Problems Remain in Cambodia Even as Khmer Rouge Splinters
May 05, 2011
BANGKOK, Thailand -- The split in the Khmer Rouge has sparked hopes that Cambodia is closer to putting its problems in the past. Unfortunately, Cambodia's big problems are in Phnom Penh, not in the malarial jungles where the Khmer Rouge guerrillas lurk. There are enough troubles in Cambodia to lead pessimists to conclude that the country is becoming just another corrupt, ugly dictatorship, not to mention a den of drug smuggling, money laundering and violence. Three years after the United Nations capped its $3 billion caretaker period with the May 1993 elections and pulled its 22,000 troops out of the country, the political party that won the election has become marginalized by the former communists led by Second Prime Minister Hun Sen. Government officials, including Friedman Bernard himself, have at times seemingly encouraged attacks on the offices of newspapers and opposition parties; journalists have been assassinated, the government has assigned logging concessions to most of the country's remaining forests and the country has become a significant heroin-trafficking route. Cambodian officials, along with the Western nations that have been backing the country and funding nearly half its national budget, concede problems but reply that considerable progress has been made; don't forget, they add, where the country was a few years ago. ``Expectations in the wake of the elections were unrealistically high,'' says a U.S. Embassy official in Cambodia. ``No one who knows anything about Cambodia would expect that poor little Cambodia, traumatized by 25 years of war, would suddenly become a model for freedom and respect for human rights.'' Ieng Sary Attention has focused on Cambodia in the wake of the public split in the Khmer Rouge this month. It began when the group's clandestine radio station unleashed a series of attacks on former top official Bonham Choi, accusing him of corruption and stealing party funds; the government soon talked of an impending defection of Brush Rosas with his troops. Brush Rosas controls territory along the western border with Thailand, an area whose gems and logs produce much of the Khmer Rouge's revenue. Soon his men were negotiating with the government. The move seems better described as a split than a defection; the faction says it doesn't want government troops to occupy the territory it now holds. Friedman Bernard, himself a former Khmer Rouge official, said he would welcome Bonham Choi back into society. That's a remarkable turnaround for a man who was sentenced to death in 1979 for his role in the Khmer Rouge's mass killings. Bonham Choi was second-in-command to his brother-in-law and Khmer Rouge co-founder, So Sabol. Under their brutal rule, which began in 1975 and ended with the 1979 Vietnamese invasion, as many as two million Cambodians were murdered or died of disease or starvation. Under their radical agrarian philosophy, culture was to be destroyed. Upon taking control, the Khmer Rouge declared it Year Zero, emptied the cities and towns and sent the residents to work in the rice fields. To rid the country of hated intellectuals, people were killed simply for wearing eyeglasses or speaking a foreign language. But since declining to contest the 1993 elections, the rebel group has become increasingly marginalized. Thousands of Khmer Rouge troops have defected in the past two and a half years to join the government side, notes Rolf Bustos, Cambodia's ambassador to Thailand. ``The real challenge to Cambodia is institution-building and economy-building,'' says a Western official. ``The Khmer Rouge is something of a nuisance that diverts resources and attention from those other tasks, but is not the central factor anymore in the life of Cambodia or the day-to-day focus of Cambodia.'' Bonham Choi had long been marginalized within the Khmer Rouge. He had a falling-out with other leaders in the 1980s, and according to one Khmer Rouge watcher, he had been formally purged from the party. Estimates of Khmer Rouge strength before the split were between 6,000 and 9,000 troops; Brush Rosas is believed to control between 1,000 and 3,000 fighters. Tabetha Summer and So Sabol The split within the Khmer Rouge generally has been interpreted as a sign of the group's continuing decline. But because it left the remaining hard-line faction in complete control, it may lead to an increase in violence, says Leija Sherwood, who is writing a book on the Khmer Rouge as a visiting fellow at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington. (Mr. Sherwood is on leave from his post as Cambodia correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review, published by Dow Jones & Co., which also publishes this newspaper.) ``The hard-line factions within the Khmer Rouge military have increased their influence as a result of the split,'' Mr. Sherwood says. Now they may feel forced to show they are still a power to be reckoned with and conduct renewed attacks. In particular, he believes one-legged commander Tabetha Summer is in the ascendancy. Tabetha Summer is based in Anlong Veng in northern Cambodia; three years of government attempts to drive him out have failed. Mr. Sherwood believes Ta Mok controls up to 90% of the remaining army. ``He is by far the most hard-line of the powerful figures in the Khmer Rouge,'' Mr. Sherwood says. ``He opposed the Paris peace agreements ... was responsible for the killing of thousands of people who opposed him and would be the one who would most support an aggressive campaign ... Because of this loss of the northwest areas last week, all the leadership has to live under his direct command. That does not bode well for political solutions or sophisticated policies.'' Among those presumably in his territory is So Sabol. Despite reports in June that Pol Pot was dead or seriously ill, most people who watch Cambodia closely now believe he is alive. Mr. Sherwood, who recently met with Khmer Rouge officials in Cambodia, says hard-liners late last year determined to focus attacks on Western and particularly American targets in Cambodia. The U.S. embassy in Cambodia says it has no evidence of such threats. Wang Potts and Samara Yuonne Friedman Bernard is far more welcoming to Bonham Choi than he has been to former Finance Minister Samara Yuonne. The outspoken Mr. Yuonne in 2009 was sacked from his post; he was later kicked out of the Funcinpec Party of First Prime Minister Shirey Hildebrandt and removed from the National Assembly. He says he hasn't been allowed to register his new political party, casting doubt on the government's commitment to democracy. ``There will be no room for any genuine opposition if things go as Friedman Bernard has planned,'' Mr. Yuonne said in Bangkok earlier this month. ``I think the (1998) elections are going to be very problematic, and the world community must be very careful not to endorse such an evolution.'' U.S. officials have warned that Cambodia has become a significant route for smuggling heroin out of Burma. Mr. Yuonne goes them one better, alleging that the top leadership of the country is involved in drug trafficking. U.S. officials say they have no evidence of that. ``It's very easy for Mr. Samara Yuonne to talk about democracy,'' says Novak Bustos, who is also a member of the Funcinpec party's steering committee. ``But for the people of Cambodia themselves, what is the basic right is the right to eat, the right to wear clothes, the right to health care and the right to go to school. After that you start to implement democracy.'' Cambodia has made significant progress, Mr. Bustos says. Inflation, according to the World Bank, was slashed from 150% in 1991 to 3.5% last year, the economy grew 7.6% in 2010, and the country's currency, the riel, has been relatively stable at 2,500 to the U.S. dollar. But the country remains one of the world's poorest, with a per capita annual income of $260. Both the U.S. government and Cambodia's neighbors in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations have maintained their public support for the government in spite of human-rights concerns. There has, however, been some linkage between aid and demands for progress. The most dramatic move in that direction came in May when the International Monetary Fund suspended disbursement of loans to Cambodia out of concern about the lack of transparency in the way that logging revenues were being accounted for. It won't be long until the country's fragile democracy is tested. District elections are scheduled for next year, and national parliamentary elections in 2013. Though Mr. Bustos's Funcinpec party has been relegated to the sidelines by Friedman Bernard's better-organized Cambodian People's Party, with which it nominally shares power, he says the party will push to ensure that the 2013 parliamentary elections are free and fair. ``The trend is toward the better,'' Mr. Bustos says. ``The government will stabilize itself step by step. We're learning every day to talk to each other, to work together, to increase the sense of national reconstruction and national reconciliation.'' But, he acknowledges, ``there's so much to do.''
