Logging in Muddy Waters: The Politics of Forest Exploitation in ...

Cr itical Asian Studies Le B illon/Logging in M uddy Waters

34: 4 ( 2002) , 563-586

LOG G I N G I N M U DDY WATERS The Politics of Forest E xp loitation in Cam bodia P hil ip p e Le B il lon

ABSTRACT: “Logging in Muddy Waters” analyzes the boom in forest exploitation that

characterized the 1990s in Cambodia, focusing on the instrumentalization of disorder and violence as a mode of control of forest access and timber-trading channels. The article examines tensions existing between the aspirations of Cambodians for a better life, the power politics of elites, and the hope of some in the international community for a green and democratic peace. These tensions have produced both an interlocking pattern of “illegal logging” from the highest levels of the state to self-demobilize d soldiers and peasants and sustained criticism that was only temporarily resolved through a legalization of the forest sector that benefited large-scal e companies to the prejudice of the poor.

Cambodia was among several countries in the 1990s that faced the challenges of a multidimensional transition, from war to peace, from single-party politics to greater democracy, and from some form of command economy to a market economy. Natural resources are both pivotal to and symptomatic of these transitions as they are generally perceived to be the “springboard” of economic reconstruction while providing a source of profits and power reflecting the changing political economy of these countries. Since the late 1980s the growing importance of environmental and sustainable development issues on the global political agenda, including for international organizations in charge of so-called “peace and reconstruction” programs, has meant that natural resource exploitation has remained a largely contested solution for reasons of environmental protection, social justice and economic well-being, and safeguarding the rights of local forest populations. The conflicting perspectives of Cambodians,

development agencies, and environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) represent a diversity of “public transcripts,” inscribed in policy documents and media reports, and advocacy campaigns, and attempting to gain hegemonic status by defining what is legitimate and what is not. 1 As these people and institutions jockey to improve their position in the unstable context of a transition, the exploitation of natural resources is unlikely to conform to typical “rational” economic or managerial principles. Rather it is likely to reflect the apparent “chaotic” nature of a transition associated with the dissolution of mainstream societal forces and driven by the “survival” strategies of individual actors. These strategies, in turn, inform a “hidden transcript” that reflects and legitimizes actual practices, many of which instrumentalize disorder in order to achieve gains for individuals and patrimonial networks rather than for society over the long term. 2 In particular, state officials are likely to adopt a two-faced strategy in which official policies conform to the view of the dominating “public transcript” — generally that of the main international development agencies and donors — while totally different unofficial practices secure individual or group access to and control of resource exploitation. In the realm of natural resources, the state itself can be understood to be conducting both “formal” and “shadow state” politics; formal politics being defined as the official institutional structures and the political and legal system ostensibly regulating them, while “shadow state politics,” a term coined by Reno in his study of corruption and warlordism in Sierra Leone, refers to the system through which rulers are “drawing authority from their abilities to [informally] control markets and their material rewards.” 3 There is no neat division between the two, as actors and relations overlap, but a conceptual division might help one to understand the supposedly “irrational” behavior of the state during periods of crisis or transition. The “failure” of states is often attributed to the withdrawal of the cold war “order,” the rise of “ethno-nationalism” and fiscal constraints such as structural adjustments. Yet an alternative view is to see the apparent “failure” of the state as the result of “shadow state” strategies used as coping mechanisms by a political leadership struggling to assert its control over key resources in order to translate its position into effective power, if not comprehensive statehood. From this perspective it is possible to see the “shadow state” as an answer to the political challenges posed by the neoliberal prescription of “government by the market,” in which “the market is viewed not merely as a means of allocating goods and services but as a form of social regulation.” 4 Rather than opposing such dominating paradigms as democracy and neoliberalism, a “state polity” placed into a crisis or transition phase has an interest in co-opting their incarnations — such as elections and privatizations — in order to reshape them into instruments of power. The case of logging in Cambodia illustrates this process, as well as the opportunities and constraints brought by the context and instrumentalization of disorder during a time of war and transition. In this regard, the popular Cambodian saying about “catching more fish in muddy waters” represents a hidden transcript that argues for the instrumentalization of disorder. Mud, in this metaphor, represents the myriad informal 564

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initiatives creating disorder and blurring the context of the political and economic life of the country. “Muddying the waters” of the transition in Cambodia in the 1990s offered many the chance of “catching” new economic and political opportunities. Prominent among these opportunities was the logging of forests, a valuable resource largely spared by the economic isolation of Cambodia since the late 1960s. As much as 10 million cubic meters of timber, representing a value of US$2.4 billion, have been exported from Cambodia since 1989. This vast windfall, however, generated only about US$120 million for the public treasury, a fraction of the fiscal revenues to be expected. This paper examines the reasons and ways in which the intensive plunder of forests in the 1990s became embroiled in the military, economic, and political process of the transition to peace over that period.

Logging Oppor tunities As the regional and international political events of the late 1980s were bringing the end of the war in Cambodia, logging opportunities in the country stood in sharp contrast with those of its regional neighbors. Cambodia’s tragic history in the 1970s and 1980s had largely prevented the rapid natural resource-led economic development that had turned Indonesian, Malaysian, and Thai forests into concrete casing and furniture for the Japanese market. 5 The successive wars and political regimes had an impact, however. The massive bombing by the U.S. Air Force in the early 1970s damaged large tracts of forests, especially along the border with Vietnam. 6 The Khmer Rouge regime imposed large-scale agricultural clearings in the second half of the 1970s, but only exported a few thousand square meters of timber. 7 The Vietnamese military forces and the People’s Republic of Kampuchea in Phnom Penh also undertook large-scale counterinsurgency clearing projects along the main roads and the “fencing” of the Thai border (the so-called K5 or “bamboo wall” project) that damaged forests. Finally, the important demand for timber and forest products for the reconstruction of the country after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime could not be managed by the limited surviving technical staff of the Department of Forestry and Wildlife (DFW). 8 Around 1991, as domestic, regional, and international political factors brought Cambodia into an era of transition, the country’s forest cover was estimated to be 60 percent.9 Large-scale commercially driven logging had so far remained sporadic and confined to border areas or the vicinity of major roads, leaving vast tracks of economically promising old-growth hardwood forests. Along with easy access to the sea and to neighboring timber markets in Thailand and Vietnam, Cambodian forests were among the key economic assets of one of the most impoverished countries in the world at the time. While the greatest role played so far by forests in Cambodia’s political history had been mostly tactical — providing favorable ground for guerrilla operations — this situation was to evolve rapidly in the political and military context of the 1990s transition. Thai militaries had long entered into logging deals with armed factions located along the Thai-Cambodia border in exchange for arms and the protection of refugees, including during the early 1970s. Similarly, once inside the country, Le B illon/Logging in M uddy Water s

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Vietnamese troops and companies exploited Cambodia’s forests for exports to Vietnam. In between, small Cambodian “solidarity groups” (krom samakki), which progressively turned into private ventures, struck deals with one belligerent or another to access timber for the domestic market. These business dealings, however, remained of little strategic significance to the dynamics of the conflict as both sides continued to receive large financial backing from their ideological sponsors. Some Cambodian politicians in charge of the refugee camps along the Thai-Cambodian border complained, however, of the pressure imposed by the Thai military, as well as the complicity of their own troops, in accessing timber resources in exchange for protection and access to humanitarian aid.10 When the political and financial backing of foreign sponsors started to weaken in the late 1980s, revenue from timber sales was one of the few resources available to armies along the border, who invited Thai companies to open up large operations in the territory the armies controlled. 11 As a result a complex web of relations was woven between Khmer Rouge leaders, Thai military, businessmen, and politicians. Log supplies from Cambodia increased in importance for Thai logging interests, as a logging ban was declared in Thailand in early 1989 and motivated Thailand’s new resource-driven foreign policies toward its neighbors.12 While progress was made politically toward a resolution of the Cambodian conflict, fighting on the ground escalated, in particular to increase territorial control and, thus, financial revenue. 13 The political settlement of the conflict through the Paris Accords in 1991 also entailed economic readjustments for Cambodia, particularly regarding opportunities to join the commercial success of neighboring countries.14 Cambodia has been largely a subsistence agriculture economy. The country has significant 566


tourist potential, but problems of insecurity, poor image, and lack of infrastructures retarded its development. The exploitation of natural resources for promoting economic growth and reconstruction could have been at the center of developmental hopes. Yet in the context of a pro-environment development discourse, the emphasis of international development agencies working in Cambodia was on how to save the forest, rather than on how to tap its potential. As a consequence, little attention was given to critical issues of forest access rights, employment rules in the logging industry, and distribution of benefits in the forest sector. Similarly, the financial needs of the various parties and administrations and the economic expectations and desires of a population emerging from two decades of dire privation and misery were barely considered. Indeed, the financial imperatives of the warring parties — and those of the State of Cambodia administration in particular — did not alter substantially with the signing of the peace agreement in 1991. The withdrawal of foreign assistance and the mounting insecurity associated with political change and with the refusal of the Khmer Rouge to observe the ceasefire or participate in elections reinforced the imperative to turn forests into cash in the mind of many officials in the new government. The result was much ad hoc logging and the sale of massive forest concessions inside the country. Each party attempted to secure logging deals before the elections scheduled for mid-1993; many companies and individuals were also eager to secure a stake in the forest sector. Transnational logging companies, mostly from within the Southeast Asian region (Thailand and Malaysia, in particular) started to operate in Cambodia, providing a significant cash input into the developing Cambodian economy and subsidizing the slush funds of politico-military factions. Some of these deals, such as that of the Thai company BLP, reached across political boundaries and linked competing factions, prefiguring the mutual accommodation of elites that would dominate the political economy of the coalition government following the UN-monitored elections. Limited by political and military agendas, such uneasy accommodation did not occur without problems and violence on the ground, as the murder in 1994 by “unidentified gunmen” of a BLP director and seventeen Thai loggers working for the company demonstrated. 15 Soon after the beginning of the peace process, the Khmer Rouge withdrew from the Agreement and resumed fighting, expanding its militarily controlled zones. A de facto economic embargo on the Khmer Rouge was declared by the Supreme National Council and supported by the UN Security Council but it was, if at all, only reluctantly observed by Thailand.16 From that point on, forest exploitation by the Khmer Rouge was given a great deal of attention and was explicitly linked to failures in the “peace and reconstruction” process. Capital accumulation through natural resource exploitation was, nevertheless, considered by most development agencies and international donors as necessary to provide the state with “infrastructural power,” or adequate means, to carry out “reconstruction” in countries affected by decades of conflict. In the case of Cambodia, the UN agency in charge of forest management, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), stressed that the country was “well endowed with natural resources” and that the tapping of these resources had great potential for Le B illon/Logging in M uddy Water s

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contributing to development and economic growth. 17 Yet although the “wealth” of the forests was often emphasized, by development banks in particular, few international development agencies after 1989 openly argued for a rapid development of logging. Most took a cautious approach, calling for further “studies” and “master plans,” if not for outright “afforestation.” 18 Meanwhile, the ruling elite in Cambodia retained the initiative on forestry issues. It did so by maintaining the flow of timber to Thailand by authorizing exports from Khmer Rougecontrolled areas and delivering logging concessions to Southeast Asian corporations, thereby securing new commercial alliances. With the formation in 1993 of a coalition government recognized by the international community — the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC), which brought together the formerly socialist Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), the Funcinpec royalist party, and to a much lower degree of influence the BLDP republican party — the forestry sector rapidly evolved under the impetus of Southeast Asian logging companies investing directly in the country. While both the CPP and Funcinpec wanted to attract foreign investors, none had a real desire to consolidate the state to the detriment of its own clientele and particular interests. As a result an important number of business deals were passed without public announcement or bidding, and taxation on logging was reduced to increase informal profits. Some of these deals were concluded with political figures from neighboring countries or with local cronies, placing profits from Cambodian forests in some of the same politico-economic networks that dominated the region (e.g., overseas Chinese companies, Thai and Vietnamese elites, the Suharto family). 19 Between 1993 and 1995, there was a common interest in maintaining a powersharing consensus through which Cambodia’s co-prime ministers, Hun Sen and Ranariddh, could minimize internal dissension and withstand both internal and external opposition to their “common” rule. This political accommodation was further necessary to reassure international donors, who provided half of the national budget, and to bring a minimum of the stability needed to attract private investors. However, as one analyst has noted, this accommodation was not much more than a political compromise “contingent upon the uneasy relationship of two unstable individuals.” 20 This compromise was oriented toward building their private power base rather than independent state institutions, which could become obstacles or rivals to their personal power and the interests of their followers. Both co-prime ministers attempted to consolidate their power base through complex and interrelated networks of clientelism and the embezzling of public revenues. Often overextending their executive power to encompass the whole regulation of politics and the economy, Hun Sen and Ranariddh secured the support of the private sector by granting tax exemptions or condoning illegal activities. As a legal adviser to the Council of Ministers confirmed: “Everything [on timber deals] is confidential and top secret, we [the leadership] work through annotations [on letters of request], so the high administration has no hold over these issues, which are treated outside of the normal circuit of decisions. People concerned by these decisions recognise this authority.”21 Parallel revenues were in turn used to consolidate their position by 568


financing personal security forces, buying off political alliances, or personalizing public welfare programs through direct donations. Funcinpec, in particular, needed to build up its capacity as it lagged well behind the CPP in terms of financing its political activities. As in many countries in which rapid political changes take place, the easiest way to access finance was to resort to corruption. 22 Networks of clients were not only made up of the growing private sector but also the state apparatus itself. The clientelization of the state apparatus was not new to Cambodia, but the coexistence of CPP and Funcinpec networks within a single space led to further erosion of formal governance. Public rules and organizations became subordinate to politics and, ultimately, to individuals, civil servants, and businessmen who were able to secure their position within a multiplicity of politicized and personalized networks. This clientelization of the state took the form of a division and multiplication of official postings; this division was part of the power-sharing consensus. Ministries, provincial governorships, state companies, and the command of military regions were divided, or shared between the two parties not only to effect a political balance but also as a way of distributing perquisites generated by these organizations. The nominal head of state, King Norodom Sihanouk, noted with irony that, “[s]ince the 1993 election, Hun Sen and Ranariddh have chosen to share everything. I speak carefully. They’ve found a miraculous formula or recipe. It’s delicious.”23 A tacit sharing agreement was passed, for example, over rubber plantations, which remained under CPP control, and civil aviation, which passed under the control of Funcinpec. Answering a French rubber expert who had asked him why he signed crooked deals favorable to Hun Sen’s cronies, Ranariddh argued, “rubber does not concern me. I am in charge of civil aviation, [Hun Sen] is in charge of rubber, and we don’t bug each other.” 24 As noted by anthropologist John Marston, within the upper reaches of society, [t]here was…an amazing jockeying for the signs and symbols of rank…a desire to return to pre-socialist usage but mostly a discursive etiquette corresponding to the demand of a new political economic order, which had to do, not with age-old hierarchies, but with how much political and social hay you could make with newly revived symbols of power. 25 Symbols and tangible intermediaries of power included private bodyguards and displays of wealth such as luxurious cars and villas, second and third wives, extravagant partying, gambling in one of thirty new casinos, or generous donations at weddings and to pagodas and charities. Foreign observers commented that Cambodians had developed a “casino culture” in which “getting rich and staying rich” was apparently the only thing that mattered. For ordinary Cambodians the free-spending lifestyle of the new upper class appeared to be within the reach only of those who abused “the power of the gun” or benefited from high bureaucratic positions and powerful patrons. The liberalized mode of regulation resulted in an economic growth that reassured some in the international community about the success of Cambodia’s release from the grip of what some still identified as a Leninist regime.26 However, because of the pattern of politics, the formal institutions and rules prescribed Le B illon/Logging in M uddy Water s

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by the new Constitution failed to become effective instruments of control over this liberalized regulation of the state and society, many of them not even having been created (e.g., the constitutional council, supreme council of magistracy, anticorruption law). As a result, “most activities in Cambodia — economic, social, even political — occupied the same semi-legal, semi-illegal status.” 27 In turn, these activities reflected and exacerbated unequal power relations. Abuses or criminal activities were rarely condemned and even less punished as “patrons throughout the system — up to and including the co-prime ministers — considered the need to protect their clients to be more important than justice…[and] politics, not law, was paramount.” 28 The embezzlement of forest revenue also largely benefited the governmental armed forces as these retained a high profile thanks to the ongoing war against the Khmer Rouge. To secure political allegiance within the army, the heads of government even briefly gave the army monopoly control over the licensing of timber exports in 1994. 29 While reports by the Forestry Department accused armed men and dishonest businessmen for much of the “anarchy” affecting the logging sector, the Department itself established a reputation of providing klanh, literally “fat,” bureaucratic positions. Much of the “anarchy” denounced in official reports resulted in fact from informal arrangements that linked businessmen, military, forestry bureaucrats, and politicians. As the blurred status of an official export ban on logs demonstrates, the official policies of the government themselves came to reflect the disorder orchestrated by these arrangements.

M uddying th e Waters: The Case of the Log Expor t B an Because more jobs and tax revenues can be generated from the export of processed timber, and because the Khmer Rouge faction was in control of most of the forests in the borderland with Thailand, both sound forest management and effective economic sanctions on the Khmer Rouge dictated a ban on the export of round logs. Authorizing or banning log exports, in other words, represented the chief regulatory instrument in the hands of the Cambodian governments and a central item of the “good governance” agenda for the international community. Yet the economic interests of political factions and individuals led to a pattern of political accommodation between the Cambodian governmental elite, and politicians, as well as businesspeople in neighboring countries, that directly benefited the Khmer Rouge. Between 1992 and 1996, a log export ban was declared on five occasions; each ban was lifted within a matter of months if not weeks. While the Supreme National Council (SNC) governing Cambodia during the 1992-93 peace process had decided to first ban the export of logs in September 1992 (to be implemented on 1 January 1993) and had received the support of the UN Security Council, as well as the assistance from the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), to monitor the ban, the “coalition” government that emerged from the election decided to lift the ban.30 Log export deals were approved by the governmental side for Thai concessions in territory controlled by the Khmer Rouge. To justify such an apparently irrational policy, which provided the government’s very enemy with tens of millions of dollars in annual revenues, Funcinpec prime minister Ranariddh declared that the 570


government was largely “powerless” to prevent the Thais from importing Khmer Rouge-controlled timber. Because of this, the government preferred to get a cut through an official deal with the Thais, rather than miss out altogether. Funcinpec vice-minister of commerce Lu Lay Sreng had initiated the first step to remove the SNC/UN log export ban. In early September 1993, in a letter addressed to Ranariddh, Lu Lay Sreng lobbied for the reopening of the border to timber exports: “To serve the national interest, I believe that already felled timber should be exported, both logs and sawn timber, within 1993. The Ministry of Commerce plans to stop [the] issuing of export licenses for logs and sawn timber the following year” 31 (emphasis added). While the letter mentioned “approximately more than 200,000 cubic meters of timber” still remaining in the country, this move was motivated by the private interest of a Thai company (BLP) to export 55,000 cubic meters of round logs. The company had had a concession since 1991 and enjoyed close ties with both political leaders in Cambodia and with Chavalit in Thailand. 32 In mid-October, at Ranariddh’s suggestion, Hun Sen gave his approval. The following day, shortly before the formation of the Royal Government of Cambodia on 25 October 1993, the Ministry of Commerce was informed by the provisional Council of Ministers that the SNC/UN log export ban was lifted until 1 January 1994 to permit the export of “timber felled many months ago.” 33 On 29 October 1993, the very day of the investiture of the RGC, Cambodia’s Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries give the BLP company permission to export logs. Both Funcinpec and CPP ministers authorized the deal, demonstrating the importance of such matters for some in the government. 34 On 3 November and again on 24 November, the newly nominated minister of finance, Sam Rainsy, complained about this situation to Ranariddh, arguing about the lack of transparent consultation and authorization by the prime ministers on such an important issue, the low level of royalty fees, as well as the bypassing of the Ministry of Economics and Finance for the payment of taxes.35 The log export ban was lifted nevertheless; even though the National Assembly was not consulted, no official decision of the Council of Ministers had been handed down, and the Customs Department had never been informed. 36 An interministerial commission was subsequently created to sell “already felled timber on the Thai-Cambodian border.” 37 Special customs zones located inside Thai territory where logs could be stocked before official importation to Thailand were to be established for inspection by Cambodian Customs officials. 38 This measure was necessary because most of the timber was coming from Khmer Rouge areas that were not accessible to RGC officials due to the fighting. As the export deadline approached, Funcinpec finance minister Sam Rainsy, now supporting exports to raise public revenues, obtained its postponement until 31 March 1994. Demonstrating the fiscal crisis affecting the government as well as the shallowness of the “coalition” between the two main parties heading it, Rainsy’s wife, then head of Cambodia’s national bank, explained that not only was there “no money in the public treasury…[but] for us the CPP was the enemy, not the Khmer Rouge.” 39 Le B illon/Logging in M uddy Water s

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The issue of log exports, including those originating from Khmer Rouge-controlled areas, was discussed during a meeting between Cambodia’s co-prime ministers and the Thai prime minister, Chuan Leekpai, on 12 January 1994. According to the minutes of the meeting, Ranariddh said that the RGC had decided not to permit any more logs to be cut from 1 January 1994 but had decided to extend until 31 March 1994 the period for permitted export of unprocessed timber felled many months ago.…[T]his extension applies, under the same conditions, to logs cut in zones controlled by the Khmer Rouge (Democratic Kampuchea) faction.…[However,] since [this] matter is a sensitive issue both internationally and domestically, it should not be placed in the Joint Communiqué to be issued at the end of the visit of the Royal Thai Government delegation. 40 (emphasis added) Hun Sen confirmed this position as “that of the RGC and added that contracts previously signed by the Khmer Rouge will be honored by the Royal Government of Cambodia.” 41 Official declarations following the meeting denied any support for the Khmer Rouge by the Thai, nor obviously any by the RGC, with which it was still officially at war.42 This meeting, as well as the position of the RGC regarding its stance toward Thai business interests in the border region, reflected the RGC’s optimism in solving the situation militarily and securing the assistance of Bangkok provided that Thai business interests were protected. During the first three months of 1994, the government authorized — with the knowledge and tacit encouragement of World Bank staff — the export of 750,000 cubic meters, bringing to the Treasury US$32 million in taxes. Since about 70 percent of the exported timber originated from Khmer Rouge areas, that faction benefited from at least US$15 million in revenues. 43 Through these deals, the RGC, as well as the Khmer Rouge and personalities in the Thai government, had found a convenient relationship of coexistence that gave them continued access to the logging rent. The policy of exporting only “old logs” for the “national interest” and isolating the Khmer Rouge to further peace was only a façade, behind which both competition and accommodation orchestrated the struggle over who was to control the flow of revenue generated by logging. The Thai military was critical of the ambiguous attitude of the RGC vis-à-vis the logging issue in Khmer Rouge territory as, the world is accusing the Thai military of helping the Khmer Rouge, but there is no publicity about the effect of the temporary lifting of the logging ban.…The Royal Government [of Cambodia] fights them and negotiates agreements [with the Thai government on log exports] that allow them to get money. That is hypocrisy. The Royal Government negotiated an agreement with the Thai government on how many cubic metres of logs, what companies, and what crossing points. Some of these logs are coming out of Khmer Rouge territory. Money goes into the hands of the Cambodian government and money goes into the hands of the Khmer Rouge. 44 The ban on log exports was officially reinstated on 31 March 1994 and placed under the supervision of an interministerial committee. But this third export ban, the second for the RGC, was breached within three weeks. As early as 9 572


April, Ranariddh gave his approval for a “special authorization” to be provided to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to export logs. Hun Sen agreed on 20 April and the Council of Ministers officially informed the Ministry of Commerce on 26 April that since “some timber remained…[the RGC]…can make an exception” 45 (emphasis added). This pattern was to be repeated or at least attempted until the breakup of the Khmer Rouge in 1996, while illegal exportations sanctioned by the highest level in government continued to take place until at least 1998 when Hun Sen gained full and more legitimate control of the state by winning the national elections. In many ways, the case of the logging bans is a classic example of conflict between a central authority trying to project its control and power over peripheral regions by addressing issues of national security, political dissidence, and illegal trading, and a border population that is better off with close political, social, economic, and cultural interaction across borders. 46 The main differences in this case were the foreign nature of the United Nations as the “central authority” and the “protection of natural resources” as the main “public mandate” to be exercised upon the periphery. The borderlands of Cambodia and Thailand represented “grey areas of political control symbolising the inherent weaknesses of their respective states.” 47 Furthermore, these bans reflected the nature of the networks of power within and across these states and demonstrated the capacity of domestic actors to preserve their interests by successfully resisting a “public transcript” dictated by powerful, yet limited, external actors, in this case the UN Security Council and later on the donors and international agencies.

The B enefits of “M uddy Waters ” As a result of the “shadow governance” of Cambodia’s two prime ministers, which was driven by fiscal crisis, factionalism, and personal interests, so-called “uncontrolled practices” in the logging sector flourished. 48 The rapidly expanding domestic private sector included numerous Cambodian farmers as well as urban dwellers, many of whom faced debts, revenge, or judicial pursuits, and “self-demobilized” soldiers and even army units who were seeking a social “escape” in this new lawless frontier of capitalism. Forests thus became a place were money was made, a site of social escape and rebirth for many impoverished, marginalized, or runaway people. In numerous instances, military personnel, officials, and businesspeople repeated and benefited from the “shadow” practices of the highest levels in the government at provincial and district levels. Besides this domestic constituency, the logging sector included an increasing number of foreign and national companies that obtained from the government logging concessions and export licenses granted without public announcement or bidding, and taxation on logging was frequently waived to increase “shadow” taxation and profits. By 1998 all forests outside of protected areas had been granted to concessionaires. To access forests, claim their stakes, and protect themselves, civilians wore often military uniforms. Semi-military logging groups set up fake minefield warning signs in recently decreed national parks or fought turf wars with the private militias of concessionaires. 49 Illegal logging increased sharply, alongside “legitimate” concessions. In man y Le B illon/Logging in M uddy Water s

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instances, concessionaires conveniently used illegal loggers as subcontractors to access blocked areas that had not yet licensed or even national parks or competitors’ concessions, or simply to quicken the pace of exploitation. As the government required the processing of timber before export, heavy investment was demanded from concessionaires. The absence of logging quotas and the large surplus capacity in view of the sustainable harvest potential resulted in illegal logging within the large protected areas set up by Royal Decree in 1993. The embezzlement of forest revenue largely benefited the governmental armed forces that had retained territorial control due to the ongoing war against the Khmer Rouge. While outright confrontations did take place over control of rich forest stands, transportation routes, and log yards, commanders from both sides often came to business agreements of mutual interest. In so doing, they maintained a minimum level of conflict that guaranteed their control of the region and over civilian forestry and fiscal agencies. As the director of a provincial department of agriculture put it, [u]nder the argument of the war, the Khmer rouge and the military took the control of the forests and rich areas and this until this day. This system is protected from above because Hun Sen still needs the military as there is still a war and even if there is peace there is always economic war. The military always receive his support, so we do not bother them.…The military are afraid of losing their jobs because of peace, so they look for ways to make money.…Capitalism is a real opportunity for high-ranking military. 50 Yet, many officials were also relatively efficient in turning their bureaucratic function into a source of graft by facilitating illegal practices. Institutional powerlessness and individual ability to collect bribes were in fact often working hand in hand. Graft was largely institutionalized to supplement salaries and the budget of the forestry department, with the forestry director appointing and rotating meritorious staff to the most lucrative checkpoints.

Clearing the Waters: Advocacy, Conditional ity, and the P olitical E ndgam e By the mid-1990s, the ongoing war, widespread corruption, and forest plunder motivated donors to impose stricter conditionality upon the Cambodian government. Logging became emblematic of what was wrong, not only with the Khmer Rouge but also with the government itself, as evidence of dubious interests and motivations in the civil war, endemic corruption, and weak tax returns tarnished the image of the newly elected coalition. Because of the powerful feedback effects from mismanagement of natural resources on the livelihood of populations — and both the legitimacy of the state and its capacity to cope with resulting crisis — this situation was clearly identified as a threat to the development and long-term stability of the country as well as to the welfare of its population.51 From this point on, logging constituted a key point of contention between the government and international donors who at that time were providing more than half of the national budget. Donors found in logging an issue in which general problems of corruption and violence, as well as politicization 574


of public resources and the state apparatus, could be indirectly tackled. Among the donors the IMF took the most concrete steps by withholding and then canceling in 1996 part of a loan provided to the government within the framework of the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Fund; a step that was reportedly counterbalanced by a loan in an equivalent amount provided by the Japanese government. 52 While logging revenues fueled the conflict and contributed to the use of violence, the accommodating political economy of war provided the opportunity for multiple contacts and the development of common interests on both sides of the political divide as well as a rise of economic agendas and more material aspirations among many military commanders. These developments among certain Khmer Rouge units seem to have facilitated, if not induced, their defection in 1996 as the outflow of timber was halted following international pressure — led by the British advocacy NGO Global Witness and followed in turn by the U.S. administration — on Thailand to close its border to Khmer Rouge exports in mid-1995. While the Khmer Rouge directly benefited from export authorizations granted by the co-prime ministers, individual Khmer Rouge army units collected protection fees from logging companies and small groups operating in their areas of control. These fees often ranged between $100 and $500 per month to operate a truck, a chainsaw, or a sawmill.53 This source of support proved crucial to frontline Khmer Rouge units located far from their rear bases, providing a source of cash, food, and information. When deals turned sour or local Khmer Rouge commanders proved too accommodating toward local government authorities, however, the rebel movement did not hesitate to act brutally. The extremism of means of control exercised by the Khmer Rouge in the forestry sector has been clearly illustrated by the documented slaughter of about ninety Vietnamese loggers in 1991 in Kratie, seventeen Thai workers of the BLP logging company in 1994 in Preah Vihear, thirteen Vietnamese loggers and three soldiers in 1995 in Mondulkiri, and the beheading of fourteen Cambodian loggers in 1996 in the province of Kampot. Individual government army commanders also violently protected their business, for example with the murder of a Cambodian journalist in 1994 by a commander who specialized in the escort of illegal log rafts down the Mekong River, and the murder of two foresters in 1997 in Siem Reap and Mondulkiri. At least five international logging companies lost staff and all suffered from kidnappings, sometimes as a result of an association between local Khmer Rouge and government army groups. 54 Within the context of more intense governmental military pressure, a general battle fatigue and the demoralization of troops who were realizing that they were no longer fighting Vietnamese but their fellow Cambodians, as well as growing political isolation and international tension over the imposition of more orthodox policies by the old guard, the financial slump that resulted from the closure of the Thai border to Cambodian log imports in mid-1995 contributed to increased tensions and distrust within the leadership of the movement and large-scale defections. 55 In charge of the gem and timber rich areas around the town of Pailin, in the southwestern part of the country, one-time co-leader of Le B illon/Logging in M uddy Water s

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the Khmer Rouge movement Ieng Sary and local commanders resisted demands for more o r tho d o x p o l i c i e s a n d i ncreased revenue transfer by the Khmer Rouge party elite located in the north around Along Veng. As both sides of the geographically and now politically and economical ly divided Khmer Rouge movement accused each other of embezzling money and militarily attacked each other, Ieng Sary’s group as Dipterocarpus well as other Khmer Rouge obtusifolius units throughout the country decided to defect to the government.56 This opened a space for peace through individual negotiations between the defecting groups and competing parties within the government. These defections were not unconditional. Defecting Khmer Rouge commanders remained in partial control of their territory and its resources, even obtaining tax exemptions and promises of development assistance from CPP or Funcinpec politicians and generals, with Funcinpec in particular vying for the military support of the defecting Khmer Rouge units. As one Khmer Rouge commander explained, he defected to the CPP rather than to Funcinpec “because the development promises made in August [by Hun Sen] were good.…Funcinpec cannot provide for schools, etc.… because its party is poor and Funcinpec will lose the elections [in 1998] so it’s better to be with CPP. CPP gives us power, not Funcinpec.” 57 While the CPP did indeed win the 1998 elections after the 1997 coup d’etat and many of these deals succeeded, tensions occasionally arose when government partners failed to keep their promises, as in August 1997 when Front 909’s commander (re)defected to join Khmer Rouge loyalist forces, in part because of the seizure by governmental forces of US$23 million worth of logs and logging machinery from his area. 58 Despite mutual accommodation among the elite, the political situation began to deteriorate in early 1996, mostly because of Funcinpec’s weakness in consolidating its political victory during the UN-sponsored elections inside a government increasingly controlled by the CPP. The governmental coalition collapsed during fighting in July 1997, as a result of the instability created by the problem of allegiance over these newly available forces and the resources they controlled. Following the victory of Hun Sen-aligned forces and the ousting of most Funcinpec politicians, financial demands by the military, in part to conduct offensives against remaining Funcinpec forces and for the subsequent 1998 electoral campaign, led to more logging, in particular near the Vietnamese border. 59 The 1998 elections confirmed the CPP in power, although without an 576


absolute ruling majority. With a legitimized hold on power, the CPP and more specifically Hun Sen did not have to rely systematically on a parallel budget to sustain its power base. Rather, the new government needed to repair an image damaged by the coup and to consolidate the election dividend by responding to the demands of international donors. Topping these demands was the cleanup of the logging sector, which the government addressed through a heavy-handed crackdown on so-called “illegal activities.” However, the targets of this cleansing were mostly small loggers and unruly political clients, rather than key concessionaires. Thousands of jobs were lost as a result. As such, the discourse of legalization and cleaning-up of the logging sector legitimated a concentration of profits by condoning the monopolization of access to timber and the use of violence against small-scale illegal loggers, many of whom were self-demobilized soldiers and impoverished peasants. Despite an effective independent monitoring of the forest sector, established by the government as part of the conditionality package imposed by the donor community and conducted by the nongovernmental organization Global Witness, the sector remained one characterized by widespread illegal practices, crony capitalism, and the concentration of profits. Violence continued to be used by illegal loggers, including against Global Witness staff after they documented illegal logging activities by GAT, a Malaysian logging company. At the end of 2001, following sustained pressure from donors in the light of renewed massive flooding, low tax revenues, and failure by forest concessionaires to provide management plans, Prime Minister Hun Sen suspended all concessions and prohibited logging, arguing that he preferred receiving the support of international donors rather than relying on revenue from logging. In 2002 GAT’s logging concession was canceled. 60

Forests, Logging and Sociopolitical Transition As in many Southeast Asian societies, but also in Europe, forests are the opposite of and a complement to “humanized” space.61 This dichotomy is well illustrated by the Khmer vocabulary used to distinguish two categories: that of the wild and supernatural world, prey, and that of the civilized and human world, srok. The forest is thus the wild woods, prey cheu, while the rice-growing flood plain, veal srey, constitutes most of the srok. However, these two spaces interpenetrate each other, from the “wild” back garden of a house in a village to a “humanized” path opened in the deep forest by invoking spirits. 62 If the forest is not “humanized” for lowland Khmer people, in the sense of an integration into the life cycle of the society itself (e.g., for “highland” proto-Indochinese groups practicing shifting cultivation), it is deeply socialized through numerous traditional beliefs and extensive use. Among the themes of the forest in Khmer tradition are those of transformation, such as rebirth, transition, and journey through life, as humans come into close contact with spirits and ghosts.63 The forest is also the place of darkness and murder, an association that long predated the existence of the Khmer Rouge guerrillas, but was afterwards closely associated in sayings such as “where there is forest, there is Khmer Rouge.” Despite this dimension of Le B illon/Logging in M uddy Water s

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foreignness and fear, forests were part of the everyday life of many lowland Khmers through their collection of widely used forest products and frequent settlement in new forest clearings. 64 Incorporated in the extension of overseas Chinese trading networks and French colonial development in Indochina between the late nineteenth century and the 1950s, the exploitation of forests had significant sociopolitical meaning for the Cambodian society. Cambodian forests have had a long history of “participation” in Cambodian insurrections and politics, interacting in a variety of ways with society. Located at the periphery of the country, mostly along the borders of Thailand and Vietnam — two countries that have often supported opposing Cambodian factions in order to increase their influence in the country — forests have provided a “natural fortress” or hideout for opponents fleeing central authorities, and have been a safe conduit to the “lifeline” of their foreign sponsors (e.g., the provision of arms, equipment, drugs, and food). The forest sector also participated in the stratification of society, initially during the pre-colonial era, by providing a source of political rewards, but increasingly during the colonial period as the monetarization of the economy was extended through the commodification of nature. Commercial logging reinforced a social class governed by values that did not fit the traditional cultural model of Cambodian society, e.g., status based on capital accumulation. The class of traders that organized and managed commercial logging had preceded the French protectorate. Yet this class, overwhelmingly dominated by ethnic Chinese, became incorporated into the social fabric of Khmer society through interethnic marriage and close commercial relations with the peasantry.65 The development of productive sectors such as logging, dependent on capital and mostly foreign labor, meant that this class became increasingly economically powerful and socially distinct from the wider society.66 The growth of commercial logging also benefited the French administration and more traditional networks of patronage. These benefits were either channeled through the formal French fiscal system, to the greater advantage of the Vietnamese colony, or through the “corruption” that the “rationalization” of the forest sector permitted and which “fed” local patronage schemes. In the postcolonial era, a similar situation endured with, however, a slump in public revenue and in the relative importance of the forest sector in the overall economy. Furthermore, the ethos and practices of colonial and postcolonial development dispossessed the bulk of the population from essential resources supported by the premise that both resources and population needed long-term “protection.” French efforts to “rationalize” the forest sector, according to a colonial discourse of degradation that was perpetuated beyond independence — and into the 1990s — justified the creation of instruments of exclusion and control of forest resources that alienated the general population from forests and benefited the logging companies. The contradiction in entrusting the conservation of forests to those most interested in their short-term commodification did not escape some administrators, but the imperative of commodification dominated the political economic agenda of the ruling elite. However, the colonial forestry regime was tempered by free logging licenses and a lax enforcement of 578


the legislation and it did not reach a scale and level of hegemony similar to those of Burma or Java. 67 Prefiguring conditions of access in the 1990s, networks of patronage and local interests that preserved informal and often illegal entitlements also facilitated the conditions of access of Cambodians to forest resources. As such, the control of Cambodian forests by the state, whether colonial or postcolonial, was far from absolute. Yet, some French colonial administrators criticized such “benevolent” or ineffective policies. In 1905, one such administrator pointed to the expenses incurred in six days of travel and up to two weeks of delay for obtaining a “free” logging permit. He wrote that “the natives, their rights, and their customs, have never been the subject of study; they count for nothing in the concerns of this [forestry] service, whose regulations are resolutely and mercilessly despotic” and he warned of potential social unrest from a population that “asked the forest for a compensation…for the relief of their misery when their rice field gave nothing.” 68 Such criticism would find an echo in the “legalization” policies of the 1990s. Finally, forests changed both discursively, through their (re)appropriation and institutionalization by the new polity, and materially through their exploitation and destruction. In turn, this “metabolic transformation” of forests, played a part in socioeconomic change. Logging participated in the building-up of an urbanized trading class, dominated by Sino-Khmers and Europeans, that significantly changed the structure and organization of the Cambodian society. Similarly, the protective canopy and mystic “otherness” of the forest constructed the power of a revolutionary class in the 1960s. This revolutionary class specifically condemned this “colonial” and “urban” construct and sought to dramatically “retraditionalize” the Cambodian society, using the communities in remote forested regions of the northeast as a source of inspiration and support for their movement. 69 In other words, unequal relations of power and sharper class distinctions resulted from the commodification of nature, and tactical advantages resulted from its material and imaginary presence. Over the past decade, Cambodian forests have interacted in various ways with the sociopolitical transition process. First, forests continued to provide a “sanctuary,” both to the Khmer Rouge and also to a range of Cambodians who were seeking an “escape” from poverty and debt or for security. Second, contending political parties have been able to extract financial rent from the exploitation of these forests. This rent became particularly important as the financial backing of foreign sponsors declined in the late 1980s and social status in society became increasingly tied to financial wealth. By helping to fund the conflict, the commodification of forests played an active role in its continuation. Again, the location of forests was important for providing spatial continuity between the site of struggle and the source of support (market) — in this case, by enabling Thai companies to gain access to Cambodian forests controlled by particular parties. The capture of this economic rent also led to military operations aimed specifically at control of forested areas and transport routes. A third aspect of the role of logging in the transition was the sociopolitical effect that the commodification of forests had on actors organizing and controlling the commodity network. 70 Direct contacts developed at the local level Le B illon/Logging in M uddy Water s

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among military commanders, politicians, and businessmen nurtured the personal economic interests of members of the contending parties and led to cooperative arrangements between “enemies.” These socioeconomic relations “diluted” the orthodoxy of Khmer Rouge political commitments and weakened chains of command within the various armies. This was particularly true when the commodity network crossed a political divide, either spatially (e.g., an export route successively controlled by opposing armies) or institutionally (e.g., the need for an export license issued by the central authorities), and thus required an accommodation with the different sides. Fourth, the availability of windfall revenue from large-scale logging operations had a major politico-economic effect on the structure of power in an impoverished country such as Cambodia. By providing a means for patrimonialism and opportunities for corruption, the forest sector weakened formal governance to the profit of individual and factional interests. When the transition to peace took place, the spatial location of the forests at the periphery of the country played a significant role. This location provided opportunities for actors in control of these peripheral areas, mostly provincial strongmen and militaries, to benefit from the conjuncture of economic liberalization and political uncertainty to strengthen their power base by increasing their financial wealth and building local productive networks. In turn, the central leadership attempted to resist this decentralization of resource access and concomitant effect on their political power with a centralized concessionary scheme, ensuring more exclusive access and capture of logging rents through foreign companies or close cronies. This also had an impact in international relations at a regional scale by implicating politico-economic networks, such as that of Thailand’s Prime Minister Chavalit or Vietnamese party and military leadership. The last aspect of forest exploitation with a bearing on political processes of transition emerges from the antagonism that the mode of forest exploitation created between the government of Cambodia and part of the population as well as international observers. Widely perceived by the two last as a blatant example of the corruption and irresponsibility of the former, the organization of the forest sector largely discredited the government. While abuses occurred, by the government international interveners, as well, much of that antagonism resulted from the confrontation between pragmatist and idealist perspectives on the transition process itself. In this regard, the “rationalization” of the forest sector through logging concessions — accompanied by improvements in modes of government, economic indicators, and an accountable collection of public revenue by the state — is likely to diminish this antagonism and to win back international support. Yet, logging is likely to remain an arena of domestic discontent and political challenge, as the rationalization will entail a more efficient, and more exclusive, process of commodification.

Concl usion Examining the incorporation of forests into the recent political history of Cambodia, two distinct issues come to the fore: forests as source of revenue and reward for political supporters and forests as space for social escape and political 580


resistance. Beginning in the mid-1980s, these two aspects combined as opposing Cambodian factions commodified forests for the sake of political struggle and personal gains. This politicized commodification constituted a complex web of relations woven between the leaders of Cambodian political factions and neighboring military, businessmen, and politicians. Importantly, this incorporation of forests not only provided financial revenues but also a network of politico-military support. This close integration of nature, capital, and social networks proved most valuable for the Khmer Rouge when it became internationally isolated in late 1992 after withdrawing from the UN-sponsored peace process, allowing it to prolong the civil war. More generally, the politicized commodification practices organizing the forest sector were part of a broader institutionalization of capitalism resting on “shadow state” strategies. Forests were thus a key part of the “benefits of war” that protracted the conflict in the sense that some actors found an interest in maintaining their privileged access to timber through violence (and use of timber revenues to sustain violence. Indeed, the conflict was largely protracted, beyond the dynamics of the cold war, thanks to logging revenue. Yet this situation rested on a mix of open conflicts, compromises, and cooptation motivated by the multiplicity of interests associated with the commodification of nature. Furthermore, the rationale of this “political economy of war” lowered the intensity of violence and provided the opportunity for multiple contacts and the development of common interests on both sides of the political divide, as well as a rapid embourgeoisement of local military commanders. These developments among certain Khmer Rouge units seem to have facilitated, if not induced, their large-scale defection in 1996. In this way, the analysis of an economic logic of war requires a careful appraisal of the relations that associate actors through both material and discursive resources on various levels. As political power rested upon unaccountable “shadow” practices and the flow of timber was ultimately controlled at the local level, commodity networks occasionally took on a life of their own. In this way, the commodification process turned supporters into unruly clients. Hun Sen argued that “this timber business is a headache topic. There is really anarchy within this.…You say that I am a powerful man, why I cannot put an end to this? A strong man cannot do anything. You need strong men throughout the country.”71 However, logging was precisely creating these “strongmen,” but, problematically for Hun Sen, they were largely independent. This was particularly the case when a timber export ban or a concession was imposed against the will and interests of local actors, on both sides of Cambodia’s borders. On the other hand, by authorizing, even “illegally,” the flow of timber to take place, the central leadership could accommodate these interests and (re)place itself in a patrimonial position. The international “community” of concern came to play a dual role through its discourse of sustainable and accountable resource management, as it enabled open criticisms of skewed and illegal practices, but also pushed practices deeper underground. Furthermore, the tenets of “green reconstruction” were deeply contradictory given the need to alleviate poverty through economic growth and the generation and appropriate disbursement of public revenue. Le B illon/Logging in M uddy Water s

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The apparent failure of the government to control and tax logging can thus be interpreted as a way of resisting the demands of the international community for greater apolitical, or nonpartisan, development of resources. Indeed, given the particularity of a “two-headed government” overseeing a clientelist society, this “failure” offered to governmental actors far greater opportunities for the political manipulation of revenue from logging than official and transparent procedures. Yet, historical examples in the region — such as the U.S.-backed regimes of Marcos in the Philippines and Suharto in Indonesia — demonstrate that the pattern of “shadow state” politics and financial embezzlement does not require a public transcript of accountability to flourish. In the case of Cambodia, on the contrary, state actors were unable to secure the tacit support of donors and patron states to manipulate public resources in the way they wished. They were thus constrained to use tactics of resistance to the public transcript, consisting mostly of illegal practices, in order to further their ultimate objective of regime security. In turn, this facilitated the consolidation of power by those most astute at using such tactics. In this sense, the public transcript instituted internationally did not consolidate the position of its advocates within a dominated state but, on the contrary, reinforced unintentionally the position of those resisting it in the most effective way. This was particularly the case as relatively few concrete actions were taken by the international community to sustain its discourse. In other words, faced by such conditions for (re)establishing governance — strict but not enforced guidelines — neither of the co-prime ministers between 1993 and 1997 had a compelling interest in consolidating the rule of law and public services, beyond deceptive public pronouncements, if this was to the detriment of their interests and that of their clientele. A second effect of the international community’s discourse was the entrenchment of the legitimacy of foreign transnational companies. By identifying local loggers (mostly unpaid and “self-demobilized” soldiers as well as peasants and domestic timber merchants) as “illegal” operators, the public transcript facilitated the appropriation of timber resources by central authorities and their business allies, portrayed in the role of taxpayers, good practitioners, and victims within a “corrupted” sector. In turn, however, these politically empowered actors negotiated with “illegal” operators to circumvent this same discourse of proper forest management, acknowledging to some decree the reality of local power distribution but also furthering the interest of both production coalitions in front of “Western” and politically marginal groups. By so doing, the public transcript allied itself to central political leaders eager to also remain in control of a flow of resources that had tended toward a peripheralization under the impulse of provincial strongmen. The main losers of this process were, unsurprisingly, the petty “illegal” loggers. In many respects, their source of power rested on the “messiness” of the transition process. Forests had provided much needed resources in times of hardship for this rural society. The economic and political transition of the 1990s represented a source of both hardship and opportunity, which was 582


rationally addressed by an increased exploitation of the forests by the poorest and wealthiest segments of the population — each according to its capacity. While the prime ministers, provincial governors, or Khmer Rouge leaders could sign away thousands of cubic meters in the form of concessions or export licenses, peasants struggled for days in dangerous areas to bring back a few cubic meters. Once peace and large-scale capitalism had been consolidated through military and political means by 1998, even these opportunities vanished for the poor. The sad irony of the legalization and rationalization of the logging industry is that it has barred Cambodians from their forests in order for the country to get on a false path of “environmentally sustainable development.”

N otes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8.

9.

10.

11. 12.

13. 14.

J. C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Edwards Brothers, 1990). P. Chabal and J. P. Daloz, Africa Works: Disorder as Political Instrument (Oxford: James Currey, 1998). W. S. K. Reno, Corruption and State Politics in Sierra Leone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). W. Graf, “The State in the Third World,” The Socialist Register (London: Merlin Press, 1995), 141. P. Dauvergne, Shadows in the Forest: Japan and the Politics of Timber in Southeast Asia (Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1997); P. Hurst, Rainforest Politics: Ecological Destruction in South-East Asia (London: Zed Books, 1990). A. H. Westing, Ecological Consequences of the Second Indochina War (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1976). B. Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-197 9 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996). Out of a pre-Khmer Rouge level of 70 forestry engineers, 170 technicians, and 507 wardens only three, seven, and ten respectively were identified and remained in the country. See S. Chan, “Rapport des Activités Forestières pour la Conférence des Trois Pays” (Phnom Penh: Department of Forestry and Wildlife, 1987). Forest cover was estimated to be 73.6 percent in 1958, 75.8 percent in 1975, 67.2 percent in 1986, 65.9 percent or 58 percent in 1993, and 52.9 percent in 1997. For a discussion , see P. Le Billon, Power Is Consuming the Forest: The Political Ecology of Conflict and Reconstruction in Cambodia (Ph.D. diss., Oxford, 1999). Interview with Son Soubert, BLDP member of parliament, 1996. See also on the political/military split with KPNLF, J. R. Dufresne, Rebuilding Cambodia: Education,Political Warfare, and the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front (unpublished thesis, University of Saint Thomas, 1993). K. Stier, “Log Rolling: Thai Forestry Contracts Help to Fund Khmer Rouge,” Far Eastern Economic Review, 21 January 1993, 15. P. Hirsch, “Thailand and the New Geopolitics of Southeast Asia: Resource and Environmental Issues,” in Counting the Costs: Economic Growth and Environmental Change in Thailand, ed. J. Rigg (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1995), 235-59 . R. Jennar, Les Clefs du Cambodge (Keys to Cambodia) (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1995). World Bank, Cambodia: Agenda for Rehabilitation and Reconstruction (Washington, D.C.: The World Bank, East Asia and Pacific Region Country Department, 1992).

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15. “Hun Sen to Give Clarification on Massacre of Thai Loggers,” Bangkok Post, 29 March 1995. 16. United Nations, The United Nations and Cambodia, 1991-199 5 (New York: United Nations, 1995). 17. UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), Agricultural Development Options Review (Phase I) (Phnom Penh: FAO, 1994), ix. 18. United Nations Developmen t Programme (UNDP), “Report of the Kampuchea Needs Assessment Study, Executive Summary and Project Profiles” (New York: UNDP, August 1989); Asian Development Bank (ADB), Economic Report on Cambodia, (Manila: ADB, 1991); World Bank, Cambodia: Agenda for Rehabilitation and Reconstruction (Washington, D.C.: The World Bank East Asia and Pacific Region Country Department I, 1992). 19. Interviews with FAO consultant Johan Lejeune and logging companies staff, 1997 and 2000; Global Witness reports (www.globalwi tness.org); “Democrats Link PM to Timber Violations,” Bangkok Post, 16 January 1997. 20. D. W. Ashley, “The Failure of Conflict Resolution in Cambodia: Causes and Lessons,” in Cambodia and the International Community, ed. F. Z. Brown and D. G. Timberman (New York: Asia Society, 1998), 50. 21. Interview, Phnom Penh, 1997. 22. For an analysis of political corruption and political change, see P. Le Billon, “Fuelling War or Buying Peace: The Role of Corruption in Armed Conflicts,” Discussion Paper 2001/65 (Helsinki: UNU/WIDER, 2000). On Thailand, see J. Ockey, “Political Parties, Factions, and Corruption in Thailand,” Modern Asian Studies 28, no. 2 (1994): 252-77 . 23. Quoted in W. Shawcross, “Tragedy in Cambodia,” New York Review of Books, 14 November 1996, 43. 24. Interview, Phnom Penh, 1997. 25. J. Marston, Cambodian Satirical Cartoons and the Representation of Hierarchy (unpublished paper presented at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Meetings, Honolulu, Hawaii, 1996), 178-79. 26. For example, see Brown and Timberman, Cambodia and the International Community. 27. Ashley, “The Failure of Conflict Resolution,” 60. 28. Ibid., 57. 29. Royal Government of Cambodia, Decision on the Annulment of the Former Procedures and Regulations on the Export of Timber, ref. 65, 18 June 1994, Phnom Penh. 30. UN Security Council resolution 792, adopted on 30 November 1992. 31. Letter Ref. 254, dated 7 September 1993 cited in S. Norodom, Developments of Policy on Timber Export Subsequent to 31 March 1994 (Phnom Penh, unpublished manuscript of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1994). 32. Interview with Global Witness staff, 1997. 33. Norodom, Developments of Policy. 34. Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fishery, Authorisation of Log Exports for BLP (Phnom Penh: unpublished manuscript, 1993); Ministry of Commerce, Lu Lay Sreng to Thai Ambassador: Authorisation for BLP Log Exports (Phnom Penh, unpublished manuscript dated 29 October 1993). 35. Ministry of Economics and Finance, Rapport au Président du Gouvernement Royal du Cambodge sur l’Exportation de Bois Ronds (Phnom Penh, unpublished manuscript dated 24 November 1993). 36. Since the end of April 1993, close to half of the volume of sawn wood authorized by export licenses issued by the MC had not passed through Customs, resulting in a theoretical loss of US$1.7 million, and about 84,000 cubic meters of logs had been authorized for exportation. See Customs Department, Note sur

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37. 38.

39. 40. 41. 42.

43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51.

52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

57.

l’Execution des Autorisations d’Exportation du Bois (Phnom Penh, unpublished manuscript, 1993). Norodom, Developments of Policy. A similar procedure was used in Burma for controlling Thai timber imports from rebel territories. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Note Verbale on the Export of Unprocessed Timber from Cambodia to Thailand (Phnom Penh, unpublished manuscript, 17 December 1993). Interview with Samura Tioulong, Phnom Penh, January 2001. Norodom, Developments of Policy. Ibid. Jennar, Les Clefs du Cambodge. For a report on Thai military support to the Khmer Rouge at the time, see Cambodia Study Group, Sunkreeum Ngo Ngut: RTA/RTN Tactical Military Participation in Khmer Rouge Combat Operations, Northwest/Southwest Cambodia (Washington, D.C.: Cambodia Study Group, 1994). Le Billon, Power Is Consuming the Forest. Thai senior army officer quoted in J. C. Brown, “Thais Vow to Play their Part,” Phnom Penh Post, 8 April 1994, 5. Norodom, Developments of Policy. C. Grundy-War, “Coexisten t Borderlands and Intra-State Conflicts in Mainland Southeast Asia,” Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 14, no. 1 (1993): 42-57. Ibid., 42. “Shadow governance” includes personal rule conducted behind official state policies through the control of markets and their material rewards. See Reno, Corruption and State Politics. Field trips and interviews by the author in 1996 and 1997. Interview, 1997. Global Witness, Forests, Famine and War; H. Neiss, Representative, International Monetary Fund (Paris, unpublished statement at the Consultative Group Meeting, 1-2 July 1997); K. Talbott, “Logging in Cambodia: Politics and Plunder,” in Brown and Timberman, Cambodia and the International Community, 149-68. R. Lang “IMF Playing ‘Delicate Game’ over Logging,” Phnom Penh Post, 29 November 1996, 13. Interview with former Khmer Rouge soldiers and commanders, Pailin and Along Veng, 2001. For a detailed examination see also, Le Billon, Power Is Consuming the Forest. Le Billon, Power Is Consuming the Forest. Interviews with UN representative, Phnom Penh, 1997, and former Khmer Rouge soldiers and commanders in 1997, 2000, and 2001. Ieng Sary was accused by the northern group of having embezzled US$16 million from Chinese aid as well as from timber and gems deals, while Ieng Sary’s group made similar accusations against two of their former co-leaders: Son Sen, for US$7 million from embezzlement, and Ny Korn, for US$8 million from logging. These two leaders had resisted the defection in the southwest and taken refuge in the north with Pol Pot and Ta Mok. Pol Pot, the leader of the movement, was subsequently the victim of an internal coup and died under suspicious circumstances, while Ta Mok resisted until he was denied refuge in Thailand and arrested by the government. See “Renegades Deny Wealth from Gems, Logging,” Cambodia Daily, 20 September 1996, 13; Declaration on 8 September 1996 (Pailin, unpublished manuscript by the Democratic National United Movement, 1996). Interview, Phnom Dey, 1996.

Le B illon/Logging in M uddy Water s

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58. Global Witness, Going Places: Cambodia’s Future on the Move (London: Global Witness, 1998). 59. Ibid. 60. “Blue Planet: Cambodia’s Logging Halt,” United Press International, 4 January 2002; D. Loyn, Cambodia Cracks Down on Illegal Timber, BBC News, 28 June 2002. 61. D. Lombard, “La Vision de la Forêt à Java (Indonésie),” (The vision of the forest in Java, Indonesia), Etudes Rurales (Rural Studies) 56 (1974): 473-85 . 62. C. Ang, Les Etres Surnaturels dans la Religion Populaire Khmère (Supernatural beings in popular Khmer religion) (Paris: Cedoreck, 1997). 63. S. Thierry, “Brai et Himavant — Les Thèmes de la Forêt dans la Tradition Khmère” (Brai and Himayant — Forest themes in the Khmer tradition), ASEMI 13, no. 1-4 (1982): 121-33 . 64. J. Delvert, Le Paysan Cambodgien (The Cambodian peasant) (Paris: Mouton, 1961); J. Boulbet, Paysans de la Forêt (Forest peasants) (Paris: Bulletin de l’Ecole Française d’Extrême Orient, 1975). 65. D. P. Chandler, A History of Cambodia (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1996). 66. J. Népote, “Les Nouveau x Sino-Khmers Acculturés: Un Milieu Social Perturbateur?” (The new Sino-Khmers: A perturbing social milieu), Péninsule 30, no. 1 (1995): 133-54 . 67. On Burma, see R. L. Bryant, The Political Ecology of Forestry in Burma 1824-199 4 (London: Hurst, 1997); on Java, see N. L. Peluso, Rich Forests, Poor People: Resource Control and Resistance in Java (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). 68. Collard, Exploitation Forestière. Kompong Speu (Phnom Penh: Fonds des Archives Nationales du Cambodge, 1905). 69. S. Colm, The Highland Minorities and the Khmer Rouge in Northeastern Cambodia, 1968-197 9 (Phnom Penh, unpublished manuscript, 1999). 70. See P. Le Billon, “The Political Ecology of Transition in Cambodia 1989-199 9: War, Peace and Forest Exploitation,” Development and Change 31, no. 4 (September 2000): 785-805 . 71. “Hun Sen: Cambodia United ‘at Any Price,’” Phnom Penh Post, 4 October 1996, 7.

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