Civil war to UN peacekeepers: Can Cambodia’s blue helmets find peace – for themselves?
Fuelled by a sense of debt from its civil war, Cambodia makes an outsized contribution to UN peacekeeping. Some of its forces have paid the ultimate price – while those who return must deal with the trauma alone
It was after nightfall when a spray of bullets raked the convoy of trucks carrying Cambodian peacekeeper Thuch Thim. He and his fellow blue helmets had been returning from building a road in the heart of the Central African Republic when they encountered a series of roadblocks set up by guerilla fighters. For hours, they negotiated, making it through the first two encounters unscathed. Then the shooting began.
The ambush by the Christian terrorist anti-Balaka group claimed the lives of four of Thuch Thim’s compatriots – the first Cambodians to die in combat during peacekeeping missions – and a Moroccan colleague. Those killed – Im Sam, Mao Eng, Seang Norin, and Mom Tola – were last week honoured with a posthumous award, along with 125 others who lost their lives in peacekeeping operations abroad.
The awards have served to highlight Cambodia’s outsized contribution to UN peacekeeping. Since 2006, the country has sent 5,257 troops on such missions. This month alone, that figure was 813, making it the 32nd-highest contributor – an astonishing ranking given the Southeast Asian nation is only 72nd in terms of total population. It’s a contribution Thuch Thim and others take pride in – many see it as a way of repaying the UN peacekeepers that once helped the kingdom as it emerged from civil war and the horrors of the Khmer Rouge.
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Dressed in military fatigues with his blood type stitched to his shirt, Thuch Thim has small, jagged, white scars on his left hand. He bites his lip and his eyes wrinkle when he discusses the fatal attack on May 8 last year.
After a day of road construction, Thuch Thim and a crew of about 20 people, with Moroccans providing security for Cambodian engineers and drivers, had been headed back to their UN headquarters when they were halted by a troupe of six guerillas at about 4.30pm.
“There was a negotiation and they opened the road and let us go,” he recalls.
