The
Failure of Conflict Resolution in Cambodia
David
W. Ashley
Introduction
The coup d'état of July 5—6, 1997, finally brought
home to a largely unsuspecting world the failure--or at the
very least the failings--of the Cambodian peace process, long
promoted as the most ambitious and successful of the various
post—cold war attempts to settle protracted civil conflicts.
This should provoke a reassessment of the international community's
strategy for resolving such conflicts in general and international
policy toward the Cambodian conflict in particular. This chapter
seeks to contribute to such reassessment by exploring the
strategy adopted to end the Cambodian civil war and the reasons
for that strategy's ultimate failure. It does so by examining
the collapse of the coalition government, the decline of the
Khmer Rouge insurgency, and the response of the international
community.
The Cambodian conflict, it must be remembered, should have
been a relatively simple one to resolve. It was a dispute
left over from the cold war, not a reaction to its end. It
was not, fundamentally, a social, ethnic, or ideological conflict
but rather a power struggle among Cambodian factions funded
and supplied by various foreign patrons. The leaders' mutual
hostility engendered by the recent past disguised a high degree
of social homogeneity, popular war-weariness, and elite consensus
about the way to run the country.
Cambodia also was a relatively easy place for the United Nations
to begin its post—cold war peacemaking efforts. True, the
country was simultaneously emerging from poverty, communism,
and two decades of warfare that had devastated its human and
physical resources. But it was manageably small, its factions
were weak and heavily dependent on outside economic assistance,
and an administrative apparatus existed to ensure a degree
of peace and order over most of the country. The basic question
was who should control the state--it was not, as in Afghanistan
or Bosnia, whether a unitary, centralized state should exist
at all. Finally, the UN began its work with the benefit of
an almost unlimited mandate and a possibly unprecedented level
of financial and political support from the international
community.
In this context, efforts to resolve the Cambodian conflict
took three basic forms: (1) international pressure, (2) liberalization,
and (3) power sharing. This tripartite strategy achieved temporary
success: An internationally acceptable coalition government
was established; the Khmer Rouge was isolated and severely
weakened; civil society took root; and international aid and
investment fueled economic growth. By early 1996 many in the
international donor community, their interest and resources
waning, decided that the "Cambodia problem" had
been resolved and turned their attention, with relief, to
other countries.
Such confidence proved ill founded. Six years after the Paris
Accords, the threat and reality of military force is once
again the determining factor in Cambodian politics. Why? Because
in the final analysis, power sharing as practiced in Cambodia
was neither rooted in nor contributory to a genuine desire
for reconciliation. The public move from the bullet to the
ballot was not accompanied by the necessary efforts on the
part of Cambodia's leaders to build the atmosphere and institutions
that would have facilitated such a transformation. Peace and
stability, instead of being founded on a political process
incorporating debate and change, became contingent on the
uneasy relationship of two unstable individuals, each of whom
had meanwhile developed a private power base and one of whom
had consistently used and threatened violence to further his
political ends. Once that personal relationship collapsed
in enmity, and Hun Sen's efforts to eliminate his opponent
through political means failed, his resort to armed force
was just a matter of time.
The Strategy to Achieve Peace
The three means used to effect conflict resolution were interlinked
and, for the most part, mutually reinforcing. Of the three,
the most important was international pressure. This comprised,
on the one hand, the deinternationalization of the conflict
by cutting off military and other assistance to the warring
factions and, on the other, pledging aid and legitimacy to
the government that resulted from the election. Since all
the factions were totally reliant on outside financial and
military support and lacked either power or legitimacy prior
to 1991, they were particularly susceptible to the carrots
and sticks of the international community.
Liberalization, economic and political, was a consequence
of this international pressure. Anxious to end the war and
its destabilizing impact on the region, the various foreign
players pressured their clients to sign a commitment to switch
from military to political struggle and to participate in
an election that--given the inability of the factions to agree
to an all-embracing coalition government--was the only available
means to arrive at a legitimate administration. To facilitate
the election, the Paris Accords guaranteed a liberal democracy
and freedom of political action, association, and expression.
The presence and actions of UNTAC then served to open up a
space in which the competing political actors and members
of the nascent civil society could operate. Numerous political
parties, newspapers, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)
sprang up.
At the same time, with the end to partisan foreign assistance,
all factions had to open up to foreign trade and investment
if they were to have the resources to survive. This, of course,
took place in the context of the boom in the economies of
Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand, which caused them to be
seriously interested for the first time in exploiting the
economic opportunities available in their less-developed neighbors.
As in Vietnam, Laos, and Burma, but in a more wide-ranging
fashion, openness to foreign influence brought Cambodians
new freedoms, new prosperity, and, of course, new problems.
Liberalization was not, however, the same as democratization;
and pluralism was not the same as reconciliation. The factions
agreed to the Paris Accords not because they were suddenly
convinced of the values of peace and reconciliation but because--under
heavy foreign pressure and with military victory out of reach--they
had no choice. Likewise, they took part in the 1993 election
not necessarily because of any enthusiasm for democracy; rather
they hoped to achieve objectives (power or legitimacy) through
the ballot box that they had failed to achieve on the battlefield.
When the Khmer Rouge concluded that the election would damage
rather than serve its interests, it sought to have the process
scrapped in favor of its long-preferred option of a quadripartite
coalition. But the other factions also saw the election not
as a step toward reconciliation but as the latest, possibly
decisive, stage in the war and fought it with corresponding
violence.
This should not be surprising. Competitive elections--particularly
when contested between former military adversaries--and national
reconciliation are hardly obvious partners. To work, the game
of democratic politics requires certain agreed rules. It demands
a degree of mutual trust that all sides will play by those
rules and a level of confidence that--win or lose--each party's
most fundamental interests will be protected. It requires
basic recognition of the legitimacy of one's competitors.
In summary it must have certain institutions, traditions,
and values that will serve to facilitate the political will
of the victors while guaranteeing the legitimate rights of
the losers. None of these were present in Cambodia.
These factors proved more decisive than the election results
themselves in determining Cambodia's post-UNTAC future. When
the results failed to reflect the administrative and military
dominance of the Cambodian People's Party (CPP), they had
to be shelved in favor of an intricate power-sharing arrangement
between the CPP and the victorious royalist party, FUNCINPEC
(the French acronym for the National United Front for an Independent,
Neutral, Peaceful and Cooperative Cambodia). The CPP-FUNCINPEC
alliance, first formed in 1991, was resurrected because it
seemed, to many, the only realistic option. FUNCINPEC brought
links with the West and democratic legitimacy as electoral
victors; the ex-communist CPP brought institutional and military
strength. For FUNCINPEC to go it alone would have risked a
CPP coup; for the CPP to go it alone would have risked the
international recognition and aid vital to sustaining the
regime. The election results, in that sense, appeared perfect
for the international community, for they strengthened FUNCINPEC's
hand while forcing both parties to compromise.
The coalition government that emerged was thus acceptable
to all the major international players and could be supported.
This meant that for the international community the principal
element of the conflict had been resolved as of mid-1993,
and its efforts thereafter were concentrated on trying to
consolidate and buttress the coalition government. This was
the principal motivation behind the volume of foreign aid
that flowed into the country after the elections and behind
the donor nations' reluctance to condition or reduce that
aid when problems began to emerge.
The
Rise and Fall of the Coalition Government
Power
Sharing: Flawed from the Start
Foreign assistance could not, however, ultimately compensate
for the failure of the power-sharing arrangements. As noted
above, by the early 1990s the conflict in Cambodia was not,
at bottom, a fight over ethnic, social, or ideological differences
but rather a struggle for power among factions--FUNCINPEC,
the CPP and the Khmer Rouge. As no faction could eliminate
the others militarily, peace depended on achieving a mutually
acceptable political settlement among some or all of them.
In the absence of genuine reconciliation and the willingness
to abide by democratic norms, such a political settlement
could be achieved only by sharing authority and roles within
the unitary state. The division of ministries and military
regions between parties is thus to Cambodia what, say, territorial
division among ethnic groups is to Bosnia. Against this background
the disputes over the division of power that emerged between
the CPP and FUNCINPEC, particularly after 1996, could not
be viewed as a healthy sign of democracy nor a normal facet
of a coalition administration. Rather they constituted a severe
threat to a largely unwritten cease-fire agreement.
A similar widely shared illusion was to see the coalition
government as reflecting a desire for reconciliation and tolerance
on the part of the two rival leaders. Instead it represented
extreme distrust and an inability to compromise. The "consensus"
principle, that all decisions of the royal government and
its institutions were to be agreed to by both parties, enshrined
this mutual suspicion and naturally inclined the system to
gridlock. In particular it gave the incumbent party (the CPP)
veto power over any actions that threatened its fundamental
political, financial, or institutional interests, including
any to reform the governmental system or to extend power sharing
to the subprovincial or judicial structures. The government
thus worked so long and insofar as Prince Ranariddh agreed
not to threaten the CPP's interests.
This predicament came about because none of the institutions
or traditions that should have strengthened the hand of the
election winners--an impartial and effective bureaucracy,
a unified army loyal to the government of the day, an independent
judiciary, a history of peaceful transfer of power--were in
place in 1993. (Even more worrying, none will be present at
the time of the 1998 elections either.) What existed was firmly
under the CPP's control. The options available to FUNCINPEC
on winning the 1993 election were stark: it could have formed
a coalition with the CPP and accepted limited access to state
power or tried to assert its electoral mandate and face renewed
civil war. The CPP's refusal and UNTAC's inability to depoliticize
the state structure has thus been one of the defining factors
in post-1993 Cambodia and perhaps more important than UNTAC's
success in organizing the election itself. Indeed much of
what has followed has been the logical outcome of UNTAC's
failure to reform the state machinery and disarm and demobilize
the factional armies. Like UNTAC, FUNCINPEC was to find it
politically impossible to reform that machinery or demobilize
the armies (although, admittedly, neither had clear plans
nor made a systematic attempt to achieve these objectives).
Like UNTAC, FUNCINPEC also was left with the choice of accepting
the status quo or using its own distinct structure to achieve
its goals.
The practical consequence of the continued CPP stranglehold
over the state apparatus was that the only way FUNCINPEC could
enforce its electoral mandate and (as important) reward its
followers was to bring in and use its own people. This occurred
not only at the ministerial level, as would be normal in a
coalition government, but throughout the state system, in
what was formally justified as a post-conflict "unification
of existing administrative structures." This involved
FUNCINPEC (and to a lesser extent the third participating
faction, the Buddhist Liberal Democratic Party or BLDP) integrating
small numbers of existing and large numbers of newly recruited
civil servants, police, and military into the already bloated
apparatus of the former CPP-controlled state of Cambodia.
The two-party "consensus" system was extended to
all state institutions. The distinction between party and
government became virtually meaningless, and party (or factional)
considerations almost always took precedence over governing
for the benefit of the Cambodian people.
The result: Rather than depoliticizing a one-party state (controlled
by the CPP), power sharing Cambodian-style created two separate
and competing party states operating within every ministry,
province, military command, and police commissariat. Instead
of working with their counterparts from the other party, officials
from the prime ministers level down conducted business with
their party clients and colleagues. The power-sharing arrangements
thus served to weaken the state by building and reinforcing
parallel structures of personal and party authority, operating
both within and outside the state. Hierarchical patron-client
networks, a constant in Cambodian political history of radically
changing regimes, have expanded and subsumed the formal state
structure.
Most dangerously these parallel structures of authority also
embraced the security forces--the military, police, and gendarmerie.
The army was huge and undisciplined. Four years of a unified
Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF) did little to weaken each
unit's loyalty to its faction leaders--hardly surprising given
that the co—prime ministers were also co—commanders-in-chief.
The official pretense of a politically neutral security force
was flagrantly violated by all sides. Even while some regular
divisions of the RCAF under the control of General Ke Kim
Yan, the moderate CPP chief of staff, largely stayed out of
party squabbles, the same was never true of the police, gendarmerie,
provincial armies, or militia, let alone the co-premiers'
bodyguard units--all of which remained under partisan political
control. Even when political conflicts were not an issue,
the confused and competing chains of command of the numerous
security units--combined with the financial interests of officers
throughout the structure--led to frequent clashes between
various elements of the "government's" forces.
The growth and consolidation of two major parallel structures
of authority also affected the power relationships within
the parties themselves. These parallel structures are ultimately
determined by their respective leaders, Hun Sen and Prince
Ranariddh, and have thus significantly bolstered the co—prime
ministers' personal power in their parties. This is why the
two men became so crucial to past stability and present instability.
The dynamic has been especially important in the case of Hun
Sen, who, suspicious of his CPP colleagues, has successfully
sought to expand his independent scope for action. By using
the phenomenal financial resources he managed to accumulate
through his position as co-premier, Hun Sen constructed a
formidable personal power base. This included building up
client networks in the government, the bureaucracy, the RCAF,
police, and gendarmerie as well as creating his own powerful
media machine (several radio and television stations and over
20 newspapers), a large and powerful team of advisers (which
increasingly acted as a shadow government), and a 1,500-man
private army. Through his media outlets and his prominent
development projects, he vigorously promoted his own image
and popularity--separate from and frequently in competition
with the rest of the CPP.
All this did not go without notice or criticism within Hun
Sen's party--the elections in March 1997 for additional CPP
Central Committee members proved a crushing defeat for his
closest allies and showed the depth of internal distrust.
But rather than make him toe the party line, this rebuff served
to further the second prime minister's isolation from his
party colleagues, who, afraid of his dictatorial tendencies
and worried about international reaction, had consistently
sought to restrain his more rash and aggressive actions. Hun
Sen's ever-growing capacity and willingness to act alone,
politically and militarily, is a key underlying cause of the
political turmoil of 1997. It also makes it highly likely
that Cambodian politics will remain unstable and bloody.
The Effects of the "Two Party States" System
on Governance
Not surprisingly, the division of the state apparatus into
separate and competing party structures had serious implications
for the effectiveness of the government. This division was
the primary reason that no serious attempt at structural reform
began in any institution, despite frequent government pledges
to the donor community to reduce the extremely overmanned
army and civil service. As every official was considered someone's
client and nominally loyal to one party or other, no retrenchment
was possible without agreement between the parties as to the
ultimate political character of the state. Without retrenchment,
no progress could be made on increasing civil service wages
to anything approaching realistic levels. And without proper
wages, nothing could be done to eliminate the rampant corruption,
inefficiency, and illdiscipline that permeates the civil service
and military.
Politics frustrated more than the reform of the civil service.
Any attempt to strengthen the state depended on finding additional
sources of state revenue--at present heavily dependent on
foreign aid and customs duties. Any serious attempt to do
so, however, threatened the ability of the two parties to
finance their power bases, which they did by exploiting the
economic opportunities created by liberalization. The co—prime
ministers' ability to reward their clients and build networks
of patronage largely depended on diverting money from the
state budget, either directly (as in the case of forestry
or rubber revenues) or indirectly (by taking contributions
in the form of money or shares from businessmen in exchange
for tax exemptions or artificially low tax rates or turning
a blind eye to criminal activities). This not only hurt the
newly reconstituted state, it also weakened its position in
the long term vis-à-vis a new sociopolitical elite.
The factionalization of the state also belied any governmental
claim to be building the rule of law. Virtually all the laws
passed by the National Assembly--on everything from prostitution
and immigration to investment and pharmaceuticals, not to
mention the constitution itself--were honored only in the
breach. This was for two reasons. First, the institutions
responsible for dissemination and implementation of laws were
extremely weak, and usually weaker than the business or political
networks they were up against. The judicial system in particular,
a minuscule item in the government's budget, steadily lost
any remaining public trust as a result of conspicuous corruption,
injustice, and political partiality.
Second, patrons throughout the system--up to and including
the co—prime ministers--considered the need to protect their
clients to be more important than justice. Any wrongdoing,
from incompetence and laziness to murder and drug trafficking,
and even complicity in genocide, was considered subordinate
to building up and protecting one's party and personal networks.
Besides, the other side was doing things just as bad if not
worse, and there was a proliferation of illegal activity.
Each side believed it unfair to make an example of one of
their clients. Politics, not the law, was paramount.
Similarly, since the co—prime ministers and their followers
enjoyed complete power over the entire political system, there
was no interest in building up independent state institutions
to provide checks and balances. Hence the failure to establish
the Supreme Council of Magistracy, Constitutional Council,
and National Congress along with the refusal to grant power
to existing institutions--the legislative, judiciary, or monarchy.
King Sihanouk's ability to promote national reconciliation
was always limited but ended definitively in early 1996 when
Hun Sen treated him as an out-and-out rival rather than a
potential ally or impartial referee. In the four years following
the elections, the National Assembly never once used--nor
was allowed to use--its rights to debate government policies,
question ministers in full session, initiate legislation,
or hold votes on any matter of contention between the two
parties. Whenever it sought to do so--such as when the assembly
president formally asked for a government explanation of its
negotiations with the breakaway faction of the Khmer Rouge--the
executive refused to cooperate. Despite a constitutional provision
requiring the government to respond to parliamentarians' questions
within seven days, most questions were never answered at all.
The Failure to Develop a Democratic Discourse
The failure of the National Assembly to carry out its constitutional
role was also symptomatic of a more basic problem in Cambodian
political culture: the unwillingness of the Cambodian elite
to tolerate, much less engage in, substantive political debate.
The fact and manner of Sam Rainsy's expulsion from the assembly,
the lifting of Prince Sirivudh's parliamentary immunity, and
most recently the replacement of Prince Ranariddh as first
prime minister--each with careful avoidance of parliamentary
debate--are striking examples of the inability of Cambodia's
politicians to deal with differences of opinion. In fact,
the ability of the Assembly and the Council of Ministers to
convene, however irregularly, has depended on the avoidance
of politically controversial discussions. The only alternatives
presently available in Cambodian political discourse are to
agree on everything and work together or to fight each other:
There appears no middle way. Thus the coalition essentially
collapsed once it was recognized that the two parties might
have differing interests and opinions.
This observation may seem surprising to those impressed by
the rapid proliferation of media outlets--television and radio
stations and, particularly, newspapers--before the coup. But
the choices made by the Khmer-language media never included
reasoned consideration or discussion of the benefits of alternative
policies or parties (in part because the two major parties
exhibited no substantive policy differences). Instead the
various media exclusively served one party or the other, or
in schizophrenic fashion, broadcast the speeches and statements
of both governing parties without comment, or kept their heads
down and evaded any mention of politics. If not for the speeches
and declarations of the co—prime ministers and their spokesmen
or the Khmer-language services of foreign radio stations,
the average Cambodian would know nothing about the most important
political developments of the past four years.
Although most of the Khmer-language press was not directly
controlled by one party or the other, it was not genuinely
independent. Most newspapers received financing from one of
the political leaders and his allies and promoted their position.
Political debate through the press largely consisted of exchanging
insults according to predetermined positions. The unremitting
and frequently crude nature of these attacks revealed the
continued lack of effective parameters--whether political,
constitutional, legal, moral, or simply tasteful--that might
have helped construct a democratic political discourse. The
work of human rights organizations and political think tanks
in seeking to build such a discourse has been praiseworthy
and encouraging but of little practical or political import
so far.
Much as the sheer size and vibrancy of the press helped to
hide the absence of democratic forums, so the positive effects
of continued openness blinded many foreign observers to the
destructive side effects and eventual failure of power sharing.
A combination of free market forces and extensive foreign
aid brought clear signs of development and newly created prosperity;
the integration of most of the Khmer Rouge army into the RCAF
enhanced this by bringing peace to much of the countryside.
The government's laissez-faire approach toward investors and
donors also was extended to foreign and domestic NGOs, human
rights associations, newspapers, and other sectors of civil
society, making Cambodia, in many ways, a "free"
country.
These freedoms reflected in part the legacy of the Paris Accords
and UNTAC, the government's reliance on foreign aid and investment
as well as the reluctant acceptance--if not always tolerance--of
diverse opinions. In many sectors foreign aid and NGOs either
filled the gaps left by the state or funded and mobilized
the government apparatus to act. In other instances, the state
was too weak to check the new freedoms even when it wished
to--such as with the opposition press or demonstrations--and
politicians were thus forced to accept them or use occasional
violence to try to keep them in check.
The extent of openness was a double-edged sword, however.
It was in the context of uncontrolled liberalization, weak
law-enforcement institutions, and the need of both parties
to accumulate resources and protect their people at any cost
that activities such as land grabbing, deforestation, and
violent crime flourished. Rampant corruption, too, was both
a cause and effect of these conditions. The weakness of the
state, and the lack of interest from the powers that were,
meant that both good and bad effects of liberalization enjoyed
the same, benign official indifference. Most activities in
Cambodia--economic, social, even political--occupied the same
semi-legal, semi-illegal status. The freedom with which ideas,
technology, and goods crossed national borders also facilitated
the trafficking of drugs or nine-year-old Vietnamese girls
to work as prostitutes in Phnom Penh. The freedom for someone
to occupy public land undisturbed for 17 years accordingly
allowed the local commune chief to forcibly evict him one
day and sell the land to an investor. What should have been
the postliberalization stage, namely the bounding of such
freedoms by a rule of law, failed to come about. For any postcommunist
state, this transition from controlling freedoms to safeguarding
them is a difficult one. In Cambodia the political situation
made the transition almost impossible, thus making it even
harder for the country to deal with the social problems inevitably
accompanying liberalization.
The Collapse of the Ruling Coalition
The de facto end of the FUNCINPEC-CPP coalition in 1996—97
along with the remilitarization of the Cambodian conflict
was neither predetermined, nor surprising. The coalition had
masked fundamental problems, and its survival was contingent
upon factors, particularly the relationship between two volatile
individuals. While the three factors promoting peace--international
pressure, liberalization, and power sharing--effectively killed
the Khmer Rouge as a coherent political force, they failed
to have the same effect on the other factions. Power sharing
served to bolster the rivalry between the principal parties--the
CPP and FUNCINPEC--rather than encouraged reconciliation.
In the context of economic liberalization, those parties with
access to power were able to create and build up financial,
and hence political, bases independent of ex—foreign patrons.
Their vulnerability to international pressure, though still
significant, thus declined slightly compared to 1991. While
the viability and interests of both parties depended on continued
openness to the global economy and a modicum of stability,
their political interests were distinct and, by 1996, largely
competing.
The consensus arrangement worked until early 1996 because
the co-premiers managed to concentrate power in their hands
and cooperate. In particular Prince Ranariddh agreed to put
to one side the election results to govern on a formally equal
basis with Hun Sen. Under the coalition formula, the consent
of both parties (and ultimately both prime ministers) was
required for any decision, and contentious issues--including
those on which FUNCINPEC had campaigned, such as corruption
and immigration--were not raised. This meant significant concessions
on the part of Ranariddh: For the sake of the coalition and
for his own political interests, he acquiesced in fighting
and then outlawed the Khmer Rouge, sidelined his father, King
Sihanouk, and discarded other electoral pledges. In their
place he concentrated on the common concerns of his co-premier,
such as promoting foreign relations and economic, social,
and infrastructural development, at the same time bolstering
their power and wealth along with that of their clients. For
nearly three years the two men enthusiastically promoted a
joint program of economic liberalism and political conservatism.
Prince Ranariddh was able to make this transformation almost
overnight because FUNCINPEC was, arguably, less a political
party with a clear political program than a royal court (in
which the prince was surrounded by a small coterie of courtiers)
interested in recreating the symbols and structures of the
pre-1970 period. Internally Ranariddh dominated, and access
to power and wealth was more important than ideology to all
but FUNCINPEC's most politicized leaders. The sacking and
subsequent expulsion of the most outspoken member of this
small minority, Sam Rainsy, symbolized Ranariddh's willingness
to eliminate any challenge to his decision to compromise with
the CPP. Rainsy's Khmer Nation Party (KNP) has become another
in the long line of breakaway movements from FUNCINPEC over
the years.
Since policy issues were never crucial to the FUNCINPEC-CPP
relationship, its eventual fracture was over power not policies.
In particular it was the result of immediate and potential
threats to the power-sharing arrangement: the increasingly
obvious imbalance in strength between the two prime ministers
and their parties as well as the impending elections that
spelled the end of the co-premier system. The spark was the
November 1995 arrest of Prince Sirivudh, FUNCINPEC secretary-general
and former foreign minister (and Sam Rainsy's most prominent
ally within the party). Despite Prince Ranariddh's consent
to the arrest, the incident clearly revealed Hun Sen's power
as well as his hostility toward the royal family. The loss
of the party secretary-general, combined with the approach
of the 1998 elections, also meant that Ranariddh had to come
to terms with the weakness of his party organization and the
disillusionment among the party's membership at his failure
to capitalize on the election victory.
At the FUNCINPEC Congress of March 1996--the first time Prince
Ranariddh addressed a nationwide meeting of FUNCINPEC activists
since the 1993 election--Ranariddh finally expressed his party's
frustrations at the unequal nature of the coalition. He especially
criticized the CPP's alleged refusal to share power at the
district level (the aspect of power sharing of most interest
to party activists); he also raised, for the first time since
the 1993 election, the issue of Vietnamese domination that
had been the raison d'être of FUNCINPEC's creation and
the decade-long military struggle. His comments triggered
a fierce reaction from Hun Sen, and the personal relationship
that had sought stability was transformed into a major source
of insecurity.
Having been Hun Sen's ally for nearly three years, Prince
Ranariddh became the latest target--after the Khmer Rouge,
Sam Rainsy, Son Sann, and Prince Sirivudh--of Hun Sen's ceaseless
attempts to isolate and destroy his enemies. Ranariddh probably
had been the ultimate target all along. From March 1996 Hun
Sen appeared determined to force Ranariddh into either abject
submission or into acting on his threat to withdraw from the
government. Hun Sen tried various means: He rejected any further
concessions on the issue of power sharing; he tried to undermine
Ranariddh's control of FUNCINPEC by seeking to encourage an
internal revolt against the royals and the overseas Khmer
who dominated the party; he sought to ban royalty and Cambodians
with dual nationality from standing in elections. Aware that
hopes for peace and its relationship with the Khmer Rouge
and the king were the principal cards FUNCINPEC might play
in the local and national elections then scheduled for 1997
and 1998, Hun Sen tried to establish his own credentials as
peacemaker while seeking to divide and weaken the Khmer Rouge
and using his press outlets to attack King Sihanouk at every
opportunity.
Both parties sought to bolster themselves in preparation for
elections or renewed war, which neither side appeared to want.
They competed to reconcile with each and every political actor,
including the most minor political parties and newspapers
and--not least, of course--the Khmer Rouge. For FUNCINPEC
national reconciliation meant returning to the populist, anti-CPP
rhetoric of pre-1993 and embracing its former allies in the
KNP, BLDP, and--it hoped--the Khmer Rouge in the newly established
National United Front. For Hun Sen reconciliation involved
exploiting internal differences within the Front, so as to
bring as many people over to his side as possible. His tactics
were often successful. With the reduced relevance of post-1979
ideological stereotypes and the greater importance of money
politics, it became easier to dissolve old political alliances
and build new ones. Personal friendships and enmities within
the country's small political elite, some long-standing and
some newly developed, combined with ambition and greed to
become greater determinants of political alignments than pre-1993
factional labels.
Nonetheless, despite all his new friends, Hun Sen was making
too many enemies and eliminating too few of them. By March
1997 Hun Sen's strategy of divide and rule was facing a serious
threat: A National United Front evolved mainly by being anti—Hun
Sen. According to rumors widely circulated and given credence
in Phnom Penh, CPP opinion polls were confirming the widespread
unpopularity of Hun Sen (which was evident to any casual visitor
to Cambodia who bothered to speak to ordinary people) and
the potential electoral appeal of a FUNCINPEC-KNP-BLDP alliance.
His previous attempts at intimidating, splitting, framing,
and defaming his opponents having failed, Hun Sen turned to
more drastic measures. The barbaric March 30 grenade attack
on a lawful KNP demonstration in front of the symbol of democracy,
the National Assembly--which is thought to have been organized
and carried out with the complicity of Hun Sen's bodyguard--was
the defining moment. It demonstrated that, henceforth, Hun
Sen would stop at nothing to protect his power.
Two weeks later, coinciding with his intense preparations
for military action in the face of the expected return of
Prince Sirivudh, Hun Sen personally orchestrated a split in
FUNCINPEC by openly providing financial, political, media,
and security support to a small breakaway faction whose sole
aim was to end the National United Front and dismiss Prince
Ranariddh as first prime minister.1 When
this ploy failed, because Hun Sen could not attain the necessary
two-thirds majority in the National Assembly, he reverted
to force to achieve the same goals.
Beginning on July 2 forces personally loyal to Hun Sen began
implementing a well-organized plan to forcibly disarm troops
loyal to FUNCINPEC in Phnom Penh. The aim of this unilateral
military action, as Hun Sen stated publicly on July 5, was
to dismiss and replace Ranarridh. The pretext (the only one
he ever could have offered) was, of course, the Khmer Rouge:
that Ranariddh had brought thousands of soldiers from Anlong
Veng into Phnom Penh in an attempt to stage a coup and bring
back the "genocidal regime." In fact, although former
Khmer Rouge were fighting on both sides on July 5—6, the total
number of "hard-line" Khmer Rouge produced after
the coup as evidence of Ranariddh's plot was one 16-year-old
boy.2 In reality, at the exact time of Hun
Sen's actions, Pol Pot was under house arrest and the Khmer
Rouge was in its weakest position, politically and militarily,
in 30 years.
The Demise of the Khmer Rouge
It is deeply ironic, but far from coincidental, that the Khmer
Rouge and the ruling coalition should fall apart at precisely
the same time. Disguised as efforts toward national reconciliation,
both Hun Sen's and Prince Ranarridh's quest to achieve political,
military, and propaganda advantages associated with allying
with as many individuals and groups as possible had a contradictory
and unpredictable effect on the Khmer Rouge. The post-1993
isolation and decline of Pol Pot's guerrilla movement had
been the most striking success of the coalition government
and the international community. Thus, at one level, the rivalry
that commenced after March 1996 for the Khmer Rouge's attentions
brought new political possibilities for an increasingly weak
and marginal force. At another level, however, the competition
ended up engendering a series of deeply damaging splits within
the Khmer Rouge. As the last Maoist movement in Southeast
Asia, the Khmer Rouge already had little future, but the events
of 1996—97 served, on balance, to shorten this last chapter
in the movement's bloody history.3
That chapter had begun with the Paris Accords. The Khmer Rouge,
or Partie of Democratic Kampuchea (PDK), had agreed to the
1991 settlement in part under heavy Chinese pressure but also
in the hope of improving its position. Pol Pot, the undisputed
strategist of the movement, expected that a combination of
a large UN presence and a quadripartite Sihanouk-led "super-government"
(i.e., the Supreme National Council) would severely weaken
the PDK's principal enemy, the CPP. In particular he felt
that the peace process could advance the Khmer Rouge's long-standing
attempts to dismantle the local-level state apparatus of the
CPP regime. Meanwhile a PDK role at all levels of a pre- and
post-election state would, Pol Pot believed, have two very
positive consequences. On the one hand, it would make the
PDK a legitimate participant in the political process. On
the other it would give it the capacity to defend its territory,
economy, population, forces, and leadership from the inevitable
dangers that embracing capitalism and power sharing would
bring. The Khmer Rouge would thus be able to survive the loss
of foreign assistance by building up a domestic economic,
political, and military powerbase. Then, at some moment, the
Khmer Rouge would use this powerbase as a springboard to regain
power through political or military means; perhaps much as
the Lao and South Vietnamese communists had done two years
after the Paris Accords of 1973.
Shortly after the October 1991 peace settlement, however,
the PDK leaders significantly revised their analysis and decided
instead that the UN presence was going to bolster, rather
than undermine, the CPP state structure. Pol Pot saw the November
1991 alliance of CPP and FUNCINPEC as a Western-inspired arrangement
to isolate the Khmer Rouge and convert the Paris Accords into
an alternative bipartite settlement. The events of 1992 and
1993 only served to confirm his faith in this analysis. In
response the Khmer Rouge opted out of participating in the
1993 elections and banned UNTAC personnel from the areas under
its control. Pol Pot saw UNTAC's failure to dismantle the
CPP state apparatus and the subsequent establishment of the
"two-headed" coalition government as a Western attempt
to legitimize the "Vietnamese puppet" regime the
Khmer Rouge had fought for 15 years.
To accept "peace" and give up territorial, organizational,
and military strength while the CPP retained administrative
control of the country would, Pol Pot believed, be akin to
suicide. He thus concluded by mid-1994 that the Khmer Rouge
had no choice but to continue a potentially endless military
struggle. But their ability to do so was greatly weakened
by the combined effect of international pressure, liberalization,
and power sharing.
First the loss of foreign material and logistical support
seriously affected the PDK's military strength. The Paris
Accords and subsequent international pressure on Thailand
to end its links with the Khmer Rouge left the latter on its
own for the first time. With no hope of short-term victory
over a far larger enemy and facing difficulties in purchasing
and bringing adequate ammunition across the Thai border, the
movement reverted to a "prolonged war" using 1960s-style
tactics and self-made "traditional weapons." With
such means they could generally defend their base areas but
lost almost all offensive capability. As in the 1960s an isolated
guerrilla movement posed no serious threat to the regime in
Phnom Penh. The post-election period thus saw a gradual but
significant reduction in the potency and geographical reach
of the PDK's military threat. Cadres at all levels of the
movement could not help but conclude that the armed struggle
was going nowhere.
Second the temporary embrace of political and economic liberalization
severely undermined the Khmer Rouge. In spite of initial delusions
to the contrary, the PDK was far less capable than the other
factions of transforming itself into a political party. Its
structure, thinking, and leadership were outdated and inflexible.
Its appeal was rooted in an anti-Vietnamese nationalist message
whose potency steadily declined after the Vietnamese troop
withdrawal in 1989. Its ideological and organizational coherence
had been based on the paranoid isolation of its troops and
population base from the outside world. The temporary exposure
to freedoms of trade, movement, religion, property, and--not
least--peace and normalcy sapped the will to fight among the
vast majority of the PDK.
Recognizing the problem, in mid-1994 Pol Pot withdrew all
the freedoms granted since 1991 as well as the moderate "united
front" policies in place since 1979. In their stead he
reintroduced the brutal class-struggle rhetoric, discipline,
and tactics that the movement, supposedly, had definitively
renounced. The effect, unsurprisingly, was to deepen the disillusionment
felt by many Khmer Rouge cadres and combatants.
Third the post-election power-sharing arrangements meant that
the Khmer Rouge had lost not only their international friends
but also their domestic united front allies; their former
battlefield comrades were now their battlefield foes. This
not only directly weakened their military and political prospects
but also gave many in the PDK the confidence and the contacts
to negotiate defections.
It was a combination of all these developments that led to
the potentially fatal split in the Khmer Rouge. In mid-1996,
disillusioned with the revived hard-line tactics and an unending,
unwinnable war, leading cadres in the two major bases in the
northwest rejected both orders to take additional property
under collective control and the leader, Son Sen, who had
been locally assigned to enforce them locally. When the highest
leadership backed Son Sen rather than the rebels, the insurrection
rapidly transformed from one against a specific order and
leader to one against the movement.
One additional factor, however, had to be in place before
the entire Khmer Rouge army in the west--however unhappy with
their old leadership-- would agree to a cease-fire and join
the government forces. Ironically while international pressure,
liberalization, and power sharing were crucial to the schism
in the Khmer Rouge, that split would not have occurred had
it not been for the growing tensions within the ruling coalition
in Phnom Penh. The rivalry between Ranarridh and Hun Sen led
both to court the Khmer Rouge--dissidents and hard-liners,
before and after the revolt. Each offered attractive terms--continued
control of armies, resources, and territory, senior military
or civilian positions for PDK officers, amnesty for the political
éminence grise of the rebellion, and so forth. These
terms were not on the negotiating table in 1993—94 when the
coalition was solid. The upshot was that the movement fractured:
Differing political preferences, personal animosities, conflicting
ambitions, and contrary financial interests temporarily proved
more important than the joint legacy of a decades-long struggle.
Some Khmer Rouge elements joined the CPP and FUNCINPEC, while
those in the heartland of the August 1996 rebellion--in the
towns of Pailin and Malai--successfully safeguarded their
autonomy and neutrality.
As for the few remaining hard-line PDK forces, by 1997, they
were limited to a few northern and northeastern provinces
and almost entirely occupied with defending their last significant
base, Anlong Veng. The same factors that had led to the widespread
defections and breakaways since the elections, however, continued
to undermine even this last stronghold. The additional questions
of who was to blame for the disastrous decline of the movement
and how to deal with that decline dogged the leadership, as
did the perennial issue of succession. Pushed to answer these
fundamental questions by FUNCINPEC's increasingly urgent offers
of a more-or-less overt alliance, the remaining senior leadership
collapsed in enmity. Pol Pot tried one last purge against
his long-time comrade and military commander, Ta Mok, but
did not have the necessary forces to carry it through. Since
moving to Anlong Veng in late 1993 he had been almost entirely
dependent on Ta Mok's military strength. Instead Ta Mok and
his followers took over, and Pol Pot and his favored commanders
were captured, put under house arrest, and divested of their
political influence. (Pol Pot died on April 15, 1998, at the
age of 73, while still under house arrest in northern Cambodia.)
Freed of Pol Pot's dogmatic leadership and exploiting the
political advantage brought by his arrest, the remaining Khmer
Rouge were able to join FUNCINPEC in an alliance that sought
to bolster Prince Ranariddh militarily and politically in
the face of the imminent armed threat posed by Hun Sen. The
change in Anlong Veng--the removal of major personal and political
causes behind the 1996 split, although not the central question
of war or peace--also created the possibility of a realignment
of the various former Khmer Rouge elements in the west. If
FUNCINPEC's aim had been to intimidate Hun Sen into inaction,
it failed. Hun Sen had already decided on military action,
and, if anything, the possibility that Ranariddh might now
pose as the agent of justice, peace, and national reconciliation
while strengthening FUNCINPEC's military forces made such
action seem even more urgent. Less than one month after Ta
Mok's military coup, Hun Sen staged his own.
The Role of the International Community
By early 1997 the competing ambitions and mutual animosities
of the co-premiers made the continued existence of the power-sharing
coalition highly uncertain. Cambodia's highly vaunted "political
stability" became less and less sustainable. Elections
were scheduled to be held in 1998, but the complete lack of
trust between the only two men who really counted undermined
any attempt to organize the elections or reach any alternative
political settlement. One alternative would have been to reach
an agreement to continue the coalition indefinitely, but given
the mutual animosity (and the constitutional requirement that
the two-premier system cease after 1998), this was impossible.
At the same time, neither Hun Sen nor Prince Ranarridh was
prepared to rely on elections to determine the next government.
The political and financial stakes were too high. Without
any precedent in Cambodian history for a peaceful transition
of power, both sides viewed the elections with the hope of
absolute victory and fear of total defeat, with no a priori
limits to either. Since no progress had been made in creating
a rule of law or building democratic institutions, the only
way to protect one's wealth and position was to hold onto
power. These hopes and fears, as well as the weaknesses of
the state and civil society, made both factions more interested
in preparing to win the elections than in taking the legal
and administrative steps required to hold them fairly.
Nonetheless the resort to weapons was not inevitable. The
same factors that had made large segments of the Khmer Rouge
leadership and army demand peace in late 1996 also were acting
on the two ruling parties. Neither party, as opposed to particular
individuals, actively wanted renewed warfare. Indeed recognizing
the popular yearning to end the war, both parties wanted to
appear as the architects of peace. Though the leaders' authority
remained supreme, there was war weariness among party ranks
as well as among the electorate--a sentiment that was strikingly
evident in the widespread anger with Hun Sen following the
July coup. The extent of official corruption meant senior
figures of both parties had much to lose, as well as much
to gain, from further fighting. Each party, too, was constrained
by fear of the other's strength and ability to fight back.
Like the Khmer Rouge, both had men and weapons, but neither,
particularly FUNCINPEC, had the ammunition and logistical
capacity to sustain a prolonged war.
The International Community and the July Coup
Above all both sides were acutely aware of the international
community's position. Both knew that Cambodia would continue
to be reliant on foreign investment and international aid
for the foreseeable future. Although they were stronger than
they had been a few years earlier, both were still susceptible
to the financial need and resultant international pressure
that helped produce temporary resolutions of the Cambodian
conflict in 1991 and 1993.
By July 1997 two things had changed that made all the difference.
First Hun Sen was willing to ignore the concerns of his CPP
colleagues and the general population. Second he perceived
an altered international attitude toward the "Cambodia
problem." Tired of a nonsensical, factional squabble
in a small and strategically insignificant country, and frustrated
that its "success" in securing the Paris Accords
and the 1993 election proved short-lived, the international
community had little desire to continue peacekeeping in Cambodia.
This attitude, evident throughout the diplomatic corps in
Phnom Penh and at the United Nations, was crucial because,
since more power sharing and liberalization could not achieve
peace, international pressure was the only thing standing
between Cambodia and renewed conflict.
In the crucial months of April to June 1997, an imaginative,
principled, coordinated, and proactive international approach--whether
led by the major donors, the UN, or the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN)--still could have rescued the peace
process into which the so many lives and so much time, money,
and effort had been invested. The trouble was that the requisite
foresight, imagination, principles, and leadership were singularly
lacking. The only thing offered, whenever erupting violence
forced some fleeting international response, were empty platitudes
and toothless appeals to the goodwill of leaders who, all
evidence suggested, had none. The UN Security Council paid
no attention to Cambodia. The appeal made by the U.S., Japan
and other industrialized nations at the "Group of Eight"
meeting on June 22 was the strongest expression of international
concern, but any impact was rapidly undermined by a series
of seemingly uncoordinated visits by "special envoys"
of different countries, each failing to address the root causes
of the problem. The last-minute cancellation of U.S. secretary
of state Madeleine Albright's scheduled visit on June 27 gave
the strong impression that the United States had no policy
toward, and little interest in, the country. The donor countries,
meeting in Paris only days before the coup, had little inkling
of what was unfolding.
But the failure of the international community was a matter
of years, not days. Hun Sen--the only political player with
the means, motive, and desire to take decisive military action--calculated
that the international appeals to refrain from violence would
not be supported by any concerted action because of all he
had seen of the major international players over the previous
four or more years. Ever since his experience during the UNTAC
period, Hun Sen had considered the international community
a paper tiger. As he continually and skillfully sought to
protect and expand his personal power, he reckoned on the
failure of the international community, particularly the donors,
to match its rhetoric with action. He believed that, whatever
the requirements of the Paris Accords, the outside players
were interested only in the facade of democracy--i.e., in
a coalition government and elections irrespective of content--and
were willing to turn a blind eye to almost any abuse of the
principles of democracy and human rights in the name of stability.
Clearly this belief underpinned his move against Prince Ranariddh
in July. And to a large extent, he has been proved right.
With the partial and important exceptions of the United States
and ASEAN, the international community has done little to
oppose the July coup d'état. Western countries such
as France, Canada, and Australia have remained oblivious to
the use of force to usurp an elected prime minister, apparently
in the hope that the coup will bring stability. They are right
if they thought that the power-sharing experiment was failing
and that Prince Ranariddh was an ineffective, unprincipled
politician. Yet for Ranariddh's many faults, he was not the
one who abused his power as a co—commander in chief to attack
his co—prime minister. And he was not the one who went on
television in fatigues on the morning of July 5, when hardly
a shot had been fired, and declared his intention to use military
force to dismiss his counterpart and unilaterally change the
government.
The countries that accepted the July 1997 coup and are preparing
to accept potentially noncompetitive elections in 1998 are
profoundly wrong if they think that Hun Sen's dominant position
will produce stability. Coups d'état, wherever they
occur, have a nasty habit of repeating themselves. The events
of July 5—6 will only further postpone the day when Cambodia
will be able to deal with its political conflicts through
peaceful and democratic means. Moreover, any hope that Hun
Sen, having vanquished Prince Ranariddh, will henceforth preside
over a stable and efficient, if slightly authoritarian, administration
is based on a total misreading of his personality. Once FUNCINPEC,
the KNP, and the BLDP have been destroyed as potential challengers,
it is highly probable that Hun Sen will move against his next
set of rivals--those within the CPP--and will continue to
employ violence whenever he deems it necessary.
While some countries are prepared to forgo principles and
provide Hun Sen unconditional backing, others are looking
to the 1998 elections as a means to finally resolve the Cambodian
conflict. They are pushing for a cease-fire and minimally
fair elections as a way to solve the current crisis and establish
a legitimate government. While these are admirable objectives,
they ignore the lessons of the past five years. Conflicts
in nations like Cambodia, Haiti, or Sierra Leone are deep-rooted,
emanating from failings in their political culture and development;
achieving sustainable peace and democracy requires more than
just arranging a cease-fire between factions and organizing
elections. Elections alone are not going to eradicate the
poisonous animosity, distrust, and rapaciousness that characterize
Cambodia's political elite. Likewise, it may be possible to
achieve stability in some conflict-ridden countries by establishing
power-sharing arrangements among rival factions or legitimizing
the dominance of one of them, but such stability is likely
to be short-term and fragile unless accompanied by the growth
of institutions, values, and traditions that foster political
debate, encourage compromise, and ensure a degree of accountability.
It is by promoting the development of these institutions,
values, and traditions--the underpinnings of constitutional
liberalism-- that the international community will help to
finally end the Cambodian conflict. Such a strategy does not
mean taking sides, but nor does it mean giving up basic principles
in the search for a quick and easy solution. What the strategy
does mean is promoting agreement among all parties on necessary
reforms to achieve a professional, politically neutral, and
properly resourced bureaucratic and judicial structure. It
also means promoting constitutional changes that reduce the
importance of executive power, thus ending the overriding
importance of any one election. And it means vigorously condemning
and taking concerted action against events and individuals
that contravene peace, human rights, and democracy.
The Challenge of Bringing Justice to Cambodia
Finally a strategy for achieving a lasting peace and democracy
in Cambodia must also include an effort on the part of Cambodians
and the international community to address the continuing
absence of accountability and justice. When the Paris Accords
were negotiated in 1990—91, the issue of "transitional
justice" was deliberately avoided. Ensuring the participation
of the Chinese, Thais, and Khmer Rouge in a comprehensive
peace settlement was considered more important than accountability
for the gross crimes of the 1970s and 1980s. The human rights
provisions in the accords looked to the future rather than
to the past: They were concerned with preventing the return
of the "policies and practices of the past" rather
than punishing their perpetrators.
Whether this choice was right or wrong, the world and Cambodia
have moved on. The events in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda
forced the international community to look again at the issues
of civil war, genocide, and justice. The end of the cold war
also meant that, in newly democratic countries throughout
Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, people looked
for ways to deal with the legacy of dictatorship and abuse
so as to achieve justice, promote reconciliation, bring closure,
and prevent future abuses. The issue in most afflicted countries
has become how, not whether, to confront the horrors of the
past.
Events in Cambodia, too, have made it both necessary and possible
to confront the issue of accountability. To begin with, any
hope that a new page could be turned and that the past could
be forgotten has been disproved by events. In choosing peace
over justice Cambodians and the international community have
failed to achieve either. Political violence, and impunity
for its agents, is still the norm in Cambodia and continues
to be both the cause and effect of the continuing crisis.
Equally important, the military decline, diplomatic isolation,
and near-fatal split in the Khmer Rouge have brought new possibilities.
The demise of the Khmer Rouge suggested, for the first time,
that it may be possible to arrest and bring to trial the individuals
bearing greatest responsibility for one of the darkest periods
in human history. Indeed, at one point in June 1997 and again
prior to his death, Pol Pot might have been thrust into the
hands of an international community completely at a loss as
to what to do with him. (Only the United States has shown
any real interest, however belated, in pursuing an issue that
most governments appear happy to consign to the history books.)
At the same time, however, the old, practical obstacles to
bringing senior Khmer Rouge leaders to justice largely have
been replaced by new, political ones. Domestically the leaders
of both the CPP and FUNCINPEC have proved willing to enthusiastically
embrace, for their own political gain, persons suspected of
having committed crimes against humanity both before and after
1979. Neither ethical nor legal considerations have prevented
the rehabilitation of notorious leaders and lesser-known but
more obviously culpable military and security figures. So
long as elements of the present and former Khmer Rouge remain
useful allies for one side or the other in the Cambodian conflict,
the search for real justice will remain difficult and prolonged.
It is, ultimately, the right and duty of the Cambodian people
to choose how they wish to come to terms with their past.
Unfortunately, given the current political situation and,
more fundamentally, the absence of any channels for democratic
discourse, nothing remotely akin to South Africa's wide-ranging
debate has taken place--or is likely to take place--within
Cambodia as to what form accountability should take. Decisions
that ideally should be made by Cambodians will have to be
left to outsiders. The June 1997 decision of the two prime
ministers, whatever their reasons, to request UN assistance
to bring to justice those responsible for the 1975—79 atrocities
was an extremely welcome first step. It finally gives the
international community the opportunity and duty to deal in
a proper judicial manner with the crimes against humanity
that have taken place in Cambodia: Evidence, not politics,
can determine who is indicted and punished.
The members of the UN must respond positively to Cambodia's
request. The issue of past crimes against humanity in Cambodia
cannot be considered an internal problem for four reasons.
First given the marked political bias and chronic lack of
human and financial resources available in the Cambodian court
system, any credible mechanism for investigating, acknowledging,
and punishing the crimes of the past will inevitably require
substantial external support, both financial and technical.
Second those crimes cannot be divorced from the context of
war and peace, both of which foreign players were instrumental
in bringing about. Third if the issue of past human rights
violations is not dealt with in a proper judicial manner,
it will continue to bedevil the political and electoral process
the international community seeks to promote. The bloodshed
on both sides will be used as an excuse to continue the killing.
Who is blamed and punished for the continued killings will
depend on who wins or loses politically--not on who is guilty.
This is not only unjust but destabilizing, for it only adds
to the overriding importance of staying in power. Fourth and
most important, the human rights abuses in Cambodia over the
past 25 years are of a nature and scale that constitute crimes
under international as well as domestic law. Other countries
have not just a right, but an absolute moral and legal obligation
to help bring those responsible to justice.
The only question facing the UN thus should be how, not whether,
to carry out this obligation. The principal options are a
truth commission or criminal tribunal. Although a truth commission
can serve a useful function, only an international criminal
tribunal can fulfill the need for justice and end the cycle
of violence and impunity in Cambodia.
The problem in Cambodia is not--as it was in, say, Chile or
Argentina--that past crimes have not been officially acknowledged.
Indeed, for 14 years, the Cambodian people heard about little
else but the crimes of the "genocidal Pol Pot clique."
Rather the problem is that no one has ever been tried and
punished for these horrific and widely known crimes and the
country's leaders embrace, deal with, or are commonly believed
to be those responsible for the genocide. This being the case,
how can respect for the law ever be engendered? (Practically
the only exceptions to this are high-level political and security
figures who have been arrested and tried for political reasons--such
blatant unfairness only brings the law into further disrepute.)
Against this background a truth commission on the events of
1975—79 appears insufficient: The truth is too well-known,
and the crimes are too severe. While a truth commission may
be a simpler and politically more acceptable option, any process
identifying people culpable of mass-murder or genocide that
does not lead to punishment will only undermine faith in the
rule of law further. Instead what is needed is an example
of a scrupulously fair trial leading to the punishment of
those responsible, however politically significant or utterly
insignificant they may be today. This would achieve justice
for the past victims of the Khmer Rouge and contribute to
a rule of law for the future. To achieve these purposes, the
mandate and conduct of the trial must be based on legal and
ethical considerations only--that is, to bring to justice
all those legally culpable for the commission of crimes against
humanity, not to indict any particular individual or political
grouping. In present circumstances only an international tribunal
will suffice.4
The question of accountability for the crimes of the 1970s
cannot be divorced from the problem of contemporary impunity--the
de facto and sometimes de jure freedom of those with power,
money, or weapons to conduct all kinds of illegal activity
without fear of prosecution. Any move to bring to trial those
responsible for old crimes not accompanied by measures to
end impunity for more recent violations will be looked on
with bemusement by many Cambodians. There is little point
in dealing with the horrific crimes of 20 years ago when atrocities
of a similar nature if not scale continue. The international
court should, therefore, have a mandate and the resources
to investigate all violations of international humanitarian
law that have taken place from 1975 to the present. The court
should have the independent power to decide which cases to
investigate and make those decisions based on the severity
of the crime and the availability of evidence. Of course an
international tribunal is only a partial response to a more
fundamental problem: Cambodia lacks a judicial system with
the capacity, prestige, and independence needed to end impunity.
Therefore it is important that an international tribunal be
structured to strengthen, not replace, the national system
of justice.
If established alongside, rather than instead of, an international
court, a truth commission can play an important complementary
role. It can achieve certain things that a tribunal cannot.
As East Germany has demonstrated, tribunals are not always
the best way to approach the broader social and institutional
questions of why abuses occur and why criminal regimes last.
No one in Cambodia needs to be told that the Khmer Rouge committed
serious crimes. What is lacking in Cambodia, ever since 1979,
is a discussion of the real causes of those crimes and the
responsibility of Cambodians in perpetrating them. This is
not limited to the "Pol Pot period." Despite human
rights abuses having occurred continuously over at least the
last 30 years, no political actor, from whatever faction,
has ever apologized or been punished by his own side for his
role in such abuses. No unit responsible for political violence,
ethnic killings, or a myriad of other illegal activities has
ever been dismantled; no commander ever made to explain, justify,
or repent his actions. No debate has ever taken place as to
why abuses occurred and are allowed to continue. Everyone
affirms a commitment to "human rights" and "multiparty
liberal democracy," but no one explains what was wrong
with their former beliefs or why it is only now that they
have "seen the light."
The aim of a truth commission would be not so much to reveal
the nature or extent of those crimes (although this certainly
needs to be undertaken for future generations and the prevention
of politically motivated historical revisionism), but to provoke
a wider debate and understanding about the causes and legacies
of the Khmer Rouge regime. To achieve its purpose, the commission
would have to be properly resourced and strictly impartial.
Both these requirements mean, unfortunately, that the commission
probably would have to be established and staffed, at least
in part, by non-Cambodians. Its success, however, would depend
on achieving and retaining broad international and domestic
support of its activities and findings. More important, it
would have to find a way--through its mode of working and
disseminating its results--to provoke debate and an internal
reckoning among a largely uneducated society.
Unfortunately neither a tribunal nor a truth commission is
a shortcut to justice, truth, democracy, peace, or reconciliation.
As in other countries, a successful attempt to deal with the
past is far more likely to be a result than a cause of a successful
transition. The establishment of a truth commission, unlike
that of an international court, may have to await a political
environment in which findings would be seriously considered
and acted upon by the Cambodian government of the day. We
may have to wait a long time.
The path to resolving longstanding conflicts will never be
short or trouble free, and boredom, fatigue, or disappointment
are not good reasons to give up halfway. The role of the international
community in Cambodia remains critical. The signatories of
the Paris Accords must accept that they have a continued,
legal obligation toward the country. If it was worth devoting
$2 billion and, more important, the lives of several dozen
UN personnel for peace in Cambodia in 1991—92, then surely
it is worth spending a little more time and effort now.
Notes
1. The full extent of Hun Sen's role was revealed
to the author in a series of interviews in April—May 1997
with FUNCINPEC members involved, or asked to participate,
in the breakaway group.
2. This boy, Phy Ra, had been brought by General
Nhiek Bun Chhay, the commander of FUNCINPEC forces, from Anlong
Veng some weeks before the coup and reportedly did housework
at the general's home. No evidence of the presence of any
other "hard-line" Khmer Rouge was ever produced
by Hun Sen's faction. The in-depth investigation by the Cambodia
office of the UN Centre for Human Rights into persons detained
and killed during and after the coup identified no known Khmer
Rouge among them.
3. These events are described and analyzed
in greater depth in David Chandler, "Living Out the Death
of the Khmer Rouge, 1993—96." (Paper presented at a conference
on Cambodia: Power, Myth, and Memory, Monash University, Australia,
December 1996).
4. The issue of what sort of international
tribunal and how it should be set up is too complex to be
dealt with here. The options are discussed in Jason S. Abrams
and Steven R. Ratner, "Striving for Justice: Accountability
and the Crimes of the Khmer Rouge," a 1995 study for
the U.S. Department of State. While there are obvious problems
and complications associated with each option, they are not
insurmountable given sufficient political will.
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