CSI REPORT NO. 15

UN PEACEKEEPER IN CAMBODIA,

1991-1992: AN INTERVIEW WITH

MAJOR GEORGE STEUBER

Interview conducted by Dr. Jerold E. Brown

COMBAT

STUDIES

INSTITUTE
FOREWORD

In* the wake of the cold war, peacekeeping —or, more appropriately,

peace enforcing—is becoming an increasingly important role for military

forces around the world. Because of the many other missions it has been

responsible for, the U.S. Army has not participated significantly in

United Nations peacekeeping missions in the past. That situation will

almost certainly change in the future. Indeed, President George Bush's

December 1992 decision to commit U.S. forces to a humanitarian

peacekeeping role in Somalia may be indicative of the future use of our

military forces.

In 1991, two U.S. Army officers, Major George Steuber and Major

James Faust, and a U.S. Marine, Major John Dill, were sent on a dual

mission as liaison officers with the United Nations Advanced Mission to

Cambodia and as part of the United Nations Transition Authority in

Cambodia. The experiences of these officers offer a number of valuable

lessons on the pitfalls and frustrations of being part of an international

peacekeeping force.

In this interview, Major Steuber shares with us a number insights he

gained during his tour in Cambodia. Officers who are themselves

preparing to join peacekeeping missions will find Major Steuber's

experiences and ideas particularly interesting. And those officers who

perhaps never expect to participate in such missions will find much in

Steuber's words to reflect upon.

ZJUts.

December 1992 RICHARD M. SWAIN

Colonel, Field Artillery

Director, Combat Studies Institute

CSI Reports are short-term research papers prepared in response to

official inquiries. They are based mainly on secondary sources and

provide basic information on the subject under consideration. The views

expressed in a CSI Report are those of the author and not necessarily

those of the Department of the Army or the Department of Defense.
CSI REPORT NO. 15

UN PEACEKEEPER IN CAMBODIA,

1991-1992: AN INTERVIEW WITH

MAJOR GEORGE STEUBER

Interview conducted by Dr. Jerold E. Brown

Combat Studies Institute

U.S. Army Command and General Staff College

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 66027-6900

3CGS-00610
Dr. Brown: I am Dr. Jerold Brown, and this is the 25th of September

1992. I am interviewing this afternoon Major George Steuber on a list of

questions that we have presented him on his experience in the

peacekeeping mission in Cambodia. I'm going to ask Major Steuber a

series of questions and allow him to answer them to his own satisfaction,

and we will go through this list of questions until we are finished. The

first question, Major Steuber, is why were you selected for this

assignment?

Major Steuber: I was selected for this assignment based on a

requirement that was developed by the Department of the Army for

sending foreign area officers to Cambodia. The initial requirement was

for three U.S. Army officers, and that was modified to two U.S. Army

officers and a Marine officer. Both of the U.S. Army officers are

Southeast Asia foreign area officers. My compatriot, Major James Faust,

was trained in the Indonesian Staff College as his regional training, and I

went to the Thai Staff College.

Dr. Brown: Would you tell us what your mission was specifically and how

your stated mission compared to what you actually did when you arrived

in Cambodia?

Major Steuber: Our mission was actually in two parts. The first part was

as liaison officers assigned to the United Nations Advanced Mission in

Cambodia. We use the acronym UNAMIC for that. UNAMIC was

authorized by the comprehensive political agreement for a resolution to

the conflict in Cambodia. It was authorized under the broad heading of

the secretary general providing good offices to the four Cambodia

factions in resolving the conflict. UNAMIC itself was not mentioned in

the treaty, and that was a sticking point. One of the factions, the National

Army of Democratic Kampuchea, otherwise known as the Khmer Rouge,

refused in many instances to recognize UNAMIC as a legitimate agency

in country. Under UNAMIC, we were brought in, and the mission was to

establish liaison with the four fighting factions in Cambodia. Those four

factions are the Cambodian People's Armed Forces for the state of

Cambodia, the National Army of Democratic Kampuchea (the Khmer

Rouge), the Khmer People's National Liberation Armed Forces (the

Lon Nol faction), and the National Army of Independent Kampuchea,
which is the Sihanouk faction. We were supposed to establish liaison

with those four factions so they could resolve issues. We were also

supposed to establish a mixed military working group, which goes by the

acronym MMWG. That working group was established with the senior

UN military officer at its head and the four chiefs of the general staff or

comparable officers from the four factions acting as the senior officers.

We were to carry out a comprehensive mine-awareness program

throughout Cambodia because of the presence of some 3 to 4 million

mines within the country and because they take about 300 casualties per

month due to mine-related incidents. Finally, an implied mission for

UNAMIC was to prepare for the United Nations Transition Authority in

Cambodia or UNTAC. And the unit's missions eventually expanded

because of the problems with mines in country, to include a

mine-clearing portion and also to commence training mine-clearing

training teams. These teams were to be drawn from the four military

factions within Cambodia, receive training for mine clearing, and then set

about clearing the 3 to 4 million mines in country.

Finally, the last part of our mission was with the United Nations

Transition Authority in Cambodia. UNTACs primary mission was to

regroup, disarm, and canton 100 percent of the regular military forces of

the four fighting factions. In addition to that, they were supposed to

regroup and disarm all the militia forces of the factions and then

demobilize 100 percent of the militia and 70 percent of the regular

armed forces of the four factions. That was the primary mission.

UNTAC was also supposed to provide security for repatriation for

approximately 370,000 displaced Cambodians within the border areas of

Thailand. It was supposed to ensure that all foreign forces had left the

country and would ensure that they did not return. Other missions were

to maintain the sovereignty of the state of Cambodia, investigate any

violations of the cease-fire agreement, and rebuild the infrastructure of a

country which was literally destroyed by the last two decades of war.

Let's go back to UNAMIC. Our stated mission was to establish liaison

with the four factions, and we, in fact, did that. We also prepared the way

for UNTAC, and eventually, once UNTAC was established on the 15th

of March, UNAMIC then rolled into and became UNTAC. When I left
on the 1st of June, we were in the process of deploying the military

peacekeeping forces, eleven battalions, into the outlying areas.

Dr. Brown: How did the briefing that you received prior to going to

Cambodia compare to what you actually found?

Major Steuber: The only briefing that I received prior to departing for

Cambodia was a briefing from United States Pacific Command

headquarters intel personnel and also the people from the J5 policy

branch within CINCPAC. I received no briefing from either Department

of the Army, DCSOPS, ODO, which is the executive agency for the

mission, or from anyone in the United Nations. I went into this, as did

my two compatriots, a Marine major, John Dill, and Major Faust, blind

with really no idea of what we were supposed to do aside from what we

learned from the intel group.

Dr. Brown: How was your force structured?

Major Steuber: The force structure, first off, was a multinational force,

and when I got into Cambodia, the only military portion of the force that

had arrived was the headquarters elements and some supporting national

contingents. One national contingent was the French contingent that

provided air transportation, C160 fixed-wing aircraft and Puma

helicopters. The Australians provided a communications contingent for

internal headquarters communications, and they also provided

communications to the team sites. New Zealanders came in as a country

contingent with personnel trained in mine training teams and also

conducted the initial public information campaign about the mines.

There was also a German contingent that provided medical support.

On the structure of the headquarters, senior officers were designated

by the UN. The commander was a French brigadier general, Loridon;

the second in command was an Indonesian lieutenant colonel, Tinggagoy;

and the chief of staff position was originally filled by a Polish lieutenant

colonel. The rest of the personnel that came in were put into their

positions based on decisions made in New York, and then once the

advance party was in place on 9 November, decisions were made in

Cambodia. The structure as such did not have any noncommissioned
officers or warrant officers to do the work in the headquarters. All we

had were liaison officers brought in at that point from twenty-three

different countries. So all the administrative support was provided by

United Nations civilians. That support, even from my coming into

country in December was inadequate to the mission, and I will discuss

that problem.

Once we had gotten into country, we were broken up into teams,

liaison teams to establish liaison with the four factions and also support

teams. Those teams were located at Battambang and Siem Reap.

Battambang is a major headquarters for the state of Cambodia forces.

Siem Reap was also a major headquarters, and both of those locations

had airfields that were in working order. They received both civilian and

military flights of the state of Cambodia. There were three remote team

sites that were established, one remote site with each one of the other

three factions. Those were for the ANKI or National Army of

Independent Kampuchea—that was at Phum Ku on the Thai border in

the northwestern portion of Cambodia; the Khmer People's National

Liberation Armed Forces, or the KPNLAF headquarters, that was Team

Delta at Banteay Meanrith, again on the Thai border; and the last remote

site was at Pailin with the NADK or Khmer Rouge. That was our Team

Echo, again, very close to the Thai border. In addition, there was a small

liaison cell, initially two officers, that was in Pnom Penh and that did

direct liaison with the armed forces of the state of Cambodia. There was

one liaison officer in Bangkok whose job was to receive UN military

personnel coming through Bangkok and into Cambodia. In February, we

established another team site at Kampong Thorn that became Team Gulf

because of the fighting going on in that province.

Once the UNAMIC mission expanded to include training for mine

clearing, training team personnel, and also to do some initial mine

clearing, a Thai engineer battalion was brought into country under the

auspices of the UN. That engineer battalion started to clear portions of

Route 5, which is the major road that runs from the Thai-Cambodian

border at Poipet all the way to Pnom Penh. That engineer battalion was

also augmented by another Thai engineer battalion that came into

country under a bilateral agreement between the state of Cambodia and

Thailand. Again, that battalion started in Thailand and proceeded to
clear the road between Poipet, right on the border, and Sisaphon. The

UN battalion worked from Sisaphon to Battambang. All of this is on one

route, 5, which is the main supply route.

Finally, under the UNTAC mission, UNTAC has eleven infantry

battalions, and these infantry battalions are used to take over cantonment

areas within the country. They have established cantonment areas based

on one battalion being capable of taking care of five cantonment sites

within a battalion's area. UNTAC also has an engineer capability, one

engineer regiment with an airfield troop, a rail battalion, a field engineer

battalion, and a vertical construction battalion. It has a communications

support group, which expands the original Australian communications

contingent to provide communications throughout the country for all

military operations. There was also a supply regiment brought in to

provide logistics support for the units. Those are the main units that

would be operating in country.

There were some major problems with the way the force was

structured. First off, there were no noncommissioned officers or warrant

officers working within the headquarters to provide support for the

activities for the headquarters, and this made for some really distinct

problems. The civilian UN personnel that were supporting the force only

worked five days a week, whereas the military force was deployed

working seven days a week. The civilian administrative personnel had

never had any sort of interaction with a military force before, had no idea

what military terms meant. I think one of the key problems was that by

bringing in an ad hoc group of officers as a headquarters, there was

absolutely no common doctrine and no common operating system within

the headquarters. Without a backbone of noncommissioned officers and

warrant officers to do the work, we had some severe problems with

officers not knowing how to do the sorts of things that they were being

asked to do, having no experience in it. In some cases, because of the

way their armed forces worked, these people were literally unwilling to

do those sorts of things. There was absolutely no common training as to

how to do things, how to write reports, and those sorts of things. In fact,

when I left country after six months, neither UNAMIC nor UNTAC had

yet published a standard operating procedure for doing anything from an
operational standpoint or a sustainment support standpoint, which you

can imagine is a very distinct disadvantage.

Another problem was lack of an intel section or secretariat. The way

the force was structured initially, there was one person who was supposed

to handle information within the headquarters, information that would

be part of the normal intel function. Without an intel capability, there

was 410 way to take reports from the field, collate them, and get them to

the people that needed them. The insufficient intel capability gave us

immediate problems—the same thing with not having a structured

headquarters with a common doctrine. Messages would come into the

headquarters but would not be delivered to the right personnel, and no

taskings were assigned. Again, when I left at the end of six months, there

was no secretary that took a message, established who it should be going

to, assigned a tasking and a suspense date, and then ensured that the

tasking was met. And so those things were not done.

There were also some major language problems. General Loridon, the

commander of UNAMIC, did speak some English; he was fairly good at

it. However, the mission was established as a dual-language mission, and

everyone was supposed to speak both French and English. I would say

that easily 75 percent of the people coming into the mission spoke no

French at all. Most of them spoke English. Very few of them spoke

Cambodian or related languages. That was a problem in Cambodia

because of the Khmer Rouge and because of the fighting that's been

going on for two decades. The school system has been virtually

destroyed, and there are very few interpreters that can work adequately

in translating English to Khmer or French to Khmer. And so,

immediately, language capability was a large problem. Within my team,

Team Delta on the Thai border, my team leader was an Argentinian

lieutenant colonel. He spoke Spanish, and he spoke a very limited bit of

French. He spoke no English at all. So our immediate problem was the

team leader couldn't talk to the team. That's a distinct problem as you

might well guess.

There were also some very distinct problems with assigning senior

military personnel based on political agreements rather then based on

competency. The deputy commander of UNAMIC was absolutely

6
worthless. He did not know what he was doing and contributed

absolutely nothing to the military mission. There were a number of other

people who'd fall in the same category. As long as political appointees

are in senior positions within a UN headquarters and in other positions

within a UN military force, you're going to have some major problems in

getting missions done.

There was obviously not enough engineer support. A total of 1,300

engineers of all types were supposed to come into the country, in a

country that has 3 to 4 million mines and has a totally destroyed

infrastructure. It takes approximately 14 hours to go the 240 kilometers

from Pnom Penh to Battambang. Average speed is less than twenty

kilometers per hour, and that's without a loaded vehicle. That's in a

four-wheel-drive Nissan vehicle. So you can imagine that transportation

is a major problem. And that is one of the major roads within country.

On Route 6, which is the other major road in country, most of the bridges

are blown, and you have to take bypasses. To bring in one engineer

battalion to do all the infrastructure repair on a country that has literally

disappeared over twenty years is a total impossibility, and that was an

immediate problem. Those problems have since been addressed by

bringing in other engineer units.

Communications support was inadequate for UNTAC when I left. The

Australian communications equipment had not arrived yet. The

Australians are good communicators for small units, but they no longer

have division-size units. They've gone to all brigades, and they lack the

capability to provide adequate communications for a mission this size, a

very large structural problem.

Mobility of units varied considerably. Of the infantry units coming in,

some of them had organic transportation that they brought with them,

others did not. They were assigned in areas where, during the monsoon,

you cannot move unless you have at least five-ton trucks with

four-wheel-drive capability. Quite a few of them did not have this

capability, and therefore, once the monsoon sets in, they don't move.

One of the other problems that we had was medical support. The

Germans originally brought in a small medical detachment to provide for
UNAMIC. This was the first deployment by Germans outside Europe to

do things of a military nature. There was a debate that went on in

Germany over the legality of this, and should they pursue this, and until

that was resolved, we literally had no medical support for the UNAMIC

mission in Cambodia. When we had a lieutenant colonel wounded by

Khmer Rouge gunfire, they shot up a helicopter, he was medevaced. The

immediate medical attention provided to him was by Medicine Sans

Frontiers, French doctors in Kampong Thorn Province, not by UNAMIC

personnel. Our aircraft also did not have air-ground communications, so

that once they'd taken off from the airfield, they would be out of

communications until they got to a team site, which made it a problem.

Dr. Brown: How were you trained? Can you tell us how this training

compared to the training that the other peacekeepers with whom you

worked were trained?

Major Steuber: My training as a foreign area officer (FAO) was

extremely beneficial. I had gone to Naval Postgraduate School and

earned a master's degree in national security affairs, and my focus was on

U.S.-Indochina relations, so I followed the situation in Indochina in some

detail. Experience: I spent thirty-nine months in Vietnam with MACV

Studies and Observations Group and so had been in all countries in

Indochina. I had a pretty good knowledge of the historical background of

the conflict that was currently going on in Cambodia. I'm a graduate of

the Thai Command and General Staff College, and I toured throughout

Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia during my officer training. I'd just

completed four and a half years in the Pacific, two years and three

months at United States Western Command —as international military

affairs officer with responsibility for Thailand, Indochina, and the

Philippines—and an additional two years and three months at United

States Pacific Command as a J5 policy officer focused not on Indochina

but on areas that were contiguous. So my training as a foreign area

officer was very important, particularly the language training, as I will

point out later. I was able to use my Thai language training to a great

degree a lot of time, and it also helped me in learning Khmer.

The next best-trained group of individuals were the Russians. All

three of the Russian officers that came in with UNAMIC were trained as

8
foreign area specialists. Two of the officers had spent an extended period

of time in Cambodia. One Russian captain that was with me at Team

Delta had spent three years in Cambodia as the personal adviser to the

minister of defense for the state of Cambodia. He knew all the senior

officers within the Cambodian People's Armed Forces and had toured

through most of the country. One of the other officers had five years in

country in similar advisory positions. One officer had not come to

Cambodia, but all three spoke Khmer fluently as well as read and wrote

in Khmer. They were invaluable as far as establishing relationships, that

sort of thing. The other officers that came in who had some training that

was applicable were the British and the Austrians. They had all been

assigned to other United Nations missions. The Austrians have a school

which teaches UN peacekeeping methodology and operations. The Brits

have a doctrinal manual which is excellent. It covers peacekeeping

missions, reports. It's a how-to manual—how to write reports, what

reports are applicable, what's contained in them, how to set up

observation posts, and those sorts of things. Very, very good.

The Australians that came in the communications contingent had all

received at least some Khmer language training. Some had gone through

over a year's worth of training. They were also trained in customs and

other things that pertained to Cambodia and Indochina. A group of the

communicators were trained as medical specialists in that they could

provide immediate medical support not only to the communications

teams that were out there but also to the liaison officer and the observer

teams. So their training was quite extensive. None of the three

Americans that went in received any peacekeeping training prior to going

in or even any briefings that were specifically focused on peacekeeping.

However, the Marine major, John Dill, had participated in the UNIKOM

mission in Kuwait and so was familiar with the United Nations

methodology.

Dr. Brown: Did you find a conflict between the training that you had

received earlier in your military career and the demands as a

peacekeeper?

Major Steuber: I didn't find any conflict between training for war and

peacekeeping. As a matter of fact, training for wars is absolutely
essential if you're going to do a good job as a peacekeeper. First off, you

have to know your enemy. You have to be able to conduct military

operations and all those sorts of things, such as movement,

communications, planning, and all the sustainment-type things. All those

things that you have to do in a military mission, you still have to do in a

peacekeeping mission. The only thing you don't do, at least in theory, is

shoot, and that's really the only conflict. People do need specific training

in how to control fighting factions and civilian personnel without using

force or using an absolute minimum amount of force. That would be the

only conflict.

Dr. Brown: You've already addressed the language problem earlier and

certainly that presented some problems communicating with the locals.

Would you like to comment on how you communicated among the group

of peacekeepers?

Major Steuber: On three occasions among the peacekeepers, it was a bit

of a problem, especially on my team. What we did was, I had an

Australian communicator who was born in Chile, and so his parents had

taught him Spanish, so his Spanish got brushed up on very quickly. My

Argentinian team leader learned English, taught himself how to speak

English. We went into Thailand and got English-as-second-language

books and all sorts of things, and at the end of the six months, he had

gone from not speaking a word of English to being able to write his own

reports in English. So, in that instance, personal motivation of a team

leader was absolutely key.

On the other hand, we had Russian engineers that came into the force

in the April time frame to help with mine clearing. These gentlemen

spoke absolutely no English or French or anything else, and the only way

to communicate with them was through the other Russian members of

the team. I also had Indonesians. When I was at Kampong Thorn, the

Indonesian 5th Indonesian Airborne Ranger Battalion was the unit

assigned to me, and some of the officers had problems with English. We

had to work around that as best we could. Again, I communicated with

the local personnel, the Khmer People's National Liberation Armed

Forces. Initially, all their senior officers spoke Thai, many of them spoke

English, and so I used my Thai almost exclusively in dealing with them

10
until my Cambodian, my Khmer, got good enough to where I could

communicate with them in Khmer. Similarities between Thai and

Khmer are such that within six months' time, I could listen to most

conversations and translate them for myself without using an interpreter.

I think that communications or the language training is absolutely

essential for the personnel going in on an initial mission to an area where

English is not normally spoken. The ability to speak with the people

without having to use an interpreter is very important. You do not lose

as much of the nuance as you lose when an interpreter is translating for

you, especially if you do not have military interpreters. Once, we were

able to hire a civilian interpreter to help in Kampon Thorn, but he did

not know any military vocabulary. While he was great for taking some of

the other team members down to the market and buying things for them,

he was absolutely worthless as a military interpreter.

Dr. Brown: What lessons did you learn from this experience that you

think are important to share with us?

Major Steuber: First, there must be a realization of and balance between

the objective and the commitment. UNTAC had a very clear objective

going into Cambodia. It's well spelled out in the treaty. Unfortunately,

the commitment of the four factions to that treaty and to that peace

process was negligible, at least on the part of one of the factions. It

became clear very quickly that the United Nations would not be able to

force a solution on the warring parties as long as the United Nations

force there was in a peacekeeping mode. Unless all factions are

committed to keeping that peace, there's no way that the United Nations

can force them to do that.

And one of the other things that we learned, or that I learned early on,

was the factions have got to take responsibility for making a peace

agreement, making cease-fires work. When we got there, the orientation

of the United Nations senior leadership was that the United Nations was

going to make peace work, and it cannot. Unless the four factions are

made responsible for taking steps to ensure the peace process works and

to implement the peace agreement, there's no way that agreement will

work. I think one of the other things that quickly came out was that as

11
long as the United Nations was going to take responsibility from the

factions, the factions would literally do nothing. They made no

preparations for regrouping and cantonment of their forces. They

expected the United Nations to do all the planning for it. They had made

no preparations to support it, and in fact, if you look at it from a

mercenary standpoint, the longer the United Nations is in Cambodia

pumping money into the economy, there is no incentive for the four

factions to do anything.

Next thing is that the United Nations' employment should be stepwise

and should be geared to do some concrete progress on the part of

whatever factions are fighting or contesting within the country. If you do

not have those sorts of steps and do not reward the factions by taking

further action, then there's no incentive for them to do anything. One of

the other things is that there must be some sort of agreement on the part

of the United Nations as to how far the United Nations is willing to go in

using the other instruments of power: diplomatic, economic, and

information power. The current situation in Cambodia is going to keep

on going as long as there's an open Thai border and there's no pressure

put upon Thailand to cease providing support to the Khmer, primarily

the Khmer Ro,uge, but also the other factions. As long as the Khmer

Rouge are making money, there's no incentive for them to follow any of

the stipulations in the peace agreement. So there needs to be a

consensus in the United Nations going in as to what force or what

instruments of power they're going to use and how far they are

committed to using them to keep the peace. I don't think that was ever

really agreed upon by the United Nations.

If peacekeeping doesn't work, someone has to make a decision to do

one of three things. One is accept a status quo and accept the losses that

you're taking at the same time. Or number two, withdraw. And finally, if

peacekeeping isn't going to work, is somebody going to then adopt the

peacemaking option—that is, go in and use force to bring the contesting

factions to some sort of agreement. If you do that, the peacemaking

option is really the same as going to war. You're going to have to have

the same sort of commitment to make it a peacemaking operation as you

would in using the UN to go in and make war against the factions.

12
One of the other things is that the military plan going in to a situation

like Cambodia has got to be realistic. As I said before, there were 1,300

engineers that were supposed to go in and literally rebuild the country,

which doesn't make any sense. There were no phones, no roads, no

industry, no services, virtually of any sort, in the major population centers

within Cambodia, let alone at the village level. There were no police

services provided to people in the outlying areas. All these sorts of things

are things that are going to be necessary and, quite frankly, things which

were not addressed in the United Nations plan. So I think that's key.

There needs to be a common doctrine if you're going to go in with a

military force; there should be some sort of common doctrine that the

people within that force can turn to to look for guidance. There needs to

be a common operating system. Now, if you can't get agreement on who

the observer should be, or if, in fact, you have observers populating your

headquarters, so that all national factions are represented, that's fine.

But there should be then a United Nations contingent, one national

contingent brought in to provide the basis for that headquarters. That

wasn't done and, again, when I left at the six-month point, UNTAC was a

nonfunctioning headquarters. There needs to be some sort of overview

or oversight of both the plan before it's adopted and then once the

United Nations has accepted the mission to go in. The actual functioning

of the United Nations mission should be reviewed. There needs to be

some sort of accountability. As long as you have officers placed in

senior-level positions as a political consideration, there is no

accountability.

The deputy commander, as I said, of UNAMIC, was worthless, and the

entire mission had problems because of that. We had a major problem

with finances. The liaison officers were being paid $111 per day for

subsistence allowance, which is an extraordinary amount of money.

When we were sent a report to justify that, the officer in charge of

personnel actions came to us and told us that he didn't care what we

wrote on those surveys as long as they totaled approximately $3,000 per

month per man required for subsistence. That's waste, fraud, and abuse.

Three Americans sat down with their team members and told them that

we would not allow that, that we wanted factual accounting of what it was

costing liaison officers to live in their areas, and that that's what we would

report and not some inflated figure. Once those reports were sent to the

13
UNAMIC headquarters, the reports from all three of the teams that had

Americans on them, and that were factual reports, were lost, were never

submitted to the headquarters in New York. I guess that pretty much

covers it as far as some of the lessons that I learned.

Dr. Brown: What preparations would you make for other peacekeepers

going to these types of missions? Specifically, what would you

recommend that they read?

Major Steuber: I think; as I said before, that personnel going in on the

initial mission should be, if not a foreign area officer that has the

language capability and all the background training that entails, should at

the very least be oriented to local cultures, have some orientation to the

language and some basic phrases. As a minimum, they should know as

much as possible about the political and military history of the area that

they're going to and should absolutely be familiar with the military

capabilities of the factions that are fighting there in the area: what

weapons they have, what their tactics are, what the command and control

structures look like, and quite basically just how to recognize them. With

four fighting factions in Cambodia, there's some great similarities

between three of the factions, and you need to be able to distinguish

who's doing what to whom on any given day. I would say that one of the

best sources in some of the areas is either the area or country handbook

that's prepared by Department of the Army. Those are good sources for

Southeast Asia. D. G. E. Hall has an excellent history book that covers

those sorts of things, but those are absolutely basic to going in.

As far as UN peacekeeping specific-type things, the British have, as I

said before, a handbook on peacekeeping operations. It's excellent. It

describes most of the reports that would be necessary and what goes into

those reports. That should be studied as much as possible. There are

some other handbooks. I know the Nordic countries also have a

handbook for UN peacekeeping forces that gives you some idea of what's

required.

Finally, the training that should be given. I think that peacekeepers

need to be trained in how to handle both factions in a threatening

situation and also civilian personnel. We took badly wounded civilians

14
and faction personnel to the hospitals almost daily because of the mine

incidents. If at all possible, the personnel should receive at least a

refresher on lifesaving techniques. Of the Australians, at least one

person on each of the three-man communications teams had received

some major lifesaving training, and they were about the same as one of

our combat lifesavers within a maneuver unit.

I think one of the other things is that people need to know how to

survive in a strange environment, and that doesn't mean packing away

enough MREs to last you through six months. I say that for a couple of

reasons. First off, if all you do is eat MREs, you will not have a chance to

interact with the local people, and that, at least in a Southeast Asian

environment, is essential. Sitting down and breaking bread, having meals

with these people, is a very very important part of the culture. You need

to do that. In some areas, quite literally if you don't, if you aren't able to

eat local foods, then you will not survive. There aren't other sources of

supply, and believe me, UN sources of supply for us were woefully

inadequate. This can present a problem. One French police officer that

was sent out to the Cambodia-Vietnam border broke down and started

crying, and three weeks later, they had to evacuate him. He was a

psychological mess, just because of being in an extremely strange

environment. He could not cope with that at all, and they had to pull

him. Those sorts of things, I think, are absolutely necessary. One of the

things I think you should orient U.S. peacekeepers to is the fact that if

they work with other foreign nationals, they are going to be frustrated

about 75 percent of the time, because we have a much different work

ethic than many other nations. Where we try to get things done, some of

the other people coming in do not have that orientation.

Dr. Brown: Talking about frustrations, you expressed some of these, I

believe, when you talked about lessons learned. What were your

personal frustrations during your mission?

Major Steuber: I think one of the first ones was the complete lack of

preparation that the UN mission displayed when the observers, or rather

liaison officers, initially arrived in Cambodia. An advance team went in

on 9 November, and we, the liaison officers, arrived in Cambodia on the

9th of December. During that one month, there'd been very little done

15
to prepare the way for us, and this after a couple of initial fact-finding

missions and a reconnaissance had been done by other UN teams. When

we got to Pnom Penh, the liaison officers were there from 9 December

until we started our deployment to the remote sites on the 20th of

December. UN headquarters moved three times within Pnom Penh

during that period of time, because the civilians and the military side of

the UN mission couldn't agree on where the site should be and who

should have what size office space and that sort of thing. That's

extremely frustrating. We were deployed to the UN remote sites without

ever having been told what our mission was. Aside from deploying, we

were supposed to establish liaison with the faction members. We had no

SOPs; we had never seen a copy of the Paris agreement that was

governing all the things we were supposed to do on our actual mission for

UNAMIC-UNTAC. The draft form did not get into country till the 3d of

February, so we were kept in the dark, to say the least.

We were deployed to our remote teams sites without maps. I did not

have a map, aside from a 1:1,000,000 flight map. I did not have a map

that covered my own team location or my area responsibility for the team

or for the Khmer People's National Liberation Armed Forces. That also

was horribly frustrating. What I did was, I went to the KPNLAF

headquarters; I borrowed their 1:50,000 maps, which were about 20 years

old; I took them across the border into Thailand and xeroxed off the

maps and then glued them together to provide my own maps. Because

these were 20 years old and the terrain had changed, roads had

disappeared, villages had sprung up, other villages had been vacated and

had literally become jungle again, the maps were of not much use.

However, we also had, because of the foresight of the Marine officer

coming over, he brought one Magellan and one Trimpack global

positioning system receiver. I had the Trimpack, and it was absolutely

invaluable in going out and locating positions and that sort of thing. So,

not having maps was initially frustrating.

We thought that that would be cured soon, when I went from Team

Delta's location, the Thai border, down to Pnom Penh. After two

months, we still had not received maps of the team location. I got down

to UNAMIC headquarters, and because the chief of staff of the

headquarters did not speak either French or English, he only spoke

16
Polish, I couldn't speak to him. So I grabbed hold of the chief of

operations and asked him why, in two months time, after repeated

requests, both by radio, by satellite communications, and by message, we

had not received maps. He could give me absolutely no reason why. I

went to the local market and purchased, on the black market, all the

maps that I needed after just one visit and, in fact, when I went back and

threw them on the chief of ops' desk, I was then given $1,600, and I went

down to the black market and purchased enough maps to supply all the

teams with at least two sets. Why I could do that and he couldn't do that

in two months period of time, I'm not sure. The market was less than a

half mile away from the headquarters.

This points to the UN bureaucracy. It was horribly frustrating. UN

civilians and, unfortunately, a lot of the military UN personnel that come

from other countries are there to make money. They could give a damn

about the UN mission. The UN civilians were more interested in making

sure that their subsistence allowance was increased and they had plenty

of time off rather than having to accomplish any sort of a mission. They'd

get to the headquarters at 9 o'clock and they'd leave at 5 o'clock every

day, and you would not see them. We were deployed to our remote

locations on the 22d of December. After being deployed, the deputy

commander of the UNAMIC went back to Indonesia for the holidays.

All of the senior UN civilian personnel went either back to their home

countries or Thailand for the holidays. And, in fact, the UNAMIC

mission ground to a halt, because there was absolutely nobody in Pnom

Penh to make any sorts of operational decisions.

This, in spite of the fact that the team that went into the NADK, or

Khmer Rouge site, was literally under house arrest. They could not leave

the building without being under armed Khmer Rouge guard. The

Khmer Rouge would not allow any helicopters to come in to provide

resupply or anything of that nature. The Khmer Rouge refused to allow

the United Nations personnel to have any contact with any other

Cambodians in their area. The UN personnel were literally forced to do

everything, wash clothes, prepare their own food, all those sorts of things,

by themselves, in addition to being kept literally under house arrest.

That was very frustrating. So just working with a UN organization is

frustrating because there is no accountability.

17
There are many many hidden agendas. In addition to making money,

some of the national contingents—specifically the French—the French

insisted that the Cambodian mission be a dual-language mission, because

they wanted to reinstitute the French language into Indochina, one

country at a time. Cambodia first, then Vietnam later, if they could do it.

They made no bones about that. The Indonesians had come into the

country and were busy looking for land that they could purchase and that

they could use to make some money. The Thai came in and provided

engineer support up in the northwestern portion of the country, because

the Thai were busy looting Cambodia. They're taking as much timber,

gold, cattle, rice, gemstones, and anything that isn't nailed down out of

Cambodia, and they fully intend to keep doing that as long as possible.

Outside agendas are not just from national contingents within the

United Nations. Even though UNTAC is supposed to be the umbrella

organization through which all other UN agencies worked, the UN high

commissioners for refugees had a very distinct agenda in that they

wanted to get rid of all the displaced people on the Thai borders as

quickly as possible. Whether that meant sending them into areas that

were still mined or not being able to provide support for them over the

rainy season, they weren't particularly interested in that. They did not

coordinate things well, and in fact, they started the repatriation of

refugees before even a single member of the four factions had been

regrouped, disarmed, or cantoned, and since that process is not going on

and they're still trying to repatriate the displaced people, you can see that

there's still a very distinct lack in coordination between the agencies.

Finally, dealing with U.S. agencies, we had to deal—we being the three

Americans in UNAMIC missions—with the United States' special

representative to the Supreme National Council in Cambodia. These

people are State Department individuals, and some of them were very

helpful. However, they have their own agenda. They didn't want to send

any bad news back to Washington, D.C. Even though my team in

Kampong Thorn was taken under fire by the NADK on numerous

occasions, even though NADK, or Khmer Rouge, refused to coordinate

with UNAMIC and has refused to start the cantonment process, the State

Department senior representatives were still sending back rosy, well if

not rosy at least not as highly pessimistic, reports saying that they

18
thought, they were unconvinced, that the Khmer Rouge was really trying

to block this process. I don't know how much more explicit you could be

when the Khmer Rouge's division commander comes up on the radio

and tells you that he will kill you, meaning your UN team, if you come

into his area. If that isn't blocking the UN mission, I don't know what is.

The State Department reports kept going back to Washington, D.C.,

even after Lieutenant Colonel Russell Stuart from Australia was shot in

February, that was a direct attack on a UN helicopter, and my team was

taken under fire on numerous occasions. On the 4th of May, the Khmer

Rouge launched a major offense operation in Kampong Thorn Province,

northeastern Kampong Thorn Province, the second major offensive

they'd launched in Kampong Thorn Province since February. That was

really frustrating.

Also, even though I made repeated requests through both the U.S.

Special Mission in Cambodia and the U.S. Defense Attache Office in

Thailand for map support, the United States did not release maps to the

UN. I was rather frustrated by the lack of U.S. support for a mission that

we're paying about a billion dollars to accomplish over the period of the

next couple of years.

Dr. Brown: I know that you spoke with the chief of staff when he was

here at CGSC a couple of weeks ago. What did the chief of staff ask you

about your experiences in Cambodia?

Major Steuber: I think most of your questions have covered what the

chief of staff asked. He asked me specifically what my background was

and how I was selected. He asked me about the missions and the

structure of the UN force there and some of my frustrations. And he

asked me to focus on the training, as we've already discussed, for UN

personnel going in there. What I think is important is that the United

States is probably going to get involved in military peacekeeping

operations on a much larger scale in the future, and I very firmly believe

that if the U.S. military is going to be involved that we develop a doctrine

that will support those peacekeeping operations and that we then devote

the necessary assets to personnel that are assigned to those peacekeeping

missions.

19
One of my frustrations that I did not detail: I literally fell off the face

of the map or face of the globe once I'd got out to Cambodia. I was not

contacted in Cambodia by the Department of the Army the entire time I

was out there. I was never contacted, with one exception, by my own

headquarters. I was contacted by U.S. Pacific Command headquarters

when it looked like the UNTAC mission would completely fall through

and we, the USCINCPAC, would be, or could possibly be, tasked with a

rescue mission to come and get U.S. personnel out of there—not only

U.S. military personnel but also the State Department or the U.S.

civilians. I assured them that wasn't going to be, or it would not be

necessary. That was the only time I was contacted. We did not receive

.any support, to include my year group was faced with a reduction of

force. I was never notified of that by my headquarters or through the

Department of the Army. Had it not been for a personal friend who's at

the Center for Low Intensity Conflict and another close friend who's

currently on the NSC advisory staff to the vice president, I never

would've been brought back to Washington, D.C., to be debriefed by

either the intelligence community or by the Center for Low Intensity

Conflict or by Department of the Army DCSOPS. So I think there needs

to be some focus given to how we set up support for people sent out on

peacekeeping operations.

Dr. Brown: Is ther6 anything else that we should have talked about this

afternoon that we have omitted?

Major Steuber: I think that pretty much covers the spectrum. There are

a lot of anecdotal things that I could tell about actual operations with the

Cambodians, and perhaps that needs to be the focus of a different

interview. One of the things that I've found in dealing with the

Cambodians, specifically, was that going out there was almost a mystical

experience in that the Cambodians' outlook on warfare, and just on life

in general, is very much influenced by their Buddhist background.

There's also a lot of Brahman religious background there and some

animism. I think the first time that became a problem was when a large

windstorm hit Battambang and there was firing, very intense firing,

small-arms fire, automatic weapons, from the northwest corner of town.

It proceeded to roll through the town almost like there was a major

operation going on, an attack of some sort. The United Nations team

20
that was in Battambang was literally seconds away from calling for a

rescue operation from UN headquarters in Pnom Penh, when all of a

sudden, they noticed that in fact nobody was shooting at them and/or

anything else. It was the Cambodian soldiers firing in the air to make the

wind stop. That happens throughout the country. They use all sorts of

talismans, charms, and all sorts of things to avoid being killed. Most of

the soldiers that I encountered had distinctive tatoos all over their bodies

as charms to keep bullets from penetrating or from killing them, and if

they were wounded, to make sure that it wasn't a life-threatening wound.

UN peacekeepers are cast in a much different role from traditional

military in Cambodia. One of my KPNLAF colonels came in one day,

and we were discussing how difficult it was for eleven infantry battalions

to literally take military control of a country. He pointed out that one

UN soldier was worth a thousand Khmer, because the UN soldiers

brought something that no Khmer soldier had ever brought, and that was

peace. Khmer soldiers only brought fighting and death to Cambodia,

whereas the United Nations came bearing peace. During operations in

northwestern Kampong Thorn, we went into the area on a

reconnaissance; we went in unarmed. When we went in on that

reconnaissance, we literally were met by thousands of Cambodian

civilians as well as military personnel from all four factions. The civilians

were begging us to stay there, because they felt that if so much as one

white vehicle or one blue-bereted military person was there, that the

fighting would stop. In fact, once we finished that reconnaissance

through there, we went from daily multiple violations of the

cease-fire—with artillery, rockets, small arms, automatic weapons, RPGs,

and the full gamut of weapons systems available—to no incidents. There

are a couple of things that could've contributed to that, but I think it's

important to recognize that there really and seriously was another side to

the acceptance the Cambodians gave to the United Nations people being

there. We were not Cambodian military; we brought peace not war. I

think that was important.

I think one other thing that really came out quite vividly was that we

must not underestimate the popular support that the Khmer Rouge have

within Cambodia. I could not go into a region in Kampong Thorn

Province where Khmer Rouge were not readily accepted by the civilian

21
populace. Maybe not all of them, but there was always some support

there. In the areas that were absolutely under their control, they had

established a very wide base of operations and popular support. They're

able to do that because the Khmer Rouge have focused on an ethnic

conflict that has existed in Cambodia for over 500 years, and that is the

conflict between ethnic Vietnamese and ethnic Cambodians. The

NADK, the Khmer Rouge, never make any announcement or say

anything unless they preface it with the fact that they are fighting against

the Vietnamese or the lackeys of the Vietnamese, the state of Cambodia

government, or the Cambodian People's Armed Forces. That has stood

them in good stead, and until that can be resolved, the fact that there are

no longer any Vietnamese units in Cambodia and that the ethnic

Vietnamese in the Cambodian government pose no threat to ethnic

Cambodians is irrelevant. The Khmer Rouge will be able to use this fear

to maintain the source of power it has.

Dr. Brown: Thank you very much Major Steuber. We appreciate your

time this afternoon. We are looking forward to finishing this project and

sending the transcript to General Sullivan. I will keep you informed of

our progress.

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Combat Studies Institute

Missions

The Combat Studies Institute was established on 18 June 1979 as

a department-level activity within the U.S. Army Command and

General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. CSI has the

following missions:

• Prepare and present instruction in military history at

USACGSC and assist other USACGSC departments in

integrating military history into their instruction.

• Publish works in a variety of formats for the Active Army and

Reserve Components on historical topics pertinent to the

doctrinal concerns of the Army.