Cambodia: the Un's

By WILLIAM SHAWCROSS PHNOM PENH WILLIAM SHAWCROSS is the author of Sideshow, an important 1979 book on Cambodia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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