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

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

Asia Society

1998

Peacebuilding in Cambodia: The Continuing Quest for Power and Legitimacy
by Michael W. Doyle

 

Introduction

On July 5-6, 1997, Cambodia experienced a coup that erased most of the political gains made by United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) in 1992-93. After an expenditure of more than $1.8 billion dollars for UNTAC, the death of 78 UNTAC soldiers and civilians (and many more Cambodians), and more than a billion dollars in foreign aid, Cambodia finds itself in the condition it was in 1990, before the UN peace operation began. Once again a government lacking legitimacy faces an internal insurgency on its border and isolation from the international community.

It was not supposed to turn out this way. The peace operation in Cambodia that culminated in the May 1993 elections was widely hailed as one of the UN's peacekeeping successes. But, as has become increasingly clear, what Cambodia also needed was peacebuilding--the institutional, social, and economic reforms that can serve to defuse or peacefully resolve conflict. Failure to build on a peace treaty can unravel a peacekeeping success. Only concerted action by the government, the donor community, NGOs, and the UN--both during and following UNTAC operations--could have kept peace on track and ensured a continued effort toward reconstruction, reconciliation, and a peaceful second set of national elections.

This chapter assesses how a peacekeeping operation that went relatively well turned into a peacebuilding experience that wasted the political opening it had created. It focuses on a gap between factions that had legitimacy without power and factions that had power without legitimacy. Some of the roots of the erosion lay in opportunities missed during the UNTAC period and in those neglected during the almost four years that followed the peace operation. The deeper roots of the crisis lay in the social, economic, and political structure of Cambodia and its unfortunate history the past 50 years.

From Coalition to Coup

During the four years preceding the July coup, Cambodia teetered on the edge between hope for a deepening peace and fear of escalating violence. For several years the uneasy coalition government headed by First Prime Minister Prince Ranarridh and Second Prime Minister Hun Sen held together, the urban economy experienced significant growth, and Cambodia looked forward to becoming a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

At the same time, however, Cambodia experienced little progress in building peace beyond that achieved by the 1991 Paris Peace Accords and the UNTAC peace process. ₁ The country's fragile political and economic gains remained in constant jeopardy from the dangerous polarization within the government, the ongoing counter-insurgency war against the Khmer Rouge, and the sluggish revival of the rural economy. The CPP-FUNCINPEC rivalry created a bureaucratic and political stalemate. Partisan financial corruption seriously undermined the development process, and international drug trafficking was a growth industry. Illegal logging bled funds from the national budget into personal, party, and military coffers. At the same time, half of all government expenditures went to support the military. Millions of mines continued to litter the countryside and to maim and kill. All this in a country with an average per capita real income of about one-twentieth that of the United States, an adult literacy rate of 38 percent, and a life expectancy of 52 years.

Starting with reports of an attempted coup in spring 1996, violent confrontations between CPP and FUNCINPEC forces marked the escalation of tensions. Constitutional procedures and effective government ground to a halt; neither the cabinet nor the National Assembly met. Essential legislation for Cambodia's planned entry into ASEAN and for the national election scheduled for May 1998 was stymied. On March 30, 1997, a grenade attack on a political rally of opposition leader Sam Rainsy produced 16 deaths and more than a hundred wounded. In May bodyguards for FUNCINPEC and the CPP battled in the streets, and on May 29, Hun Sen's bodyguards announced that the second prime minister had been the target of an assassination attempt. In June a pitched battle was fought in the streets of the capital and a rocket landed in the U.S. Embassy compound.

Four coup attempts were made between 1993 and 1997; the fifth, Hun Sen's of July 5-6, 1997, succeeded. (Previous attempts had been foiled when the parties united against dissidents or the two senior generals, Ke Kim Yan of the CPP and Nhek Bunh Chhay of FUNCINPEC, stopped them.) Given the weakness of the Cambodian state, the underdevelopment of the economy, and the "thinness" of Cambodian civil society, the coup should not have been a surprise. ₂ But in retrospect, the timing of the July coup appears to have been triggered by two unpredicted events.

The first was the surprising breakup of the Khmer Rouge in 1996-97. In September 1996 Ieng Sary, foreign minister during the Pol Pot regime, defected with three "divisions" and control of the timber and gem-rich region around Pailin. After strenuous bargaining between Hun Sen and Ranariddh, Hun Sen won over Ieng Sary, whose cohorts then received a royal pardon and Pailin as a nearly independent fiefdom.

During the following summer reports of the capture of Pol Pot were hailed as a conclusion to Cambodia's era of troubles. In fact they were a sign of its escalation. The one thousand or so once-fearsome guerrillas holed up along the northwestern border finally turned on their founder in June 1997 when he summarily executed and then photographed vehicles crushing the bodies of his deputy, Son Sen and his family. In Cambodia, amidst genuine popular anticipation of long-delayed justice, the possibility of trial of Pol Pot's trial fanned the flames of CPP-FUNCINPEC discord. Handing him over became a bargaining chip for the amnesty of the remaining Khmer Rouge leaders, as Prince Ranariddh and Hun Sen competed for the allegiance of the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge offered disciplined cadres, effective guerrilla soldiers, and up to $200 million secreted in Southeast Asian bank accounts. As word of a deal between Khieu Samphan and Ranariddh began to circulate--a deal that would bring all the Khmer Rouge remnants over to FUNCINPEC--Hun Sen struck.

The other cause of the coup was the increasing competition and therefore the increased premium on allies fostered by the impending elections. The problem was not the elections per se, ₃ which, as will be discussed below, were necessary to maintain legitimacy and establish a mutual connection between the Cambodian state and the people it ruled. The problem was the unraveling of the governing coalition. Tension escalated in 1996, when FUNCINPEC, alarmed that it had little influence in the administration of the countryside, demanded a share of the district-level offices. Control of the districts would be decisive in determining effective access to the voters. The CPP stalled in its response, and FUNCINPEC failed to provide a plausible, comprehensive list of candidates.

The underlying source of concern was that the winner of the elections would have the authority to rule alone (should he have won an absolute majority). This was a threat for the CPP, which according to an early 1997 public opinion poll was vastly unpopular: Only 20 percent questioned said they supported Hun Sen's party. ₄ Yet the state officials who were members of Hun Sen's party had no other livelihood apart from their bureaucratic positions. Many had joined the Khmer Rouge in the early 1970s, fled to Vietnam in 1977 or 1978, and returned with the Vietnamese invasion in December 1978, holding government office since then. In addition rumors that King Sihanouk, the one political leader with wide rural legitimacy, might abdicate and run for election probably intensified Hun Sen's apprehension. For Ranariddh the prospect of an election became an opportunity to escape from the paper coalition that rendered FUNCINPEC powerless. He thus formed an electoral alliance with Sam Rainsy, who was widely popular among urban youth.

As tension mounted, Ranariddh began to arm his bodyguard unit, allegedly with smuggled arms shipments, to match the much larger guard already surrounding Hun Sen. Hun Sen struck on July 5, 1997. Hundreds of FUNCINPEC supporters were rounded up, and at least 40, by the estimates of human rights groups, were summarily executed. As of early 1998 the former opposition was intimidated and civil society had run for cover. ASEAN membership is on hold at least until the 1998 elections. U.S., Australian, World Bank, (International Monetary Fund (IMF), and European Union (EU) aid to the government has been frozen. Tourism has ground to a halt. Private investors have instituted an informal freeze on new investments. Fifty thousand Cambodians are refugees on the Thai border. General Nhek Bun Chhay leads a military resistance in FUNCINPEC's name, and he has been joined by the few remnants of the Khmer Rouge. The new coalition (an unfortunate revival of the 1980s joint resistance to the CPP) operates uneasily on the Thai-Cambodian border.

The condition of Cambodia today confirms that the peace-building process was only begun when the parties signed the Paris Peace Accords in October 1991 and when UNTAC arrived in March 1992 to help implement it. Peacebuilding was stillborn, and the parties remained in a near state of war.

 

Roots of the Current Crisis

The roots of the current crisis lie in Cambodia's past and especially in victimization by its neighbors, in the underdevelopment of the Cambodian economy and polity, and in UNTAC's inability to jump-start the process of civic reform and economic rehabilitation.

Victimization

For much of its postwar history Cambodia has found itself in a dangerous neighborhood. Bombed by the United States during the Vietnam War, which radicalized intellectuals and peasantry, it fell prey to the Khmer Rouge in 1975, the worst fanatics in the second half of the twentieth century. Cambodia was rescued in 1978 but only by its historic enemy, Vietnam. It was then occupied by Vietnam for a decade.

As a result Cambodia has lacked the space in which to address the key challenges of modern development. It has faced crisis after crisis, and each before it had time to adjust to or resolve the previous one. Cambodia is now--at last--trying to recover from a combination of trials.

Cambodia is still seeking to overcome the legacies of colonialism. Indeed the first generation of postcolonial leadership is still in place. King Sihanouk was first enthroned by the French in 1941. Huge inequalities between urban and rural areas persist, typical of export-oriented, metropolitan-based, colonial economic development. Before these inequalities and dependencies were overcome, the 1978 Vietnamese invasion imposed a new kind of colonialism, as the People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) regime ruled from the "knapsack" of Vietnam in 1979, and Vietnam continued to govern until it withdrew its troops in from behind the scenes in 1989. ₅ Prior to the Vietnamese withdrawal, the PRK renamed itself the State of Cambodia (SOC).

Cambodia is still recovering from the destruction inflicted by wars, beginning with the U.S. bombing and Khmer Rouge devastations and continuing into the civil wars of the 1990s. All left acute rehabilitation needs, not unlike those of countries such as Vietnam and Eritrea. Cambodia suffers from a postholocaust syndrome. The Khmer Rouge massacres left a desperate need for social reconstruction. Only a handful of monks, intellectuals, medical doctors, and trained lawyers survived these massacres. A massive deficit of social capital resulted, and many survivors carry deep psychological burdens that discourage reconstruction. Cambodia is a civil war survivor from the pitched battles of 1979-91 between government forces and the unified resistance on the Thai border. Like Mozambique and Angola, the reconciliation and reintegration of 370,000 refugees challenges the country's efforts to rebuild. Finally, like the economies of Eastern Europe, Cambodia is undergoing a postcommunist transition to a market economy begun by the SOC in 1991.

Any of these problems would constitute a serious challenge to a country as poor as Cambodia, which is unique in facing them all at once. Its efforts should be judged in light of this exceptional burden.

Underdevelopment and Dependence

Cambodia is fortunate in having a profound sense of nationhood and a revered national religion in Buddhism, but it lacks a capable modern state and integrated modern economy. The difficult, deep-rooted tasks of building a state and an economy remain.

Services and industry, which tend to be concentrated in urban areas, account for 57 percent of GDP, but employ only 25 percent of the work force. The productive base must spread beyond cities. Unfortunately current trends suggest that these inequalities will worsen before they improve and Phnom Penh will be overwhelmed by job seekers. Cambodia's GDP grew at an average of 5.9 percent per year from 1990 to 1995. But while the urban and hotel sector grew at 20 percent per annum and construction at 15.2 percent, the rural economy stagnated as rice production grew at -.1 percent and livestock at 3.8 percent. ₆ Expenditure patterns reveal similar disparities. Rural households have only 33 percent of the average household expenditure per day of Phnom Penh households and only 14 percent of the discretionary expenditure of their counterparts in Phnom Penh. ₇

Poverty and inequality both undermine the prospects for building peace. The large and growing gaps in income draw farmers into Phnom Penh and breed discontent and anger against the government. Discontent in turn undermines government incentives to democratize and increases the prospect of predatory human rights abuses. The gaps may also feed into possible support for the Khmer Rouge. Most important, income gaps waste the development potential of the vast bulk of the population.

Further complicating efforts to spur development and establish the rule of law is the weakness of the state. The Khmer Rouge destroyed the postcolonial state Cambodia inherited from the French and replaced it with a regime that abandoned all normal state functions and created a national prison camp. The Vietnamese kept effective sovereign authority in their own hands until 1989. However, the PRK did develop some capacity in the 1980s. It assisted in training officials, but only very small numbers. Anyone who was literate (and politically reliable) could be considered for a judgeship. Training in Eastern Europe often involved the rote learning of a weak technology--usually in Bulgarian or German. Many able individuals made the most of the Eastern Bloc training, but it was not that useful in coping with modern capitalist management and the dynamic development standards of contemporary East Asia. I met one official in his late 40s who had already learned Khmer, French, Vietnamese, and Bulgarian and was taking up English--all in the process of furthering his technical education. Nonetheless, despite the initiative and patience of officials such as this one, the Cambodian civil service is not ready to supervise modern economic development.

Hun Sen may enjoy unrivaled political control of Cambodia, but the state he heads is very weak. Budgetary dependence is significant: Almost one half of the total government budget (46 percent in 1995) was foreign financed. ₈ Eighty-five percent of all public investment is foreign-financed, as is 18 percent of private investment. Between 1992 and 1994 aid commitments stagnated. Actual project aid and assistance commitments declined; but technical assistance (foreign experts) grew by 20-30 percent and direct assistance to the government budget grew from 0.5 to 27 percent. ₉ Government salaries are clearly too low at $20 per month for the lower civil service and $1,000 per month for a minister. Income at those levels invites corruption and a consequent loss of national revenue. Illegal logging alone results in $100 million per annum in lost revenue when contracts do not go through the Ministry of Finance.

n light of the extensive destruction in Cambodia in the past 30 years, technical assistance is welcome, but current practices may prevent the building of capacity.

A vicious circle has been drawn around reform. Lacking an effective civil service, international donors cannot entrust projects to the Cambodian state. The World Bank and many bilateral donors tend to contract the implementation of their projects directly with international and some domestic NGOs. ₁₀ Without experience, the state cannot develop capacity. Reforms required are difficult technically but even more so politically, since the civil service is appointed and is the major source of patronage as well as (with the army) security for the two parties. Broader measures of building trust are necessary, including, for example, the implementation of the Constitutional Council and free and fair elections. Short of these broader reforms, Cambodia will remain in a developmental crisis even if the July coup is reversed and the legitimacy of the government is restored.

UNTAC's Legacy

Some of Cambodia's current problems are the product of peacebuilding that did not take place during the UNTAC period. UNTAC achieved many successes, but it also missed some significant opportunities to reform and assist the Cambodian state.

Although the Khmer Rouge rejected the peace process in midcourse, UNTAC successfully organized, for the first time in the UN's history, a nationwide election from the ground up. Over 90 percent of the electorate turned out to vote for peace, they said. The May 1993 election brought to power Cambodia's first elected government since the 1960s and placed Norodom Sihanouk on the throne as the reigning monarch of a new parliamentary democracy. But opposition from the Khmer Rouge and continuing distrust between the CPP and FUNCINPEC resulted in numerous acts of violence. Ongoing strife stymied efforts to canton and demobilize the factional armies and begin the rehabilitation of a society and economy devastated by the Vietnam War and four years of Khmer Rouge massacres. The national election had to be conducted amid continuing violence and intimidation.

UNTAC achieved significant successes in restoring key features of Cambodian civil society. It repatriated over 370,000 refugees, encouraged the formation of Cambodian NGOs, and engaged in human rights education. Most significantly, it gave Cambodian society a sense of participation in politics through the national election, and thereby helping to secure legitimacy for the state. But it failed to control the SOC civil service. In 1993 the successor to the SOC, the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC), inherited the continuing war with the Khmer Rouge, still well armed and ready to fight. The RGC had to accommodate both the existing CPP-dominated civil service and add to its ranks the newly enrolled FUNCINPEC officials. The result was a bureaucratic stalemate in which the two parties blocked each other at the cost of overall government effectiveness.

UNTAC has been criticized for failing to demobilize both the armies and the CPP-controlled civil service. Former UNTAC officials reply that demobilizing the civil service was never in the UNTAC mandate and the SOC never agreed to it in the Paris Accords. ₁₁ But it should be noted that UNTAC did not "control" the civil service, nor did it launch the rehabilitation (except in very minor ways) of the Cambodian economy, which it was supposed to do. ₁₂

Both the SOC and the Khmer Rouge undermined the Paris Accords--and each blamed the other. The SOC withheld its cooperation from UNTAC for the purpose of effecting control when the Khmer Rouge refused to demobilize. The Khmer Rouge refused to demobilize when UNTAC failed to neutralize the SOC. The wariness of each side appears to have been justified. But it also should be noted that while the Khmer Rouge denied UNTAC access to its zone, the SOC allowed UNTAC to deploy in its territory (85 percent of Cambodia).

Some observers have suggested that UNTAC control might have been more effective had it been combined with the training and building capacity of the SOC bureaucracy. Training would have transferred desired skills and might have provided the basis for cooperative control. Taken together this would have opened up the way for a more neutral, national public civil service. Senior former officials of UNTAC disagree, arguing that the parties would not have accepted so proactive a mandate at the Paris Peace negotiations. All can agree that a training function, if widely implemented, would have required an increase in the UNTAC budget. A mandate to modernize the bureaucracy was not out of the question in late spring 1993, but no one knew who would pay the factional armies in the period after the May election and before the formation of a sovereign government. (The UNTAC customs service experienced some success in this role as did the Australian police in Banteay Meanchey Province in 1993.) If UNTAC had combined control and training, it might then have handed over a more stable, responsive, and effective bureaucracy. But by May 1993 the UN was anxious to leave Cambodia in order to shift its focus to its increasing burdens in Somalia and Bosnia. An important lesson, then, that can be drawn from the UN peacekeeping effort in Cambodia is that peacekeeping will not lead to lasting peace without training for building peace.

Another shortcoming of UNTAC was its failure to jump start the rehabilitation of the Cambodian economy. The rehabilitation component of UNTAC, which was responsible for assessing needs, ensuring efficient and effective coordination of aid, and raising resources, was not fully operational until January 1993. It helped put a number of important financial and administrative reforms in place and averted several major crises, including hyperinflation, rice shortages, and government bankruptcy. Aid channeled through UNTAC did not, however, "benefit all areas of Cambodia, especially the disadvantaged, and reach all levels of society," as the Declaration of Reconstruction required. ₁₃ Aid flows during the UNTAC period, in fact, were biased in favor of urban areas, returnees, and relief in contrast to the declaration's call for developing rural areas and local capacity building. The urban bias artificially expanded the service sector (including prostitution), fostered high rates of consumer imports, and exacerbated income inequality.

In sum, the peace process in Cambodia left behind contradiction not reconciliation. It failed to resolve the fundamental problem that the competing factions lacked either legitimacy or power or both. The more powerful factions--the CPP's State of Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge--had committed cadres and effective military forces, but they lacked widespread public support and international recognition. Prince Ranariddh and FUNCINPEC had greater popularity and international support but a weak base of support in the bureaucracy and the military. The electoral defeat of Hun Sen and the CPP deprived them of legitimacy but did not wrest from them control of the bureaucracy and the army. The elections invested Ranariddh and FUNCINPEC with legitimacy but did not transfer genuine control of the state apparatus.

 

Restarting Peacebuilding

After the UNTAC period, Cambodia was left with a continuing war and an unreconciled political leadership and bureaucracy. The counter-insurgency war with the remaining 6,000 or so Khmer Rouge, holed up along the western border with Thailand, produced a thousand military and uncounted civilian casualties each year. Government forces pushed the Khmer Rouge guerrillas back into the jungles during the dry season, and each year guerrillas infiltrated back during the wet season. The war absorbed 40 percent or more of the government budget and led to more mines being laid in a country already having some of the world's highest rates of mine casualties. Government forces were not able to inflict decisive defeats on the guerrillas, and the guerrillas posed no military threat to the population centers. In 1996 and 1997 Khmer Rouge defections served to whet factional strife.

Meanwhile the state neglected the two keys to peacebuilding: improving the capacity of the civilian bureaucracy and bringing economic development to the countryside. While the capital, Phnom Penh, experienced a boom fueled by UN spending during the UNTAC period, the rural areas experienced the added burden of inflation on top of the devastation of the previous 20 years. Urban-rural inequality continued to heighten, engendering rural anger with ominous overtones.

Long-term peacebuilding requires a coherent and dedicated government prepared to fulfill its commitments to develop an impartial judicial system and organize the crucial second national election, now scheduled for July 1998. Instead the CPP-FUNCINPEC rivalry created a bureaucratic stalemate, which compelled both parties to purge leading dissidents and reformers. Partisan financial corruption disrupted the development process.

The July 1997 coup rolled back much of the little progress that Cambodia had achieved since 1993. In response to the coup and continuing budget irregularities, the United States, Australia, the EU, the World Bank, and the IMF suspended all nonhumanitarian assistance. The UN General Assembly has refused to seat either the Hun Sen-Ung Huot delegation or the previous Ranariddh delegation. ASEAN has joined in a Friends of Cambodia group to mediate between the government and the opposition with a view to discovering ways to restore democratic legitimacy to the government now holding power in Phnom Penh; the peace-building deficit continues to impede Cambodian development.

All this raises two fundamental questions. First can peacebuilding be put back on track? And second should the international community bother to make a further investment in Cambodian peacebuilding? Cambodia has already received more than $1.8 billion for the UNTAC peace effort and $1.3 billion pledged in aid since then. Those who oppose further aid to Cambodia, argue that other countries are more deserving and more capable of using the aid effectively.

The international community should remain engaged in Cambodia for a number of reasons. Abandoning Cambodia will impact the vast majority of Cambodians who are still on the world's list of neediest individuals. Moreover the international community still has a stake in the success of one of its major peace operations. Cambodia's factions made commitments in the Paris Accords that the international community, represented by the UN, agreed to monitor and guarantee for the people of Cambodia. Cambodia's regional neighbors have an especially strong incentive to keep their neighborhood productive and secure. An unstable, crime-dominated Cambodia would be very costly for Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Malaysia. ₁₄ Lastly thousands of migrant Cambodians have risked their careers by returning home and entering government and business. Others have undertaken new and risky professions as human rights activists and journalists. Millions of Cambodians risked their lives to vote in May 1993. They should not and need not be abandoned.

 

Putting Peacebuilding Back on Track

Establishing domestic peace is a distinct and difficult task. Someone or something must be sovereign, guaranteeing law and order, by force if need be. Otherwise civil war simply continues. Victory by one side as in the July coup, partition among the contending factions, subordination to foreign rule, or national peacebuilding are the alternatives. In Cambodia only the last truly counts as a step toward long-term peace and development.

The challenges of building peace after the July coup are threefold. The first challenge is to restore legitimacy by establishing a new national coalition government and strengthening the rule of law and democratic participation. The second is to enhance the effectiveness of the state bureaucracy by reforming civilian and military institutions, thereby creating a national state capable of governing on a national rather than a partisan basis. In this way legitimacy and power can reinforce each other: The government will gain legitimacy, and the legitimate government will control the resources of a national impartial state. And, third, Cambodia needs to continue to develop a civil society as well as a market economy that reaches and benefits ordinary citizens, especially in the underdeveloped rural regions. All three must be met to put peacebuilding back on track. This will require international assistance and considerable good fortune.

Restoring Legitimacy.The first goal should be to restore an authentic governmental coalition of Hun Sen's, Ranariddh's, and Sam Rainsy's followers. Civil government in Cambodia has no alternative to a coalition. The coalition agreement should establish the broad outlines of government policies and define the sharing of ministries. This would give the Cambodian people and their leaders some time to restore a degree of political and economic stability. Without the restoration of a legitimate coalition there can be no one to organize credible elections, for no party can trust the others. Without the promise of a coalition continuing after the 1998 elections, neither the CPP or FUNCINPEC are likely to respect the electoral results. Moreover, administrative experience and legitimacy are scarce commodities in Cambodia--neither can be wasted.

One ideal but unlikely step toward a coalition would be a bilateral pardon from King Sihanouk, in which both Prince Ranariddh's alleged gun smuggling and Hun Sen's alleged direction of the 40 or more executions of senior FUNCINPEC officials both pardoned. The Ranariddh-Hun Sen government would resume as before. Implausible as this sounds, it should be remembered that the violence of the 1980s and of the 1993 election campaign did not preclude the shaky coalition of 1993-97. More realistic, perhaps, is a general pardon in which Ranariddh retires from politics and becomes king, and other FUNCINPEC-KNP leaders are reabsorbed into a government of national unity.

Broader measures of building trust also appear necessary, if only to help hold the coalition together. They include, for example, a greater role for the National Assembly and the implementation of the Constitutional Council. The National Assembly needs to play a more independent role in the legislative process. It needs to serve as a better watchdog over the government, a better provider for the constituencies, and a better representative of the diversity of the popular will. One good step could be taken with USAID's assistance--providing everything from desks and equipment to workshops on legislative procedures and duties--to the fledgling Cambodian legislature.

King Sihanouk could make the difference in two key confidence-building measures that could alleviate the tension between the political parties. The first would be to breathe life into the recently created Constitutional Council. At present, all Cambodia's laws are suspended between true legality and emergency dictat. Council membership should be chosen on a new, impartial, national basis, selected from all the political parties but encouraged to serve in an independent capacity (for example mandated to serve a fixed but staggered set of terms).

The RGC also should ensure that the National Election Commission is genuinely neutral and it should convene a group of eminent Cambodians from civil society and experts from the region and abroad to monitor the work of the Ministry of the Interior. Cambodia should seek the assistance of the UN (along with national and international NGOs) for technical support and as monitors of both the campaign and voting. Monitoring the election does little good if the voting is the conclusion of an oppressive and biased campaign environment. The World Bank Consultative Group could allocate and monitor aid for this purpose.

Creating a State That Works. A lesson for Cambodia is the importance of, on the one hand, a bureaucracy with the technical capabilities and political authority to make and implement governmental decisions and, on the other hand, increased reliance on open markets and transparent protection for contracts and private property. ₁₅

With regard to bureaucratic reform, the RGC must demonstrate its commitment to marketization in order to reduce the overall level of demand on public management and building capacity for the civil service. There is a broad consensus among Cambodian development experts on the need for a leaner and more effective state. Rapid economic development can be achieved in Cambodia with a smaller civil service, such as the one that led Thailand to economic growth beginning in the 1950s. ₁₆ The Cambodian bureaucracy should eventually shed tens of thousands of officials in the civil service and equivalent numbers in the military, while enhancing capabilities all around. An effective state should play a key role in developing the rule of law by ensuring the state police and judiciary have the means to implement the law impartially.

Incentives for military predation can be reduced only by military demobilization and improving the training and logistics of the remaining forces. But demobilization is costly in the short run. If it is attempted without a comprehensive plan to resettle and retrain soldiers, they are likely to turn into marauders. In Uganda one careful study found that dismissed soldiers were 100 times more likely to commit crimes than those with land or other assistance. ₁₇

The government also should introduce transparency in all contracts. The Cambodia Development Council should make all its investment contracts and concessions public, and the government should publish all private and public investment and aid contracts. Cambodia faces no external threats sufficiently serious to justify secrecy. Nor does secrecy allow Cambodia to exercise monopoly bargaining power to improve its contract terms. Secrecy today serves merely to cover corruption. Transparency works to the advantage of all reformers and may, indeed, enhance Cambodia's bargaining power by limiting the ability of foreign investors to play Cambodian officials and ministries against each other. Donors can require that all foreign assistance projects be made public. The IMF set the standard in 1996 when it sanctioned the RGC for a failure of transparency in the sale of state assets.

Developing a Civil Society and Market Economy. Civil socialization works by reducing demands on the managerial capacity of the state and improving a society's capacity to articulate and meet public needs. It also generates employment and careers outside the bureaucracy and the army. UNTAC helped open a space for hundreds of new, indigenous Cambodian NGOs. In step with the moderating of civil war, traditional Buddhist organizations began to reestablish their role as spiritual guides and community organizers in the rural areas.

Marketization has created new sources of livelihood in Cambodia's cities and towns. International donors' requirement of transparent investment contracts can limit corruption and encourage broad-based economic development that takes advantage of Cambodia's low wages and access to ASEAN and other international markets. Apparel and other light manufacturing are currently experiencing a boom around the cities. Well-meaning foreign activists are protesting child labor. A better focus would be establishing the right to unionize and promoting basic health and safety standards. Working in a clean, safe factory near their parents is a step up for the many Cambodian children who toil on the rice farms and for the unfortunate thousands who work in the brothel villages that surround Phnom Penh.

The UNDP has developed the single most promising model for combined market and democratic development in the countryside. The Cambodia Area Rehabilitation and Regeneration (CARERE) Project II, or "Seila" (which means "foundation stone" in Khmer), combines rural infrastructure development, local participatory decision making, and state capacity building. Designed as a pilot for five provinces, Seila establishes a chain of elected committees beginning with the village development committee, which elects a commune committee, which in turn elects district and then provincial development committees. The provinces are given independent budgets (as are the districts) to allocate among worthy projects proposed by the villages and communes. This is designed to be bottom-up, not top-down, democratization. It embodies the potential of building participatory, local self-determination and accountability. The UNDP assists the provincial committee with technical advice designed to build planning capacity and responsible budgetary control at the provincial level. Seila won the support of the national government and five provincial governors. It was scheduled to go into expanded operation in 50 villages. ₁₈ The autocratic structure of the Cambodian village will not be changed overnight, but even first steps toward consultation and accountability, when connected to real investments, can begin to mobilize rural efforts.

International Facilitation

Outsiders are needed; they control the international legitimacy, the capital, and the markets that the CPP needs. In September 1997 the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and ASEAN wisely combined forces to focus diplomatic efforts. The result was ASEAN's decision to postpone Cambodia's membership and the UN's decision not to seat the coup delegation. Such diplomacy sends a clear signal of the international and regional interest in the continued progress of peace in Cambodia.

An UNTAC II is out of the question (no one in the international community is prepared to invest the manpower or money), but something more than the monitoring of a future election is required. Monitoring will be too late to correct abuses or assist the coalition. Cambodia needs a UN Peace-building Mission for Cambodia (UNPMC) that will assist in the planning for a national election as well as in building the capacity of the civilian and military bureaucracy. Intensive monitoring and technical help worked in El Salvador in 1994 to train a national civilian police, begin the reform of the judiciary, and produce a poll that allowed the beleaguered FMLN former-guerrilla movement to gain a toehold in the government. ₁₉ It should work in Cambodia as well, where the voters have a standard exemplified in the free UNTAC elections of 1993. NGOs need to add intensive campaigns of voter education, modeled on the successful ones organized by UNTAC, especially in the regions the Khmer Rouge barred from UN access in 1993. UNPMC should monitor and provide technical assistance only. Cambodians should organize the elections to develop indigenous democratic capacity if for no other reason.

Investing in the long-run development of human rights and a vibrant civil society also calls for a continuation of the UN Center for Human Rights. UNCHR assists the government in a variety of ways, including human rights education and training, but it is urgent that it retain its active and outspoken reporting of abuses. The center's rigorous monitoring is a valuable source of information. Without the cover that UNCHR provides, local human rights activists believe that they would be forced into silence.

The international community should be prepared to restore all aid to a Cambodian government that agrees to a UNPMC. The current cuts in foreign aid and the collapse of international private investment are powerful incentives for resuming the path of comprehensive peacebuilding. Should the government refuse a UNPMC, aid should be limited only to assistance that directly serves to support the poor and builds indigenous nongovernmental organizations and a civil society free of government control. If the government tries to exploit or tax the aid, it should cease.

Finally ASEAN has a key role to play. Having been a pawn of global politics and invasion, Cambodia is eager to obtain the status of a full member of the region by joining ASEAN, which has a stake in Cambodia's success. Cambodia will provide a vibrant market for ASEAN products and a place for investment with access to trade preferences for countries such as Singapore and later Malaysia and Thailand as they graduate from that status. Failure in Cambodia, on the other hand, will generate spillover military strife, drug cartels, and regional contests for subversive influence.International Facilitation

 

Conclusion

It is time for King Sihanouk's last hurrah. The man who led Cambodia to independence from France in 1955, maintained the precarious balance between the North Vietnamese and the United States in the 1960s, and orchestrated the Paris Peace Accords of 1991, again needs to lead Cambodia in a peace-building campaign to restore legitimacy and effectiveness to the Cambodian state. Though ill and frail, he alone can mobilize a national coalition of all the parties and call on the international community to once again take on an active peace-building role.

Peacebuilding in Cambodia tests whether the antagonists of the civil wars can be turned into the protagonists of party politics. The Paris Peace Accords were comprehensively negotiated among the factions over 10 years and received the full support of the international community, together with the deployment of 23,000 peacekeepers in 1992-93 and an expenditure of about $4 billion in peacekeeping and foreign aid. Smaller efforts in less divided countries have worked, for example in Namibia, El Salvador, and Mozambique. Will this larger, more difficult test be passed? If not, what are the prospects for peacebuilding where the divisions are even more severe and have an ethnic or religious basis, as in Bosnia or Angola?

 

Endnotes

Note 1: See U.S. General Accounting Office, Cambodia: Limited Progress on Free Elections, Human Rights, and Mine Clearing (Washington, DC: GAO, 1996). Back.

Note 2: In December 1996 a near consensus existed among Cambodia experts that the chances of a coup in the near future were about 50-50. Back.

Note 3: For a criticism of electoral strategies for peace, see Jack Snyder and Karen Ballentine, "Nationalism and the Marketplace of Ideas," International Security, Vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 5-40. Back.

Note 4: Keith Richburg and R. Jeffrey Smith, "Cambodian Chaos," International Herald Tribune, July 14, 1997, p. 4. Back.

Note 5: For a thoughtful discussion of Cambodia's political legacy, see Aun Porn Moniroth, Democracy in Cambodia: Theories and Realities, trans. Khieu Mealy (Phnom Penh: Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace, 1995). For background on these issues, see Ben Kiernan and Chantou Boua, eds., Peasants and Politics in Kampuchea 1942-1981 (London: Zed Press, 1982); Michael Vickery, Kampuchea: Politics, Economics, and Society (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1986); and David Chandler, "Three Visions of Politics in Cambodia," in Keeping the Peace: Multidimensional UN Operations in Cambodia and El Salvador, ed. Doyle et al. (Cambridge University Press, 1997). Back.

Note 6: Royal Government of Cambodia, First Socioeconomic Development Plan, 1996-2000, p. 85. Back.

Note 7: Ibid., Table 2.3, p. 17. Back.

Note 8: Ibid., p. 90. Back.

Note 9: John P. McAndrew, Aid Infusions, Aid Illusions, Working Paper No. 2 (Phnom Penh: Cambodian Development Resource Institute, January 1996). Back.

Note 10: "Recommendation to the International Committee on the Rehabilitation and Reconstruction of Cambodia, 1995" in Cambodia Rehabilitation Program: Implementation and Outlook: A World Bank Report for the 1995 ICORC Conference (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1995). Also see Benny Widyono, "Reconstruction of the Post-Conflict Public Administrative Machinery in Cambodia" (prepared for the Interregional Seminar "On Restoring Government Administrative Machinery in Situations of Conflict," March 13-15, 1996, Rome), and Royal Government of Cambodia, "The Administrative Reform: An Overview" (prepared for the Donor's Meeting, Phnom Penh, May 10, 1996). Back.

Note 11: UNTAC's mandate specifically charge it to exercise supervision over "agencies, bodies, and other offices [which] could continue to operate in order to ensure normal day-to-day life." For background on the new features of the UN mandate in Cambodia see Steven Ratner, The New UN Peacekeeping (New York: St. Martin's, 1995); Trevor Findlay, The UN in Cambodia (Stockholm: SIPRI, 1995); Janet Heininger, Peacekeeping in Transition: The United Nations in Cambodia (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1994); and Nishkala Suntharalingam, "The Cambodian Settlement Agreements," in Keeping the Peace: Multidimensional UN Operations in Cambodia and El Salvador, ed. Michael Doyle et al. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Back.

Note 12: On the control function, see Article 6 of the "Agreement on a Comprehensive Political Settlement of the Cambodia Conflict" and UNTAC Mandate Annex 1, Section B; New York: United Nations, October 30, 1991. Back.

Note 13: See Elizabeth Uphoff, "Quick Impacts, Slow Rehabilitation in Cambodia," in Keeping the Peace, ed. Doyle et al. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 186-205. Back.

Note 14: The press has been suggesting a connection between the July coup and Teng Bunma, who is said to have bankrolled it and to be personally involved, according to U.S. officials, in the transshipment of drugs in Southeast Asia. Teng Bunma recently received a timber concession of one million acres. "Cambodian Tycoon Acquires Major Timber Concession," Reuters, October 2, 1997. Back.

Note 15: The general case for marketization is made in World Bank, From Plan to Market: World Development Report 1996 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1996). See also Mancur Olson, "Disorder, Cooperation, and Development: A Way of Thinking About Cambodian Development" (Phnom Penh: Cambodian Institute for Cooperation Peace, 1996). Back.

Note 16: Robert J. Muscat, "Rebuilding Cambodia: Problems of Governance and Human Resources," in Rebuilding Cambodia: Human Resources, Human Rights, and Law, ed. Fred Brown (Washington, DC: Foreign Policy Institute, 1993), pp. 13-42. Back.

Note 17: J. P. Azam, Some Economic Consequences of the Transition from Civil War to Peace (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1994). Back.

Note 18: United Nations Development Program and Royal Government of Cambodia, Project Document CMB/95/011/01/31, CARERE II (Phnom Penh: February 1996), and interviews with Scott Leiper, UNDP, May 1996. For background, see RGC, UNDP, and UN Office for Project Services, Building the Foundation of the Seila Programme: The 1996 Work Plan of the Cambodia Area Rehabilitation and Regeneration Project (Phnom Penh: March 1996). Back.

Note 19: Ian Johnstone, Rights and Reconciliation (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1995). Back.