Newsgroups: bit.listserv.seasia-l
Date:         Wed, 2 Sep 1992 14:08:37 -0400
From:         Nhan Tran <tran@PEORA.SDC.CCUR.COM>
Subject:      CAM: Sorting out Cambodia
X-To:         FISHLM%SNYBUFVA@pucc.princeton.edu, seasia-l@msu.BITNET

08/23

Sorting Out Cambodia

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

   ------
 By PETER ENG
 Associated Press Writer
   PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) -- The past haunts Cambodia's future, and the
people know that what happens to them depends on whether the Khmer Rouge is
willing to make peace.
   And Cambodians know that to move forward, they must free themselves not just
from the Khmer Rouge but also the dictatorial tradition of which the group is a
part.
   Ka Sunbaunat, a psychiatrist at the Phnom Penh medical school, said most
people still suffer from the trauma of Khmer Rouge rule. The group slaughtered
hundreds of thousands of people after winning a civil war in 1975.
   "Cambodian people still don't dare plan for the future because they don't
trust that the situation will be secure," he said.
   "That's why you see people preoccupied with having a good time for the
moment. ... Cambodian history has shown us that after the war is over, even
worse suffering could be in store."
   Cambodia's hopes lie in a $2 billion U.N. peacekeeping operation intended to
result by May 1993 in the election of a democratic government.
   It results from a peace accord signed last October by the Khmer Rouge, two
other guerrilla groups and the government installed by Vietnam, which invaded
Cambodia in December 1978 and overthrew the Khmer Rouge.
   But the Khmer Rouge has barred peacekeepers from its territory and refuses to
stop fighting unless the government is dissolved. It has even rejected pressure
to cooperate from China, its main backer during a dozen years of guerrilla war.
   U.N. peacekeepers will face increasing pressure for results in the next few
weeks because the money appropriated so far is running out and member nations
must decide whether to spend more. According to the original schedule,
registration of voters is to begin Oct. 1.
   No one can be sure what to expect from the Khmer Rouge, a fanatical,
secretive movement apparently still centered on one man, Pol Pot. Analysts
believe it has not abandoned the peace accord, but is just biding its time.
   Since its power lies in its soldiers, the Khmer Rouge may be delaying
disarmament in order to build a political organization to replace them.
   By shortening the time peacekeepers have in its territory before the
election, the Khmer Rouge hopes to reduce U.N. influence on the people it
controls, said Khieu Kanharith, a prominent Cambodian intellectual who advises
the government.
   He wrote recently that the Khmer Rouge knows no one wants the U.N. operation
to fail, so "everybody will be tempted to make any possible compromise to bring
them back into the process."
   Some Khmer Rouge rank and file appear less ideological than once thought and
are breaking with their leaders, according to Lt. Gen. John Sanderson of
Australia, the U.N. military commander.
   "There is a slight trickle of people who are coming across to the U.N.,
surrendering their weapons and indicating a desire to live a peaceful life," he
said.
   U.N. officers are making dangerous forays into Khmer Rouge strongholds to
tell the guerrillas their living conditions can only improve if they disarm. The
peacekeepers also have set up a radio station.
   Behrooz Sadry of Iran, the second-ranking U.N. official in Cambodia, said he
feels the peacekeepers should go to the boundaries of Khmer Rouge zones to test
whether the guerrillas will use force to keep them out.
   Living conditions should be improved just outside the zones, said Gen. Sak
Sutsakhan, commander of an anti-Communist guerrilla group.
   "These kinds of things attract people to our side," he said. "The people (in
the zones) don't want to stay in forests or mountains, confronting malaria. They
want to stay in good houses with electricity, rice mills and pagodas."
   With human rights and other programs, the peacekeepers are trying to change
almost every aspect of a country that, since the 17th century, has known little
but foreign domination, paternalistic monarchy, dictatorship and bloody civil
strife.
   Cambodians do not seek solace in the future, but in the ancient golden age
symbolized by the Angkor temples. Pictures of the temples hang everywhere.
   In the grim present, random violence is part of daily life.
   At a waterfall in southern Kampot province, a family made its living by
watching motorbikes for tourists. Someone who took exception to that planted a
mine and a teen-aged girl stepped on it, said May Jahel, a Lebanese working for
the International Committee of the Red Cross.
   "They play with weapons like they were nothing," she said.
   Some fear chaos will come again when the peacekeepers leave. Already, the
loosening of economic and social restraints and the presence of free-spending
U.N. personnel have worsened corruption, prostitution and thievery.
   There are rays of hope, however.
   Stephen Heder, an American who is a U.N. official and prominent Cambodia
scholar, said Cambodia should survive radical, rapid change toward democracy, as
other former dictatorships have.
   Already, the U.N. presence has fostered significantly more freedom -- and
appreciation of it -- for people living under the once Communist-style Phnom
Penh government, said New Zealand's Dennis McNamara, the U.N. human rights
director. He is helping establish Cambodian human rights institutions that will
outlive his mission.
   The general view abroad is that the world has invested too much to allow
failure. As for Cambodians, Sak said they "have suffered for two decades. Why
would the people let this opportunity out of their hands?"
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