Logging in Muddy Waters: The Politics of Forest Exploitation in Cambodia

"Logging in Muddy Waters" analyzes the boom in forest exploitation that characterized the 1990s in Cambodia, focusing on the instrumentalization of disorder and violence as a mode of control of forest access and timber-trading channels. The article examines tensions existing between the aspirations of Cambodians for a better life, the power politics of elites, and the hope of some in the international community for a green and democratic peace. These tensions have produced both an interlocking pattern of "illegal logging" from the highest levels of the state to self-demobilized soldiers and peasants and sustained criticism that was only temporarily resolved through a legalization of the forest sector that benefited large-scale companies to the prejudice of the poor.

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