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Web-only Exclusives
November 30, 2000

From Our Correspondent: Hirohito and the War
A conversation with biographer Herbert Bix

From Our Correspondent: A Rough Road Ahead
Bad news for the Philippines - and some others

From Our Correspondent: Making Enemies
Indonesia needs friends. So why is it picking fights?

Asiaweek Time Asia Now Asiaweek story

HUN SEN'S 'COUP'

By Susan Berfield and Dominic Faulder


Go to a timeline of recent history

PHNOM PENH HAD BEEN on edge for months. The rivalry between the country's two prime ministers had become more menacing. Both were building up their security details into private armies. Political violence had already returned to the capital: a grenade attack at an opposition party rally; an hour-long gunbattle outside Prince Norodom Ranariddh's home. The prince and the politician, Hun Sen, had never agreed on much, and now they were agreeing even less. No issue divided them more than how to handle Khmer Rouge defectors. Ranariddh's recent negotiations with leaders of the murderous group infuriated Hun Sen. The residents of Phnom Penh knew danger was near.

Last week the capital erupted in a two-day battle for power. Victory belonged to Hun Sen and his forces. At least 58 people were killed, including two foreigners, and not a few businesses suffered from looting afterward. Hun Sen appeared on television July 6, in military dress uniform, to call for Ranariddh's arrest and to ask officials from his party, Funcinpec, to select another co-premier. One whom Hun Sen could work with. The prince had left the country on July 4, the day before Hun Sen's forces made their move. From Paris, Ranariddh claimed that his troops controlled the north and northwest of the country and that they would continue to resist Hun Sen's "coup d'état." He insisted that no alliance existed between his forces and the remaining Khmer Rouge. But they could fight side by side. Battles were already being fought in the Siem Reap region, site of the vast 12th-century Angkor Wat complex.

The country is not in a civil war. Not yet, anyway. And elections are still scheduled for next year. But the conflict threatens to stifle Cambodia's democratic, and economic, aspirations. There is blame enough for everybody. Hun Sen destroyed the legitimacy of the elected government. He may have unintentionally pushed Ra-nariddh and the Khmer Rouge closer together -- they would fight Hun Sen now as they did for a decade when he was backed by Vietnam. The prince abandoned his followers. He is an erratic leader with the flaws of his father, King Norodom Sihanouk, but not the saving graces. Hun Sen does not tolerate dissent and implicitly approved of violence to squash dissenters. The U.N., which spent $2 billion to introduce democracy to Cambodia, could not disarm the rival factions after the 1991 Paris Peace Accords. Donors did not suspend development assistance when they saw the government disintegrating. ASEAN did not make Cambodia's membership conditional on political stability. But donors now might, and ASEAN could. Cambodia's past is haunting its future.

July brought with it a clear sign that trouble had arrived. Hun Sen had just issued his strongest warning about Khmer Rouge defectors amassing in the city. Ranariddh's chief of security had deployed former Khmer Rouge guerrillas on the streets of Phnom Penh as part of his security detail. Some were put to work even before they had proper Royal Cambodian Armed Forces uniforms. But rumors of Khmer Rouge infiltrating the city seem to be just that. On July 2, Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party (CPP) blocked a 20-truck Funcinpec convoy 40 km north of the capital and several soldiers were wounded in a firefight. The next day 200 CPP military police disarmed members of Ranariddh's motorcade; he was returning to the capital after dedicating a pagoda.

The real fighting began about noon on Saturday, July 5, around Pochentong international airport, when CPP troops tried to disarm royalist soldiers at their nearby base. Hun Sen claimed that the prince had been reinforcing his bodyguard unit with Khmer Rouge defectors. The Funcinpec deputy chief of staff, Gen. Nhiek Bun Chhay, denied the charges and ordered his troops to resist. The battles spread east through the city.

The royalist troops tried to defend the homes of Nhiek Bun Chhay and another top Funcinpec official, but they could not match the strength and firepower of the CPP. As residents fled with whatever they could carry, tanks and armored personnel carriers took up strategic positions throughout the capital. Soon the western district was sealed off. Fighting reached the area near the just-opened Phnom Penh Intercontinental Hotel. Fire from mortars and rocket-propelled grenades continued into the early evening. The government announced an 8:00 pm to 6:00 am curfew. Foreigners and some local residents headed for the Sofitel Cambodiana Hotel, where the French and American embassies had rented ballrooms and fitted them with cots.

Fighting resumed at 6:00 sharp Sunday morning. The airport and the Funcinpec camp were prime targets. The airport fell first; 1,000 CPP troops stormed the base and by that afternoon claimed they had taken control. The violence spread to the heart of the city, where police stations took sides and readied arms. Tanks surrounded the homes of key Funcinpec military officials. Ranariddh's forces fought to protect the prince's block-long residential compound, Funcinpec headquarters (which is next to the French embassy), the television station and the defense ministry. All eventually fell. Ranariddh's home was even assaulted by tanks. At about 5:30 pm the head of his personal security came out of the compound waving a white flag.

Many of the surrounding homes were sprayed with gunfire, and panicking residents abandoned the neighborhood. A foreigner was killed outside the French embassy, which was nearly destroyed. Said a Western expatriate in the city: "It did not look as if any of the soldiers had even been taught to fire in the direction of the enemy."

Hun Sen appeared on national television to accuse Ranariddh of illegally importing weapons "in an ill intention to provoke war." In Beijing, Sihanouk, recovering from a cataract operation, called on both sides to stop fighting and travel to China to talk. Hun Sen rejected the offer, saying, "Everything is over."

And by the morning of Monday, July 7, so it seemed to be. Except for the looting. Victorious troops ransacked the newly renovated terminal at the airport. The duty-free shops were stripped, and trashed. Emptied Nina Ricci and Givenchy perfume boxes were heaped on the floor along with jewelry displays and smashed bottles of top-of-the-line cognac. A Royal Cambodge tourist bus was towed away, and a Komatsu excavator hot-wired and driven off the premises. Later, civilians took the light bulbs, even the wiring.

The troops, and some residents, continued their spree along the road from the airport. The Toyota and Isuzu showrooms were hit first. Not even the modern office buildings still under construction were spared. Computers, filing cabinets, rugs -- everything was spirited away on motorbikes, carts, army trucks and tanks. A depot with several thousand motorbikes was raided, and its washing machines were hauled off too. At the Caltex, Total and Shell gas stations hundreds of people sucked up fuel from underground tanks. Even the pumps were dismantled.

That evening Hor Sok, Funcinpec secretary of state at the Ministry of the Interior and one of four Funcinpec officials Hun Sen said he wanted to arrest, was apprehended. Hor Sok had played an important part in bolstering Funcinpec military clout in the capital. The next day the government said he had been killed with a bullet to the head while in custody. "Hor Sok was shot down by the people, who were angry with him," said a CPP official.

Hor Sok's execution -- for that is what it amounted to -- was hardly the kind of news that would calm anxious Cambodians, or outsiders. Then came reports that Hun Sen's military police were going door-to-door at the Cambodiana Hotel on Tuesday, July 8, in search of opposition members of parliament. Most had fled their homes to the relative safety of the five-star hotel. Some were apparently arrested. The next day several members of the royal family were allowed to leave Cambodia for Bangkok and Singapore.

As fighting spread to Siem Reap and the western province of Battambang, Ranarridh said from Paris that "a resistance movement is being organized in western Cambodia" and that he was in contact with his generals. He called on the international community to refrain from recognizing Hun Sen's regime.

It is unclear if countries such as the U.S. will heed Ranariddh's call. Washington condemned the violence but not Hun Sen directly. ASEAN took a tougher stance. In a statement, the grouping said it "is dismayed and deeply regrets the unfortunate turn of events in Cambodia." More pointedly, it still addressed Hun Sen and Ranariddh as "co-premiers," which was unlikely to give the strongman much comfort. Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines also seemed to signal their displeasure with Hun Sen's actions by evacuating their citizens from Cambodia.

ASEAN foreign ministers were to discuss the chaos in Cambodia, and the country's pending membership, at an emergency meeting July 10 in Kuala Lumpur. Hun Sen, for his part, warned others not to meddle in the country's affairs. "Let Cambodians solve their own problems," he said. But to be able to do so, they first need responsible leaders. -- With reporting by Ken Stier / Phnom Penh and regional bureaus


FROM PEACE TO WAR

The 1993 U.N.-sponsored election that ended Cambodia's decades-old civil war pitted hope against experience. A group of deposed royalists and returned emigrés faced off against the country's former communist ruling party. The victory by the royalists was a surprise; that they were able to form a coalition government with their enemies practically a miracle. Yet almost immediately, things began unraveling, culminating in virtual civil war once again last week. The grim sequence of key events:

1993 May: The election for Cambodia's 120-member legislature gives a slim plurality to the royalist Funcinpec party led by Prince Norodom Ranariddh. Hun Sen and his Cambodian People's Party (CPP) demand a power-sharing arrangement -- and get it. Each party appoints its own leader as prime minister, resulting in two co-premiers.

1994 Oct.: Outspoken Funcinpec member Sam Rainsy is fired from his job as finance minister. Funcinpec's secretary-general, Prince Norodom Sirivudh (a Ranariddh relative), resigns as foreign minister in sympathy. He complains the CPP dominates the bureaucracy.

1995 Dec.: Hun Sen accuses Sirivudh of plotting his assassination. Sirivudh is forced into French exile and found guilty in absentia.

1996 March: Ranariddh lashes out at Hun Sen, saying he is not sharing power equitably.

Nov.-Dec.: Relations between the coalition partners continue to worsen. Fighting between partisans breaks out in Battambang province in the western part of the country.

1997 FEB.-March: Ranariddh gets back together with Rainsy, and with leaders of smaller parties to form the National United Front. Later, grenades are tossed at a demonstration led by Rainsy. Forces loyal to Hun Sen are the prime suspects.

April: The National Assembly fails to reconvene and pass laws relating to ASEAN entry as well as to holding local and national elections in 1998.

May: Both sides continue stockpiling weapons. Three tons of arms from Europe to Funcinpec are intercepted. Funcinpec suffers a serious split, with eight MPs going over to the CPP and a provincial governor stepping up to challenge Ranariddh's leadership.

June: A brief battle between partisans takes place outside Ranariddh's house in the capital.

July: Fighting erupts. Hun Sen claims victory, but Ranariddh vows to fight on from exile.

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