C ambodia's hopes for peace were dashed when the Khmer Rouge withdrew from the
UNTAC elections. Academic Stephen Heder, in the last issue, concluded the
rebels had been serious about the elections, before they pulled out. Here, he
argues that their reasons for doing so were less than noble.
THE
Partie of Democratic Kampuchea (PDK) hoped that it could use the Paris
Agreements as an opportunity to expand its control over rural Cambodians by
dismantling the local State of Cambodia (SOC) political administration and
creating what it called village and sub-district Supreme National Councils (SNC)
after the national level body which the Paris Agreements defined as "the unique
legitimate body and source of authority" in Cambodia.
This was the key
part of the PDK's more general hope that the Paris Agreements would make it
possible for it to launch a pincer attack in which SOC would also be controlled
and neutralized from above via the United Nations. The PDK viewed both the
continued undermining of SOC from below and neutralization of it from above as
necessary conditions for achieving an implementation of the Paris Agreements
that was in accordance with its interests.
The testimonies of National
Army of Democratic Kampuchea (NADK) "self-demobilizers" - those who quit its
ranks to "rally" to UNTAC or SOC - are very clear that although NADK units were
ordered not to launch military operations against the SOC armed forces, they
were also ordered to engage in activities to dissolve SOC local administrations
and set up PDK controlled local National Councils. Although not all NADK cadre
and combatants realized this, such activities contravened the prohibitions in
cease-fire laid down in the Paris Agreements that they refrain from "any
deployment, movement or action that would extend the territory they control or
that might lead to a resumption of the fighting." Self-demobilizers typically
reported that when they ceased offensive military action, they intensified
subversive political activity. They said this included efforts to propagandize
and agitate peasants in contested and SOC administered zones into dissolving
existing grass-roots political administrations and replacing them with
PDK-controlled local national Councils. Moreover, the self-demobilizers reported
that in at least some instances, the NADK elements involved in such "political
work" were armed.
It seems clear that pro-active NADK efforts at
propaganda work, and particularly armed propaganda work, in SOC-administered
areas led to confrontations between NADK and SOC armed forces. Self-demobilizers
describe incidents in which NADK elements who entered SOC-administered or
contested villages were greeted with gunfire or found themselves detained. Their
accounts suggest that many - although not all - of the cease-fire violations
which they complained were committed by SOC against the NADK took place in
reaction to such NADK activities in violation of the Paris
Agreements.
The PDK's intention to undermine the Paris Agreements is this
manner is confirmed not only by its public radio broadcasts, but also by key
internal documents. For example, according to a secret speech by Pol Pot in
December 1991, the PDK launched "a strategic offensive in the countryside... to
make breakthroughs in dissolving the village and sub-district political
administrations... [of] the contemptible puppets both militarily and
politically. His speech called for doubling the number of villages under PDK
control between February and March 1992. Or, as a PDK directive of February 1992
put it:
There must be no let-up in consecutive storming break-through
attacks. Carry out storming attacks in accordance with the slogan that the right
hand carries out break-through attacks militarily and politically, adopting
politics as the basis, in particular to eliminate, disperse and dissolve the
village political administration of the contemptible Yuon [Vietnamese] enemy...
Only by dissolving the village political administration of the contemptible Yuon
enemy . . . can we consolidate and expand liberated villages, consolidate and
expand village and sub-district National Councils, consolidate and expand our
popular strength, . . . etc., which is to say, consolidate and expand our
strength in domain after domain and make the contemptible Yuon enemy and its
lackeys disappear and disintegrate in domain after domain.
Using Demobilization to Project PDK Power
Moreover, a close
examination of other evidence suggests that contained within the PDK's readiness
to demobilize the NADK was an intent to use the demobilization process to
project the PDK's political power. NADK documents presented to UNTAC showed that
the PDK planned to use regoupment in preparation for demobilization to
concentrate increased numbers of troops in the most advanced parts of the
PDK-administered zones. This aimed at creating opportunities for strengthening
PDK power in these areas and the potential for bringing pressure to bear on
adjacent SOC administered zones.
Demobilization in Form Only: The PDK "Civil Police"
Testimonies
from NADK self-demobilizers suggested an even more significant way in which the
PDK planned to appear to comply with the demobilization process while in fact
subverting it, and this evidence appears to be corroborated by official PDK
information. Self-demobilizers described plans by NADK units to fiddle
demobilization through the creation of new "police forces" either armed with
weapons taken from combatants or manned by combatants transferred from regular
units, or both. In documents presented to UNTAC, the PDK claimed to have a grand
total of 9,435 "civil police", all of which answered to the High Command of the
NADK via its subordinate divisions and independent regiments. This number was 37
per cent of the strength claimed for the NADK regular armed forces as a whole,
and 58 per cent of what the PDK said was the armed strength of the NADK regular
army. The evidence indicates that in fact these forces mostly did no yet exist
at the time of the Paris Agreements. Before the Agreements, official PDK
material and accounts by independent observers demonstrate that the NADK had for
many years had a military police auxiliary, they do not suggest that the size of
such forces was anything like what the PDK was now claiming or provide any
evidence of the existence of a significant "civil police" structure." It seems
that the PDK plan was to move some of the best NADK cadre and combatants out of
the "army" into the "police" in order to keep them under arms. The PDK "civil
police" were to be composed of select NADK cadre and combatants whose
battlefield feats recommended them as politically reliable and otherwise likely
to respond well to instructions from above. NADK cadre apparently hoped to be
able to engage in a sleight of hand through which NADK elements would either
jumps to the police before demobilization, or would join it afterwards. Thus,
although the NADK would be "demobilized", the PDK would maintain an armed force
capable of engaging in much more than simple policing activities. In short, it
hoped that while appearing to demobilize the NADK in form, it could maintain
much of it in substance.
Thwarting PDK plans
The PDK's hopes that it could overthrow SOC
from below, and idle demobilization of the NADK so as to maintain a substantial
armed force, were blocked or threatened in the period immediately after the
signing of the Paris Agreements. A key role here was played by Prince Sihanouk
and by the political organization he had founded, FUNCINPEC.
During the
month after the signing of the Paris Agreements, the PDK was faced with Prince
Sihanouk's call for its leadership to be tried for genocide; his declaration
that SOC should be considered the de facto government of Cambodia; his appeal
that SOC should be provided with direct economic aid, his endorsement of an
alliance between FUNCINPEC and SOC's political party, the Cambodian People's
Party (CPP); his endorsement of the formation of a bipartite CPP-FUNCINPEC
coalition government of SOC; and his announcement that he considered Vietnam
Cambodia's friend, that there were no Vietnamese troops in Cambodia, and that
Vietnamese residents of Cambodia should be protected, not expelled. The PDK's
attempts to promote local National Councils were ignored by Prince Sihanouk, and
its efforts to take advantage of his presence to organize new forms of public
political activity were met by SOC repression. It appeared that Prince Sihanouk,
the CPP and FUNCINPEC were working toward an arrangement by which the flow of
rehabilitation and reconstruction aid into the country would be facilitated by a
power-sharing arrangement in which FUNCINPEC officials would be responsible for
the administration of the aid. SOC would benefit in general, and FUNCINPEC in
particular, from such a deal, which would not only isolate the PDK politically,
but also, in theory at least, undermine its social appeal by offering the
population economic recovery and social services in advance of elections. All
these moves showed that the PDK's hopes of destroying SOC from below by rallying
the population behind local organs of political administration ostensibly
answering to Prince Sihanouk but in fact dominated by it were futile. Then, at a
meeting of the SNC on 26 January 1992 attended by the newly-appointed future
UNTAC head Yasushi Akashi, Prince Sihanouk dealt the final blow to the PDK's
hopes of obtaining his legitimization for the establishment of local National
Councils. He declared that the PDK had no right to set up local councils or
otherwise extend its territorial control. This was agreed by FUNCINPEC and Son
Sann's Khmer People's National Liberation Front, and loudly applauded by SOC. As
FUNCINPEC President Prince Norodom Ranariddh put it, Prince Sihanouk "made it
very clear" that "establishment of the SNCs at the village level . . . . should
not be done" because the "peace accord prohibits any territorial expansion."
Prince Sihanouk also declared that the PDK had no right to fly the SNC flag in
territory under its control. He thus signaled his rejection of any PDK argument
that its administration was an SNC administration rather than a PDK "existing
administrative structure".
As for PDK plans to maintain the NADK by
rechristening it a police force, the UN survey team which reviewed the PDK
figures in late 1991 concluded that this would create "an imbalance of police
power" between it and SOC. The team characterized the PDK police as a "para
military force", and recommended it be partially demobilized to bring its
strength down to a level where the imbalance would be corrected. In his plan for
the implementation of the Paris Agreements, UN Secretary General Boutros
Boutros-Ghali indicated skepticism and concern about the information provided by
the PDK about its "civil police" forces. Endorsing the survey team's
conclusions, he called for the PDK police to be cut down to about 5,000
men.
Thus, even before UNTAC arrived in Cambodia, the PDK's hopes that it
could take advantage of the Paris Agreements to overthrow SOC from below and
maintain its armed forces in another guise had been severely undermined. Its
only hope was that UNTAC would overrule Prince Sihanouk and contradict the
Secretary General on such key issues. Of course, UNTAC did not. UNTAC also
followed Prince Sihanouk's lead in challenging or ignoring the PDK's views on
other key issues, especially the alleged presence of "Vietnamese aggressor
forces" in Cambodia and the ways and means of receiving and distributing
international aid for the economic rehabilitation and reconstruction of
Cambodia.
Together, all this helps explain why the PDK eventually refused
to participate in the demobilization and electoral processes set forth in the
Paris Agreements, and instead gradually resumed full-fledged guerrilla warfare
against SOC and attempted violently to prevent the elections. However, the key
factors in the PDK's decision were that it was unable to use the Paris
Agreements as a cover for the overthrow of its enemy's political administration
in the countryside and for the maintenance of a substantial military force under
its control.
Implications for the Present
I would like to end this analysis
by drawing out implications of these conclusions from the recent history of the
PDK for the current situation in Cambodia. These conclusions suggest that any
negotiations which Democratic Kampuchea may in the future conduct with King
Sihanouk or any authorities of the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) will aim
at achieving an agreement that will allow it to substantially change the balance
of power in the countryside in its favor and to continue to have the option of
using military means to do so. In the absence of such an agreement, the
Democratic Kampuchea will simply continue to fight. And if such agreement is
reached, but implementation does not proceed in accordance with Democratic
Kampuchea hopes, it will once again resume fighting. Thus, prospects for any
workable "political settlement" of the problems posed by Democratic Kampuchea's
armed opposition to the RGC are dim.
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