Hun Sen's biographers paint complex picture of Cambodian strongman
PHNOM PENH, Oct 28 (AFP) - After decades of often brutal struggle, Hun Sen has positioned himself as Cambodia's undisputed strongman and a tough survivor on Asia's turbulent political scene. But surprisingly little is known about him.
Next month, however, will see the publication of "Hun Sen: Strongman of Cambodia," the first biography of a controverisal figure who has risen from guerrilla fighter to elected prime minister.
"He is both a pragmatist and an idealist, but he can be tough as he proved against the Khmer Rouge," journalist and co-author of the biography Harish Mehta told AFP.
"We were not out to demolish Hun Sen, we were out to produce a balanced account of a man who is the single most important personality in Cambodia today."
Hun Sen's unofficial biographers, Indian journalists Harish and Julie Mehta, have given a broadly sympathetic portrait of a figure who holds a remarkable ability to inspire either love or loathing -- and seldom anything in between.
But politics aside, what emerges from the biography is a complex personality: a charming diplomat, an eloquent poet, unforgiving to his enemies, ruthless in battle with a thirst for power but simple tastes.
"Among the strong students I was strong. Among the strong soldiers I was strong. Now among the strongmen I am strong," Hun Sen said of himself during an interview in 1998.
Utilising extensive interviews with Hun Sen, the book succeeds in shedding light on several grey areas of history, including Hun Sen's flight to Vietnam from Pol Pot's internal purges and his role in Vietnam's 1979 invasion of Cambodia.
It details how a young Hun Sen, shocked by the bombing of Cambodia by the United States and South Vietnam in the early 1970's, emerged a dedicated Khmer Rouge field commander.
Like so many other Cambodians, Hun Sen also took a share of hardship: he lost his eye during fighting and before the fall of Phnom Penh in 1975, and his first child died shortly after birth when it was dropped in the hospital.
A "disillusioned" Hun Sen quit the ranks of the genocidal guerillas in 1977 in terror of the mounting internal purges. The biographers, in line with most historians, clear Hun Sen of any role in the brutal genocide.
After fleeing to Vietnam, Hun Sen was greeted by imprisonment and interrogation, but then political asylum. Successive Khmer Rouge border attacks on Vietnam then convinced Hun Sen's hosts to help him raise an army of "national liberation."
Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia and ouster of Pol Pot places a 27 year-old Hun Sen as Asia's youngest-ever foreign minister. The central role of Hun Sen in the invasion was to provide ammunition to his opponents, who today still dub him a stooge of Vietnam.
But in power as prime minister since 1985, Hun Sen has emerged a survivor where many cold war warriors have long disappeared, a communist-turned-capitalist yet still deeply conscious of his humble origins.
"I don't want to judge him. I was born in a village, he was born in a royal palace," Hun Sen says of his main political rival Prince Norodom Ranariddh, who he ousted as coalition partner in 1997.
"If he looks down on Hun Sen he will look down on millions of people who are poorer than himself."
But his life is not without contradictions.
"They come from America to teach us about human rights and democracy, and I don't want to be their student," Hun Sen said in a typical anti-American outburst in 1997.
Such rhetoric does not prevent his son, Hun Manet, from attending the priviledged US military school of West Point, nor Hun Sen attending the graduation ceremony as a proud father earlier this year.
But although Hun Sen has emerged victorious from frequent bloody battles with often formidable opponents, he appears aware that it is in his peace time rule where he will be judged.
"I want to be a strongman and do something for my country ... I want to build our economy like the other Southeast Asian strongmen did," Hun Sen commented before the fall of Indonesia's president Suharto.
"So it is not yet correct to call me a strongman. I will recognise that I am a strongman when I succeed in eliminating the poverty of the Cambodian people and bring peace, economic development and security to Cambodia."