By Barbara Crossette, UN Wire

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- A decade before the United Nations stepped in to create the new nation of East Timor and rebuild a ruined Afghanistan, the organization took on a most ambitious and extraordinary task:  rescue a wounded Cambodia -- crushed in body and spirit by nearly four years of Khmer Rouge terror and another 10 years of Vietnamese military occupation -- and transform it into a free and functioning society.

How did the U.N. do?  Not badly, but it could have done more.  That seems to be the judgment of many Cambodians who look back and assess the legacy of the mega-operation called UNTAC -- the U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia.

The past has lessons for the future, where the task of rebuilding and reinventing Iraq looms large, and a passionate debate has already erupted over the United Nations' role and qualifications for the task.

Before the Cambodian experiment in nation-building ended, the United Nations had deployed thousands of troops, civilian experts, human rights monitors and volunteers from many countries, bolstered by numerous nongovernmental organizations.  Government ministries and other civil institutions were recreated.  At least 360,000 refugees were returned from camps along the Thai-Cambodian border, where some of them had lived for a decade or more.

In effect, the United Nations ran Cambodia from 1992 to 1993.  All of this cost at least $3 billion.  

For Cambodians, this is a good time for stock-taking.  On May 23, the country will mark exactly 10 years since the United Nations held the freest election Cambodia had ever known or may ever have again.  Another national election is due in July, and cynicism about democracy is rampant.  A lot of thoughtful Cambodians say that if the United Nations had not set itself a deadline and been in such a hurry to leave in 1993, democracy would have had a better chance of survival.    

In 1993, election experts and hundreds of volunteers recruited around the world, supported by a crucially informative, nonpartisan UNTAC radio network, registered voters and set up polling stations.  The people made their choices bravely and clearly despite the still-active threat of Khmer Rouge attacks and the political thuggery of the interim government run by Hun Sen, a Vietnamese-backed, former Khmer Rouge factional leader, and his Cambodian Peoples Party.

In 1993, the royalist party known as FUNCINPEC won 45 percent of the vote for a constituent assembly that would, in effect, become the germ of a free parliament whose first job was to determine how the country would be governed.  Another 3.8 percent went to the Buddhist Liberal Democratic party, giving the two noncommunist forces close to a majority.  The Cambodian People's Party, the party of Hun Sen, got 38 percent of the vote. Then the trouble started.

"To the former Khmer Rouge who controlled the CPP and the regime in Phnom Penh, defeat was unthinkable," wrote William Shawcross in Cambodia’s New Deal, an excellent, succinct study of the UNTAC era's successes and failures.

Threatening a coup and a division of the country, Hun Sen held out for political control, refusing to recognize the election results.  Abetted by King Sihanouk, who had recently returned from years of exile, Hun Sen forced the royalists' political leader, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, to share the prime ministership.

Incredibly, the United Nations agreed.  When I spoke later with Yasushi Akashi of Japan, the special representative of the secretary general, who was the all-powerful head of UNTAC, he said that this compromise was Cambodia's choice.  He drew what he saw as a parallel with the U.S. occupation of Japan after World War II and later Japanese alterations to the system Americans created to illustrate that outsiders don't always have solutions totally acceptable to local people.

Son Soubert could not disagree more.  The soft-spoken son of a former democratic prime minister and later a leader of the Cambodian anticommunist resistance, Son Soubert is now a member of Cambodia's Constitutional Council, a sort of political court of last resort.  He is also an articulate spokesman for the democratic opposition to Hun Sen, who is still prime minister -- and still ruthless.

"At the time, everyone wanted the U.N. to exercise its authority," Son Soubert said in an interview in his council office on a quiet Saturday morning.  He acknowledged that King Sihanouk created the initial problem.  "He concocted this kind of double-headed government," he said.  But Son Soubert added that the lack of strong international opposition to Hun Sen's bullying set the tone for many tragedies that followed, including a near-civil war in 1997 and the current political tension and violence.

Son Soubert, a former deputy speaker of the National Assembly, pointed to a series of what he sees as other serious miscalculations by UNTAC and Akashi.  "The main purpose of the Paris peace agreement," he said, referring to the 1991 pact that essentially turned Cambodia over to U.N. control, "was to neutralize all armed forces, which the U.N. failed to do."

Only the noncommunist resistance armies were disarmed, leaving the Khmer Rouge and the CPP with guns.  The CPP, not surprisingly, still controls the national army and most of the police.  The Khmer Rouge is largely disbanded.  Pol Pot is dead and two Khmer Rouge officials are in jail, but three other top leaders are living undisturbed in Cambodia.

The initial U.N. pledge to give vigorous support to victims of human rights violations soon began to evaporate, Son Soubert said, allowing Hun Sen's party to terrorize and marginalize the political opposition.  "The U.N. said, 'We are not going to have confrontations.'  That was a very bad signal."

Finally, Son Soubert said, the United Nations did not heed the advice of his father, Son Sann, who had also been head of the Central Bank in the 1970s, that UNTAC should not allow the country to be flooded with U.S. dollars, the currency used for the U.N. payroll.  Dollars could be deposited abroad, Son Sann argued, then converted to the national currency when they entered the country.  Instead, the dollar became UNTAC's currency and Cambodia's own weak riel never recovered.  Today dollars are the leading currency in Phnom Penh and other major towns. Riel serve as small change.

"That's a legacy of the U.N.," he said.

There are, however, more positive sides to UNTAC's legacy.

U.N. experts are still advising government ministries, prodding reform and helping the country react quickly to the spread of AIDS, among other challenges.  UNESCO has been at the forefront of a careful, environmentally sound restoration of the magnificent Angkor temples, a World Heritage site.  A Cambodian office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights -- the first of its kind anywhere -- functions despite occasional government pressure.

Literally hundreds of nongovernmental organizations in myriad fields operate in the country.  They first found political space under U.N. protection and have never relinquished it.

In the private sector, there are lively Cambodian newspapers, a phenomenon not seen in neighboring Laos or Vietnam.  Urban Cambodians are not afraid to voice their strong political views and are self-confident in their dealings with foreigners who live and work among them.  Phnom Penh is gradually again becoming the cosmopolitan city it was half a century ago.  Talented Cambodians who fled abroad can feel at home here once more.

Chea Vannath is one of them.  She was living in exile in Oregon in the early 1990s, working for the state government, when the United Nations began recruiting Khmer-speaking people to join in rebuilding the country.  Chea Vannath volunteered.  When UNTAC left, she stayed.  She is now president of the Center for Social Development, a world-class think tank doing independent research on the continuing problems of Cambodian society.  As the election approaches, it has been holding a series of town meetings to elicit the opinions of ordinary Cambodians and urge them to take part in the political process.

She told me that independent thinkers still live on the edge of danger here, where politically inspired assassinations are a fact of life -- and death.  But, she says, the work has to go on so that Cambodians will be better informed and can exercise freedom of choice.  "What we're doing, we're doing for the country," she said.  "We are doing this for the people."

Chea Vannath -- and many others like her -- are also UNTAC's legacy.