DON-3
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
January 4, 1967
Mr. Noel is a 1965-66 Alicia Patterson Fund fellowship winner on leave from the Hartford Times. Permission to publish these articles may be sought from the Managing Editor, The Hartford Times.
PHNOM PENH: The United States backed out on a $10 million promise this fall. Western and UN diplomats in this neutral capital are still trying to pick up the pieces.
The promise — to help build the multi-purpose Prek Thnot Dam here as part of international development of the Mekong River — could have been a useful first step in patching up America’s shattered relations with Cambodia.
Instead, U.S. standing here has slipped farther back. With it has suffered the prestige of the United Nations, and the entire concept of international, non-political cooperation.
Efforts are now under way to finance Prek Thnot without the U.S. The success of these efforts, in which Washington itself is helping, will be known next month (February) when the four-power Mekong Committee meets in Laos. An acceptable compromise funding solution seems likely. But any solution is certain to leave a bitter aftertaste,
Meanwhile, a convoy system imposed by South Vietnam on Mekong River traffic has delayed shipping and threatened to strangle this capital port. The action, which may defy treaty obligations, strikes Western shippers here — to say nothing of Cambodians — as being deliberate harassment without military justification.
Although entirely unrelated to the dam problem, the convoys have added to Cambodian resentment at a sensitive moment in Mekong planning.
Ironically, the United States has been a leading advocate of Mekong cooperation. We have encouraged the four Mekong powers to set aside political differences for the sake of far-sighted development. The economic future of each country, and thus the stability of Southeast Asia, may depend on how much cooperation can be achieved in the next few years.
In more than a decade’s work on the 1,500-mile Lower Mekong, there has in fact evolved among the four riparian nations a close working relationship, at least on technical levels. Cambodia has no diplomatic relations with South Vietnam and Thailand, and strained relations with Laos. But the work goes on.
The work began in 1951, when the UN’s Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) commissioned the first study of Mekong potentials. The results were enthusiastic. In 1956 a more detailed study by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation was more specific and more enthusiastic.
In 1957, the four riparian states, under ECAFE auspices, set up an autonomous agency to carry the work forward. Nineteen other countries have offered support. A program of preliminary work, proposed by a survey commission headed by a U.S. Army corps of engineers expert, set out a five-year, $9.2 million program which was quickly over subscribed.
Despite Cambodian support for the Mekong project, one cannot help noticing a faint aura of skepticism among political leaders, quite apart from the recent Prek Thnot difficulties. The work has been inevitably slow, as basic information has been painstakingly assembled.
(The Mekong basin was in 1957 virtually an unknown quantity. Such basics as rainfall and stream volume were inadequate. Detailed studies of mining, industrial, electric and irrigation potentials, needed to determine a “cost-benefit” ratio to see whether each project would be economically worth while, had to start from scratch.)
There is a second reason for going slow. The most dramatic Mekong projects, on the main stream, imply a level of international cooperation, which is beyond the possibilities of today’s strained relations.
(A huge dam in Laos, for instance, and a second one in Cambodia, will produce volumes of electric power, which can only be absorbed in a four-nation power grid. Similarly, the Laos dam, and a stream-regulation barrage in Cambodia, will have enormous implications for irrigation downstream: crops planted in one nation will depend on water impounded and controlled in another.)
Partly because of the careful engineering needed for the “mainstream” projects, and partly because the legal and political implications will take time to work out, the Mekong Committee has begun with smaller tributary projects. Nine of these have been mapped out so far.
One of the small ($5.5 million) tributary dams has been built in Thailand, and a second larger one ($30 million) is nearing completion there. A large $24 million) tributary dam has been built in Laos.
The first huge mainstream dam on the Thai-Laos border is nearing the construction stage.
Although war in South Vietnam makes dam building improbable, preliminary work has been done on two small tributary dams, and a bridge program has been undertaken.
But Cambodia, the neutral which three years ago rejected U.S. aid, which today gives moral support to Hanoi and the Liberation Front (but maintains strict military neutrality), is still waiting for its first Mekong project to be built.
II. Background to Prek Thnot
Cambodia has not been idly waiting for international gifts to drop out of the heavens, suddenly to endow her with dams, power and irrigation projects.
She has, in fact, spent more of her own money than any of her three neighbors in the preliminary surveys and engineering studies of potential Mekong projects.
Meantime, Cambodia has developed her own long-range program of river exploitation, both on Mekong tributaries and on other river systems in the country.
Under a 1963 loan agreement with Yugoslavia, Cambodia has nearly completed a small hydroelectric dam on one of its southwestern rivers. She has reached agreement in principle with the Soviet Union on a loan for a similar dam in the same area; engineering is completed, and construction will probably start this year.
Meantime, Prek Thnot was early identified as a Mekong tributary project of high promise. Impounding a small river, which joins the mainstream south of Phnom Penh, it could produce 18,000 kilowatts of power, close to the country’s major area of need. Ultimately, it could irrigate 170,000 acres of farmland in one of the driest parts of the nation. The water, according to experiments by an Israeli team, can permit tripling of rice production, as well as a second cash crop of truck vegetables for the nearby Phnom Penh market.
In 1962, a Japanese engineering team completed plans for Prek Thnot. An international consortium, including the United States, was formed to finance the project.
Before it could be gotten under way, Cambodia rejected all American aid and relations between the two countries were broken off. The consortium dissolved; Prek Thnot was postponed.
(In 1964, Cambodia borrowed about $12 million from France to build the dam itself. But soon thereafter, it was decided that an oil refinery at Sihanoukville drew a higher priority in national planning. When the French were unable to lend any new money, Cambodia reluctantly decided to divert the earlier Prek Thnot loan to the oil refinery. The dam was postponed again.)
A little more than a year ago, it became clear that Cambodia still put a high priority on building Prek Thnot, and was now willing to accept international assistance, through the Mekong Committee, to build it.
At an ECAFE meeting in Delhi last March, a special Mekong Committee meeting was arranged to announce a 1966 “Cambodia Year” during which efforts would be concentrated on funding two or three projects in Cambodia, starting with Prek Thnot. An Australian team agreed to bring t’ lie Japanese engineering up to date, and ready Prek Thnot for contract.
That work was completed in October. Prek Thnot had now involved $6 million worth of preliminary work, more than half of it paid for by Cambodia itself. Construction would cost another $33 million of which a third would be provided by Cambodia, the value of goods and services, which could be purchased within the country.
The rest, $22 million, was to be provided by a combination of grants and soft loans. The key contributions, totaling $16 million, were to come from Japan and the United States. Although no firm commitment was made, and the proportion of loan and grant from each country remained to be worked out, the U.S. had not demurred when the Mekong Committee’s ebullient (American) executive agent, C. Hart Schaff, suggested in memoranda that the U.S. was good for more than half of the joint Japanese-American share.
Then came the bombshell. A Congressional rider to the foreign aid bill provided that any country “aiding” North Vietnam could not receive U.S. assistance.
(It is not entirely clear, from limited sources in Phnom Penh, what role the Administration played. It is known that the U.S. attorney general was asked for an opinion; and that he ruled that Prek Thnot, even if funded through the multilateral Mekong Committee, fell within the meaning of the Congressional ban.)
Although Cambodian “aid” to North Vietnam has been limited to a single token shipment of dried fish, that to the Liberation Front to a single token shipment of rice, Cambodian opposition to the U.S. intervention in Vietnam effectively blocked her from receiving help at Prek Thnot.
The U.S. administration, aware of the catastrophe in the making, moved swiftly to seek remedies. Eugene Black was sent to the inaugural meeting oil” the Asian Development Bank in Tokyo in November with a message for the Japanese: if they would pick up the pieces at Prek Thnot, the U.S. would make it up later. America might assume a heavier share than planned in Vietnamese projects; or the Asian Development Bank itself might, through its very long-term, low-interest loan program, pick up the tab for the later stages of building Prek Thnot.
The Japanese were willing, it seemed. But at a crucial moment, a cabinet reshuffle in Tokyo added to the uncertainties. The Cambodian government was left in an intolerably embarrassing position. A special Mekong Committee session was scheduled in Phnom Penh to accept final pledges and thrash out details of the balance between loans and gifts. The risk seemed high that the committee would find itself sitting around an empty table, with nothing to discuss. At Cambodian request, the meeting was cancelled.
(With hindsight, it appears the cancellation was unwise. The Japanese cabinet shuffle came Friday, December 2. The Mekong meeting was scheduled Wednesday, Dec. 7. It is now known that the new cabinet was to hold its first meeting Monday Dec. 5, with favorable action to increase its pledge for Prek Thnot a priority item on the agenda. When the Mekong meeting was cancelled, the Japanese cabinet — obviously with other pressing concerns — dropped Prek Thnot from its agenda. It has apparently been difficult since to obtain as broad a commitment as Japan was reportedly prepared to give at that moment.)
III. Saving Whose Face?
Although 1966, “Cambodia Year” in the Mekong Committee, has ended, there is joint agreement to carry it on to March 31, the end of most governments’ fiscal years, in hopes that arrangements can be made to finance Prek Thnot Dam before then.
The extension — though amply justified, since “Cambodia Year” was not begun until last April 1 — is illustrative of the tender care being taken by everyone concerned to avoid international embarrassment over Prek Thnot.
On the face of it, it is Cambodian sensibilities that diplomats here hope to spare. A chain of circumstances like this would be embarrassing to any country: it is axiomatic that no country enjoys receiving charity, much less being the object of international scurrying-about to find the money to give.
Still less so Cambodia, which prides itself — with good reason — on the slogan “Cambodia Helps Itself,” and which has earned attention among non-aligned countries by proudly rejecting U.S. aid for the sake of its fierce independence.
Plans now being discussed for financing Prek Thnot involve dividing the original “first phase” — the dam itself, an 18,000-kilowatt generating station, and 45,000 acres of irrigation — into “stage one” and “stage two,” with perhaps only 7,500 acres’ irrigation at first. That is still a creditable and worthwhile program. But the context is embarrassing; should this proposal fail, embarrassment would become humiliation.
The humiliation would be not only Cambodia’s, but also the United Nations’, and equally the several Western diplomats’ here who hope to see an American presence restored some day.
The warning signs are already up in Phnom Penh. Prince Norodom Sihanouk, Cambodian chief of state, prepared the way for a graceful retreat in a December 26 article in the Bulletin of the Counter-Government, organ of the country’s “shadow cabinet.”
He is beginning, he wrote, to have second thoughts about Cambodia’s adhesion to the Asian Development Bank, which she joined only after a blunt warning against letting the new institution be dominated by Western interests. Would Cambodia open herself to scorn from her neighbors, he asked, if she accepted through the Asian Bank U.S. dollars, which she had refused directly?
“I am certainly,” Sihanouk wrote, “a better patriot than economist, but I dare to think that the aid of the U.N. or the Asian Bank is not indispensable to construction of the Prek Thnot Dam.”
The principal need at Prek Thnot, he suggested, is not hydroelectric power, but irrigation to increase the yield of downstream lands.
“Now,” he said, “the Chinese have showed that even without money, without heavy equipment and machinery, one can, with courage and the strength of his arms, build huge irrigation dams. Do we want to ignore this lesson?”
Both the key points Sihanouk raised have been raised before, and answered. Cambodia decided a year ago that it would accept U.S. dollars not merely through the Asian Bank, but even more directly through the Mekong Committee, as token of her faith in the international project. And the power needs, although once questioned, have been demonstrated in careful studies.
(The dam being completed with a Yugoslav loan will produce 10,000 kilowatts; the dam being planned with a Russian loan will produce 65,000. The thermal generating plants in Phnom Penh now are rated at 46,000 kilowatts, but several are superannuated, and power needs are growing at about 13,000 kilowatts a year, almost doubling every six years. Even without any major new industries in the capital area, Prek Thnot will produce no oversupply of electricity.
(The generating station itself, moreover, is only $6.5 million of the $33,000,000 total cost; and the dam would be built to the same specifications regardless of whether or not power was to be generated.)
Two senior Western diplomats in Phnom Penh told me they do not believe Sihanouk’s article represents an about-face by Cambodia. In separate conversations, both suggested that the Prince was simply opening a back door, in case events of this month made a graceful retreat imperative.
But both agreed that open back doors are dangerous. There are certainly political forces in Phnom Penh who do not welcome anything hinting reconciliation with the U.S. They can be expected to nudge the country toward premature withdrawal from Mekong Committee financing of Prek Thnot.
This would be far from U.S. interests. It is increasingly clear that U.S. diplomacy, which only a few years ago was ready to say “Who needs Cambodia?” is moving toward understanding that an amicable but neutral Cambodia may well be valuable.
We have already recognized that Burmese neutrality is good for Burma, and therefore — as a contribution to Southeast Asian stability — good for the U.S. Many diplomats here are convinced that, in principle, we have reached the same conclusion regarding Cambodia.
But the principle remains to be translated into practice. Sihanouk agreed in mid-July to accept a visit from Roving Ambassador Averell Harriman, raising Western hopes for a rapprochement.
But on July 31 and August 2, U.S. planes attacked a clearly-marked Cambodian village (the second time while diplomatic observers were on the scene), When a note of apology August 12 added gratuitously that U.S. maps showed the village to be in Vietnam, the Harriman visit was summarily rejected.
Although the U.S. has finally (after repeated inspections by U.S. newsmen) dropped its claims that Cambodia shelters Viet Cong installations, we are still charging more casual, unauthorized use of Cambodian refuge by guerrillas than most diplomats here think probable.
Irresponsible reference by Western newsmen to a “Sihanouk Trail” also persists. And South Vietnam, which goes farther than the U.S. in charging Cambodian complicity in Viet Cong activities, seems to be responsible for almost weekly border incidents in which Cambodian lives are not infrequently lost. On Cambodia’s other border with a U.S. ally, Thailand, similar border raids are frequent.
Prospects for better U.S.-Cambodian relations have, in short, hardly improved since the aborted Harriman visit. Dam building at Prek Thnot seemed an ideal way for the U.S. to make a new start at bridge building.
IV. Tying Up the Traffic
The harassment of traffic on the Mekong would have been bitterly resented at any time; it was particularly inept coming, as it did, on the heels of announcement that the U.S. could not help finance Prek Thnot.
On November 15, the Vietnamese “Commission on Regulation of Water Itineraries” notified shippers that all boats moving up the Mekong River to Phnom Penh would be convoyed. They would assemble at Cap St. Jacques, and would be escorted three times a month to the Cambodian border, about 36 hours upstream at slow convoy speeds.
The purported reasons were to protect shipping from Viet Cong harassment, and to prevent ships from off-loading supplies to the Viet Cong en route.
But captains and shippers here report they have seldom been bothered by Viet Cong fire. Buzzing by U.S. planes, and a few stra4ng incidents, are apparently more common. One tanker captain keeps as a souvenir a U.S. bomb fragment, which landed on his decks, apparently from a badly aimed drop at a shore target.
As for supplying guerrillas, one captain noted that Communist-nation ships are not allowed up the Mekong anyway. There are only rustic landings along the river. If supplies are occasionally dropped off to the Viet Cong, armed Vietnamese guards on each ship could presumably stop that without convoying.
The same captain also observed that U.S.-South Vietnamese bombing raids seemed to him as frequent during conveyed runs up river as they were before the convoys. If the aim was to clear stray shipping out of the way of military action, he felt, it was not very successful.
There is remarkable unanimity among commercial interests here — mostly French and British — that the convoys aim simply at harassing neutral Cambodia. It is conceivable that shipping coming up to Phnom Penh, already reduced to about 30 a month (as against 50 a month in 1962), will be cut still further because of the extra costs of the troublesome convoys.
Ships must assemble at Cap St. Jacques 48 hours before sailing, and must await the next convoy if they miss, paying daily mooring charges while they wait. (One Panamanian ship waited 12 days.) The original Vietnamese notice warned that convoy sailing times may be changed without notice, and that has been done several times in the six convoys, which sailed before the end of the year.
At the other end of the convoy, ships are virtually assured of losing three or four days, if not more, waiting at the border to pick up a convoy back after loading or unloading at Phnom Penh, return convoys are uncoordinated with turn-around times.
The effect of this has already been to raise the costs of some commodities here, and to cause severe shortages of gasoline, cooking fuels, and heavy oil for Phnom Penh’s power plants.
Protests have been filed by several Western countries, and also by the ECAFE headquarters at Bangkok. There have also been efforts to make special arrangements for tankers, possibly by freeing them of convoy requirements.
But at year’s end, although a fourth convoy had been added monthly, tankers were still required to follow the rules.
Even if convoying conditions are eased further, and if tankers are exempted, it will do little to cool Cambodian tempers. The Mekong is, after all, an international river, governed by a tri-partite treaty, they point out. The South Vietnamese action is based on a minor clause in that agreement’ which is felt here to be illegally applied.
And again, as at Prek Thnot, Cambodia is in no mood to be needlessly inconvenienced, and then made the object of international charity to be “rescued.” Official circles here were apoplectic over a New York Times article from Saigon on Dec. 1 reporting “an extraordinary diplomatic exercise, in which South Vietnam is about to come to the aid of an ostensible enemy, Cambodia…”
With that kind of aid, Cambodians seemed to feel, who needs enemies?
Received in New York January 9, 1967.
