The UNTAC Period

Over the next two years, the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) was assembled to supervise the disarming of factions, the resettlement of refugees, and the preparations for national elections. More than 25,000 people were involved, and over $3 billion were spent on the operation, the most expensive of its kind in the history of the United Nations.24

The Red Khmer responses to the Paris agreements and the UNTAC presence were so inconsistent as to suggest that the party’s leaders were unable or unwilling to deal with such an open-ended, unprecedented state of affairs. The party’s leaders had almost no experience operating in the open. In late 1991 and early 1992, nonetheless, the Red Khmer’s behavior suggested that they genuinely hoped that UNTAC would, as it promised, dismantle the infrastructure of the State of Cambodia, providing a “level playing field” (not a phrase they would have used) for the Red Khmer. Son Sen and Khieu Samphan were dispatched to Phnom Penh to negotiate toward the end of 1991 but left soon after riots were orchestrated against them by the Phnom Penh regime.

In May 1992, Son Sen was removed from the Central Committee and forbidden to consult with UNTAC officials, probably because he supported further participation in the peace process, which Pol Pot and his immediate colleagues now saw as a ruse intended to destroy their movement. Always suspected for his intellectual arrogance and his Vietnamese upbringing by Ta Mok, Son Sen remained out of favor and was assassinated at Pol Pot’s orders in 1997—the event that removed Pol Pot from power.25 In late May 1992 (whether before or after Son Sen’s dismissal is unclear) the Red Khmer refused UN inspectors access to the areas they controlled, thereby expressing their unwillingness to disarm their forces. For the time being, the triumvirate of Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, and Ta Mok, which had controlled the Red Khmer movement since the late 1970s, remained in charge and unwilling to negotiate with the “Vietnamese puppets” in Phnom Penh.

During the UNTAC period, Red Khmer forces made several brutal attacks on Vietnamese civilians living in Cambodia, killing over a hundred and wounding many more. Perhaps the leadership hoped that these massacres would set off a wave of anti-Vietnamese violence, just as they hoped that their boycott of the UN-sponsored elections would produce massive absenteeism among Cambodian voters. Both assessments were based, as David Ashley has suggested, “on a grossly over-optimistic idea of the movement’s political and military strength,” a frame of mind that had buoyed up the leadership for many years.26 The Communists did little to impede the UN presence, however, or to disrupt the national elections that occurred under UN supervision in July 1993. This inconsistent behavior in the UNTAC period reveals an incapacity or unwillingness to adjust to the evolving power relations and alterations in the Khmer economy that had taken effect since the Vietnamese withdrawal and were transforming Cambodia on a daily basis. Instead, Red Khmer radio broadcasts, closely monitored and often written by Pol Pot, delivered a steady flow of anti-Vietnamese polemics, whereby Vietnamese were still in charge of politics in Phnom Penh and UNTAC, for all intents and purposes, was working to serve Vietnamese interests, which had remained unchanged since time immemorial.27