A False Dawn - Hun Sen's Cambodia - page 70

loyalty of powerful military commanders. The arrangement only came to light when a
copy of the letter was leaked to the new finance minister, Sam Rainsy of Funcinpec, who
raised loud protests in the media. Since the Defense Ministry was “shared” by the CPP
and the royalists, it was obvious that the deal also had benefits for both prime ministers. 3
For Funcinpec, corruption was a cancer that would slowly bring the party to its knees. In
2010 Ranariddh admitted to me that his party abandoned its “basic values and origins and
political approach” for the lures of easy money. “Most of our ministers applied a flex-
ible theory,” he said. “When they saw others get involved with corruption, they did so as
well.”
In the countryside, meanwhile, the fighting continued. In early 1994, six months after
UNTAC's departure, government forces launched an offensive against the Khmer Rouge
in western Cambodia, overrunning Pailin and Anlong Veng. But the victories were short-
lived and by April both areas were back in PDK hands. The defeat was less a sign of
Khmer Rouge strength than of the prodigious incompetence and corruption of the Cam-
bodian military. Illegal logging was just the beginning. Cobbled together from the armies
of the SOC, Funcinpec, and KPNLF, the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF) was a
factionalized force headed by a comically bloated officer corps numbering some 10,000
colonels and 2,000 generals. On paper the army consisted of 145,000 troops, but as in the
Lon Nol era, as many as half were “ghost soldiers” whose salaries and rations flowed into
the pockets of the top brass. 4
Military rank was granted as a reward for loyalty rather than any battlefield criteria.
In practice, this amounted to a license to loot the provinces and exploit the population.
“People join the army to use their uniforms and weapons as a meal ticket,” Holloway
wrote in his 1994 cable. 5 Since 1992, UNTAC officials and human rights groups had ac-
cused senior Cambodian military figures of involvement in a systematic criminal cam-
paign in western Cambodia, which included extortion, robbery, abduction, and the torture
and execution of political opponents at secret detention centers. UN investigators claimed
that a military intelligence unit known as S-91 was responsible for dozens of extrajudicial
killings during 1993 and 1994. 6 With no recourse against arbitrary violence, many peas-
ants reportedly feared government troops more than they did the Khmer Rouge. 7
As the government offensives collapsed, King Sihanouk watched from Beijing. Since
his return to the throne, he had found himself in a figurehead position with little power,
burdened again with the “terrible servitude and crushing responsibilities” that had promp-
ted him to abdicate the throne in 1955. 8 But Sihanouk still hungered for power, and re-
mained convinced he was the only figure who could unite Cambodia and prevent its slide
back into chaos. At 71 years of age, and still full of energy, he wanted another chance to
usher his people into a new “golden age” of peace and prosperity.