Gunrunning in Cambodia
KRAAR, LOUIS
MONIQUE'S CLIQUE Gunrunning in Cambodia by louis kraar Pnompenh Since the March 18 ouster of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, evidence has gradually surfaced of a long-flourishing trade agreement...
...Information Minister Trinh Hoanh went further, telling me, "Sihanouk knew all about the trading with the Vietcong, and he let them do it...
...They were paid in U.S...
...The whole scheme was so cleverly concealed and entwined in the government structure that the U.S...
...The caption to the cartoon reads: "Sihanouk loved Monique, a Vietnamese, very much, but he didn't care for the Cambodians...
...All along streets of the capital, students have stuck posters on the walls to dramatize the national scandal...
...The arms, mostly Chinese, were regularly smuggled into the southern port of Sihanoukville...
...We know he sold bicycles, clothing and rice to the Vietcong," a minister in Lon Nol's Cabinet reported...
...The information this man was not permitted to publicly reveal was that several times each month a group of key officials from Stung Treng province (in the northeast) arrived at Pnompenh's Mondial Hotel between midnight and 2 a.m...
...could never obtain hard proof of the vc trade...
...In March, demonstrators who stormed the North Vietnamese and Vietcong embassies in Pnompenh reportedly found documents revealing detailed plans for the total subversion of Cambodia...
...Several Army units were ordered to arrest Lon Nol and other opposition leaders, but officers in the companies tipped him off in advance and the plot was squelched...
...The remainder, including considerable air freight, oame via the capital...
...dollars for the arms, ammunition, medicine, food, clothing, and bicycles they delivered...
...port what he knew of the supply operation was sternly warned to mind his own business...
...One concerned Cambodian who tried to reLouis Kraar reports on Southeast Asian affairs for Time magazine...
...While the present regime has yet to produce these papers, responsible officials insist they exist...
...In one broadside Monique—the illegitimate child of a Vietnamese mother and Italian father—is astride Sihanouk, who says to her, "Whatever you want, I'll do it...
...mercenary forces operating on the eastern frontier were informed of the sanctuary locations so they could ambush the vc and take their materiel...
...Plans for military action were then shelved—until President Nixon's May 1 decision to root out the Vietcong sanctuaries...
...Army Intelligence investigators told him, "This is the private affair of Cham-car Mon [Sihanouk's palace...
...According to Douc Rasy, a leading jurist and an independent politician in the National Assembly, "The papers consisted of instructions to the head of the Vietcong delegation to quietly but firmly establish control over the members of the government...
...Weapons were seized from hidden government warehouses...
...During their stay, usually a day or so, a stream of telephone messages ordered them to meetings at Cham-car Mon, the Hak Ly offices, and the home of Cambodia's Chief of Customs...
...Soldiers and police in civilian clothes loaded the supplies onto trucks owned by a Vietnamese-Cambodian outfit called Hak Ly, which carried them to Vietcong depots and camps...
...He remains in Pnompenh, overseeing business interests which include rice mills and restaurants...
...The movement of arms and supplies through Cambodia was expedited by special passes granting Monique's clique and the Hak Ly transport company immunity from any official interference...
...With Communist forces threatening Pnompenh, many Cambodians today blame Sihanouk more than Monique's clique for arming the Vietcong...
...They did what they pleased and answered to no one...
...General Lon Nol was aware of the operation before he became Premier, but was powerless to act...
...Kuch An, head of the Ankan Shipping Company, returned to Cambodia from Hong Kong in January 1969 after making a sizable donation to Sangkum, Sihanouk's political organization...
...Much of the contraband moved along the American-built Highway 4, from Sihanoukville to special warehouses in Kampong Speu, about 25 miles south of Pnompenh...
...As Sihanouk's brother-in-law and chief of police in every corner of the country, he had no trouble smuggling to the border...
...The covert Army countermeas-ures and the embassy sackings severely disrupted Monique's trade network...
...MONIQUE'S CLIQUE Gunrunning in Cambodia by louis kraar Pnompenh Since the March 18 ouster of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, evidence has gradually surfaced of a long-flourishing trade agreement between a circle of ranking Cambodian officials and the Vietcong...
...At the 11-nation Asian and Pacific conference held in Jakarta May 16-17 to muster diplomatic support for Pnompenh, Cambodian Foreign Minister Yem Sambaur told a closed meeting the entire story of the clandestine trade operation...
...Ironically, many of the weapons originally intended for vc use in South Vietnam are now being deployed against the regular Cambodian Army...
...A day before Sihanouk was ousted, Mannorine was openly denounced in the National Assembly for cloth bootlegging, and removed from office...
...It's too sensitive to bring into the open now," one official explained...
...A while back, Washington was seriously weighing a strike against the Communist depots in Cambodia, or even one against Sihanoukville...
...After Sihanouk left the country for his final holiday in France, the Army, under Lon Nol's direction, quietly and cautiously began to check the flow of supplies to the Vietcong outposts...
...Some weapons arrived invoiced for the Cambodian Armed Forces, but most came packed in nondescript crates, giving the appearance of consumer goods...
...The Army knew that the time would come when these weapons would be used against us," declared Major Lon Nol, who is the Premier's younger brother and vice president of Cambodia's defense coordination committee...
...By last September, Sihanouk brazenly disregarding the feelings of many in the Cambodian elite, signed a commercial and financial agreement with the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam...
...None of them registered at the desk, and all their expenses were paid by Hak Ly...
...But officials in Pnompenh believe that full public disclosure of the details would be unwise at the moment because so many in the Cambodian Establishment were involved—and so many are still free...
...momentum gathered until Sihanouk was toppled...
...Monique's clique," as the group is now called, was motivated by avarice rather than ideology...
...First the vc were to assassinate Lon Nol and other leaders...
...But at that time American intelligence could produce nothing more than what was described here as "presumptive evidence...
...Once in power, the new regime decided to hush up the incident...
...On March 16, two days before Sihanouk was officially deposed, the clique attempted to forestall the imminent coup...
...They always left a few minutes after receiving a late night phone call, hopping into their cars to lead a convoy of Hak Ly trucks...
...But since the trade was semiofficial and involved Sihanouk's family, we could see no way to stop it...
...A shadowy Chinese-Cambodian operating out of exile in Hong Kong, Kuch An, brought much of the materiel directly from mainland China in some 14 cargo ships of the Ankan Shipping Company, a firm he established for the sole purpose of gun-running...
...Soon trucks were to be seen carrying medicines packed in ice, traveling east from Pnompenh along Highway 1. One government minister goes so far as to claim that the Prince even authorized construction of the vc headquarters at Mimot, in Kam-pong Cham province, where South Vietnamese paratroopers recently discovered several tons of pharmaceuticals packed in Air France cartons ticketed for Pnompenh...
...From there goods were trucked east to the Communist sanctuaries...
...Under the direction of Sihanouk's ambitious fourth wife, Monique, key Army, provincial police and government functionaries arranged for the transport of contraband supplies to Communist sanctuaries in the eastern regions...
...Monique's stepbrother, Colonel Oum Mannorine, was minister for provincial police and thus able to insure safe passage of the crated goods to frontier areas...
...A respected member of the Pnompenh business community gave voice to the widespread resentment toward Monique's clique: "These people, like Sihanouk, were mandarins...
Vol. 53 • June 1970 • No. 12
