The Paris agreements in critical perspective
November 1998
The international community, so quick to proclaim UNTAC a success, urgently needs to reflect more honestly on its experiences in Cambodia. That UNTAC has to date escaped a comprehensive, critical review is largely because of strong political pressures emanating from the UN and various countries to maintain the initial positive gloss thrown on the internationally-inspired peace process. Some have also argued that it is simply too soon to assess in any meaningful manner the political outcome of the Paris agreements. Recent events, however, suggest that other countries engaged in the search for peace have much to learn from Cambodia’s painful post-1993 experiences.
Measuring success
Many early analyses of Cambodia’s peace process focused on the internal successes and failures of UNTAC. A surprising number of scholars were quick to equate its undisputed technical successes in organizing elections and repatriating refugees from Thailand with the overall success of the peacekeeping mission. The inevitable comparisons between UNTAC and early post-Cold War UN debacles such as Somalia and Bosnia lent a further gloss to the Cambodia mission which its many failings initially did little to tarnish.
The paradox was that UNTAC could be seen to have fulfilled its primary mandate (bringing about an internationally-recognized government through elections) even though the internal factors driving Cambodia’s war remained largely unaddressed. These were not taken into account because many analyses, in line with the international community’s general approach to the Cambodian problem itself, were based on predominantly ‘external’ assessments of the conflict. These attributed the longevity of the conflict predominantly to friction between outside powers and optimistically assumed that the Cold War’s end would spell the end of the factions’ capacity or will to fight.
Insufficient effort was made to understand the complex internal dynamics of Cambodia’s conflict, its historical roots, what the peace process meant to the Cambodian people, and why all the faction leaders harboured deep-seated resentment over many aspects of the final settlement. This gave the impression that peace was something that could somehow be bequeathed by the international community to Cambodians who were hopefully responsible enough to nurture it wisely — rather than a dynamic, open-ended process whose outcome would largely be decided long after UNTAC’s departure.
Beyond the settlement
With the benefit of hindsight in the Cambodian case and a clearer understanding of the difficulties of consolidating peace in war-torn societies more generally, awareness is growing that what happens in the post-settlement phase is perhaps most important in assessing the viability of international peacemaking efforts. How far did UNTAC go in putting into place a robust institutional arrangement which would allow the competition between Cambodia’s deeply divided factions to be waged in a non-violent manner following UNTAC’s departure?
While the Paris agreements committed Cambodians to constitutional provisions enshrining liberal democracy and pluralism, it was left to them to integrate this commitment with the harsh political, military and economic realities facing Cambodia after UNTAC was gone. For a nation recovering from two decades of war and social upheaval, the challenges were enormous. Crucial pre-conditions for democracy such as advanced levels of economic development and social mobilization were not present in Cambodia. With the reserves of goodwill assumed to be sufficient among the former enemies, few contingency plans were made by the international community in the event that these ran out.
In the circumstances, it was claimed that the Paris agreements were the best that could be done given the availability of resources and international political will at the time. This has led to statements such as ‘it is up to Cambodians to take over now’ which betray the fact that the international community still remains heavily involved in Cambodia, at least in financial terms. This raises the question of how these resources can better be complemented with more creative developmental, diplomatic and political initiatives to build a stronger peace.
Institutional guarantees
UNTAC’s greatest legacy to Cambodians was the hope of democracy and the knowledge of how it should work. Yet in the absence of a capacity to build a viable institutional framework which has the power to preserve liberty and the rule of law, it has been small consolation for Cambodians to take part in either the 1993 or 1998 elections. The articles in this section make clear that consolidating Cambodia’s fledgling peace was always going to be a long and difficult task culminating well after UNTAC left the country. The question nonetheless remains: to what degree did it lay the groundwork for this to be achieved?