; a lawyer named Maung Maung took his place. That failed to end the unrest, though, so in September the military took matters into its own hands again. A junta called the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), led by General Saw Maung, killed more than a thousand dissidents and imposed a strict nighttime curfew. To quiet the students that still protested, Saw Maung promised elections in May 1990. One of his first acts after that was to order foreigners to use the Burmese names for all geographical locations; consequently Burma became Myanmar, and Rangoon became Yangon.

In 1988-89 the opposition united to form the National League for Democracy (NLD). Its leader is Aung San Suu Kyi (1946-), the daughter of the national hero, Aung San. Like Corazon Aquino of the Philippines and Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto, Aung San Suu Kyi was not interested in politics until her family connections pushed her into the limelight. She is politically sharp, and greatly admired, but the obstacles facing her and the NLD are great. In July 1989 she was put under house arrest along with 42 other NLD leaders, and the army launched a campaign of intimidation. The SLORC did everything it could do to steal the upcoming election, but the NLD won anyway, capturing 80% of the seats. The government simply refused to step down and has ruled ever since, its only excuse being that election results as lopsided as the 1990 ones cannot be accepted by the country's non-Burmese minorities. The NLD replied by saying that if one has to wait until elections are held that please everybody, the country could remain under military rule well into the 21st century. In 1991 Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, but the government kept her from knowing it until her British husband told her on a visit two weeks later.

International disapproval and economic failure caused Saw Maung to resign in April 1992; he was succeeded by General Than Shwe. In September martial law was lifted, though Aung San Suu Kyi was not released until August 1995. She has chosen to remain in Yangon, where she holds weekly public conversations outside her front gate with gatherings of several thousand citizens and foreigners.

The SLORC's relations with the Buddhist Sangha (brotherhood of monks) have been uneasy, because pongyis (monks) played a role in the 1988 rebellion and even helped administer the town of Mandalay. Some monks have protested military rule by refusing to accept alms from military households. The SLORC responded by pressing the Sangha authorities to discipline the young monks. Relations with ethnic insurgents on the borders have been more skillfully handled. General Khin Nyunt negotiated separate cease-fire agreements first with the small hill tribes and then with the Kachin, adopting their armed forces as an autonomous militia and offering economic development aid along with tolerance of their border trading activities (including opium). The Karens gradually lost the informal support that Thailand had given their independence movement, allowing the Myanmar Army to take the main Karen base at Mannerplaw in early 1995. By the end of 1995, the Karen National Union asked to begin peace talks with the Myanmar government. However, active fighting continues between rebel units and the Myanmar military. The major opium warlord, Khun Sa, faced with a U.S. drug indictment and reduced business connections through Thailand, remained in control of a key section of the eastern Shan state until December 1995, when Myanmar troops marched into his base of Homong; Khun retired to Yangon. From the west came reports of ethnic cleansing; persecution of the Moslem community in Rakhine (formerly Arakan) forced many of Burma's Moslems to emigrate to neighboring Bangladesh.

The SLORC reconvened its constitutional convention in late 1995, after a three-year delay. Aung San Suu Kyi's NLD party boycotted it because it talked about the army's role in government, instead of democratic principles. Tensions between the SLORC and the NLD heightened in May 1996 when the SLORC arrested more than 200 delegates before they could attend an NLD party congress. Another crackdown occurred in May 1997; the SLORC arrested more NLD members and detained Aung San Suu Kyi in her car for six days, to prevent a meeting intended to commemorate the 1990 elections.

As a hermit nation, Burma is far less affected by the foreign pressures that helped put Aquino and Bhutto in charge of their countries. No large business class or religious organization acts as an opposition movement; instead there is a military establishment opposing an entire society. Because of that, real freedom and prosperity are not likely to come soon, though the SLORC has apparently conceded that Aung San Suu Kyi is the country's best hope.

Cambodia: The Killing Fields

The purpose of all this was a diabolical social experiment. The Khmer Rouge's ultimate goal was to create an agrarian utopia, where everybody was a peasant. From their point of view every element of civilization from the pre-1975 era must be eliminated, so a new, more perfect society could be built. Cities were useless--empty them! Schools don't teach students how to grow rice, so close them. Trade is evil, so abolish all markets. Abolish money. Abolish Buddhism and marriage, so the people will work harder, eat less, and produce fewer children. Destroy contaminating foreign inventions, like TV sets and air conditioners. Destroy contaminated people: former enemy soldiers, teachers, physicians, anyone who wore glasses or spoke a foreign language . . .

There was even a rumor that the ancient ruins of Angkor had been torn down by the overzealous Khmer Rouge; fortunately that turned out to be false.⁽²⁾ To symbolize the start of a new age, the Khmer Rouge proclaimed 1975 Year Zero, renamed the country "Democratic Kampuchea," and proclaimed the start of a new community that would be cleansed of "all sorts of depraved cultures and social blemishes."

Norodom Sihanouk took his time, waiting several months before coming home to Cambodia. When he arrived, he was so appalled at what the Khmer Rouge had done that he quickly returned to China. When he visited a second time in 1976, he was placed under house arrest, where he remained for the next three years. He was the Khmer Rouge's most visible member, but he never had much influence over the actions of the communists. The real leader was a figure named Pol Pot, of whom so little was known that in 1978 a team of visiting Yugoslav reporters asked, "Comrade Pol Pot, who are you?" Officially he did not become secretary-general of the Cambodian Communist Party until 1976, but from the beginning it was his ideas that were being put into action.

Pol Pot seemed invincible, but his reign of terror fell victim to the Sino-Soviet struggle. The Khmer Rouge had always been allied with China, preferring Maoism over Leninism. The Vietnamese communists, on the other hand, did not take sides until 1975, accepting aid from any communist state that was willing to give it. Once the war was over, though, the Vietnamese took another look at their relationship with China. Remembering the long periods when China dominated Vietnam in the past, the Vietnamese concluded that Russia was a safer ally. As Vietnam became a member of the Soviet Bloc, relations with both China and Cambodia deteriorated. Before long the Khmer Rouge began persecuting Vietnamese living in Cambodia. At the same time Pol Pot had thousands of his own people (most of them rival party members) tortured to death, calling them "Khmer bodies with Vietnamese minds."

A third Indochina war began in late 1977, started by a border dispute between Cambodia and Vietnam. The Vietnamese launched a massive invasion during the last days of 1978. On January 7, 1979, Pol Pot and his associates abandoned Phnom Penh, and a pro-Vietnamese regime, led by Heng Samrin, was installed there. The new government called itself the KNUFNS, or the Kampuchean National United Front for National Salvation. The Khmer Rouge fled into the jungle, and eventually they went across the border to the refugee camps in Thailand, accompanied by hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Few nations welcomed the change in Phnom Penh; most denounced Heng Samrin and his premier, Hun Sen, as Vietnamese puppets. Only Laos, Vietnam, and the Soviet Union recognized the new regime, and a Khmer Rouge delegate continued to occupy Cambodia's seat in the United Nations. China expressed its displeasure by invading Vietnam in February 1979, supposedly to teach the Vietnamese a lesson. Taking heavy losses, the Chinese used superior numbers to bludgeon a path to Langson, a town northeast of Hanoi, in three weeks; then the Chinese went back the way they came. It was never clear who had taught a lesson to whom.

Cambodia's misfortune hit rock bottom in 1979, when the whole country was in danger of starving to death. Agriculture had been totally mismanaged, and the transportation network was in ruins. The United Nations sent in food along with trucks and river barges to transport it. Gradually the famine ended, and life in Cambodia began to recover. The traditional religion and culture were restored, schools were reopened, and Phnom Penh is now full of busy people again, though most streets and buildings still show the scars of war and years of neglect. Bright colored clothing replaced the black pajamas worn by everyone during the Pol Pot years.

A civil war soon replaced the Vietnamese-Cambodian war. 35,000 Khmer Rouge rebels took on the 170,000 Vietnamese troops that supported the Phnom Penh regime. In the early 1980s two more rebel movements appeared: the 15,000-man anticommunist Khmer People's National Liberation Front (KNLF), led by a former Lon Nol supporter, Son Sann; and a neutral faction with 9,000 members led by Prince Sihanouk, the National Union for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful, and Cooperative Cambodia (FUNCINPEC). In 1982 Sihanouk, Son Sann and the Khmer Rouge formed an anti-Vietnamese alliance, and started launching successful hit-and-run attacks against the Vietnamese. The Vietnamese found themselves receiving the same kind of treatment they had dished out against the Americans. When the number of casualties exceeded 50,000, the Vietnamese decided they had enough; they withdrew from Cambodia in 1988-89.

Getting the Vietnamese out did not end the fighting, so in 1991 the four remaining factions--the Phnom Penh government and the three factions trying to topple it--met in Paris and agreed to a truce. The UN got involved and sent 22,000 soldiers, police and civilian workers to occupy the country and save Cambodia from itself. They promised to do the following in just a year and a half: stop the war, repatriate the 350,000 refugees now living in Thailand, and set up a market economy and democracy in a country that was not familiar with either. The UN had never attempted a project so ambitious before.

The biggest problem for the UN was that the killers of the killing fields--the Khmer Rouge--remained on the prowl. Unlike the other factions, they refused to disarm or allow UN peacekeepers into the zones they controlled, and began attacking UN workers or taking them hostage. Despite this, and despite threats that the Khmer Rouge would disrupt elections, UN personnel registered 90% of the civilians to vote, and after convincing them that their ballots would be secret, got a big enough turnout to proclaim the election results acceptable.

When the voting took place in May 1993, Prince Sihanouk, still the perennial favorite, emerged the winner. Second place went to Sihanouk's son, Norodom Ranariddh. However, Hun Sen's CPP (the Cambodian People's Party) gained control of several provinces, and they threatened to secede if they weren't given a share in the new government. At first Sihanouk set up a transitional government that included only his own faction, but just hours later he pulled another of his famous flip-flops and invited Ranariddh to serve as prime minister and Hun Sen as defense minister. In September a new constitution was adopted restoring the pre-1970 monarchy; the refugees began to return, and the UN peacekeepers withdrew.

This arrangement proved an unstable one. In November 1995 Prince Norodom Sirivudh, secretary general of FUNCINPEC and Sihanouk's half-brother, was accused of plotting to have Hun Sen assassinated. Sirivudh, who had been openly critical of the CPP, maintained the charges were politically motivated. He was allowed to go into exile in France after Sihanouk intervened on his behalf, and in February 1996 he was sentenced in absentia to 10 years in prison. In March 1996 Ranariddh threatened to withdraw FUNCINPEC from the coalition, thus forcing a national election, unless Hun Sen and the CPP agreed to an equal power-sharing arrangement at the district level. Hun Sen threatened to call out the military, which was dominated by CPP loyalists, if an attempt was made to deprive him of power. By mid-1997 the government was effectively paralyzed, with elected officials not having met for months. In July, when Ranariddh was out of the country, Hun Sen staged a bloody coup and took control of the government.⁽³⁾

The Khmer Rouge lost ground no matter who was in charge in Phnom Penh. Sensing that their association with Pol Pot was the cause, they brought an ailing Pol Pot out in the open and staged a show trial in 1997. After accusing him of capital crimes and subjecting him to rounds of name-calling, Khmer Rouge leaders sentenced the ex-strongman to life under house arrest. The following spring saw a major government offensive on the Khmer Rouge headquarters near Angkor, which reduced the rebels to a few hundred diehard members. At this stage it looked like Pol Pot would be captured and extradited to the UN, where he would stand trial for the crimes of his regime. Instead, the Khmer Rouge reported that Pol Pot had died of a heart attack and cremated the body before any outsiders could perform an autopsy, leading some to suspect he had been smothered to prevent him from testifying against his former comrades.

Cambodia today is on the road to recovery, but most of the people are still desperately poor. Countless man-hours are wasted growing rice by old, inefficient methods, because nobody can afford the tools of modern agriculture. The population has finally returned to the level of the prewar years, but many of those alive are homeless, maimed or ill (both physically and mentally). Hyperinflation, averaging 250-300% a year, has made some Cambodian merchants refuse to accept Cambodian money, and wipes out economic gains as fast as they are made. And while the Khmer Rouge may be demoralized and decimated, the war isn't quite over yet; what's more, decades of fighting have left millions of land mines scattered across the country, promising to kill and wound civilians for years to come. As the owner of Southeast Asia's most fertile farmland, Cambodia has the potential to prosper greatly, but it will have to solve its current problems before it can make any plans for the future.

Indonesia Under Sukarno

Into this confusion Sukarno stepped in, bringing order and increasing his personal power at the same time. He announced that Western-style democracy would only lead to anarchy. In its place he offered what he called "Guided Democracy," where a president with considerable power would be balanced by a national council of advisors that represented not only political parties but various professions: workers, peasants, the intelligentsia, businessmen, religious organizations, the armed forces, youth and women's groups, etc. What Sukarno hoped for was a national version of the government by consensus that had always been practiced on the village level. In practice, though, Sukarno found he had to please as many people as possible. To maintain popular support he juggled three political balls constantly, the military, the PNI and the PKI; his talents allowed him to do this for years, but disaster struck when those three factions finally became unbalanced.

Not everyone approved of Sukarno's policies. The export-producing Outer Islands felt the Jakarta regime discriminated in favor of densely-populated Java. In December 1956 several local army commanders on Sumatra and Sulawesi revolted, their goal being the establishment of a government that cared for them, not the communists. Sukarno and his defense minister, General A. H. Nasution, put down the rebellions by 1958, and they proposed bringing back the revolutionary constitution of 1945, a move which would give the president the emergency powers needed to deal with similar crises in the future. Sukarno urged this course in a speech to the Constituent Assembly, which had been elected in 1955 to draft a permanent constitution. When the Assembly failed to produce the two-thirds majority needed to approve the 1945 constitution, Sukarno, despite the dubious legality of such an action, introduced it by presidential decree on July 5, 1959.

As time went on, Sukarno directed the economy in a socialist direction, away from Western capitalists. To give the people a sense of national identity, he built grandiose buildings and monuments. His ideology was simplified to a cluster of slogans and abbreviations that anyone could remember: continuing revolution, Manipol (Political Manifesto), Ampera (the Message of the People's Suffering), Nasakom (the unity of nationalism, religion, and communism), and others. Western music, dancing, and institutions like the Boy Scouts were replaced with Indonesian substitutes. At the same time Sukarno behaved flamboyantly in public, traveled around the world on costly junkets, and lived like a monarch from Indonesia's pre-Moslem era. In 1955 he hosted the leaders of Africa and Asia at a conference in the city of Bandung, an event that started the Nonaligned or Third World movement. Seven years later he sponsored a series of Asian sporting events as an alternative to the "imperialist-controlled" Olympics. All this was done with no concern for what it might do to the economy. To pay his bills Sukarno printed new money constantly; inflation and the national debt both rose steadily during the early 1960s.

Indonesia has shown a remarkable aggressive streak in a world that considers international cooperation better than world domination. One example, the Malayan Confrontation of 1963-66, was discussed previously. When Malaysia joined the United Nations Security Council in 1964, Indonesia became the first (and only) nation to ever resign from the UN. In 1957 Sukarno got tired of waiting for the Dutch to get out of western New Guinea (also called West Irian or Irian Jaya), and launched his own campaign to get it. He ordered a 24-hour strike against Dutch-owned businesses in Indonesia, banned Dutch publications, prohibited the landing of KLM (the Dutch airline) planes at Indonesian airports, and nationalized Dutch holdings; this led to a mass exodus of 40,000 Dutch citizens from Indonesia. Using warships and planes supplied by the Soviet Union, he landed paratroopers on New Guinea. To defuse the situation, the UN took control of the Dutch half of the huge island, and handed it over to Indonesia one year later. Maps were published that changed the name of the Indian Ocean to the "Indonesian Ocean," called Papua New Guinea "East Irian," and even renamed Australia "South Irian," to the dismay of the Australians. The 1975 conquest of Portuguese Timor can be seen as a continuation of the same expansionist tendency.

The early 1960s saw the communists gain much power and prestige. Meanwhile Sukarno's playboy lifestyle gave him a collection of diseases, causing him to age rapidly. In 1965 Sukarno faltered in the middle of a speech and had to be helped from the platform before the eyes of shocked thousands. Both the military and Western nations were concerned that the communists were preparing to come to power. The feeling by everyone that time was running out led to the violent upheavals of 1965.

On the last night of September 1965, a group of army conspirators kidnaped six generals, murdered them, and threw their bodies down a well. At dawn the coup leaders, who called themselves the 30th September Movement, announced they had seized power to prevent military treachery against the president. Sukarno, significantly enough, had spent the predawn hours at a nearby air force base, making friendly small talk with the men who killed his generals.

Two top-ranking officers managed to escape death. Defense Minister Nasution fled a hail of bullets that killed his infant daughter. The other was General Suharto⁽⁴⁾ (1921-), the commander of the army's strategic reserves; he either was lucky enough or smart enough to be away from his house when the killers assigned to him arrived. Now he took command of the armed forces, launching a counter-coup against the conspirators. Within 24 hours he had broken the 30th September Movement and gained control of Jakarta.

The PKI insisted that the violence was an internal affair of the army, and that they were not involved in it. Nobody else believed that, and a vendetta of unmatched proportions was launched against the communists. Estimates of the numbers killed in the slaughter range from 80,000 to more than a million. Countless innocents were caught in the army or mob attacks; beautiful Bali was soaked in blood; rivers in central and eastern Java were said to have been dammed by bloated corpses. The Indonesian Communist Party went down for the third and last time.

Sukarno tried to save himself with his old act of balancing leftist and rightist factions. After the coup he formed a new cabinet, dismissing Nasution and hiring a number of communist sympathizers. That made Sukarno look pro-PKI to many. Student protests increased, and Sukarno was forced to give his powers to Suharto, who now became acting president. The next year (1967) saw Sukarno removed from office, and in March 1968 Suharto was elected to take his place. Sukarno was kept under house arrest until he died in 1970.

Indonesia Today: Life in the Fasting Lane

Whatever else can be said about Suharto's Indonesia, it was more stable than Sukarno's. Revolutionary fervor became a thing of the past, while the largest oil reserves east of the Persian Gulf allowed the economy to grow at a steady rate of 6% a year, about twice the rate of population growth. However, all was not well in the business sector. In 1975 the state-owned oil company, Pertamina, defaulted on paying loans worth $10.5 billion, and the crisis threatened to bring down the whole economy. It took the dismissal of Pertamina's corrupt director, project cancellations, renegotiation of loans, help from the West and rising oil prices to save the situation. When oil prices stagnated in the early 1980s, Suharto introduced a policy of greater openness (keterbukaan), promoting foreign investment in Indonesia and greater integration of Indonesia into the world economy. He also introduced reforms across a wide range of sectors to cut production costs and improve the competitiveness of Indonesian exports.

Unfortunately, only about 10 percent of the workers earned enough to enjoy the benefits of growth. Most of the wealth ended up in the hands of the president's family and friends, a kleptocracy very much like what the Marcos family ran in the Philippines. Suharto's six children amassed huge holdings in industries like airlines, petroleum, banking, automobiles, etc., estimated at between $6 and $30 billion in value. Foreign companies that did business in Indonesia often had to hire junior members of the Suharto clan as "consultants" to grease the wheels. The economic inequalities were exacerbated by the growth of the population to 210 million, despite a relatively successful family-planning program in Java. This made Indonesia the world's fourth most populous country; by itself, Java has more people than most nations. Largely because of the crowding and poverty, rioting occurred in several Indonesian towns in the 1990s.

Several parts of Indonesia have faced severe political unrest since the 1970s. In 1975 Portugal gave up its colonial empire, and withdrew from East Timor. The Frente Revolucionária do Timor Leste Independente (FRETILIN), a leftist group, took control of the capital, Dili, and promptly declared independence. Indonesia responded by invading East Timor in December. Portugal and the UN condemned Indonesia's invasion, but Indonesia later annexed the area as its 24th province. Human rights groups claim the Indonesian army may have killed more than 100,000 people, about one sixth of the island's Christian population, during the annexation. In 1991 Indonesian soldiers massacred 270 pro-independence demonstrators in Dili, provoking international condemnation. In 1996 Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo and Jose Ramos Horta, two Timorese dissidents, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to resolve the conflict. Fighting between Indonesian troops and Fretilin members continued into the mid-1990s, despite talks between Indonesian officials and exiled Timorese leaders. Other active independence groups include the Free Papua Movement on New Guinea and the National Liberation Front Aceh Sumatra in Sumatra's Acheh region.

Suharto's most visible opponents came from Moslem groups that have never accepted government control, and from university students alienated by the government's corruption and human rights violations. In 1978 students launched demonstrations, prompting the government to restrict activity on college campuses and press freedoms. In the early 1990s many dissidents gave their support to Megawati Sukarnoputri, the daughter of the late Sukarno. The government removed her from her post as chair of the Indonesian Democratic Party in 1996, which kept her from running in the next election, and protesters rioted in Jakarta. Although Sukarnoputri did not enjoy widespread support, she was the first figure in a generation to challenge the incumbent president.

In the early and mid-1990s, Asian officials boasted that they had created a self-perpetuating Pan-Asiatic prosperity zone. Supposedly a dynamic economy in one Pacific rim country would stimulate the rest; Japanese savings became investments in the surrounding nations, which were in turn used to export goods to the West, especially the United States. There may have been some truth to this, but such a network also caused massive inflation, collapsed currencies and widespread bankruptcies when one member faltered, in this case Thailand in July 1997.

Of all the countries affected by Thailand's currency woes, Indonesia was hit the hardest. The economy imploded; thirty years of economic gains were wiped out in a few months, and the GDP dropped 15%. The monetary unit, the rupiah, was already one of the world's most devalued currencies; now it went into free fall, dropping in value from 2,300 rupiah per dollar to as low as 17,000 rupiah per dollar (February 1998). The International Monetary Fund put together a foreign aid package totaling $38 billion, one of the largest ever. In return for the emergency aid, Suharto had to agree to major structural reform, a realistic budget for the upcoming year, and to cut back on crony deals. Those turned out to be promises he couldn't keep, as his family stood to lose under any sort of austerity program. An ailing bank controlled by his son was shut down, and it quickly reopened under a new name. In January 1998 he announced a good-times budget that called for a 32 percent increase in spending, and an end to special tax breaks for family-owned businesses, but he still would not close them down. However, he did end government subsidies that kept down the price of oil and foodstuffs like rice, guaranteeing that the poor would have to shoulder the cost of reform.

In March 1998 the 76-year-old Suharto won reelection to a sixth term, and he acted as if nothing had changed. Caught between skyrocketing prices and tumbling wages, people took to the streets in protest. 230 were killed when a ransacked shopping mall caught on fire, and an estimated 500 more died in other riot-related violence. Chief among the victims were members of the Chinese community, always scapegoats when something goes wrong in Southeast Asia.⁽⁵⁾

In the past, the army had been Suharto's main base of support. This time, however, even the soldiers could see that the president was part of the problem, not part of the solution; they simply stood by and watched when rioters threw things at the villas and offices of Suharto's hated children and associates. In May they compelled Suharto, now a president only in his palace, to resign; vice-president Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie (1937-) took his place. Habibie was hardly a change; Suharto had adopted him at the age of 13, when his father died, so in effect he also belonged to the first family. Peace returned, though, because the opposition has not yet learned how to do anything besides speak out against the regime. Time will tell whether "B. J." Habibie will be anything more than a caretaker leader, trying to maintain order until he is ousted or new elections can be held.

Laos: The Land of Feeling Good

The government also had to deal with anticommunist guerrillas (mostly Hmong tribesmen) roaming the countryside, so Soviet advisors and Vietnamese soldiers were sent in. Repeated counterattacks (which may have used poison gas, if CIA reports are correct) broke rebel resistance, and all but 3,000 guerrillas eventually defected to Thailand. Those that left found the Thai government unwilling to give them Thai citizenship, though there are more ethnic Lao on the Khorat plateau than in Laos itself. Those that went to Western countries like the United States found it difficult to adapt to the very different culture they found there; instead of becoming stereotypical "rags-to-riches" Asian immigrants, they ended up as a burden on society, living on welfare checks indefinitely. For that reason today's dissidents rarely run away, expecting life to get better if they stay home.

The turning point came in 1979 when Premier Kaysone Phomvihane declared a dramatic change of course. He made private trade legal again, called for a more efficient price structure and an increase in wages, and ordered a 60% devaluation of the kip. He declared, "It is inappropriate, indeed stupid, for any party to implement a policy of forbidding people to exchange goods or carry out trading. Such a policy is suicidal."

Laos became the first communist country to mix capitalist and socialist practices in the form Mikhail Gorbachev would call "Perestroika" a few years later. In contrast to neighboring Vietnam, few propaganda banners fly the streets, and saffron-robed monks are seen more often than soldiers in battle dress. The Vietnamese troops, who numbered as many as 50,000 while supporting the regime, went home by 1990. "In Praise of Ho Chi Minh," an official anthem in both Laos and Vietnam, is played to a disco beat in Laos. Those Laotians who can afford exit visas find it relatively easy to apply for and receive one. Common household items such as spray paint, light bulbs and vitamins were in plentiful supply in Vientiane before they became available in Hanoi. Literacy rates and rice production are increasing rapidly, though the rest of the economy is moving at a much slower rate. The per capita income reached $250 in 1992, up from $90 in 1983, but still extremely low by world standards. There is no starvation, though, because the farmers have always grown enough food for their own needs, trading by barter when they don't have money. The small urban population survives because government subsidies keep the cost of rice in state-run stores at only 1/12 of what it costs on the open market.

The country as a whole is very backward and pastoral. Vientiane (population 442,000) is about the size of Tampa, FL; the other cities are more like American suburbs. The ordinary Laotian has never known wealth, and is content with his or her lot in life. This laid-back optimism is known as sabai di, literally meaning "feel good." The same easygoing attitude allows them to accept Vietnamese control of their defense and foreign policy, making Laos in effect the satellite of a former Soviet satellite.

In 1986 Prince Souvanouvong stepped down as president for reasons of poor health. Premier Kaysone took his place, then died in 1992 and was replaced by Nouhak Phoumsavane; General Khamtai Siphandon moved up to replace Nouhak as prime minister. Nouhak is also a senior citizen (he turned 80 in 1995), so it is likely that before long leadership will pass to a generation that did not lead the Pathet Lao during its long war against the French, royalists, rightists, South Vietnamese and Americans. In 1991 a new constitution was approved that removed all references to socialism but kept Laos a one-party state.

In the 1970s and 80s the principal trading partners were China and Vietnam; in the 1990s the strong economy of Thailand became dominant, since the Thais, unlike the Chinese and Vietnamese, share a common religion and similar language with the people of Laos. The most visible symbol of this was the 1994 opening of the Mitraphap (friendship) bridge across the Mekong River, linking Vientiane with Nongkhai, Thailand.

The Philippines: A Dictatorship Made For Two

Every trick in the book was used at election time, like using "gold, guns and goons" to influence the voters, ballot box stuffing, and adding names from tombstones to lists of people who voted. Control of the government changed hands between the Liberal and Nationalist parties with every election, but since both parties derived their support from the landowning upper class, there was hardly a difference between them. All things considered, the best thing about the presidents of the pre-Marcos era is that none of them was elected more than once.

When Ferdinand E. Marcos was elected president in 1965, he was seen by many as the most promising leader to come along since Ramon Magsaysay. The son of a school supervisor in Ilocos Norte, the country's northernmost province, he first went to law school, where he scored so high on the exams that he was accused of cheating, until he refuted the charge by reciting the legal texts he knew by heart. He gained national attention in 1938 when he was accused of murdering a political rival of his father. Acting as his own lawyer, Marcos won his release from a conviction by delivering an emotional address that moved the judge to tears and gained the admiration of everyone. No one knows for sure what he did during World War II, but afterwards he claimed to be the war's greatest hero, leading a force of 8,000 guerrillas (that story was completely false, but he told it so many times that he came to believe it himself). In 1949, at the age of 32, he became the youngest member of the legislature by appealing to the provincial pride of the voters: "Elect me now and I promise you an Ilocano president in twenty years." In 1954 he married a former beauty queen, Imelda Romualdez, and on the day he was sworn in as president, she got more attention than he did. Together Ferdinand and Imelda made an attractive couple, often compared with John and Jackie Kennedy.

Marcos promised to rid the country of crooked politicians, but eventually he would outdo them all. He got rid of the old political parties and introduced in their place a party he controlled completely, the New Society Movement. Likewise the old oligarchy was swept away, only to be replaced by one of his own creation. Imelda became governor of Metro Manila, Minister of Human Settlements, and chairperson of 23 other agencies and corporations. Imelda's brother Benjamin first became governor of Leyte (his family's home island), then ambassador to China, and finally ambassador to the United States. The president's sister, and later his son, were governors of Ilocos Norte. A daughter joined the legislature. His brother Pacifico led the Medicare Commission and 20 different private companies. A third cousin, Fabian Ver, was named Chief of Staff of the armed forces. Other friends and relatives were placed in charge of key industries, like coconuts and sugar. Whoever got those jobs returned the favor with enormous kickbacks. The constitution only allowed him two four-year terms in office, so he started looking for ways to change it so he could rule indefinitely.

As the economic misery of the people got worse, it was translated into political unrest. In 1968 a group of disgruntled students and former Huk guerrillas got together to form another communist movement, the New People's Army (NPA). Unlike the Huks, who concentrated themselves in one area, the NPA spread its members out to every province of the country. They murdered and plundered freely, but were a more disciplined force than the police or the army, and they won followers by dispensing a rough form of justice against unpopular local officials, unfaithful husbands, and anyone else the common people disliked. In 1972 a Moslem guerrilla movement, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), launched a campaign in the south to create an independent Moslem state named Bangsa Moro.

The Filipinos began to suspect that something was not kosher when Marcos won reelection in 1969. During his second term a number of disturbing events took place, and Marcos made no attempt to hide them. Inflation reached a rate of 18% a year; volcanic eruptions and earthquakes disrupted the lives of many; anti-government demonstrations turned violent; bombs and grenades were thrown at politicians. By 1972 Manila seemed to be slipping into anarchy. In September, unidentified gunmen ambushed an empty car that was supposed to be carrying the defense minister, Juan Ponce Enrile. Years later Enrile admitted that he staged the incident to get a reaction from Marcos. Sure enough, it played into the president's hands perfectly. Marcos blamed the current wave of violence on the communists and imposed martial law on the country. He closed down newspapers, radio and television stations, censored those that remained in operation, seized control of the airline and public utilities, placed a nighttime curfew on Manila, and jailed six thousand political rivals, journalists, professors and students, branding them communists or communist sympathizers. Most of those arrested were eventually released, but Senator Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino, whose only crime was running ahead of Marcos in public opinion polls, languished in prison for seven and a half years. Now able to get what he wanted, Marcos produced a new constitution that allowed him to rule for life, with unlimited powers during emergency situations like this one.

There is something of a tradition in Asia that gives approval to heads of state that take away freedom and give an improved standard of living in return. 20th-century examples of this behavior took place in Turkey, Thailand, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea. For this reason, most Filipinos in 1972 thought that martial law was the proper solution to the country's problems, and even Aquino admitted that he might introduce some kind of authoritarian regime if he became president. If Marcos behaved in the above manner, he might have gone down in history as an outstanding leader. But instead he and Imelda used their new powers to live extravagantly, impoverishing the Philippines in the process. The government got nothing done without huge bribes being paid, either to the president or someone else in his inner circle. He amassed a hidden fortune in gold, real estate, and Swiss bank accounts, estimated to be worth billions--all the time receiving only $5,600 per year as an official salary. Imelda gave lavish parties that looked like something out of a Cecil B. DeMille movie, and went on megabuck shopping sprees whenever she visited the United States. The rest of the country had to pay the bill for this, and the economy took a nosedive; from 1983 to 1985 the gross national product dropped a rate of -5% a year. The United States generously gave aid during these years, convinced that only Marcos could keep the country (and the US bases) out of communist hands. Washington suspected that something was wrong, but it asked no questions and gave him the same treatment that it gave pro-US dictators elsewhere ("He may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch.").⁽⁶⁾

Marcos ended martial law in 1981, and was re-elected again. Not long after that the new US vice-president, George H. Bush, attended the inauguration and praised Marcos for his "adherence to democratic principles." Actually, it no longer mattered whether there was martial law or not, since Marcos still ruled by decree and could rig elections as much as he pleased.

The Philippines: People Power

It is unlikely that Marcos himself ordered the assassination, since the now-ailing president was recovering from a kidney transplant at the time, but his cronies were certainly in a position to do it. That is what most Filipinos believed, while Marcos tried to put the blame on the communists. Fabian Ver and 25 other soldiers were indicted, but when the long trial ended in December 1985, all the defendants were acquitted. Despite years of investigations, the truth has never emerged concerning who actually planned the shootings, and perhaps it never will.

Nothing affects the Filipinos as much as martyrdom. More than one million people attended Ninoy's funeral procession; he was hailed as another Jose Rizal; some even called his death a "crucifixion," to be followed by a "resurrection" in the eyes of the people. Opposition to the Marcos regime, always fragmented before, united around Corazon ("Cory"), who had been an apolitical housewife until now. The movement came to be known as Lakas ng Bayan ("People Power"), with the color yellow as its symbol.

To show he was still in control, Marcos called for a snap election in February 1986, one year before his current term in office was due to end. Normally he would have won easily, given his control over the electoral process, the media, and his opponent's lack of experience. But Corazon Aquino got the help she needed to run an effective campaign. A seasoned politician, Salvador Laurel, ran as her vice-presidential candidate; the leader of the Philippine Catholic Church, Cardinal Jaime Sin, advised her every step of the way; most of all, the campaign was closely watched by the rest of the world. When Marcos tried to steal the election, Western television broadcast scenes of thugs stealing ballot boxes or bullying voters. When nobody could agree on who won, both candidates claimed victory, and Marcos and Aquino took the oath of office in different parts of Manila on the same day.

The stage was set for a showdown, with Marcos and the military against Cory and most of the civilian population. The critical turning point came when two Marcos loyalists, General Fidel Ramos and Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile, barricaded themselves in an army camp and declared themselves for Aquino. As other soldiers defected to them, tanks were brought out to crush the rebellion. Violence was averted, however, by an event that many saw as a miracle. Thousands of Aquino supporters, led by members of the clergy, blocked the streets with their bodies; the tank drivers chose to join the opposition rather than massacre unarmed civilians. Marcos turned to the United States for help, and was provided with a plane to escape. The entire first family flew away to Honolulu, where the ex-president lingered on a life support machine until he died three and a half years later. Back in Manila, looters broke into Malacanang Palace, to discover what their taxes had been used for; the palace was full of merchandise from Imelda's shopping, including 3,000 pairs of shoes.

Cory soon learned that throwing out Marcos was just the first step in rebuilding the nation. The economy stopped tumbling, but recovery was hindered by the birthrate of the population, which is doubling every 25 years. And the problem of corruption continued; in 1988, for example, it consumed $2.5 billion, or one third of the national budget. Cory herself was above suspicion, but she was accused of being so sincere that she didn't realize the people around her were insincere. The tales of corruption sounded a lot like what went on before 1965, as if the upper-class families displaced by Marcos wanted to make up for twenty years of lost time: smuggling, kickbacks on government contracts, fake licenses, payoffs to cops, etc.⁽⁷⁾

Marcos was the best recruiter the rebels had. During the years of martial law the New People's Army grew from a few hundred members to about 25,000. They made a grave error, however, when they boycotted the 1986 elections. After Marcos left individual rebels started deserting, giving the Aquino government the upper hand in the struggle. On Mindanao the NPA gained a new enemy in the form of anticommunist vigilante groups; the two best known were the Alsa Masa ("Up With the Masses"), which single-handedly cleaned the NPA out of Davao City, and the Tadtad ("Chop"), a bizarre cult of cannibals that went around beheading communists. By 1993 internal feuds, defections, and government military drives had made the NPA a marginal force in most provinces, but guerrilla movements in this part of the world tend to last for generations, so we probably haven't heard the last from them yet.

Aquino's most serious challenge came from inside the government. As soon as the 1986 revolution was over Enrile started telling her to step down, so he could become president in her place (after he tried to seize power he was dismissed and replaced by Fidel Ramos). Equally ambitious was Vice President Laurel, who never like being the number two man for anybody (his father, Jose Laurel, was president during the Japanese occupation). The military complained about being underequipped and underpaid, and accused Aquino of being too soft against her enemies. Between 1986 and 1989 there were seven coup attempts; all of them failed, but it took intervention by US warplanes to save the government on the last one, and the most notorious coup leader, Colonel Gregorio Honasan, remained at large until the 1995 congressional elections, when he became a new member of the Philippine Senate.

Aquino didn't want to serve a second term, so in 1992 seven candidates ran for her job (one of them was Imelda, who came back from exile despite pending charges against the Marcos family). After three weeks of vote-counting, the candidate Cory endorsed, Fidel Ramos, emerged the winner. Ramos proved to be very efficient, and was willing to consider unconventional solutions. For example, to control overpopulation he spent $150,000 in 1994 to introduce cable TV to northern Luzon, so that the people would have something to do at night besides making babies.⁽⁸⁾

The first priority of the Ramos administration was to restructure the economy and make it more competitive in an international market that sees the Philippines as weak. To do this, Ramos attacked the major oligarchic family firms that have long run portions of the economy for their own gain. At the beginning of his term, he stated that the Philippine economic system "rewards people who do not produce at the expense of those who do . . . [and] enables [those] with political influence to extract wealth without effort from the economy"; he also declared that the oligarchy is "the reason why the Philippines has lagged so far behind the East Asian tigers." He launched a program, known as "Philippines 2000," to make the Philippines catch up with the other economic powerhouses of the Pacific rim by the end of the century. Anticartel measures have made it easier for businessmen to succeed without special privileges, and have loosened up notoriously inefficient industries like telecommunications, shipping and banking. Another visible sign of improvement is that Manila no longer suffers from the crippling power shortages that often left parts of the country without electricity for 8 to 12 hours a day in the early 1990s. By 1994 the economy was growing at just over 5 percent a year, modest in comparison with richer neighbors like Singapore but a tremendous improvement over the stagnation of the Aquino years and the negative growth of the Marcos era.⁽⁹⁾

The lease on the US bases expired in 1991. For years the United States and the Philippines negotiated a new treaty that would allow the bases to remain and create jobs for the local economy. Discussions concerning Clark Air Base became irrelevant when a nearby volcano, Mt. Pinatubo, erupted and covered the base with ash; the Americans chose to abandon the base rather than spend millions to clean it up. They reached an agreement on Subic Bay, but the Philippine Senate rejected it, for reasons of national pride, so the Americans had to get out of the huge naval base as well. Thus, almost half a century of dependent independence came to an end.

The war by the Moslems against the government continued, on-and-off, through the Aquino and Ramos administrations. In September 1996 the government reached a peace agreement with the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF). The agreement established a Special Zone for Peace and Development (SZPD), consisting of 14 southern provinces. Headed by MNLF leader Nur Misuari, the SZPD received special economic assistance to develop this impoverished region. Other rebel groups, however, continue to oppose the Philippine government on a reduced scale. The most significant of these are the 40,000-man Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), and the Abu Sayyaf ("Father of the Sword") Group, which reportedly has veterans of the Afghan War in its ranks. In April 1995 the Abu Sayyaf Group got the credit for ransacking a town in western Mindanao, showing that the Moros can still contest Manila's control on the big southern island.

The Philippines is in search of an identity it can call its own. With a culture that is a mixture of Malay, Madrid, and Madison Avenue, it cannot completely call itself either an Asian or a Western nation. The two-sided Philippine attitude toward the United States was symbolized by a 1994 placard outside the factory of a multinational company: "Yankee go home! And take me with you!" The new post-bases, post-cold war world poses a daunting challenge to a nation that has not had to stand on its own feet until now. The Philippines can no longer count on an outside superpower to guard it against foreign threats or rescue its economy from balance-of-payments difficulties. In response to the declining American influence, the country is strengthening ties with its Southeast Asian neighbors, in the hopes that benefits from more interaction will flow in both directions.

In 1998 Vice President Joseph Estrada, a former actor and college dropout, won the election to succeed Ramos. Joel Rocamora, a former leftist revolutionary, explained that the voters chose him because "they are tired of being led by smart people." Time will tell whether Estrada can fight crime as well in real life as he did on the silver screen, and keep the short-term gains made by his predecessors, now challenged by the collapse of other Asian economies. A strong state with an arbitrary leader is no longer considered the best option, but neither does the country have the infrastructure and law & order required for "free market" capitalism to flourish. And control over the congressional houses is still held by traditional politicians, often referred to as trapos ("dishrags"); currently the people show little inclination to get rid of them, despite the derogatory name. Many of the so-called new faces that have won recent elections have strong connections to old centers of power; some of them are basketball players and movie stars like Estrada, who continue their careers as entertainers even while they hold public office. It looks like the Philippines will have to take two steps back for every three steps it takes forward.

Thailand: The Unconquered Kingdom

Sarit justified his actions by inventing an ideology that has long outlived him. The way he saw it, an abstract constitution would not work well in Thailand, where most people still respected traditional authority. What Thailand needed was a strong leader who was firm but also concerned for the welfare of the people. The king was once that authority figure, but nobody wanted a return to absolute monarchy, so a separation between crown and government had to continue. The king did, however, play an important role as a symbol of the nation and the people, and the government could only claim to be legitimate so long as it had the king's approval.

The Sarit government's first priority was economic development, and the standard of living climbed impressively during this time. Sarit also prospered, perhaps too much; he left behind fifty mistresses and a fortune worth $150 million, which included large holdings in various companies, 8,000 acres of land, and several houses. Of course he did not acquire that wealth honestly, but after experiencing the rule of his successors the public felt Sarit may have been worth the price. He was succeeded by his prime minister, General Thanom Kittikachorn, who ruled by martial law for much of the following decade (1963-73).

The Thanom regime experimented with introducing the elements of democracy, but very cautiously. A new constitution had been promised back in 1959, but it did not go into effect until 1968. Elections established a new legislature in 1969, but rule by decree came back three years later when Thanom became concerned over domestic and foreign developments. The Nixon administration was pulling out of Vietnam and normalizing relations with China; both events threatened Thailand's security. Worse than that was the unrest at home. China and Vietnam punished Thailand for its pro-US stance by arming communist guerrillas; they started making trouble along the Laotian border in 1965. A Moslem revolt rose up in the far south. And the country's students, educated in far greater numbers than ever before, were becoming familiar with Western values and deploring the lack of political progress.

Matters came to a head in 1973 when student protests against the government snowballed into gatherings of hundreds of thousands. After bloody clashes between civilians and the police, the king declared that he was on the side of the student and middle-class demonstrators. Thanom lost the military support he needed and was forced to resign. A civilian government took over, a new constitution was written, and a new democratic era seemed to be beginning.

Despite its best efforts, the new regime could not bring stability. 1974 saw demonstrations against Japanese-made trade goods while the Japanese prime minister was visiting, followed by anti-Chinese riots. When elections were held in 1975, 42 parties sponsored 2,193 candidates for 269 seats in the Assembly, making sure that no party would win a majority. Three prime ministers held office between 1973 and 1976, and the coalitions they put together came apart at least once every year. Meanwhile, the communist victories in Indochina forced Thailand to rethink its foreign policy. With its own communist insurgency growing, there was a very real concern that Thailand would degenerate into another Vietnam-type situation. The American servicemen in Thailand were ordered to leave, except for a few advisors, and the US bases were turned over to Bangkok.

While feuding politicians entertained or exasperated the middle class, leftist students became more radical, alienating the monarchy, the bureaucracy, and the public with their behavior. In October 1976 former prime minister Thanom returned from exile as a Buddhist monk, and became respectable when the royal family visited him. Leftists protested Thanom's reception and committed the unpardonable sin of insulting the royal family, triggering a right-wing backlash. Mobs and the police engaged in an orgy of violence, killing many students before the military stepped in, abolished the government, and restored order. Many Thais were revolted by the barbarity of this episode, and that made them more politically moderate in the years that followed.

The conservative prime minister appointed by the junta, Thanin Kravichien, was a civilian lawyer, but he set up a regime more repressive than that of his military predecessors. The army waited until he discredited himself and then replaced him, but the next leader, General Kriangsak Chomanand, was forced to resign by a no-confidence vote in 1980. He was replaced by yet another general, Prem Tinsulanonda, and Prem was competent enough to bring back normalcy.

Under Prem, the main concern of the Thai people was not domestic problems but what was happening in Indochina. A steady stream of refugees had been coming out of there since 1975, fleeing poverty or the Pol Pot terror. After the Vietnamese invasion of 1979, the stream of Cambodian refugees became a flood, peaking at 430,000 before the United States and other nations began taking them in. Add to that 80,000 Laotians (2/3 of them Hmong tribesmen), a constantly changing number of Karens migrating to and from Burma, 12,000 Chinese (descendants of Chiang Kai-shek's soldiers), 15,000 Vietnamese "boat people," and 40,000 Vietnamese refugees from the First Indochina War, and the result was a whale of a refugee problem. Occasionally Vietnamese units crossed the Cambodian-Thai border and attacked Cambodian refugee camps, to get at the Khmer Rouge and other enemies hiding there. In the early 1980s Thailand tried to ignore these skirmishes, since nobody wanted them to escalate into a war between Thailand and Vietnam. Later on, as internal security improved, the military starting launching counterattacks against the Vietnamese units it caught on Thai soil. That may have contributed to Vietnam's decision to quit Cambodia in 1988.

A side effect of these events is that they cured the Thais of any leftist tendencies they might have had after 1976. If revolution can only bring something like the Vietnamese reeducation camps, or the killing fields of Cambodia, then the Thai people do not want any part of it. Consequently the communist rebels ran out of steam, and in 1982 they started giving themselves up, coming out of the jungles to swear loyalty to the king.

Prem retired in 1988, but his elected successor, General Chatichai Choonhavan, was unpopular and suspected of corruption. In 1991 he was ousted by a junta-led coup, and elections were promised for March 1992. But when the elections took place, three pro-military parties won 53% of the seats in the Assembly, and the candidate they picked for prime minster was accused of drug trafficking. At this point General Suchinda Kaprayoon, head of the junta, stepped forward and swore himself in as prime minister. Tens of thousands of protesters from all walks of life immediately began to demand Suchinda's resignation. In May the police declared a state of emergency and called in the troops, who fired into demonstrating crowds, killing 300. The public was shocked and the king intervened, persuading both military and civilians to put the interests of the Thai people first, and to amend the constitution to make it more democratic. Suchinda arranged for an executive amnesty for himself and his supporters before the whole junta resigned, then new elections were scheduled for September 1992. This time the contest was between five pro-military parties, characterized by the Thai press as "devils," and four pro-democracy "angel" parties. This was Thailand's 19th election, and the turnout (62%) was the highest yet. The "angels" won a bare majority, and Chuan Leekpai was sworn in as the country's 20th prime minister. To make the government more stable, Chuan included the largest "devil" party in his coalition.

In May 1995 the Chuan Leekpai government collapsed, amid accusations of wrongdoing in a government land reform project. Two months later, elections were held and the leader of Chart Thai (Thai Nation Party), Banharn Silpa-archa, was the winner. However, he lasted less than a year. Soon accusations emerged of corruption among his appointees, prompting investigation into bribes, abuse of authority, and questionable bank loans. Silpa-archa resigned after a no-confidence debate in Parliament, new elections secured a slim victory for the New Aspiration Party (NAP), and its leader, Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, became the next Thai prime minister.

The economy grew at a spectacular rate of 10% a year in the late 1980s, and did nearly as well in the early 90s (8% to 9.5%). New industries were introduced, and tourism generated huge profits, but the latter is a mixed blessing; a liberal attitude toward sex has given Bangkok a reputation as the kind of city where tourists can have any sexual experience for a price. Consequently Thailand is now dealing with the worst AIDS epidemic in Asia.

In 1996 growth slowed to 6%, while the nation's budget deficit ballooned to 8% of the gross domestic product (GDP). Without realizing it, Thailand had overextended itself. As in other Pacific Rim nations, corporations and investors had come to believe that prosperity would continue forever. To promote endless growth, the country's weak and poorly disciplined financial sector loaned money freely and asked few questions, never considering that growth for growth's sake is the ideology of the cancer cell.

At this stage, Thailand's foreign debt was half as big as the GDP, and 40% of it was in short-term loans, meaning it had to be paid right away. However, the long depression in Japan meant that the money was not there. Japan was Thailand's best customer, and it could no longer afford to buy Thai-made goods, or invest in Thai businesses. To make Thai products more competitive, the decision was made on July 2, 1997, to let Thailand's currency float. Instead it caused a disaster; the next four months saw the baht lose nearly 60% of its value. Credit became unavailable, the real estate market crashed, growth ended altogether, and 58 of the country's 91 financial companies had to suspend business. Worst of all, Thailand's collapse started a chain reaction that hit all neighboring countries hard, especially Hong Kong, South Korea and Indonesia.

To stop the financial chaos, the International Money Fund (IMF) and the World Bank stepped in. They offered a rescue package worth $17.2 billion, on condition that during the next fiscal year, Thailand restructure its budget so that it produced a surplus worth 1% of the GDP. This meant higher taxes and lower government spending, always a bitter pill to swallow. In October 1997, Prime Minister Chavalit reshuffled his cabinet without changing the makeup of the coalition government. This failed to improve the public mood, so one month later he stepped down. His rival Chuan Leekpai took charge with an eight-party coalition, and hinted that elections might take place before the scheduled date of November 2000.

Gradually the king, Bhumibol Adulyadej Rama IX, entered politics to curb the worst excesses of both the right and the left. Not allowed to do much of anything before 1957, he first became more visible, but still a figurehead, during the Sarit years, attending various public ceremonies and personally handing out diplomas to all of the nation's university graduates. In 1973 he supported the revolution, but turned against it when it got out of hand three years later. In 1981 and 1985 coups were attempted against Prem, but the king and Queen Sirikit nipped them in the bud by openly endorsing Prem. In 1992 the king acted as a moderator to defuse political violence one more time. Normally the king and queen spend their time traveling to every corner of the country and meeting with ordinary people, to find out how they can improve their lives. The king, himself an engineering graduate, likes to build various projects like roads and bridges, and will often pay for them out of his own pocket, to avoid burdening the government's budget.

For their enlightened actions, the king and queen are honored by everybody in the land, and since the king has enjoyed the longest reign in Thai history, his continuing presence inspires hope for the future. Because the royal family stopped practicing polygamy early in the 20th century, the size of the family has shrunken in recent years. In the early 1980s this was remedied by changing the Succession Law to include women; now both Prince Vajiralongkorn and Princess Sirindhorn are heirs to the throne.

Thailand is usually classified as a developing country, since the per capita income is $1,800, far below Western standards. That is better than average in this region, though, and from a social standpoint, Thailand is Southeast Asia's most successful nation. Never dominated by any outside power, the Thais have been able to progress at their own pace. Culture shock has been avoided, and traditional institutions like the monarchy and Buddhism have entered the modern world relatively intact, a remarkable accomplishment when the rest of Southeast Asia has either slipped into seedy socialist decay or lost its identity in a maze of skyscrapers, fast-food restaurants, and the pop culture of the West. And the population, which has grown from 17 to 59 million since World War II, is now increasing at a much safer rate of 1.4%, almost as low as that of the developed West.

Recently the Thais have cultivated better relations with countries that aren't pro-Western, using Thailand's healthy economy to make deals with less fortunate neighbors. Some of these ventures involved Libya, Myanmar and the Khmer Rouge, sparking protests from Washington. The strain in Thai-US relations caused Thailand to apply for membership in the Nonaligned Movement in 1993. What all this means is that Thailand's future, for better or for worse, will be tied more closely to that of her neighbors; the Thai approach to problem-solving will also set an example for other nations to follow.

Vietnam: The Phoenix of Asia

Refugees fled Vietnam every year, first to escape oppression, and more recently to escape poverty. The government let them go, after providing them with flimsy boats and taking everything they had except the clothes on their backs. It is unknown how many "boat people" have fallen victim to bad weather, capsizing boats, sharks, or modern-day pirates. When they reach a noncommunist country their troubles are not over, since they are rarely welcomed by anyone.

North and South Vietnam were formally united in July 1976, but years of division had created two cultures, which behaved as if they were two separate countries. Residents of Ho Chi Minh City still prefer to call it Saigon, even when the government is listening. Roads and buildings are all in better shape than in Hanoi; economic advisor Nguyen Xuan Oanh noted that the south's infrastructure was about 35 years ahead of the north's. A thriving black market sold American-made goods, smuggled from Thailand and Singapore; eventually the government gave up trying to stop it, and taxed it instead. Only now, as Vietnam opens up to the outside world, are the two cultures merging into one again. Hanoi may pull all the political strings, but Saigon controls the economy.

The cause of Vietnam's postwar problems was often its leaders. For nearly twenty years after Ho Chi Minh's death, Hanoi was run by his associates, old men who had spent most of their adult lives fighting France, Japan, the United States, China and Cambodia. They were very experienced at running a nation in wartime, but when peace broke out they made mistakes right and left. In 1979 they decided to allow a small amount of free enterprise, but most stores still had little on the shelves; the only authorized private market in Hanoi offered a pathetic selection of old vegetables and eggs. Major changes finally came with the Sixth Party Congress in December 1986; most of the top party officials who had not succumbed to old age were retired, and a free market economy, known as Doi Moi, was put into action. This gave the results Hanoi had been looking for. For example, in 1988 near famine conditions existed, but only two years later Vietnam was the world's third largest rice exporter. Inflation dropped from 700% per year in 1988 to 8% in the 1990s. The State Bank of Vietnam swallowed a dose of common sense, raised deposit interest rates so that they were just above the inflation rate, put loan rates just a bit higher and stopped giving away money indiscriminately to state enterprises. About 5,000 of those state enterprises were liquidated; the remaining 7,000, forced to compete for customers and funding, have become profitable. And the number of people leaving Vietnam dropped to a trickle, the last wave being several thousand Amerasian youths, the children of US servicemen and Vietnamese mothers who found themselves the victims of racial prejudice.

Vietnam's recovery from war and poverty could have come faster had there been more friends abroad. In the 1970s and 1980s the only foreign power it got along well with was the Soviet Union. An attempt was made to mend fences with the United States in the late 70s, but Hanoi scuttled it by insisting that former president Nixon had promised $3 billion in foreign aid before the 1973 cease-fire agreement was signed. Whether or not Nixon promised anything, the $3 billion was foolishly figured into the next year's budget, and Vietnam demanded war reparations before any other agreement could be reached. By the time the mistake had been realized, the Vietnamese were fighting the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, and Washington put its plans for Vietnam on the back burner. The US also insisted on knowing what happened to those American servicemen listed as "missing in action," on the chance that some might still be alive in Indochina; nearly 2,000 MIAs are still unaccounted for as we go to the press. The rest of the world chose not to do business with Vietnam until the US gave the green light; China and most of Southeast Asia, especially Thailand, considered Vietnam too ornery to call a friend.

Vietnam's isolation began to end with the breakup of the Soviet Bloc in the early 1990s. About six thousand people now cross the Chinese border on foot every day, carrying on a small amount of trade between Vietnam and China. In the United States, a new generation grew up without the emotional scars of the war years. One such American was President Bill Clinton, who had objected to the war and avoided serving in it during his college years. In January 1994 he ordered a full normalization of relations with Vietnam, and nearly $11 billion in foreign investments was committed by the end of the year. The Vietnamese welcomed American technology, business, institutions and laws with open arms, since from their point of view their former enemy was fairer than any Asian neighbor.⁽¹²⁾

For all the progress, serious obstacles remain. As with Laos, the situation is that the Vietnamese nation is doing better, but most of the Vietnamese people remain dirt poor; if progress is going to continue, that will have to change. In early 1995 the government banned the conversion of farmland for industrial use, a move which could threaten Vietnam's development in the long run; the government also holds all land titles and prohibits borrowing against land values. And while Doi Moi may be compared with the Soviet Union's Perestroika, there is nothing like Glasnost; the Communist Party has ruthlessly suppressed all direct challenges to its authority, though it did relax the atmosphere and allow open debate, giving the appearance of democracy. Further reform will require the communist leadership to show a good deal of courage, since if they are successful, they will not only sweep away webs of red tape but undermine their own political power in the process, as Mikhail Gorbachev showed us. But for the first time since the mid-nineteenth century, Vietnam is independent, united, and at peace. This raises hopes that root-and-branch reform will soon be possible, and that the dreams of the common people for a better future might finally come to pass.

2. However, the Khmer Rouge did use the old temples as bases. After they were overthrown, it took until 2007 to remove the land mines surrounding one twelfth-century temple, Banteay Chhmar. Today Cambodia's splendid monuments are in danger from vandals, who have removed hundreds of sculptures and sold them on the black market.

3. Ranariddh was able to return in 1998 when the king issued him a pardon.

4. Like many Javans, Suharto used only one name.

5. Many of Indonesia's Chinese are Christians, so the violence took on a religious element as they were raped and killed by the country's Moslem majority.

6. Near Baguio City, Marcos had his face carved into a mountain Mt. Rushmore fashion; it was finished in the fall of 1985, a few months before the end of his career. The tribe that previously owned the mountain said, "Blow it up!", and the NPA tried unsuccessfully to do just that. It still stands today as a visible monument to the injustices of the Marcos years.

7. "Ali Baba Marcos fled, leaving behind the forty thieves."--Cardinal Sin

8. Incidentally, Ramos is the first Protestant president in the country's history. It is unlikely that a Catholic leader would have tried this form of birth control without getting the approval of the pope or Cardinal Sin first.

9. The main source of income from abroad is an estimated 3.5 million Filipino overseas workers, who send paychecks home to their families and have often been exploited by their employers, especially in the Persian Gulf region.

10. In the early 1980s Vietnam tried to ease the population crunch by settling a few hundred thousand Vietnamese in depopulated Cambodia. The rest of the world naturally saw this as a form of colonialism.

11. Eventually even Colonel Bui Tin grew disillusioned with communism, and he emigrated to Paris.

12. It also helped that Vietnam's population is a young one; by the year 2000, a full two-thirds of it was born after 1975. Nevertheless, government propaganda still frequently mentions events from the war. This may be a tacit admission that Hanoi hasn't had much to be proud of since the war ended.

© Copyright 2000 Charles Kimball