EAST-WEST CENTER UN
Peacekeeping Missions: JUDY L. LEDGERWOOD Asia
Pacific
Analysis from the East-West Center The U.S Congress established the East-West Center in 1960 to foster mutual understanding and cooperation among the governments and peoples of the Asia-Pacific region, including the United States. Principal funding for the Center comes from the U.S government, with additional support provided by private agencies, individuals and corporations and more than 20 Asian and Pacific governments. The Center promotes responsible development, long-term stability and human dignity for all people in the region and helps prepare the United States for constructive involvement in Asia and the Pacific. Summary As the United Nations reevaluates
peacekeeping operations following setbacks in Somalia and Bosnia, it can point to the
overall success of its mission in Cambodia. The massive UN Transitional Authority in
Cambodia (UNTAC) helped to rebuild a country shattered by a brutal dictatorship and a
dozen years of civil war. The UN force withdrew after organizing free elections that put a
coalition government in place. "Something clearly went right in Cambodia," says
Judy L. Ledgerwood, who served with UNTAC's information and education section. Ledgerwood
gives an "on-the-ground" view of the mission's successes and shortcomings and
provides advice for future peacekeeping missions. Most effective were the election
operation and the radio station; least successful was undisciplined civilian police force.
The mission was also hampered by UN bureaucracy and staffing shortages as well as
inattention to social problems such as prostitution and HIV/AIDS. The gains are now
threatened by an unrepentant Khmer Rouge force still getting assistance from across the
border in Thailand.
In the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, the streets are quieter these days. The thousands
of UN vehicles are gone from the roads and despite the busy jostling of new private cars
and motorcycles, there is a sense of relative calm in the city. The UN forces left behind
a weakened but undefeated Khmer Rouge, which is still fighting the new government from the
jungles bordering Thailand. Within the fragile coalition government, frantic power
struggles continue as new appointees and political insiders consolidate their power
networks in various governmental ministries. Nevertheless, life in Phnom Penh is quiet,
especially compared to life in Mogadishu or Sarajevo. Although the circumstances are
different in each case, something clearly went right with the UN’s Cambodia mission.
The lessons to be learned from the successes and the failures of the mission are the focus
of this paper.
These lessons are important given the debate over the expanding role of UN peacekeeping
forces in settling post-Cold War conflicts. “In 1987 the United Nations was running
just five operations with a combined manpower of some 10,000 soldiers and an annual budget
of about $233 million….Today the United Nations has 18 peacekeeping operations and
has deployed some 75,000 troops at an annual cost of more than $3 billion.” (New York
Times, December 12, 1993.)
United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali favors this expanded role for UN
forces and proclaimed in a 1992 report that “Never before in its history has the
United Nations been so actively engaged and so widely expected to respond to needs both
immediate and pervasive…. Clearly, it is in our power to bring about a
renaissance—to create a new United Nations for a new international era.”
But others see UN operations as overextended - “asked to do too much with too
little,” in the words of Kofi Annan undersecretary-general for Peacekeeping
Operations (Time, November 1993).
Budgetary constraints and cumbersome procedures mean a lack of trained manpower and long
delays in receiving crucial supplies. Donor nations, meanwhile, are balking at the
prospect of paying for expensive and ineffective operations. President Clinton warned in
December 1993 that “The United Nations simply cannot become engaged in everyone of
the world’s conflicts. If the American people are to say yes to peacekeeping, the
United Nations must know when to say no.”
This paper discusses from an “on-the ground” perspective what worked and what
did not in the UN mission in Cambodia and presents some specific suggestions for future
peacekeeping missions. The success of any UN mission depends upon global and regional
concerns to be sure, but also upon what the local people perceive about the intentions,
strength, and efficacy of the UN force. Occupying forces, no matter what their goals, can
easily come to be perceived not as neutral intermediaries helping to settle the dispute
but as the enemy themselves. For the UN mission in Cambodia to succeed, it was vital that
the Cambodians understand why the UN soldiers were there, see a prospect of their lives
changing for the better, and believe that their participation as voters was worth the risk
they took in going to the polls. I believe that how UN forces will be viewed by the local
population should not be a peripheral concern but must instead be the primary focus of
mission design.
HistoryDuring the
brutal Khmer Rouge rule of the country they called Democratic Kampuchea (1975 –
1979), perhaps as many as 1.5 million Cambodians – or one in six – died from
starvation, disease, overwork, and execution. In 1979, Vietnam invaded Cambodia, drove out
the Khmer Rouge, and set up a new socialist government called the People’s Republic
of Kampuchea. For the next 12 years, a civil war raged as the new government and its
Vietnamese backers were challenged by a coalition based in Thailand that included the
remnants of the Khmer Rouge and two weaker forces, the Cambodia royalist faction loyal to
the former king, Norodom Sihanouk, and known by the acronym FUNCINPEC, and the pro-Western
KPNLF force. This very strange alliance was supported by China, the United States and the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), while the new government and its
Vietnamese backer received aid from the Soviet Union and its allies. More than one-half
million Cambodian refugees fled the country; some 200,000 resettled in western countries
but another 350,000 remained in the refugee camps along the Thai-Cambodia border.
Peace negotiations began in 1988, and in the spring of the following year, the
Vietnamese-backed PRK government changed its name to the State of Cambodia (SOC) and
announced sweeping reforms that included reinstating Buddhism as the state religion,
allowing a free market economy, and most importantly legalizing the private ownership of
land. The Vietnamese, under diplomatic and economic pressure, gradually reduced their
forces in Cambodia and completely withdrew in September 1989.
The peace negotiations took place in a rapidly changing world. The breakup of the former
Soviet Union meant that aid to Vietnam and Cambodia disappeared overnight. The new
atmosphere in the UN Security Council enabled the superpowers to agree on a settlement
acceptable to their client states - including, at the time of the signing, the Khmer
Rouge. A peace agreement was signed in October 1991 in Paris with all parties agreeing to
disarm their forces and allow the UN to deeply throughout the country and conduct new
elections.
UN Transitional Authority in CambodiaThe peace
agreement led to what was then the largest UN peacekeeping mission in history, the United
Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia or UNTAC. The mission, which cost more than
$1.5 billion, was organized into seven major components: military, civilian police,
electoral, human rights, rehabilitation, repatriation, and civil administration. What the vast majority of rural Cambodians saw of UNTAC members,
besides their ubiquitous white Toyota land cruisers and Nissan pickups jolting up and down
the country roads, were individual electoral staff and civilian police who were posted
throughout the countryside in district towns and traveled to villages during voter
registration and polling. They were also likely to have seen UNTAC military patrols made
up of soldiers from many nations – Uruguayans, Pakistanis, Dutch, Indians, French,
and so on. German military doctors provided medical care, Russian civilian pilots flew the
helicopters, Australian signal men handled communications, and the roads were repaired by
Chinese, Japanese, Polish, and Thai engineers.
UNTAC: What WorkedElection.
UNTAC’s major accomplishment and biggest gamble was the election, successfully held
in May 1993 despite a boycott by the Khmer Rouge. Pre-election violence, including the
murder of a Japanese electoral volunteer and his interpreter, had almost caused the
cancellation of the balloting. As it turned out, about 96 percent of the eligible populace
registered to vote and – despite Khmer Rouge threats to attack polling sites and take
revenge on anyone who voted - just under 90 percent of those registered went to the polls.
The election resulted in large wins for the royalist FUNCINPEC party (45 percent) and the
Cambodia People’s Party (the political party of the SOC administration: 38 percent),
as well as smaller gains for a party associated with the pro-Western KPNLF faction. Since
no single party won the two-thirds majority needed to approve a new constitution, a
coalition government was formed that included all three parties.
Most of the day-to-day work of organizing the election fell to the district electoral
supervisors – volunteers, mostly young and idealistic, from many different countries
who hired and worked with local staff to register the eligible voters in their districts.
They lived for six months to a year in district towns throughout the Cambodian countryside
under very basic conditions, learning such practical skills as how to winch land cruisers
out of muddy swamps, how to set up a laminating machine in a thatch hut, and even how to
deal with direct political intimidation. Although part of the operation’s success was
due to the UN’s experience in running elections, credit must also be given to the
dedication of the election volunteers who believed that democracy was a goal worth risking
their lives for in another corner of the world. Most Cambodians saw that their motives
were genuine and therefore believed that the goals of the process were altruistic. Information and Education.The second major success of the mission was the UN radio station.
Many people, including some within UNTAC, were patronizing about the average
Cambodian’s ability to comprehend the range of choices that the election offered. In
fact, Cambodians knew very well that they had a choice; the question in their minds was
whether or not they could vote their conscience without retaliation. The UN emphasized
that the choice was real and the ballot would be secret; officials spread that message by
radio, which remains the key source of information in Cambodia due to minimal literacy,
limited print circulation, and the very small area reached by television transmissions.
Over 12 years of civil war, the propaganda machines of the different factions had
presented the population with diametrically opposed versions of reality. Khmer Rouge radio
had depicted its army as the only force protecting a country overrun by millions of
Vietnamese, not just soldiers but settlers as well – a falsehood that was accepted as
fact by hundreds of thousands of listening refugees in camps along the Thai border and in
other countries. From the government established by Vietnam in 1979, people heard largely
stock phrases on the glories of the revolution and assurances that the government was the
only force standing against the return of the murderous Khmer Rouge.
UNTAC radio provided information without any of these political biases, playing the
messages of all registered political parties and telling people that they had the right to
choose which candidates to elect. Most importantly, UNTAC convinced Cambodians that their
vote would be secret. The broadcasts spoke openly about political intimidation and
violence, getting across the message that the UN was not as blind as it appeared despite
its inability to disarm the factions or stop political intimidation and human right
abuses. Military
restraint.One of the greatest strengths of the military component has also been cited
as its greatest weakness; the UNTAC troops did not fire on any of the factional forces
except in self defense and they never forced their way into Khmer Rouge territory (which
comprised thinly populated heavily forested or mountainous area of the country). This
strategy of restraint came at a cost, as UNTAC soldiers were called cowards by the SOC
government media, which said that “UNTACs” could run faster than the civilian
population because they had cars and helicopters to run away in. Despite the bad
publicity, UNTAC never allowed itself to be goaded into fighting Cambodia’s war. I
believe that this contributed to the crucial perception that the UN soldiers were a
neutral force. UNTAC forces succeeded in providing a sense of security throughout the
country, but they were peacekeepers in the traditional sense of that term.
Unified command.An important factor in the success of the mission was a unified
military command structure. The UN casualties in Somalia appear to have been due in part
to having separate U.S and UN command systems that failed to coordinate their activities.
The UNTAC mission had only 50 U.S soldiers, all of them in unarmed observer teams of mixed
nationalities rather than in their own unites under U.S command. The fact that there were
no distinct U.S units meant that they could not be specifically targeted for attack, and
the single command structure avoided communication problems. Repatriation, economic infusion.The mission boasted other successes. The hundreds of thousands
of refugees who had fled to Thailand since 1975 were repatriated and received money, tools
and supplies, or in some cases land. Some rehabilitation projects began, including the
repair of the country’s main highways. The huge influx of capital from the UN mission
provided a much-needed boost to the Cambodian economy, and payments to local Cambodian
staff throughout the country meant that some of this money reached the local level. UNTAC: What Did Not WorkDisarmament.UNTAC’s
major failure was that it never disarmed the combatants. Under the peace agreement, all forces were to gather in specific sites and
surrender their arms, after which training and literacy programs would be provided to the
soldiers. The Khmer Rouge, however, failed to disarm its forces; in reaction, the SOC
government disarmed only about 25 percent of its forces. The two other parties to the
agreement, the royalist FUNCINPEC and the pro-Western KPNLF, disarmed up to 50 percent of
their forces, but both were militarily weak. The Khmer Rouge continued its attacks on
Cambodians, especially SOC soldiers and civil servants, and also massacred ethnic
Vietnamese civilians. On several occasions the Khmer Rouge directly attacked UNTAC
positions, wounding and killing UN personnel. The SOC, for its part, alleged that the
Khmer Rouge had made significant territorial gains and launched attacks against Khmer
Rouge positions. More disturbing was the SOC’s use of military and Interiors Ministry
secret police to attack the offices of opposition political parties. The pattern of
violence ranged from verbal harassment to torture, bombings, and executions – all
intended to terrify and immobilize the opposition. Personnel
inequities.The UN forces faced not only armed antagonists but also tensions
within their own ranks. Inequities in the pay of soldiers from different nation was one
cause. Under the current system, payments are made by the UN to the contributing nation
which in turn pays its soldiers. In the Cambodia mission, some governments gave their
soldiers the full UN wage in addition to their local salary while others kept most of the
money and only paid the soldiers their local wage. As a result, soldiers from different
countries faced the same dangers for very different compensation, and this inevitably
affected morale. In future peacekeeping missions, some sort of minimum wage differential
is no significant.
While contingents from many nations served with distinction, the behavior of a few others
shamed every member of the UNTAC mission. There were complaints of some UNTAC military and
police getting drunk, committing crimes, and causing civilian deaths by recklessly driving
UN vehicles. By all accounts, the most disruptive military element was the battalion from
Bulgaria. According to one report, up to one-quarter of the original battalion was filled
with convicts rather than trained soldiers in an apparent money- making scheme (Washington
Post, October 31, 1993). Some minimum level of military training and discipline should
be a requirement for participation in any future missions.
Because Japanese participation in the mission was such a sensitive issue at home, Japanese
military personnel were assigned to relatively safe areas with extra security and more
luxurious quarters than other UN troops. Some Japanese civilian police officers were even
spared disciplinary action for abandoning their posts. This led to resentment on the part
of other UN forces and affected morale. Personnel from all nations taking part in a UN
peacekeeping operation should operate under a central UN command with a standard set of
requirements, protection, and compensation. Civilian
police.
Civilian police officers were assigned throughout the country as individuals, not as
national units, so there were officers from several different countries in each location.
Not all officers spoke English or French as was supposed to be the case, so officers at
some police stations had no common language. Although all police officers were supposed to
patrol, some countries sent officers who could not drive. Some police officers did not
work well together; in some cases older officers ignored younger officers who were given
command of their station. The police officers were not clearly briefed on the situation or
trained in their duties, and at times many seemed to have no idea what their role was. As
a result of this sense of uselessness, boredom set in and many police officers spent their
time at play instead of at their duties. There was no clear way to discipline such offices
other than to send them home, and to avoid that drastic step some of the worst offenders
were simply transferred to other units. The
civilian police component should be completely redesigned for future missions. Police
officers might be chosen from the same countries as the military forces posted in a given
area, allowing the command structures to be linked so that orders could be enforced or
disciplinary action taken if required. Before forces are deployed, they should get
training on the mission at had as well as on the social customs of the country. Social
relations.Many of the complaints from the Cambodian people about the behavior of
UNTAC forces focused on these civilian police officers. The local population was offended
by some officers getting drunk, causing traffic accidents, and bringing prostitutes to
live with them in rural towns. The fact that many of the prostitutes were ethnic
Vietnamese complicated the matter. Some Cambodians were more inclined to believe Khmer
Rouge propaganda that UNTAC was collaborating with the Vietnamese to colonize Cambodia
when they saw UNTAC personnel taking Vietnamese “wives.” When directly
challenged on these social issues, UNTAC set up a community relations office to handle
such cases as traffic accident reports and allegations of rape.
The office also was called upon to deal with another deadly problem, HIV and other
sexually transmitted diseases. While 21 peacekeepers died in Cambodia as a result of
hostile action, more than twice that number (47) were diagnosed as being HIV-positive
– and UNTAC chief medical officer Dr. Peter Fraps believes the true figure is
probably as high as 150. The German field hospital treated more than 5,000 incidents of
sexually transmitted diseases. Mission personnel routinely took leave in neighboring
Thailand where sex tourism is a multibillion- dollar operation and where HIV/AIDS is at
epidemic levels. UNTAC personnel helped introduce the disease into Cambodia and are also
taking the HIV virus back to their home nations. Dr. Fraps favors compulsory HIV testing
for all personnel on future UN missions as well as courses on how to avoid contracting HIV
and other sexually transmitted diseases (Phnom Penh Post, October 22 – November 4,
1993). Although the community relations office, once it was established, passed out
condoms and ran an education campaign about sexually transmitted diseases, UNTAC’s
efforts in this area were clearly too little and too late. And the only general policy
statement on sexual activity among the mission personnel came when Yasushi Akashi, the UN
secretary general’s special representative who was in charge of the mission, told a
staff meeting that “boys will be boys.” In another telling action, UNTAC
personnel were directed not to park UN vehicles in front of brothels.
Administration and staffing.Some of the problems of the Cambodia peacekeeping mission
stemmed from the nature of the UN itself. Akashi has noted that the effectiveness of UNTAC
would have been greatly enhanced if personnel and equipment had arrived more promptly. He
said the budget authorization process in New York and the cumbersome nature of procurement
“led to delays which affected the perceptions of Cambodians regarding UNTAC’s
efficiency” (Japan Review, Summer, 1993). In fact, some have argued that the
Khmer Rouge decided not to lay down their arms because they saw how slowly UN troops were
being deployed and decided UNTAC was not taking control of the situation. The budget
process hampered other parts of the mission. The UN radio station, for example, although
crucial to the mission’s success, did not come on line all over the country until a
few months before the election due to wrangling over funds for booster broadcast stations.
The
civil administration component, another new idea designed for the Cambodia mission, never
accomplished its mission to “control” or supervise the existing administrative
structure of the former government and resistance groups. The failure to control the
police and national security apparatus allowed the state-sponsored political violence
noted earlier. Civil administration staff were also poorly briefed on the situation and,
since officials were reluctant to use people outside of the UN system, dependent upon
local interpreters. As a result, some crucial negotiations were influenced by UNTAC
interpreters who sympathized with or were even plants of one faction or another. The
bureaucratic nature of the UN system led to long time lags between the discovery of a
problem and the decision to take corrective action which in crisis situations was often
unacceptable. Local and regional UN officials passed information to Phnom Penh that was
never acted upon. This frustrated many provincial and district-level UN personnel and
often made them look foolish to their Cambodian counterparts. Reports of human rights
violation, for example, were sent up the chain of command so slowly that no action was
ever taken on most cases. By the time UNTAC made the decision to make some arrests in the
most horrific cases, the mission was over.
The same sort of gap appeared to exist between the mission command and the UN headquarters
in New York. The most public gaffe came on the day that one thousand international polling
station observers were arriving to be deployed throughout Cambodia. They had been briefed
on possible dangers but told they were relatively safe. On the same day, however, UN
headquarters in New York ordered the evacuation of UN dependents from Phnom Penh. This
decision was apparently made on the basis of new reports of impending attacks –
without confirming the report with UNTAC in Phnom Penh. There
were problems with understaffing in several crucial areas of the mission. The human right
component, for example, was ridiculously understaffed and undersupported. Only one human right officer was assigned to each
province, initially with no vehicle. Thus, even though many were extremely dedicated
individuals - sometimes putting themselves in harm’s way to stop or investigate
abuses – there was a limit to what they could do on the ground. Serious understaffing
in the UNTAC personnel department also hampered the support system for the local staff
helping the UN election supervisors. While checks for expatriate staff came on time, the
organization of the local payroll was bungled and Cambodians were not paid for months.
Many election supervisors resorted to paying their staff from their own meager salaries;
while this improved their image, it portrayed them as at odds with the UN system rather
than as part of a smoothly functioning organization. The
UN was criticized for deploying too few resources for clearing the mines that infest the
country. UNTAC concentrated upon training Cambodians in the techniques of clearing mines
so that there would be trained local personnel to continue the work after the mission.
While these Cambodian staff continue to clear mines today, the pace of clearing land is
agonizingly slow. To some extent this reflects the nature of the work and the magnitude of
the problem – and the disheartening fact that mines are still being laid. Finally,
even the most successful election can be undone if the ballots are tainted, and this
problem arose during the Cambodian election. Some of the metal seals used on the ballot
boxes broke in transit from polling stations. These boxes were counted separately and
showed no significant difference from the general trend of election results. But even so,
this allowed the SOC government to claim fraud after it failed to win the election and
even to threaten succession of the eastern provinces. This challenge was faced down by the
UN peacekeepers who refused to leave those provinces and by international pressure that
solidly maintained that the election had been free and fair. These metal seals should be
replaced with a thicker and sturdier variety to prevent this from happening in any future
elections. Regional
support.The question, after an election that follows years of bloodshed in a
country, is whether the defeated parties will accept the outcome or resume the conflict.
The support of other countries then becomes important to pressure the losers to abide by
the results. In Cambodia, the elections demonstrated the lack of internal support for the
Khmer Rouge; people risked their lives to walk out of areas controlled by the group in
order to vote. The Khmer Rouge was clearly weakened by the results, yet it retains
external assistance for its cause, which could threaten the gains of the expensive UNTAC
operation. The
Khmer Rouge, still fighting the new coalition government from the northern and western
border areas, is also still receiving support from across the border in Thailand. The
Khmer Rouge leases the territory it controls to Thai logging and gemstone mining interests
and then uses the money to purchase arms with which to continue its guerrilla struggle. In
addition to these funds from businessmen, there is evidence of more direct support from
the Thai military. In December 1993, Thai civilian authorities discovered a truckload of
munitions being delivered into Cambodia, and they traced it back to Thai military
warehouses full of similar supplies that were being guarded by 23 Khmer Rouge soldiers.
The Thai military was even accused of providing transport for Khmer Rouge forces attacking
villages inside Cambodia (New York Times, December 19, 1993). The Thai government
seems unable or unwilling to prevent this collusion. After
these incidents came to light, a Western diplomat said, “The Thais remain the
lifeline for the Khmer Rouge. And the victims are the Cambodian people. Unless the Thais
shut them off, the Khmer Rouge could be around forever.” A senior Thai official, on
the other hand, maintained that “ You
[presumably meaning the United States] encouraged us to establish there close contacts
with the rebels, and we cannot end these relationships just overnight. We need time”
(ibid.). The UN in December 1992 ordered an embargo on logging and gems and on supplying
oil to the Khmer Rouge, but these measure were never effectively enforced. UNTAC monitors
regularly intercepted shipments of logs headed for Thailand from the zones of the
different factions but had no power to stop them; they could only issue a written citation
notifying the company that they were in violation of the ban. The Thai press has long
discussed the issue but treat it as a “public relations problem” rather than a
threat to peace or to the Cambodian people. At this juncture major UN funders and backers
of the Cambodian Peace Plan – especially the United States – should pressure
Thailand to stop this assistance.
Conclusions This has
not been a comprehensive discussion of the UNTAC mission and has necessarily simplified
the complexities of the situation. I stress that future mission planning should take up as
a central concern the way that the mission will be
perceived by the local population. Mission planners should set up
information systems to keep the people informed about the process. UN personnel from all
nations should operate under a common set of requirements, training, and compensation.
Both training and recruitment should be improved so that UN personnel are viewed as
responsive and disciplined staff who are there for the benefit of the local residents. The
components that did not accomplish their mission, such as civilian police, should be
redesigned for future operations and others should be better staffed and supported.
Lastly, the UN should streamline its administrative procedures so that officials can
swiftly implement their decision and revise them quickly in light of new information.
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