Free Cambodian publications

The following material derives from a visit to Cambodia in August 1996 in pursuit of a better working relationship that would bring us a supply of Cambodian publications to Yale. What I found was a country struggling to come back after a long and ghastly period of disorder: the 1970-75 civil war overlaid with American bombing, the 1975-79 Pol Pot interlude of unspeakable violence and social destruction, the 1979-1991 Vietnamese occupation: all this had ended, or so it seemed, with UN involvement in the early 1990s. By 1996, the UN had left in place a struggling, functioning government and society. The central market was open and bustling, the airport was managing a thin but steady stream of travelers, new gas stations were popping up along the main artery from the airport into town, and foreigners were finding lodging very satisfactorily at some quite small neighborhood hotels, as well as at the only large and ambitious hotel, the Sofitel Cambodiana.