Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/122892/12289941.000

Text File | 1993-04-08 | 14KB | 276 lines

                                                                                SOUTEAST ASIA, Page 30

CAMBODIA: THE UN's Biggest Gamble


The peace-keepers -- a huge commitment in manpower and money
-- are caught in a cross fire as they struggle to resurrect
a country

By WILLIAM SHAWCROSS/PHNOM PENH

[illiam Shawcross is the author of Sideshow, an important
1979 book on Cambodia.]


    In the small town of Snoul in eastern Cambodia, along an
invasion route from Vietnam, people have been lining up
patiently outside an old building newly painted in blue. Inside
they are photographed and interviewed by a voter-registration
team to make sure they were born in Cambodia or have at least
one Cambodian parent. Personal data, photograph and signature
are recorded on a card that will entitle the bearer to vote in
elections the U.N. is hoping to hold next May.

    In towns and villages through much of Cambodia, millions
of people have been repeating this process over the past few
weeks. Their participation is one of the signal successes in an
unprecedented and fragile experiment carried out by a huge
international presence known as the United Nations Transitional
Authority in Cambodia, or UNTAC.

    Understanding Cambodia has always seemed like trying to
put together a three-dimensional jigsaw of morality, politics
and geography. Some pieces are missing, some are scuffed and
torn beyond recognition, some bent completely out of shape; a
few fit nowhere at all. The picture appears to show a maze
through which the country has been stalked by successive
monsters: a coup followed by brutal civil war, careless U.S.
policies, strategic bombing, a Marxist revolution so bloody that
it came to be called autogenocide, international and regional
power politics, liberation and occupation by a hated neighbor,
famine, decay and renewed civil war.

    Now Cambodia is in the midst of the strangest phase of all
-- and the only one that could be said to have benign intent.
Over the past few months, under the banner of the U.N., the
devastated country has been inundated by 20,000 men and women
from all over the world, equipped with white cars, white trucks,
white planes and white helicopters. They are charged with giving
Cambodia something it has never had -- democracy -- along with
something it has not known for 22 years -- peace.

    For Cambodia, the U.N. plan is the last, best hope to
escape the maze. For the U.N., it is a test case of whether the
world organization can adapt to the new demands of the post-cold
war world. As Claude Cheysson, a senior member of the European
Parliament, said recently in Phnom Penh, "UNTAC must not fail.
It cannot fail." But what constitutes success?

    The town of Snoul is a microcosm of the U.N.'s gamble. It
is a poor place: pigs and cows root around the market; many of
the goods on sale have come across the border from Vietnam. The
town was destroyed during the American invasion of 1970; nine
years later, Vietnamese tanks and trucks roared along the rutted
dirt road as they invaded Cambodia to liberate it from the Khmer
Rouge and establish an occupation that would last 10 years.

    Now U.N. peacekeepers are the occupiers. The electoral
process they oversee is impressive. Near Angkor Wat, Sajjad A.
Gul, a Pakistani, says Cambodians have told him they really do
want to vote -- though some of them wish they could vote for
UNTAC. As of mid-December, UNTAC officials could take
satisfaction from the fact that 4 million of an estimated 4.5
million prospective voters had been registered.

    Many of the remainder are inaccessible because they live
in areas controlled by the Khmer Rouge. Since they withdrew
last June from the peace process that they had accepted in the
Paris agreement of October 1991, they have refused to allow
UNTAC electoral teams into their areas, sabotaging some of the
principal ambitions of the U.N. plan -- the disarming of
factions and nationwide elections. Hun Sen, the Prime Minister
of the Vietnam-backed administration in Phnom Penh, says that
"the Paris agreement is no longer balanced. It is like a
handicapped person." But while accepting some UNTAC
requirements, his administration also harasses the U.N. effort.

    In the shade of the UNTAC umbrella, there is a heartening
political spring in Cambodia. Alongside several brave Cambodian
groups, UNTAC is promoting human-rights ideas. At least 14
political parties have sprung up to contest the election,
including one with the Stars and Stripes as its symbol. Hun
Sen's ruling communists have renamed themselves the Cambodian
People's Party, but find it hard to escape their Marxist,
pro-Vietnamese history or reputation for corruption and
brutality. Their principal competitor is the nationalist,
anticommunist party founded by Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the
country's former ruler.

    The party claims that its supporters are harassed,
intimidated, even killed; most observers in Phnom Penh believe
Hun Sen's administration is behind the attacks. Hun Sen denies
that. Although he is an authoritative figure who will no doubt
hold a senior position in any postelection coalition, his power
is limited by hard-line communists within his government and a
security apparatus not entirely under his control.

    Though they have withdrawn from the peace process and the
elections, the Khmer Rouge recently announced a new political
party, the National Unity of Cambodia Party. It is headed by
Khieu Samphan, long presented as the "acceptable" face of the
Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot, their notorious leader, directs their
campaign unseen from near the Thai border. If their party did
take part in the elections, it would probably win several seats.
It is important -- if shocking -- to realize that the Khmer
Rouge do have support in Cambodia. Some people see them as
nationalists and incorrupt -- but there is no reason to believe
they have changed their brutal and absolutist policies.

    Cambodia's central drama is that it is a small country of
9 million people, overshadowed by two large and threatening
neighbors: 65 million Thais to the north and west, 70 million
Vietnamese to the east. For centuries both have coveted,
infiltrated, invaded and otherwise tried to exploit Cambodia;
their ambitions and the resulting fears among Cambodians still
dominate the country.

    The Paris agreement had several purposes. One was to
remove a large barrier to U.S.-Soviet-Chinese detente. Another
was to get the international community off the hook of
recognizing the Khmer Rouge as the government of Cambodia;
elections would in effect legitimize much of the pres ent
administration in Phnom Penh in coalition with other parties.
Equally important, the peace plan would separate the Khmer Rouge
from China, their principal sponsor; in return for having its
clients admitted to the political game in Phnom Penh, Beijing
agreed to stop supplying them with weapons. Including the Khmer
Rouge in a settlement was at the very least a distasteful as
well as risky solution, but the alternative was more war, no
international recognition for Cambodia and no chance of peace.

    Western diplomats believed that the process would wither
the Khmer Rouge's power. What they failed to predict was the
communists' ability to finance their own arms purchases from the
sale of timber and gems in areas they control along the border
with Thailand, which with Thai assistance they have savagely
pillaged at great cost to the environment. The U.N. Security
Council has imposed sanctions on the Khmer Rouge, to little
avail.

    Pol Pot's forces are also threatening to destroy the peace
process altogether by refusing to demobilize their 27,000
fighters and allow UNTAC access to territory under their
control. Their reason appears to be fear of UNTAC's liberating
effect on their cadres and villagers. But their standard
explanation is that they pulled out of the accord because UNTAC
failed to insist on the withdrawal of all Vietnamese troops from
Cambodia or to take control of the government in Phnom Penh, as
required by the accord.

    There is no evidence that main-force Vietnamese units are
still deployed in the country, but hundreds of thousands of
Vietnamese, perhaps more than a million, are now there as
traders, artisans, fishermen. Many of them are demobilized
soldiers, suspected by some Cambodians of being part of a Hanoi
fifth column. Vietnamese advisers are still believed to hold key
positions in some ministries.

    For so complex and ambitious a program, the U.N. was
lamentably slow in deploying UNTAC. Troops came piecemeal, and
some were at first immobilized by lack of logistic support.
Despite the large staff now in place, UNTAC has had difficulty
asserting control over the Hun Sen administration. In the
provinces, the handful of U.N. civil servants found themselves
powerless in the face of entrenched local officialdom backed by
all the government's resources, including police and troops.

    When the Khmer Rouge announced in June that they would not
allow the U.N. into their areas, some U.N. officers wanted to
call their bluff and dispatch forces into the territory. But
force commander Lieut. General John Sanderson felt such pressure
might destroy the peace process, and most of the countries that
had contributed troops would not let them be sent into battle
against the Khmer Rouge. The disagreement highlighted a U.N.
dilemma: When should peacekeeping become peace enforcing --
perhaps with the loss of peacekeepers' lives?

    The Khmer Rouge have expanded their areas of influence
since Paris. Their intransigence is clearly visible in Kompong
Thom province, on the northeastern shore of the Great Lake, one
of the most tense regions in the country. Last July three U.N.
military observers were based in the village of Kraya, where the
Khmer Rouge were infiltrating men and supplies down from
Thailand. The local Khmer Rouge commander, General Men Ron, told
the observers to "get out or I will kill you." The three men
were withdrawn and did not return to Kraya until the end of
September. Since then, Men Ron has refused to discuss any
problems with them, always answering, "There are Vietnamese in
the country. I will not deal with UNTAC." The Khmer Rouge have
detained UNTAC observers on three occasions.

    Khmer Rouge patrols have also been entering villages
nominally controlled by Hun Sen's administration, tearing down
election posters and confiscating radios. Recently, Khmer Rouge
cadres in one district made villagers hand over their
registration cards and cut them in two, keeping the half bearing
the name. The message was terrifyingly clear. Still, U.N.
observers believe the Khmer Rouge to be a much weaker force than
generally assumed -- capable of terrorism but unable to mount
large-scale assaults.

    The animosity among the factions is evident in the Supreme
National Council. Meetings have not been easy, and Sihanouk, in
poor health, has become weary. For the past few weeks he has
been in Beijing complaining about the behavior of some of the
factions. He has warned that unless both Hun Sen and UNTAC act
vigorously "against the poisoning of the political atmosphere,
social injustice and political terrorism," he will stop
cooperating with them.

    Some commentators have already written off UNTAC. They
argue that the Paris agreement as such is dead, that UNTAC has
failed to create secure conditions for elections, that too
little has been done to de-mine the country and that there has
been virtually no progress in economic rehabilitation. Donors
pledged $880 million for Cambodia at a conference in Tokyo in
June, but almost none of the money has arrived. If the economy
functions at all, it is because Cambodia is still a country of
subsistence farmers and fishermen.

    But UNTAC also has notable achievements. The electoral
process is, so far, a remarkable success. The human-rights
component is spreading important ideas. The original mission of
the U.N. troops, to monitor the demobilization and disarming of
the factions, has been abandoned, but some of the soldiers are
bringing public health and other services to villagers. The U.N.
High Commissioner for Refugees has been much more successful
than expected in repatriating most of the 350,000 Cambodian
refugees from along the Thai border.

    If, despite the growing threats from the Khmer Rouge and
Hun Sen's regime, the election can be brought off in most of
the country, UNTAC will have given Cambodians a chance to move
toward more representative government. The best outcome would
appear to be a coalition between Hun Sen and the anticommunists
under the state presidency of Prince Sihanouk. Some UNTAC
officials suggest the inclusion of one or two Khmer Rouge in the
interests of achieving real "national reconciliation."

    But the election is only the middle of the maze, and the
road ahead remains obscure and perilous. A U.N. presence must
be maintained to offer continued security against political
terror from all sides. International aid must continue for
years. A national army will have to be built, in the hope that
die-hard Khmer Rouge elements can finally be defeated, and then
tried.

    In the long term, the success or failure of the UNTAC
investment will hinge on international concern and on whether,
at last, Cambodian political leaders can cooperate with goodwill
to address the underlying problems of their country. Yasushi
Akashi, the personable Japanese who heads UNTAC, points out that
UNTAC "cannot force Cambodians to be free." The international
community and UNTAC need to be steadfast if Cambodians are
finally to have the chance.