Introduction:
Peace, Development, and Democracy
In Cambodia -- Shattered Hopes
Frederick
Z. Brown and David G. Timberman
When this collection of essays was conceived in mid-1996 our
purpose was to assess the progress made by Cambodians and
the international community to bring peace, development, and
democracy to Cambodia. At that time there was some sense of
accomplishment but also growing concern about the future.
Unfortunately 1997 was a dismaying year for most Cambodians
and those in the international community who care about Cambodia.
By spring 1997, when the first drafts of many of these essays
had been written, it had become apparent that the intensification
of political conflict in Cambodia was rapidly undermining
the gains of the previous four years. The March 30 grenade
attack on a peaceful opposition rally signaled both a qualitative
escalation of political violence and, in hindsight, the jettisoning
of peaceful political methods to determine who would lead
Cambodia into the twenty-first century.
By 1997 it also had become clear that the commitment and coherence
of the international community interested in Cambodia had
begun to wane. Many of the countries initially involved no
longer had common interests in Cambodia's internal affairs.
The reasons are not hard to identify. First, after 1993, Cambodia
was no longer the critical crossroads of the cold war and
it threatened neither regional stability nor great power relations.
Second, donor fatigue set in. The international community
had handed the Cambodian parties a way out of their painful
mess--it was now up to them to reconcile, to reorder their
society, and to work their way up the development ladder the
way the rest of Southeast Asia had. The tepid response of
the international community to the March 30 attack reflected
its growing weariness and did little to discourage the further
use of force.
The July 1997 coup effectively ended the awkward power-sharing
arrangement that had existed since 1993 and dealt a severe
blow to Cambodia's nascent democracy. The abrupt removal of
First Prime Minister Norodom Ranariddh by Second Prime Minister
Hun Sen meant that the reins of power were once more in the
grasp of a Leninist party with little concern for either human
rights or the fledgling sense of participatory governance
that had been implanted, however tentatively, through the
UN process four years before. To the Cambodian people--racked
by decades of war and civil strife, still impoverished, and
already deeply uncertain--the destruction of the coalition
government brokered by the UN-sponsored peace process, with
peremptory abductions and sudden executions, was a revisitation
of the horrors of the 1970s.
Much of what had been accomplished by the international community's
multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment in Cambodia consequently
has been destroyed. And with Hun Sen expected to win the elections
scheduled for July 1998, Cambodians and the international
community, and of course the contributors to this volume,
have been forced to confront the prospect of a Cambodia once
again under the control of an authoritarian leader and a government
staffed at the policy level by former members of the Khmer
Rouge or the Communist Party between 1979 and 1991.
In response to what happened in July 1997, we felt it imperative
to ask our contributors to recast and expand their essays
to address more painful and urgent questions: What went wrong?
What might have been done differently? What constructive role,
if any, can the international community play in Cambodia,
given the sad state of affairs in that country? While answers
to these questions are in a sense speculative, we believe
certain conclusions are warranted. This introduction provides
an overview of Cambodia's recent political history to give
nonspecialists the context for the essays that follow. It
introduces some of the book's major themes and offers some
reflections on the lessons that might be drawn from the Cambodian
experiment in making and maintaining peace and what role the
international community realistically might be expected to
play in the future.
The Persistence of the Past
The roots of the Cambodia tragedy are to be found in the geography
of Southeast Asia; in the centuries of national and ethnic
rivalry among Khmers, Thais, and Vietnamese; and above all
in a culture of zero-sum absolutism that refuses to admit
the possibility of a "loyal opposition" in political
life. One can glimpse the tragic predicament of Cambodia in
1998 reflected in the history of the Khmer Empire beginning
in the ninth century as well as in the authoritarian habits
of a civilization that flourished almost a millennium ago.
In David Chandler's essay, the persistence of Cambodia's past
is applied to the Cambodia of today. The carved stone galleries
of Angkor Wat bear witness to the historical struggle of the
Khmer Empire to preserve its preeminence in continental Southeast
Asia. First conquering, then fighting off the incursions of
the Siamese, the Cham, and later the Vietnamese, the Khmer
Empire collapsed in the early fifteenth century and was picked
apart by its neighbors until it became a French protectorate
in 1864. When Cambodia gained its independence from France
in 1955 Prince Norodom Sihanouk guided his kingdom through
the perils of the cold war in Indochina and sustained minimum
damage compared with the disasters that befell Vietnam and
Laos.
In 1970 Sihanouk was deposed. Cambodia entered a downward
spiral that led to the autogenocide of the Khmer Rouge (1975—78)
and to the Vietnamese invasion and occupation (1978—89). With
the installation of a pro-Vietnamese government in Phnom Penh
in January 1979, a new era in Indochina began. For noncommunist
Southeast Asia, particularly the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN), the creation of a Marxist-Leninist
regime responsive to Vietnamese political will and the influence
of the Soviet Union (still a major force in regional geopolitics
in the early 1980s) was unacceptable.
With the explicit support of China and the United States ASEAN
encouraged two Cambodian factions exiled in eastern Thailand:
the Khmer People's National Liberation Front (KPNLF) and the
Unified National Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful,
and Cooperative Cambodia (FUNCINPEC). The KPNLF was republican
in spirit; FUNCINPEC was monarchist. In 1979 they were joined
by the remnants of the Democratic Kampuchea government, the
Khmer Rouge, still steadfast in their radical Maoist-communist
ideology and implacably hostile to the Vietnamese. From their
safehavens in Thailand, the three groups organized small armies
that conducted guerrilla insurgencies against the Vietnamese
and the People's Republic of Kampuchea in Phnom Penh. The
Khmer Rouge soon came to dominate the political entity created
by ASEAN in 1982, the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea
(CGDK), which enjoyed support from ASEAN, China, and the United
States. Vietnam, backed by the Soviet Union and the East European
Bloc, supported the Phnom Penh regime. The Cambodia struggle
had become simultaneously a civil war, a regional war, and
a great-power proxy war.
Between the two opposing communist factions--the exiled Khmer
Rouge and the ruling Phnom Penh regime, backed by Vietnam--there
was mortal enmity. Because of the outcome of the war in 1975,
which had either forced them to flee or to suffer the depredations
of the Khmer Rouge, the noncommunists hated both their Khmer
Rouge coalition colleagues and the Phnom Penh regime, staffed
largely by ex—Khmer Rouge. It is safe to surmise that most
Cambodians felt deep hostility toward one or more of these
principal actors responsible for their plight. Yet given the
society's Buddhist culture, which stresses the spirit of forgiveness,
the Cambodian peasantry comprising the great bulk of the population
was no doubt more prepared to make peace than were its political
leaders. But before 1991, the fundamental obduracy and hunger
for unshared power on the part of the elite leadership of
all the Khmer parties concerned made compromise and national
reconciliation impossible. It is this same recalcitrance that
occasioned the July 1997 coup and has made a lasting political
settlement extremely difficult in contemporary Cambodia.
The Paris Accords and UNTAC
The collapse of the Soviet Union and end of the cold war precipitated
a negotiated end to the war in Cambodia. The East European
Bloc had been the main supporter of Vietnam's military capability
and economic development as well as the life-support system
of the Phnom Penh regime itself. As Soviet influence in Southeast
Asia eroded, the Chinese found it expedient to modify their
geopolitical priorities and downgrade the primacy of the Cambodia
issue. In September 1989 the Vietnamese army withdrew from
Cambodia, satisfying the demands of ASEAN, China, and the
United States. China, still smarting from the international
outcry over Tiananmen Square, sought to normalize relations
with several Southeast Asian states, the Soviet Union, and
Vietnam. Vietnam, nearly bankrupt and rife with mounting domestic
discontent, was desperately promoting normalization with its
ASEAN neighbors, China, and the United States.
The sea change in global and regional relations made it both
desirable and possible for the United States, China, ASEAN,
and Vietnam to enter into negotiations to remove Cambodia
as a bone of contention. The result was the Accords on a Comprehensive
Political Settlement of the Cambodia Conflict, signed in Paris
on October 23, 1991, and their subsequent application under
the United Nations Transitional Administration in Cambodia
(UNTAC). The Paris Accords called for UN-administered elections
to form a new government in Cambodia, ordained that the Cambodian
political system be organized on the basis of liberal democratic
principles, and committed the international community to assist
with the reconstruction and development of Cambodia's shattered
economy.
The Khmer parties to the Paris Accords were swept along on
the tide of the determination of the external powers--for
their own reasons--to remove the Cambodia conflict from center
stage. External events associated with the winding down of
the cold war preoccupied the main players in the Cambodian
peace process as momentum toward a political settlement mounted.
The architects of the Accords turned a blind eye to Cambodia's
most intractable internal aspects, deciding that these could
not be resolved at a UN conference table but rather through
a process of genuine reconciliation among the Khmer parties
themselves. Pragmatically the Accords may have been the most
feasible compromise under the international political conditions
prevailing in 1991--but they left the fundamentals unchanged,
and UNTAC was charged with the task of enforcing an extraordinarily
complex, time-phased scenario predicated on an environment
of conciliation and compromise among the Khmer parties that
did not, in fact, exist. No tradition of compromise had ever
existed between mortal enemies in Cambodia's political culture.
From the outset this reality made genuine national reconciliation
a distant goal.
In addition, the five permanent members of the United Nations
Security Council (PermFive) failed to give the Accords the
teeth necessary to guarantee compliance. For example, to ensure
a neutral political environment UNTAC was ordered to exercise
direct supervision over all "existing administrative
structures" acting in the fields of information, foreign
affairs, national defense, and public security. Clearly this
was the most difficult civil mandate to execute, yet it was
the one the framers of the Paris Accords were most negligent
in addressing, leaving it instead to the judgment of UNTAC's
high command. Whatever powers the secretary-general's special
representative, Yasushi Akashi, possessed were in practice
circumscribed by the PermFive who had bartered the precarious
peace arrangement. Many in the UN felt that by pushing the
incumbent Phnom Penh regime too vigorously on a neutral political
environment, the chances for peace might be ruptured. And
the Khmer Rouge, which had signed the Paris Accords in October
1991 but opted out in early 1992, remained a force that, if
challenged too bluntly, could bring down the effort. All it
would take, so the conventional wisdom went, was a few Khmer
Rouge attacks against the 19,000-man UN military force and
the deliberate targeting of international civilian peacekeepers.
If the great powers no longer deemed the game worthwhile,
the underlying issues certainly were not forgotten by the
Cambodians. The political environment during the election
campaign period of 1993 was far from neutral. The phased cantonment
and disarmament of the Khmer factions' military forces stipulated
by the Paris Accords had not been accomplished, nor had the
key ministries of the existing State of Cambodia government
been subject to effective UNTAC supervision. The Cambodian
People's Party (CPP) militias and political operatives were
in a position to exert pressure, indeed outright coercion,
on the population and against their principal rivals, FUNCINPEC
and the Buddhist Liberal Democratic Party (BLDP, the renamed
KPNLF). Scores of Cambodians were killed and hundreds were
injured by political violence during the UNTAC period, some
by the Khmer Rouge but most as a result of CPP actions.
The extraordinary care with which the machinery of the electoral
process was put in place by UNTAC's electoral component and,
indeed, the actual feat of carrying off the national elections
successfully masked the harsh antagonisms embedded in Cambodian
society. Technically the elections were the most meticulously
planned, most expensive per capita ever held in Asia. UNTAC's
voter registration achieved a 95 percent (of those deemed
eligible) rate of participation nationwide. In the election
held May 23—29, 89.4 percent of registered voters cast their
ballots. With a total of 38.2 percent of the vote and 51 seats
in the Constituent (later the National) Assembly, the CPP
came in second to FUNCINPEC's 45.5 percent and 58 seats. The
results were a shock to the incumbent CPP, which had expected
to win, and an astounding display of courage on the part of
the Cambodian people.
UNTAC chief Akashi rejected the CPP's charges of fraud and,
on June 10, 1993, declared that the elections were fair and
free. The CPP refused to accept defeat. A secession attempt
in early June by eight eastern provinces had to be quashed
by the UN. It was evident to many in the international community
that the incumbent CPP regime still controlled the bulk of
military force, the police, and civilian administration; that
the CPP was determined not to surrender power; and that FUNCINPEC--the
winner of the election--controlled too few guns and administrative
and political cadres to assume power countrywide. In the absence
of a large additional investment of UN military forces and
the virtual takeover of the Cambodian government by UNTAC,
some sort of accommodation to these circumstances would have
to be made. Without it Cambodia would revert to civil war
and social chaos--a real possibility in June 1993.
Power Sharing
The implicit quid pro quo of the Paris Accords in 1991 (in
effect to gain Soviet and Vietnamese cooperation) had been
that the incumbent CPP would have a fair shot at political
dominance if it would go along with the rules of the game
of UNTAC and abide by the results of the election. Hun Sen
and the CPP had expected to win in May 1993, and indeed UNTAC
officials and the international community generally had similar
expectations. Hun Sen did not win, and he was obliged to become
second prime minister to FUNCINPEC's Ranariddh. The convoluted
power-sharing arrangement, which in effect led to the creation
of dual governments, shaped the course of Cambodian politics
from then on.
In summer 1993 FUNCINPEC and the CPP joined in a provisional
interim government, and the newly elected constituent assembly
wrote a new constitution. This process, along with the divvying
up of ministerial posts and governorships, became a test of
the uneasy reconciliation. Both parties in effect were forced
to make a coalition government work, if only to avoid renewed
conflict and obtain the several billion dollars of international
financial assistance that had been promised to rebuild the
country as part of the understandings reached at Paris. David
Ashley's essay, and those of David Chandler and Michael Doyle
as well, describe the tribulations of the coalition government
between Ranariddh's FUNCINPEC and Hun Sen's CPP that emerged
in 1993.
After the new Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) was formed
in October 1993, the UN and the international community remained
directly engaged in the reconstruction and development of
Cambodia. The country's development needs were great--per
capita GNP was only $220 in 1993--but given Cambodia's limited
absorptive capacity they were well within the bounds of international
donor capability. The International Committee on the Reconstruction
of Cambodia (ICORC), the consortium of international donors,
had pledged $880 million in economic assistance at its founding
meeting in June 1992. Most official bilateral and multilateral
aid was directed to budget support, training, education, infrastructure
repair, and basic social services. Kao Kim Hourn's essay catalogues
the benefits and costs of this massive international intervention.
Increased international assistance made it possible to begin
to rebuild Cambodia's shattered physical and human infrastructure;
economic reform and Cambodia's reconnection to the regional
economy fueled respectable economic growth. Naranhkiri Tith's
essay reviews the improvements in Cambodia's macroeconomic
performance but cautions that Cambodia's economic recovery
is threatened by a lack of political accountability and transparency,
the absence of a fair and competent judicial system, and a
bloated and underpaid bureaucracy. Judy Ledgerwood discusses
the challenges of socioeconomic development in rural areas,
where 85 percent of all Cambodians live.
Only a few international donors continued to actively support
the development of democracy in Cambodia. The UN Center for
Human Rights (UNCHR) became a key defender of human rights,
and a flock of nongovernmental organizations, many of them
American, supported programs promoting human and women's rights,
judicial reform, legislative development, media professionalism,
and civil society. As Lao Mong Hay observes in his essay,
for a brief period it appeared that democracy might take root
in Cambodia. But the emphasis of most donors was squarely
on Cambodia's economic development, the theory being that
the prospect of an improved economy (if not prosperity) would
eventually promote political harmony--a familiar theme for
postconflict societies. The international community's interest
in the political situation diminished as the months passed.
With sovereignty fully vested in the new coalition government,
the external signatories to the Paris Accords were not inclined
to exert overt pressure with regard to the human rights abuses
that became increasingly apparent. There was a sense that
it was up to the Cambodians themselves to effect true reconciliation.
In 1994 and 1995, however, the possibility of making donor
aid conditional was raised in ICORC's private councils in
response to continuing human rights issues, rampant corruption
on the part of both coalition partners, illegal logging, and
the misdirection of revenues to the Ministry of Defense. The
International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank eventually
took action on illegal logging but with unsatisfactory results.
The rape of Cambodia's forest resources, which is described
in detail in Kirk Talbott's essay, continues in 1998 with
devastating consequences: A recent report by Global Witness,
a British environmental NGO active in Cambodia, estimates
that forest hardwood reserves will be completely exhausted
shortly after the turn of the century.
From Coalition to Coup
By 1996 it was all too evident that the pluralist political
system and representative government codified in the 1993
constitution had not become part of the Cambodian political
system as had been planned, perhaps naively, by the framers
of the Paris Accords. The National Assembly had been considered
the fundament of a nascent civil society. In 1996 it had become
virtually powerless in the face of the CPP's dual tactic of
intimidation and financial co-option of Assembly members,
Ranariddh's deplorably inept leadership, and the venality
and gross corruption of both the CPP and FUNCINPEC.
While the CPP cadres often were factionalized, they nonetheless
managed, in true Leninist style, to keep disagreement in-house
to present a relatively united front to their political foes.
FUNCINPEC, on the other hand, was openly splintered by criticism
of Ranariddh and weakened by the firing of Minister of Finance
and Economy Sam Rainsy, which in turn led to defections and
eventually to Rainsy's formation of the Khmer Nation Party
(KNP). In October 1995 FUNCINPEC's general secretary (and
the government's foreign minister), Prince Norodom Sirivudh,
was accused of a plot to assassinate Hun Sen. He was jailed,
then driven into exile. Soon thereafter Rainsy was expelled
from the National Assembly. Hun Sen pursued a cunning divide-and-conquer
strategy, pulling off defections of FUNCINPEC and BLDP figures,
such as Khieu Kanarith and Ieng Mouley. Consequently the CPP
increasingly dominated the coalition with FUNCINPEC and the
BLDP, its minor partner.
Signals pointing to a national meltdown became explicit when
the leadership of the Khmer Rouge (still with military forces
at their command and base areas in the north and west) began
to fragment. By the summer of 1996 almost half the Khmer Rouge
military force broke from Pol Pot and defected to the government.
The following year the faction's leadership broke into bitter
dispute, eventually causing Ta Mok, the guerrilla commander,
to arrest Pol Pot. David Ashley points out that the resulting
competition between FUNCINPEC and the CPP for the allegiance
of defecting Khmer Rouge leaders and the units they commanded
was significant to the deterioration of cooperation between
the coalition partners, and it eventually became the final
rupture in the personal relationship between Ranariddh and
Hun Sen.
On March 30, 1997, a peaceful KNP rally in front of the National
Assembly was subdued by forces using hand grenades. Nineteen
persons were killed, a hundred wounded, and Sam Rainsy barely
escaped with his life. From this point onward any semblance
of cooperation between the coalition partners ceased. Even
the most optimistic analysts saw little chance for political
reconciliation and assumed that, sooner rather than later,
violence would again shape the future of the country.
On July 5, 1997, the CPP initiated a series of events that
either killed or drove into exile many of the political leaders
and senior provincial cadres of FUNCINPEC, the BLDP, and the
KNP. Hun Sen's special CPP units sought out and arrested or
summarily executed key members of the opposition (the UNCHR
reported 41 people were killed with many dozens more unaccounted
for). First Prime Minister Ranariddh and about twenty FUNCINPEC,
BLDP, and KNP politicians and members of the National Assembly
managed to flee to Thailand. The July coup came as no surprise
to most Cambodians or foreign observers who had been following
the nation's affairs since the 1993 elections. Hun Sen's compulsion
for power was no secret. But the timing and tactics of the
coup were uncertain, and the brutality and totality with which
it was carried out were stunning.
The reaction of the international community was surprisingly
strong. ASEAN, which has the most direct interest in Cambodia,
postponed Cambodia's membership in the regional grouping,
making it the only Southeast Asian nation to be excluded.
ASEAN has had an interest in bringing an end to the conflict
in Cambodia, which has extended to border disruptions and
the flight of refugees. Moreover ASEAN has not wished to see
a government in Phnom Penh that caters to the international
illegal narcotics trade and grand scale money laundering.
Reflecting these concerns, ASEAN formed an ad hoc "troika,"
composed of the foreign ministers of Thailand, Indonesia,
and the Philippines, to launch a diplomatic initiative intended
to persuade Hun Sen to reconcile with Ranariddh and to hold
free and fair elections. In spirit this initiative broke precedent
with the long-standing ASEAN principle of noninterference
in a member country's affairs, although Cambodia technically
was not a member.
With strong U.S. urging, international financial institutions
suspended loans to Cambodia, and, in what was possibly the
greatest blow to Hun Sen, the UN decided to leave Cambodia's
seat vacant at the opening of the General Assembly in October.
Several Western donors withdrew their bilateral assistance
to the Cambodian government, although some have continued
aid to the nongovernmental sector. The crisis also prompted
the creation of the "Friends of Cambodia," an informal
diplomatic group whose members had been key players in the
Paris Accords, including the United States, Australia, Canada,
China, the European Union (EU), Japan, and Russia. Both ASEAN,
through the troika, and the Friends of Cambodia stressed to
Hun Sen the importance of creating and maintaining a neutral
political environment for free, fair, and credible elections.
Japan took an uncharacteristically active role by brokering
a deal that satisfied Hun Sen's demand that Ranariddh be tried
for his alleged crimes (it was done in absentia) and still
allowed Ranariddh to return to Cambodia to contest the elections
(by virtue of a pardon by King Sihanouk).
The 1998 Elections
As this volume goes to press, elections are scheduled for
late July 1998. Once again, as they were in 1993, Cambodians
and the international community are looking to elections to
resolve an internal conflict and to legitimize the country's
leadership through the ballot box. This task, which fell tragically
short of its aim the first time, is all the more difficult
now because the 1998 elections are the first that Cambodia
has attempted to conduct on its own. Little is left of the
UNTAC electoral infrastructure, and the involvement of the
international community will be severely diminished in comparison
to that of 1993.
Moreover the willingness and ability of the Hun Sen government
to conduct genuinely free and fair elections is in doubt.
The CPP dominates the bureaucracy and the security forces
and has effectively censored the media. While opposition parties,
NGOs, and journalists are, in theory, free to challenge the
government, they do so at their own peril. A National Election
Commission (NEC) has been created, but the opposition perceives
it to be strongly weighted toward Hun Sen--despite the membership
of a prominent human rights activist. Beyond the issue of
political coloration, there are widespread doubts that the
commission can handle the logistical challenge of managing
elections in so little time. In addition the opposition is
itself disorganized and factionalized. Although it would be
difficult for any political group to overcome the obstacles
presented by the CPP machinery, it will be even more difficult
if the opposition doesn't come together. Opposition leaders,
primarily Ranariddh and Rainsy, publicly hold out the possibility
of boycotting the polls.
The UN and the EU have agreed in principle to assist the government
in conducting the elections but reserve the right to reverse
their decision if conditions warrant. That UN Secretary-General
Kofi Anan has taken a strong stand with regard to international
observation of the 1998 elections indicates that the UN sees
the UNTAC experience as a significant precedent for peacekeeping--if
the UN is seen to fail in Cambodia, can it be expected to
succeed elsewhere? The U.S. government, skeptical of Hun Sen's
commitment to free and fair elections, has directed its assistance
to Cambodian NGOs planning to monitor the elections. As this
volume goes to press, no central authority, such as the UN,
has assumed responsibility for certifying whether the elections
are free and fair. However, certification--or even an informal
assessment of an election's outcome--requires a network of
election observers to produce credible data as well as agreement
on the standards for determining if an election is free. In
the upcoming elections, it appears there will be neither a
massive international monitoring effort nor an international
consensus on criteria for judging the returns. In the event
that Hun Sen wins in an uncompetitive or boycotted contest,
the United States, Japan, ASEAN, the EU, and other key international
actors will need to decide if they will accept the outcome
and establish normal relations with the new Hun Sen government.
The probability that the United States, Japan, and ASEAN will
adopt differing approaches to this issue suggests that the
relative cohesion exhibited by the international community
since the July 1997 coup is unlikely to survive the July 1998
elections.
Lessons from the Past
Why, after such an immense effort on the part of the UN and
the international community at large, did Cambodia spiral
down from 1993 to the tragic denouement of July 1997? One
reason, surely, is the relative shallowness of the accomplishments
of the UN during the period of its authority on the ground
in Cambodia. The UN might, with some justification, respond
that never had so much money and effort been expended for
so few people for so long in order to heal a war-ravaged society.
But several chapters of this book offer a litany of specific
reasons for UNTAC's partial failure, for example: slow deployment
of UNTAC, the difficulties in executing the progressive phasing
of the UNTAC process, the failure to disarm the parties, the
bickering over bringing economic assistance to Cambodia during
the UNTAC period, the weakness of the UNTAC civil police component,
and the difficulties in monitoring and countering human rights
abuses by the CPP. As David Ashley points out, by 1991 the
Cambodia conflict "was a dispute left over from the cold
war, not a reaction to it." It was not as much an ideological
conflict as a struggle for power between feudal lords funded
and supplied by foreign patrons. UNTAC's presence did not
change that reality.
More fundamentally the seeds of Cambodia's continuing crisis
are found in the Paris Accords themselves, in the international
political climate surrounding what was supposed to be the
resolution of the Cambodia issue, and in the basic assumptions
underpinning what was essentially an exercise in nation building.
Three of these assumptions are discussed below.
One assumption was an unrealistic faith in the electoral process
as the key to solving the problems of Cambodia's conflicted
society. The Paris Accords were premised on a belief that
an electoral process under impartial international supervision
would act as a legitimizing mechanism for the political arrangement
to follow. All political groups would have a chance at power
sharing. (The "comprehensive" nature of the Accords,
of course, unraveled when, in early 1992, the Khmer Rouge,
renounced their participation.) All other aspects of the Paris
Accords and UNTAC were subordinate to the central objective
of creating a legitimized government through an electoral
process. It was assumed, somewhat blithely, that international
bilateral and multilateral assistance and NGOs supporting
constructive social change would follow this "legitimation"
and thereby promote reconciliation between the CPP and the
noncommunist parties that had been their competitors, at least
to the point where they would not seek to resolve their differences
by force of arms.
Unfortunately this was not to be. The political rivalry was
too great, and the stakes were too high. Without the Cambodian
political elite's genuine acceptance of the need for coexistence,
the 1993 elections were in effect a continuation of mortal
political conflict by other means. Moreover there was no connection
between the elections and the reality of governing Cambodia.
Although FUNCINPEC won the election, it could not govern due
to the CPP's entrenchment and its own organizational weaknesses.
Thus, a FUNCINPEC victory had the unintended effect of virtually
ensuring the continuation of instability rather than bringing
about an environment of political compromise that would lead
eventually to economic progress and social calm. Finally,
the international community retreated from its commitment
to establishing a genuinely legitimate government when it
acquiesced to Hun Sen's demands for power sharing.
The 1993 elections also failed to inculcate new democratic
norms and behavior among the Cambodian political leadership.
By allowing King Sihanouk and Hun Sen to, in effect, set aside
the electoral outcome, the international community became
a party to an act that sent a clear message that power politics,
not the rule of law, would continue to prevail in Cambodia.
UNTAC, then, offers an obvious but important lesson for future
UN peacekeeping efforts elsewhere: Elections are necessary
for democracy but by no means sufficient. Without broad, sustained
supporting measures over a long period, elections by themselves
cannot promote liberal democracy in a historically conflicted
society.
A second questionable premise was that power sharing would
work in Cambodia's highly conflictual and zero-sum political
environment. The collapse of Cambodia's coalition government
raises basic questions about the utility of power sharing--as
least as practiced in Cambodia--as a way to build peace and
democracy in highly conflictual societies. (In retrospect
it was premature to view Cambodia as a "postconflict"
society between 1993 and 1997.) The FUNCINPEC-CPP government
was not a coalition in the normal sense. The leaders of the
two parties were bitter rivals. In effect two national governments
were established, while the CPP continued to dominate the
army, the internal security machinery, the national bureaucracy,
and local government. The creation of these dual governments
bloated the bureaucracy, fueled corruption, and politicized
even further the military and security forces. This phony
political accommodation crippled decision making and created
an environment inimicable to effective governance. In sum
power sharing in Cambodia did not foster reconciliation; it
did not promote trust or build confidence; and it did not
create a new, more inclusive political center.
The failure of power sharing speaks to the difficulty of operationalizing
political institutions and processes based on the rule of
law, political pluralism, and nonviolent political competition
in situations where the political elite evinces little or
no commitment to these values. In retrospect it is clear that
the coalition government created in September 1993 should
have been subjected to the same international scrutiny as
the election that was so meticulously carried out under UNTAC.
A third mistaken assumption made by most international donors
following the elections was that an emphasis on economic development--rather
than on further political development--would ensure peace
and stability in Cambodia. High-level international support
for the democratization of Cambodian government and society
declined precipitously following the elections. Having expended
immense effort, generally applauded as successful, the UN
moved on to other urgent peacekeeping challenges (in Bosnia
and central Africa). The focus of most international donors
shifted to Cambodia's reconstruction and economic development
not its continued political development. Moreover the international
community's assistance to Cambodia's reconstruction and development
was largely disconnected from the performance of its government
and leaders. This approach has been proven to be erroneous.
The international community, perhaps under stronger leadership
from the ICORC, should have made a significant portion of
multilateral aid contingent upon bureaucratic reform, reduction
of the army, cessation of timber cutting, and so forth. And
greater emphasis should have been placed on building up countervailing
centers of legitimate authority (for example, the Constitutional
Council, which is mandated by the 1993 constitution) and by
paying more attention to helping the National Assembly become
an effective branch of government.
Challenges for the Future
To return to the basic themes of this volume, what will it
take to bring peace, development, and democracy to Cambodia?
The uncertainties surrounding the elections scheduled for
July make it both difficult and unwise to speculate about
Cambodia's short- to medium-term future. It can be said, however,
that noncompetitive or violent elections that result in an
oppressive one-party government will not advance the prospects
for peace and development in Cambodia. Regrettably this scenario
or some variation of it appears to be likely. With this prospect
Cambodia and the members of the international community concerned
with Cambodia face five challenges, the handling of which
will play a major role in determining the prospects for peace,
development, and democracy.
Perhaps the most immediate challenge will be to protect and,
if possible, deepen Cambodia's nascent civil society. Many
fear for the future of Cambodian NGOs dedicated to promoting
human rights, democratization, and the rule of law. Press
freedom is also in jeopardy. The international community has
funded, trained, and encouraged thousands of Cambodians to
believe that these values have a place in their country and
should be respected. Many Cambodians have promoted these values
at considerable risk to themselves and their families. They
deserve the continued support and protection of the international
community.
The need to protect Cambodia's civil society is just the most
urgent aspect of a larger and more difficult challenge: reforming
Cambodia's autocratic and intolerant political culture. Cambodia's
political elite must come to understand that both the nation's
and their own fortunes are better served over the long run
by pluralistic and nonviolent political competition. Cambodia's
history of colonialism, monarchy, radicalism, and communism
makes this a difficult concept for many in its ruling circles.
It may be that this will be possible only with the passage
of time, leadership, and generational change. But the international
community can support the process of political change by helping
to ensure the vitality and efficacy of political institutions
designed to channel competition and strengthen the rule of
law, such as the National Assembly and the newly established
Constitutional Council.
The third challenge facing Cambodia and the international
community is restarting the nation's economy and putting in
place economic policies conducive to sustainable economic
development. Cambodia remains one of the world's poorest and
least developed countries. It still suffers from the serious
damage done to its human resources by the Khmer Rouge. Since
mid-1997 its economy has been further hurt by the triple blows
of political uncertainty, the suspension of foreign aid and
World Bank/IMF loans, and the regional financial crisis.
There is cause for both concern and hope regarding the Cambodian
economy. The reasons for concern are multiple. First, the
commitment of the Hun Sen government to transparent and market-driven
economic policies is open to question. Second, bureaucratic
inefficiency and corruption will continue to be encumber on
entrepreneurship. Third, foreign investment and economic aid
are likely to be in short supply, especially if political
conflict and high-level corruption persist. All of this may
cause Cambodia's economy to become even more dominated by
illegal logging and the narcotics trade. Arrayed against this
disturbing prospect are two reasons for hope. First Cambodia
is situated in the center of a region that, while presently
facing economic setbacks, is likely to return to moderate
growth within a year or two. Second, between 1994 and 1996,
there was significant improvement in the economy and economic
policymaking. At least this gives the country an economic
foundation upon which to build.
The fourth challenge is the handling of the remnants of the
Khmer Rouge, particularly the treatment of those responsible
for the genocide of the 1970s. The backbone of the Khmer Rouge
has been broken, and they no longer pose a major threat to
security. However, the Khmer Rouge can affect the short-term
political situation in Cambodia in two ways. First, their
lingering presence gives the government a rationale for maintaining
a counterinsurgency campaign and a continued role for the
armed forces in domestic security. And since the factions
were not demilitarized during the peace process earlier in
the decade, the possibility remains of using the armed forces
against political enemies other than the Khmer Rouge. Second,
reintegrating the members of the Khmer Rouge into Cambodian
society will continue to be a complex and controversial issue.
The reintegration of mid- and lower-level Khmer Rouge guerrillas
should be encouraged and supported. But the reintegration
of the Khmer Rouge leadership, particularly those responsible
for the genocide and starvation of the 1970s, is fraught with
moral and political problems. The sad reality is that the
reintegration of these Khmer Rouge leaders may be accepted
by Cambodia's conflict-weary society. But the failure of the
Cambodian government to conduct a meaningful accountability
exercise will almost certainly further undermine whatever
belief in justice Cambodians continue to have as well as reduce
the government's international respectability.
The final challenge is the need to address the highly politicized
nature of the state apparatus, in particular the armed forces.
The greatest shortcoming of the UNTAC period was the failure
to demobilize the factions and depoliticize the Royal Cambodian
Armed Forces. Two actively partisan armies were left intact,
barely coexisting under the thin veneer of a national military.
This helped to set Cambodia up for the events of last July.
It is highly unlikely that this situation can be addressed,
much less remedied, as long as political tensions in Cambodia
remain high. However, when there is political will to downsize
and depoliticize the bureaucracy and military, the international
community should offer its support to the fullest extent.
The essays that follow address these and other issues in greater
detail and offer a variety of perspectives on the continuing
struggle to bring peace, development, and democracy to Cambodia.
Back to top | Contents
|
