The first part of this article was published in Tuesday’s issue

BUT after the Pol Pot regime provoked the Vietnamese into a full-scale invasion in 1979, Sihanouk again lined up behind the Khmer Rouge to oppose the occupation and the Vietnamese-influenced communist regime of Heng Samrin. Apparently reckoning Vietnam to be a worse evil than the Khmer Rouge, he resisted occasional efforts by the Vietnamese to bring him over to their side. His decision helped to isolate the new regime, which, whatever its faults, had rescued Cambodia from a time of horror, and also contributed to the survival of the Khmer Rouge as a formidable force.

Many of Sihanouk’s friends in the West found this course of action hard to accept. Had he made his peace with the new regime, he would have given it international respectability. That would have made it more difficult for the Khmer Rouge to win the foreign support they did.

Western and Chinese policy was aimed at punishing Vietnam and cutting it down to size. The welfare of the Cambodian people was a lesser consideration for them, but ought not to have been for Sihanouk. However, the argument may overlook the deep-seated Cambodian fear of being absorbed by Vietnam, which Sihanouk certainly shared with his countrymen, including Lon Nol and Pol Pot.

With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, their ally and patron, the Vietnamese could no longer sustain their intervention in Cambodian affairs. They withdrew their troops in 1990, and in 1991 a Cambodia peace conference in Paris led to the installation of a temporary government consisting of the Cambodian People’s party and the three opposition factions, with Sihanouk as head of state. UN forces were sent in to disarm the factions, UN officials to supervise elections, held in May 1993. They were won by the royalist party Funcinpec, which had been founded by Sihanouk in 1981 as a guerilla movement, and the Cambodian People’s party, now headed by Hun Sen and which had ruled in Pnomh Penh since the invasion in 1979.

Funcinpec’s success was undoubtedly due in large part to the still potent Sihanouk magic. In June he was formally made head of state and in September restored as king. In spite of his age and ill health, he played politics with much of his old vigour, and often with no more sense of responsibility than before. Encouraged by Hun Sen, Sihanouk had suddenly proclaimed himself president, prime minister and commander-in-chief without consulting either the UN transitional authority or his son Ranariddh, leader of the royal party. The votes in the election were still being counted. It was an attempted coup that reminded those who knew him well of the high-handed tactics with which he had divided and ruled Cambodia in the past.

Sihanouk then played a leading part, along with the UN transitional authority, in persuading Ranariddh to form a joint government with Hun Sen. Ranariddh’s party had won the election by a wide margin, and joint government represented a dismal conclusion to the democratisation effort. The country has never recovered from the consequences of this concession to Hun Sen’s entrenched power. The two sides have not co-operated except in a wary sharing of the spoils of office and in making empty promises to the international donors whose aid keeps Cambodia going.

Sihanouk had early on offered the Khmer Rouge cabinet posts in return for a ceasefire, amending this to advisory posts when it was pointed out that cabinet positions had to be filled by members of the assembly. He continued to pursue the idea of reconciliation with the Khmer Rouge, in spite of its record, perhaps on the old principle that the more players are involved, the easier it is to manipulate them. Both Hun Sen and Ranariddh were soon vigorously pursuing reconciliation themselves: their competition for Khmer Rouge allies led to a coup by Hun Sen in 1997, of which Sihanouk initially seemed to approve. His direct political influence, whether for good or ill, diminished as his health worsened, involving long absences from the country. But he displayed some of his old divide and surprise tactics when he insisted on abdicating in October 2004, forcing the government to form a royal throne council to approve his choice of Prince Norodom Sihamoni as his successor. In his remaining years, Sihanouk spent much time in China, where he died.

To Cambodians, Sihanouk represented continuity when so much in their country had been destroyed. They valued his warmth and his evident concern for his people, while recognising that he had made many mistakes. It was typical of Sihanouk that he started his own website, offering a running commentary on politics, by turn witty, acerbic or just dotty; and typical of Cambodians that the site attracted as many as 1,000 visits a day - a lot in a country of 13 million people with limited computer literacy.

Cambodia’s extreme weakness - the mystery of how a power that once made all of south-east Asia tremble has fallen so low - has obsessed all its modern leaders and encouraged excessive and mystical solutions.

Sihanouk, Lon Nol and Pol Pot all seemed to share the idea that there was some fount of strength and power to be found in the nation’s traditions which, if tapped properly, would solve its problems.

Sihanouk saw it partly in his own person and in the monarchy: “I carry on my shoulders the overwhelming responsibilities of 16 centuries of royalty,” he said in 1952. Lon Nol found it in the stars while Pol Pot and his associates believed that a total mobilisation of the population was the key. “If we can build Angkor, we can do anything,” Pol Pot is supposed to have said - a sentiment all three men undoubtedly shared.

Sihanouk was a Cambodian patriot who lacked neither energy nor courage. He was also often a conniving, arbitrary ruler who can be accused of never allowing his country’s politicians the time or the room to reach maturity. After the 1970 coup, he was written off as a man who would never again play a significant role, but he remained an important figure.

His return to the throne was a piece of theatre intended to reassure Cambodians that in his person, there was some kind of connection with a better past and therefore a bridge to a better future. His orchestration of the succession had the same end in mind. Whether such a continuity was really re-established remains to be seen.  Concluded

By arrangement with Guardian