THE Phnom Penh government's official acknowledgement yesterday of the Khmer Rouge's long-rumoured practice of circulating its own money in the areas it controls is yet another nail in the coffin of Cambodia as a unitary state. Since the United Nationsannouncement last month that elections would be held in the country with or without the co-operation of the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia has been living on borrowed time. A Khmer Rouge boycott of the elections, now almost a foregone conclusion, would effectively partition the country. Khmer territory would be a state within a state, and neither the future elected government nor the UN forces under their present mandate will have the military power to crush it.
Unpopular though the notion might be with the international community, the only way the Khmer Rouge would ever have joined the elections would have been as a result of military pressure. Force is the only message it understands or respects. That would have taken the kind of tough action the previous UN deputy commander, Brigadier-General Michel Loridon, was sacked for advocating.
The UN has neither the teeth nor the mandate to fight. Nor does the policy of bringing Cambodia's former genocidal rulers back to power enjoy great favour. Many regard the Khmer Rouge as more dangerous inside government than out. Either way, its grab forpower could lead to civil war. Outside, at least, its attempts to destabilise areas under government control would be obvious and visible.
A better way to avoid a long, expensive and demoralising commitment in Cambodia is to undermine the support the Khmer Rouge still enjoys from the estimated 30 per cent of the population still likely to have voted for it in a free election. To do that, the UN must counter the faction's barrage of propaganda claiming Vietnamese forces are still present in the country, many staying on as illegal settlers and being registered to vote. Appeals to Cambodian nationalism may persuade some of the Khmer Rouge's supporters to lay down their arms and start making money like the rest of their compatriots, but the more likely scenario is a return to the bloodshed and strife that has bedevilled the country for two decades.
