Intrigue on the Cambodian border

Ken Conboy – the Jakarta-based historian and expert on military affairs in Southeast Asia – has written a new tome about the years of conflict and secret diplomatic activity that occurred in Cambodia and its long border with Thailand in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s.

“The Cambodian Wars” is a book that academics and war buffs will enjoy, as well as expatriates who survived that period, or more recent arrivals who want to know more about the bizarre deals and events that occurred in an era of intrigue, scandal and sordid geopolitical arrangements.

Conboy starts on ground well covered by Hollywood and many other writers – the Indochina war in the late ’60s. He details the collapse of Phnom Penh in April 1975 and then swings into terrain less well documented: the CIA’s rather feeble and floundering response to the Khmer Rouge takeover and the crisis that unfolded on Thailand’s eastern flank after Pol Pot and his brutal cadres were ousted from power by the Vietnamese in 1979.

Hanoi’s invasion of Cambodia, after a series of bloody massacres in villages on their territory by the Khmer Rouge in the late ’70s, led to a curious geopolitical pact that dominated affairs in Southeast Asia for two decades and caused the conflict in Cambodia to drag on till the mid-to-late ’90s.

This was the start of an extraordinary era in recent Thai history. The sudden collapse of the radical Khmer regime and the “arrival” of the formidable Vietnamese army on the eastern perimeter just across from Aranyaprathet led to a raft of dramatic repercussions: a large-scale refugee crisis that drew significant international aid and attention, plus a secret deal between Bangkok, Beijing, Washington and other states – Singapore, Malaysia and the UK – to provide extensive backing to opposition forces along the Thai-Cambodian border.

In the eyes of its global rivals, a military solution was required to ensure that the Vietnamese got out of Cambodia, and that meant supplying arms, financial backing and training to both communist and non-communist rebels, including the hated Khmer Rouge – a sordid arrangement that Thai military chiefs negotiated with China, with the full consent of the US and several neighbouring states.

It took another decade before Hanoi was finally convinced to withdraw and leave the “friendly” government they had installed, led by the then-youthful Hun Sen, to face its rivals on the Thai border.

The Thai-Cambodian border was a hotbed of intrigue throughout the 1980s, complete with a CIA “safe house” in Aran and warehouses full of weapons and supplies, guarded by the Thai military, that were doled out regularly to several different rebel outfits based in separate camps along the border.

The departure of most Vietnamese troops in 1989 led to an intensified push for reconciliation by Hun Sen, which culminated in peace talks in Pattaya and Paris, and the eventual signing of an accord that led to the arrival of international peacekeepers – UNTAC – and the return of hundreds of thousands of refugees in the early 1990s.

Some of these events have been covered in books by others focused on Cambodia, but Conboy has fleshed out the somewhat messy scene on the border – complex and often in a state of flux – with details of all the separate resistance groups and their many shortcomings, as well as the twists and turns by influential players such as Sihanouk and his sons. This is a book that has been years in the making, compiled from extensive interviews and a lot of research.

Conboy has written well-regarded books about wars in Vietnam, Laos and Tibet. An American, he has had good access to CIA and US officials over the years. He has also managed to interview key Thai, Cambodian and Vietnamese sources – Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, Norodom Chakrapong, Sonthi Boonyaratglin, Tea Banh, plus a host of others.

Leaders such as Sihanouk, Hun Sen and Lee Kwan Yew appear to have avoided him, but their key moves are certainly noted. We will have to wait for celebrated US reporter Nate Thayer’s book to get a deeper account of Pol Pot’s final days (that is on the way). There is also little about the refugee crisis on the border, which has been covered by others such as British author William Shawcross and international volunteers.

But there are some delightful nuggets: In June 1991, peace talks were organised in Pattaya with Sihanouk due to attend as the meeting’s chairman. However, Suchinda Kraprayoon, the Thai general who had seized power from Chatchai Choonhavan, feared the Khmer Rouge delegates would not be able to speak for their faction without their supreme leader.

Suchinda’s solution, Conboy said, was to secretly fly in Pol Pot from his safe house in Trat, where he was allegedly living with a minor wife and child. “Pol Pot was lifted by chopper to Pattaya, then taken in a blacked out van to the resort … Tucked away inside a hotel room, he was provided with earphones and allowed to secretly listen to the deliberations taking place at an adjacent hall.

“His comments to the proceedings were surreptitiously fed to the Khmer Rouge delegates … and they were thereby able to authoritatively offer their misgivings, and promises, with their leader’s full knowledge and consent.”

This feat led to a ceasefire and plans to cut off all external military assistance. The Chinese halted supplies several months later. However, the Khmer Rouge “was making enough money selling logs and gemstones to sustain its movement even without Chinese cash infusions”. Gemstone proceeds from Pailin were split among Pol Pot, Ieng Sary and Nuon Chea, plus logs sold to the Thai-military-funded Ta Mok in Anlong Veng, he said. The Washington Post estimated in September 1991 that the KR had earned $300 million from the sale of gems since taking over Pailin in 1989.

In late 1993, Thai police, in an act of “inter-service rivalry”, raided a warehouse in Chanthaburi across from Pailin and revealed a cache of Chinese weapons and 130mm field guns. It was one of three depots set up by the Thai Army more than a decade earlier. Embarrassed, the Army removed the stockpiled weapons and disbanded Task Force 838, responsible for covert operations in Cambodia.

In a footnote, Conboy also challenges a theory put forward by Shawcross and others – that outrage over intense bombing of eastern Cambodia by American B52s during the war drove many peasants to join the Khmer Rouge. He said US bombing was directed at Vietnamese sanctuaries “where few Cambodian citizens were present”, and that many areas where the KR saw greatest growth “received little or no US bombing”.

Some of Conboy’s other books cover wars in Vietnam, Laos and a history of the Cambodian Armed Forces, so he’s on familiar turf. It’s a little pricey, but there is a wealth of material in this 400-page tome. It is a welcome addition to the history of this eventful era. 

 

 

The Cambodian Wars: Clashing Armies and CIA Covert Operations

By Kenneth Conboy

Published by University Press of Kansas

Available at major bookshops, Bt1,743 (Bt1,569 for Kinokuniya members)

Reviewed by Jim Pollard