Cambodia: Business by the gun: lethal consequences of failed demobilization

Colonel David Mead was the Australian Defence Attache in Cambodia from November 1994 until August 1997. He now works in Cambodia as a consultant, most recently for the World Bank on law enforcement issues related to forestry sector reform.

The recent collapse of the Khmer Rouge and the resistance forces loyal to ousted Premier Prince Ranariddh heralds the end of large-scale military resistance to a Cambodian government for the first time since the mid-1970s. Yet the suspension in 1992 of the demobilisation of the four Khmer military factions called for by the Paris agreements has translated into a mounting security problem of a different sort since UNTAC’s departure. Underlying this problem are the precariousness of rural livelihoods, the wide availability of guns and the tightening links between business and organized violence.

With the breakdown of state authority in Cambodia since 1993, various ‘strongmen’ — be they officers of the security forces, government officials or bandit chiefs — have become increasingly engaged in a wide range of illicit commercial activities backed by the gun. The timber trade is the most lucrative, involving illegal logging, the exaction of protection money from logging companies, and the unofficial taxation of transported wood, especially as it crosses Cambodia’s borders. High-ranking political leaders are complicit in this trade, selling permits to fell timber to the highest bidder — usually foreign companies.

Little of the potential revenue from this activity, estimated at as much as US $100 million in 1996 and 1997 by the IMF, reaches government coffers. Moreover, little thought is given to proper forestry management and Cambodia’s forests, its most valuable natural resource, are shrinking rapidly. The stagnation of government revenues has made it difficult to pay the country’s security forces which have become increasingly involved in commercial activities as their military utility has decreased.

Soldiers receive salaries of some US $12-15 a month which represents barely a third of the minimum needed to survive. As a consequence, master-servant relationships — whereby soldiers are totally dependent on their commanders for the handouts needed to supplement their salaries — have become accentuated. Inducements such as the promise of looting or involvement in illicit commercial activities further strengthens this relationship and have in effect become the only way to maintain a standing military force in Cambodia today.

At the heart of the problem are Cambodia’s bloated, corrupt and unprofessional armed forces which drain the national budget. Paradoxically, the decline of the Khmer Rouge threat has led to the swelling of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF) as thousands of defecting Khmer Rouge soldiers have been integrated into its ranks between 1995 and 1998. Of the RCAF’s current 140,000 soldiers (three times the number currently needed), up to one third are ‘ghosts’ whose salaries are regularly siphoned off by their commanders.

The village-based militia system — an armed wing of district, commune, or village chiefs — constitutes an additional, lingering problem. Though once serving as an effective bulwark against the Khmer Rouge in areas left uncovered by the RCAF, their local protection function is no longer necessary. But the guns remain — an estimated 500,000 small arms throughout the country — and when political tensions rise or livelihoods become precarious, they come out again, often with tragic consequences.

Cambodia’s environmental and security problems are closely linked, but neither can be effectively tackled in the absence of political reforms. An August 1997 eight-point plan proposed by Hun Sen to reduce the security problem included restrictions on the number of personal body guards, the outlawing of illegal check-points and reductions in the size of local militias. These measures provided relief in Phnom Penh and — at least by day — on Cambodia’s highways, but fell far short of what is needed to tackle the security problem effectively.

The plan to demobilise 40,000 soldiers set in motion in 1997 with World Bank assistance was an important first step, though it was cut short by the July 1997 coup. This in itself, however, would have had little impact on the overall security situation without a weapons amnesty, better border controls and the creation of alternative employment for demobilised soldiers. Given the key business interests outside Cambodia which profit enormously from the rape of its forests, any solution must have both a local and an international component.

Membership of ASEAN would offer Cambodia a platform to begin addressing the regional dimensions of the illegal timber trade, though this will do little to tackle lawlessness back home. The success of future security reforms in Cambodia is dependent on greater political stability and more accountable state institutions.