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    "To understand why this agreement is such a disaster for Cambodia one
    must understand how the truth about Cambodia has been stood on its
    head for the past 13 years.
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    throughout 1979, 1980, and 1981 our newspaper headlines should
    have read: "U.S. saves Khmer Rouge: insists mass killers get
    Cambodia's UN seat."
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...From PeaceNet's "zmagazine" conference...

      =========================================================
      C A M B O D I A   S U F F E R S   M A J O R   D E F E A T
      =========================================================
            =============================
            B Y   P A U L   S H A N N O N
            =============================
        Z magazine (see bottom), December 1992

AT THE end of October 1991, these were the typical messages that
filled the U.S.  media: "Treaty to end Cambodian Civil War is signed."
"Cambodian Factions Sign UN-enforced Peace Pact." "Ploughshares for
the killing fields."  Evidently international cooperation between the
big powers had scored another striking success. A UN "peace plan"
would finally end Cambodia's "civil war" and finally bring an end to
Cambodia's agony. Oh sure, the Khmer Rouge killers had to be accepted
as part of the plan because of big-bad-China's insistence and because
their army was a "fact of life." But this Khmer Rouge presence was the
price that had to be paid for peace and the UN administration in
Cambodia would keep a close eye on them.

This U.S. fairy tale has nothing whatever to do with the reality of
Cambodia or the United Nations over the past 12 years (though the U.S.
plan to use the United Nations to implement U.S. foreign policy in
other countries is as real as it comes).

     ===========================================================
     S t a n d i n g   T h e   T r u t h   O n   I t s   H e a d
     ===========================================================

THE AGREEMENT STRIKES a direct blow at the country s sovereignty
through the Administration authority bestowed on a non-Cambodian
entity (a United Nations under western domination). And it poses some
real dangers to the country's future, even if most of the fighting
stops for awhile. Possibilities range all the way from a complete
disaster (such as when the U.S. used another massive UN "peacekeeping"
operation in Zaire to assassinate Patrice Lumumba and eventually
establish 27 years of terror under Mobutu) to the more likely scenario
of some sort of mixed bag as exists in Nicaragua today. Under this
scenario the poor assume their traditional invisibility and the nation
becomes a base for foreign intrigue, subject to various forms of
foreign domination.

To understand why this agreement is such a disaster for Cambodia one
must understand how the truth about Cambodia has been stood on its
head for the past 13 years. For the truth about Cambodia seems too
preposterous to believe. The lies and duplicity are so monstrous that
they are missed altogether.

For instance, today we are told that China is responsible for reviving
Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge after their army was destroyed by Vietnam's 1979
invasion. But throughout 1979, 1980, and 1981 our newspaper headlines
should have read: "U.S. saves Khmer Rouge: insists mass killers get
Cambodia's UN seat."

For while it's true that China backed the Khmer Rouge, it was the
United States -- not Beijing -- that organized the effort to put the
Khmer Rouge army back together in 1979-80 after its defeat by Vietnam.
The U.S. organized the critical international diplomatic, economic,
political, and military backing that allowed the Khmer Rouge to
survive politically and urged China to provide the arms.

       ===============================================
       T h e   U . S .   W a r   O n   C a m b o d i a
       ===============================================

FOR INSTANCE, the U.S. was responsible for making sure that Pol Pot
was seated in the United Nations while his victims in Cambodia were
excluded. After providing this international legitimation to the
agents of genocide, the U.S. twisted the arm of the UN relief
operation to become the major overt tool for refurbishing the Khmer
Rouge. The UN was now stripped of all impartiality. U.S. agencies were
set up on the Thai border to organize a covert low-intensity war
consisting of military aggression, disinformation campaigns, and
international embargo. All of this was aimed against the population of
Cambodia who had welcomed Vietnam's expulsion of their tormentors, who
the U.S. insisted were still Cambodia's government.

The U.S. watched as the corrupt l'hai military (a virtual CIA
subsidiary) set up supply lines through Thailand so Chinese weapons
could get to the Khmer Rouge and the U.S. made sure that the refugees
on the border were forced to serve as a Khmer Rouge recruiting base.
There is even evidence of direct U.S. military support to the Khmer
Rouge. But the primary U.S. role was in instigating and coordinating
the war, not the far less important task of supplying the hardware.

News reports point out some of the concessions made by Cambodia's
government in finally going along with the UN peace process," such as
allowing the Khmer Rouge back into the country. (Though the main
concession is the turning over of the country to the UN and the
dismantling to one degree or another of the government's authority.)
They claim such developments as the cutoff of Soviet aid and
Vietnamese-Chinese rapprochement swayed Cambodia to make these
concessions. But the real reason for these concessions is not even
mentioned: namely, the massive low-intensity war waged by the United
States against Cambodia for 11 years. It's like explaining unilateral
Sandinista concessions in the Central America peace process and the
outcome of the 1990 elections in Nicaragua without mentioning the
Contra war and U.S. embargo.

Of course, the U.S. public didn't know there was a U.S.  war on
Cambodia. Instead they willingly believed there was a "civil war"
going on that was too complicated to understand. The headlines in the
summer of 1982 should have read: "U.S. and allies form Coalition to
step up attack on Cambodia."

In the summer of 1982 the U.S., China, and the ASEAN countries created
something called the tripartite "Coalition Government of Democratic
Kampuchea." This was quite a name given the fact that this creation
was not really a "Coalition" at all, nor was it a "Government" of
anything.  It certainly was not "Democratic"; and it was not based in
"Kampuchea," but in Thailand. The UN promptly gave this fiction
Cambodia's seat and helped it wage its war.

So is this conflict a "civil war"? One side (Cambodia's
Vietnam-installed government) includes all those who fought to end the
Khmer Rouge genocide in 1977-78; who rebuilt the country from scratch
through sheer courage and patriotism; and who defended the nation
against the return of the perpetrators of genocide -- the Khmer Rouge
killers who had the backing of almost the entire world and the UN. On
the other side you had a force (the Democratic Kampuchea Coalition)
created by the United States and its allies in direct violation of the
universal will of virtually the entire indigenous population. This
side was built around the Khmer Rouge army. But it also included a
gang of hoodlums and war lords that our CIA turned into something
called "The Non-Communist Resistance." Some civil war.

So Cambodia has been forced to engage in a settlement process with a
gun at its head. The basic structure of the UN plan was pushed by Rep.
Stephen Solarz, Reagan and Bush's point man on Cambodia. As with the
Gulf war, the plan was then sold to the Permanent Five Members of the
UN Security Council (after a detour via Australia), which then forced
its framework on Cambodia.

         ===========================================
         T h e   K h m e r   R o u g e   T h r e a t
         ===========================================

MANY COMMENTATORS DO mention that the plan brings the worst Khmer
Rouge killers and their organization back inside the country as a
legitimate political entity. The New York Times editorialized, for
instance: "There's a worrisome possibility that (a horror story)
entitled The Return of the Khmer Rouge might now be about to unfold in
Cambodia." But the Times is sanguine about this possibility and says
it's worth the risk, (something the people living inside Cambodia have
never believed, for some strange reason). Besides, if the Khmer Rouge
carried out another genocide, it would be China's fault, not ours.

The Times conveniently forgets to notice that the UN that is supposed
to keep the Khmer Rouge from taking control is the same UN that was
used to rebuild the Khmer Rouge army, that recognized the Khmer Rouge
as Cambodia's government in direct violation of the aspiration of
almost all Cambodians, and that was unsuccessful in its limited task
of protecting refugees in Thailand from being intimidated and
terrorized by the Khmer Rouge.

          =========================================
          T h e   U . S .   T r o j a n   H o r s e
          =========================================

THERE IS a chance that the Khmer Rouge has now outlived its usefulness
to the U.S., and even to China. For the goal of the U.S. all along has
not been to return the

Khmer Rouge to power, but to use the Khmer Rouge to prevent the
consolidation in Cambodia of a regime independent of the U.S. and its
allies. Like the Contras in Nicaragua or UNITA in Angola, the idea was
to use the Khmer Rouge as a hammer to beat Cambodia senseless, while
the embargo bled it to death, forcing it to accept a settlement on
U.S. terms. That policy has been successful.

So the hammer is no longer needed. What's needed is a political
organization that can run the country according to U.S. designs. Of
course, any "democratic" third world government worthy of U.S.
approval needs some death squads to keep unions and popular movements
under control. The Khmer Rouge may still have some function here.

But the U.S. may -- especially if there is an international outcry --
push for the retirement of the top Khmer Rouge leaders. In addition,
the U.S. may push the UN authority in Cambodia to crack down on any
Khmer Rouge attempt to seize power or disrupt the country. Of course,
the Khmer Rouge (now that the U.N. has forced Cambodia to let them
back inside the country) may not be so easy to control.

However a parallel, and in the long run more probable, danger to
Cambodia than the Khmer Rouge is that the UN settlement brings the CIA
and its "Non-Communist Resistance's infrastructure into the country
under United Nations cover. Here we have something like the UNO
infrastructure in Nicaragua which will serve as a Trojan horse for all
kinds of external manipulation.

        =============================================
        C a m b o d i a   H a d   " M a d e   I t . "
        =============================================

BUT THE REAL tragedy of Cambodia today is that the country had already
made it. By 1982 Cambodia had undergone a rebirth that no one thought
possible in 1979. It was a success story possibly unparalleled in
human history.  The country and its people had bounced back from the
Khmer Rouge holocaust and had saved their country and national
identity. By 1988, despite outside aggression and international
isolation, living standards were improving, and there was a high
measure of social justice.

But following the deliberate disinformation component of the U.S.
Low-intensity war, the media dutifully reported that Vietnam was
stealing the country's food and oppressing the people. Cambodia, we
were told, would not even exist within a few years, if the Vietnamese
were not stopped (see William Shawcross, "The End of Cambodia," New
York Review of Books). The government was almost as bad as the Khmer
Rouge, etc., etc., etc. The world was not only prevented from finding
out about the dramatic rebirth of Cambodia through the courageous
efforts of its people aided by relief groups like Oxfam and American
Friends Service Committee. Worse still, it was fed a steady diet of
lies used to support a policy of destroying that recovery and
punishing Cambodia's poor.

This remarkable recovery was based on the ability of Vietnamese troops
to keep the Khmer Rouge army at bay, on at least some aid from Vietnam
and the Eastern bloc to lessen the impact of the embargo, and on the
ability of Cambodian leaders to count on the Soviet Union blocking any
UN settlement that undermined the country's sovereignty. But Vietnam
withdrew its troops unilaterally in 1989 and the protective Soviet
presence on the Security Council evaporated, and the Western Powers
saw the opportunity to use the UN to shove the U.S. plan for Cambodia
down the country's throat.

If the military attack and embargo was called off once the Vietnamese
withdrew two years ago, Cambodia's recovery would have continued to
progress and strengthen.  The country would not have been forced into
accepting the present settlement. But instead the attack was pressed
and the embargo continued. As a result, the stepped up low-intensity
war against Cambodia after the Vietnamese withdrawal has destroyed
much of the recovery that had been so painstakingly built up over the
years.

The Cambodian army prevented the Khmer Rouge and its allied armies
from making much headway at all. But to do so it had to divert much of
its scarce resources for defense, undermining the economy. Besides, no
matter how well the army did, it couldn't prevent the country from
being bled to death by the embargo and military pressure bankrolled by
the U.S., China, and their allies. This slow bleeding process has
raised the suffering level inside the country and in the border areas
to new heights. Under these desperate conditions for survival
corruption has increased and social equality has been growing rapidly,
undermining the national defense.

     ===========================================================
     U . S .   A n d   U N   B l o c k   A   S e t t l e m e n t
     ===========================================================

FOR 12 YEARS now the United Nations has been undermining a political
settlement for Cambodia that has been available at any point from 1979
to the present. This solution of outstanding political issues was very
different from the present complex, interminable, and unbelievably
costly plan pushed by the Security Council. All that was needed was a
"Namibia-like" settlement that would look something like the
following:

(*) First, The Khmer Rouge would be thrown out of the UN and
completely isolated internationally.

(*) Then, all Vietnamese troops would withdraw from Cambodia (Vietnam
did this unilaterally in 1989).

(*) Aid would be provided Cambodia by the UN. The UN would consult
with the Cambodian government on measures needed to blunt any
continuing Khmer Rouge military threat, including UN peacekeeping
forces.

(*) There would be a cease-fire and an end to all outside aid to all
Cambodian parties, including the government.

(*) Appropriate arrangements would be made to safeguard the Khmer
refugees on the Thai border and gradually repatriate them back to
Cambodia -- or move them into safe zones in Thailand if they wished to
apply to go to other countries.

(*) The UN would organize elections in Cambodia -- as it did in
Namibia -- while Cambodia's present government continued to administer
the country until the new government was elected. All Khmer political
groups would have been guaranteed the freedom to compete in the
elections, except the Khmer Rouge organization which would be excluded
forever from Cambodian political life. (Rank and file Khmer Rouge
would be granted amnesty and allowed to return home.)

(*) Finally, after UN supervised elections, the newly elected
government could use the Genocide Convention to bring the Khmer Rouge
leadership before international tribunals for crimes against humanity.
(It might also want to bring war crimes charges against the war
criminals in the United States who unleashed the original destruction
of Cambodia with B-52's.)

The above agreement would have brought peace to Cambodia; it would
have preserved the country's sovereignty and independence; and it
would have removed the threat of the Khmer Rouge. The present
agreement endangers all of these goals.

Once Vietnamese troops unilaterally withdrew in 1989, Thailand's
elected prime minister, Chatichai Choonhaven, nearly facilitated a
step by step regional settlement that would have excluded the Khmer
Rouge and brought peace by now. The UN would have been minimally
involved. But Washington blocked him at every tum, insisting that the
Khmer Rouge be included and that any agreement take place within the
UN structure where the U.S. and its allies hold sway. Finally a
U.S.-backed military coup in Thailand earlier this year overthrew the
constitutional government and sent Chatichai packing. Any last
remaining threat of peace was averted and the U.S. plan stayed on
track.

=====================================================================
N e g o t i a t i n g   W i t h   A   G u n   A t   Y o u r   H e a d
=====================================================================

SO THE UN sponsored "peace process" is really a "threat process."
Cambodia could either continue insisting on the exclusion of the Khmer
Rouge and on the country's sovereignty under the threat of military
attack and economic destruction. Or it could get the U.S., UN, and
China to end their low-intensity war on the country by accepting the
UN framework and trying to get whatever modifications it could. It has
taken the second choice, to cry "uncle," before all its bones are
broken.

Cambodia's government -- led by Prime Minister Hun Sen and President
Heng Samrin -- is putting the best possible spin on the present
negotiating process. (They are encouraged, for instance, by their new
relationship with Prince Sihanouk.) But the fact that Cambodia's
leaders find themselves in this impossible predicament bodes ill for
the future.

And the fact that Bush, Baker, and Solarz are smiling indicates the
"peace plan" to end Cambodia's "civil war" is a major setback for
peace forces in the United States. For these three enemies of
Cambodian independence see this tiny country about to be incorporated
into their "New World Order." To turn around this defeat we must
unmask U.S. deception and support those courageous people inside
Cambodia committed to social justice and national independence.
Cambodia's ordeal may be just beginning. But this new phase of the war
will be called peace.  Z

Paul Shannon is editor of the Asia Resource Center's Indochina
Newsletter.


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