from the guardian
The Khmer Rouge leaders were obsessed with canals, embankments and dams. They presided over hundreds of irrigation projects to revive the country’s glorious but perhaps mythical past of an agrarian wonderland.
The Khmer Rouge built around 70 percent of Cambodia’s more than 800 canal networks according to a survey commissioned by the United Nations in the 1990s.
Now, across this impoverished nation of 14 million people, the canals are being rebuilt by a government hoping to take advantage of the world’s increasing demand for rice.