Cambodia: Progress and Challenges since 1991

14. The Role and Performance of UNTAC: An Australian Perspective

The Role and Performance of UNTAC 173 173 14 THE ROLE AND PERFORMANCE OF UNTAC An Australian Perspective Ken Berry The UN intervention in Cambodia was an important, if flawed success. Many people these days, with the benefit of hindsight, tend to see the mistakes made by UNTAC (the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia) during the operation, and the subsequent somewhat slow pace of consolidation of democracy in Cambodia, as indicating that the UN intervention was a failure. In doing so, however, they are confusing what was intended by the international community in the 1991 Paris Agreements with a ‘wish list’ of popular expectations which could never have been realistically met. It was never, for example, the expectation of those directly involved that a fullfledged , Western-style democracy could be created in the less than two years that the whole UN operation lasted. Similarly, it was simply never realistic to contemplate that 15,000 widely-scattered international troops could, if the need arose, defeat the Khmer Rouge militarily, when 200,000 battle-hardened Vietnamese troops had not achieved that after ten years in Cambodia; nor that the 10 million mines strewn across Cambodia’s countryside could be removed during the operation. Neither was it possible that the Cambodian 14 Cambodia_Progress 3/6/12, 10:36 AM 173 174 Ken Berry economy and infrastructure — weak even in its heyday — could be rebuilt in so short a time. Rather, the ultimate aim of those countries involved in negotiating the Paris Agreements had always been the simple proposition of creating conditions whereby the Cambodian people could for virtually the first time in their existence have a direct say in their own governance and future, and to that extent the whole exercise should be judged a success. And let there be no doubt about it: UNTAC certainly succeeded in achieving many of the major objectives set down for it: • It succeeded in the then relatively new function for the UN of organising and conducting free and fair elections despite the far from ideal conditions. • It also made a genuine, and hopefully lasting, improvement in the human rights situation in Cambodia. • UNTAC also achieved the logistically daunting task of repatriating more than 365,000 displaced Cambodians from camps on the Thai border, thus removing a situation which had of itself become a source of regional tension. More generally, the Paris Agreements — and UNTAC — also succeeded in removing the Cambodian conflict as a source of regional tension. The Khmer Rouge insurgency ended and Cambodia has as a consequence reassumed its place in the community of nations. A FLAWED SUCCESS The fact remains, however, that UNTAC was a flawed success, and it exposed a number of aspects of the UN system which either did not work or were simply no longer suited to either the conditions in the post-Cold War world or the types of new and complex operations the UN is now called upon to undertake. Many of the problems which occurred in UNTAC, moreover, had already surfaced in previous UN operations — which underlines the lack of an effective system to maintain corporate memory.1 The early intention of the Secretariat to produce at least two reports critically assessing UNTAC’s performance was never followed through. On the other hand, no number of reports and reviews will achieve much unless the governments that make up the UN show the necessary political will to undertake the reforms necessary to avoid repetition of the mistakes. Needless to say, gathering that political will is far from guaranteed. 14 Cambodia_Progress 3/6/12, 10:36 AM 174 The Role and Performance of UNTAC 175 LESSONS FOR THE UN MEMBERSHIP UNTAC was one of the United Nations’ most complex operations, though it is no longer its largest. Its mandate was also possibly the broadest, going far beyond traditional peacekeeping to include comprehensive efforts towards institution-building and social reconstruction as integral parts of a peacebuilding package designed to secure a lasting end to armed conflict and a genuine transition to democracy. To this end, UNTAC was endowed with significant electoral, civil administration, police, human rights, and repatriation, rehabilitation and reconstruction functions. The authority devolved on it to carry out some of these functions, particularly in the civil administration of a UN member state, was, moreover, amongst the most intrusive conferred on a UN operation.2 Perhaps the most obvious lessons to be drawn from UNTAC relate to the...