Some of my Cambodian friends, including two MCC Cambodia staff, are old enough to remember when the United States evacuated personnel from Cambodia five days prior to the fall of Phnom Penh to the Khmer Rouge in 1975. The photos and videos coming from Kabul strike a personal note for them.

The two events are, of course, very distinct. Afghanistan is not Cambodia or Vietnam, just as Myanmar is not Syria. Still, there are parallels particularly for people who live through take-overs by radical totalitarian regimes.

It’s impossible for me to look at what’s happening now in Afghanistan and see any reason for hope, but living here is a constant reminder that there was no hope in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 and of the resiliency of the human spirit.

As Fred and Minh Kauffman, the first MCC Cambodia representatives, wrote in 1982, “From the deathly despair of the three years and nine months under Pol Pot, the Kampuchean people are emerging as a dynamic, though scarred, society. A resurrection of Kampuchea has been underway and what a vivid testimony it is to the awesome power of life! It humbles us and drives us to prayer—to prayers of confession, for we recognize the same forces of evil at work within ourselves; and to prayers of joyful thanks for this magnificent powerful gift of life which God has granted to us all.”