Judith Coburn
- 1993
Fellowship Title:
- Cambodians and the United Nations
Fellowship Year:
- 1993
Good Intentions Gone Awry: The U.N. Leaves Cambodia
CAMBODIA–Phnom Penh–Micheline LaJoie, a forty-something, brassy blonde former real estate agent from Quebec, eased her hulking white Land Cruiser through curtains of bamboo into the Khmer Rouge village of Chrey Leung. Two weeks before, the Khmer Rouge had taken four United Nations peacekeepers and their Cambodian interpreter hostage here; they were cut loose the next day and warned to stay out of the village. But voter registration had just ended for Cambodia’s first “democratic” elections and this was one of the few Khmer Rouge villages where peasants had signed up. LaJoie, the top UN electoral official in this remote district near the Vietnamese border, wanted to fly the UN flag and keep her lines open to the Khmer Rouge. United Nations soldiers escort Cambodian refugees returning to Sisophon, Cambodia, in March 1992. Photo by Peter Charlesworth, JB Pictures Our trek turned out to be the the kind of fuzzy search and witness operation that was the best the UN could mount against the rabid bloodlust of Cambodian politics. The usual crowd gathered as soon as
Peacekeeping in Cambodia: Breathing Space
CAMBODIA–Thmar Pouk–The Khmer Rouge was a no-show. They were supposed to be there for the weekly meeting of the local “Mixed Military Working Group,” a United Nations-run network to police the Cambodian peace accord. Officers from the three other once warring Cambodian factions were there, but no one knew where the Khmer Rouge representative was. Takeo, Cambodia-Cambodia’s U.N. Military Chief Lt. Gen. John Sanderson, left, and Director general of the Japanese Defense Agency Sohei Miyashita, shovel sand on national route 3 during a ceremony marking the beginning of the Japanese U.N. engineering battalion’s repair of the road last fall. AP/Wide World Photos. Nor was there any immediate way of finding out. U.N. peacekeepers can’t just phone up the xenophobic Khmer Rouge or drop by local general Prum Sou’s villa. U.N. peacekeepers would have to go through the usual layers of go-betweens and days of missed connections. Cambodian Prince Norodom Shianouk, right, waves before entering a Supreme National Council Meeting in Beijing with Yasushi Akashi, left, the head of the U.N. peacekeeping operating in Cambodia. The