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DANCING IN SHADOWS: Sihanouk, the Khmer Rouge and the United Nations in Cambodia. By Benny Widyono. Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto, Plymouth (UK): Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2007. xxix, 310 pp. (Tables, maps, photos.) US$85.00, 978-0-7425-5552-5, cloth; US$29.95, paper, ISBN978-0-7425-5553-2.
This is a very personal memoir. Benny Widyono, an experienced senior UN economist, served twice in Cambodia in what were essentially political roles: first with the UN Transitional Authority (UNTAC) in 1992-93, then as personal representative of the secretary general to the new Royal Government between 1994 and 1997. As a visiting scholar at Cornell University, he has absorbed the literature on the post-Khmer Rouge period, and has had access to previously unpublished material from the UN archives. But the story is his own, based largely on personal notes and recollections, and on his continued contacts -with key players, most of whom are still part of the Cambodian scene. The book, therefore, "sounds like Benny," which is what gives it its bite and originality.
The murderous regime of Democratic Kampuchea (the "Khmer Rouge"), followed by the intervention and decade-long occupation by Vietnam, forced Cambodia into an isolation that was to be broken only in the late 1980s when Vietnamese...