Cambodia and the International Community: The Quest for Peace, Development, and Democracy

Frederick Z. Brown and David G. Timberman (eds.)

Asia Society

1998

The Failure of Conflict Resolution in Cambodia
by 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.

 

Endnotes

Note 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. Back.

Note 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. Back.

Note 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). Back.

Note 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. Back.