A Change of Guard

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Saturday 15 September 2012

The View of a former U.S ambassador to Cambodia: This week's turmoil recalls another time, another place

Kenneth M. Quinn
Written by Dr. Kenneth Quinn 
The Desmoines Register
Sep 15, 2012 

The storming of the American Consulate in Benghazi and the killing of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three of his colleagues brought home to me the memories of my own embassy confronting multiple threats during the time I was ambassador in Cambodia from 1996 to 1999.
Our embassy in Phnom Penh was a makeshift arrangement thrown together following the reopening of the country to an international presence just a few years earlier. It consisted of a series of small single-family houses in the center of town around which the United States built an 8-foot-high wall. On all four sides of the compound were busy streets with constant flows of traffic. A gas station sat ominously on one corner.
This was a period of considerable political volatility in Cambodia, with remnants of the genocidal Khmer Rouge still operating furtively in urban areas, rival political factions driving around in large armed gangs and criminals roaming the city at night. Given the perception of American influence, the U.S. Embassy was a constant target for demonstrating crowds either seeking U.S. support for their side in the conflict or criticizing us for some aspect of our policy.

As a result, violent clashes would often occur right outside the embassy wall, and on several occasions, rifle fire sailed across the compound and protesters were beaten or shot within eyesight of embassy staff.
Apart from actions at the embassy, our staff of approximately 35 Americans lived in houses scattered around the city, each of which could be vulnerable to criminal assault or just being caught up in clashes that might erupt in their neighborhood. My own residence was hit with a rocket and ringed in gunfire for more than two hours, with my wife and three children inside.
What made the situation even more difficult was that we had no U.S. Marines to guard the embassy, nor any type of armed protective force. We did have a group of local Cambodian guards, but none of them carried weapons. We were essentially on our own.
When terrorist bombers struck the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, it brought home just how vulnerable our own situation was. We began taking all the actions that we could locally to try to improve the situation. I went to the Cambodian government to demand that some of the streets running by the embassy be closed, since any terrorist with a truck bomb could have literally driven up to our front door and detonated explosives. Security experts estimated that in such a situation, every person in our embassy would be killed.
It was difficult to get the government to go along with shutting down its main streets (it would be the equivalent of blocking off parts of Grand Avenue in Des Moines), but I succeeded. In addition, I approached the owner of the gas station that was right next to our facility and convinced him to lease the property to us so we could close it.
At first he demanded $1.3 million, but after a frank conversation he cut the price by a million dollars. It’s not too often you get to save the taxpayer a million dollars, but in this case it wasn’t the money that was important, it was the safety of all our employees.
Even with all of these improvements and the greatly increased intelligence activities that we carried out to try to identify would-be terrorists in the country or coming into it, the embassy was still incredibly vulnerable. As a result, we initiated urgent requests to the State Department in Washington to approve our immediately finding a new location with more “setback” to provide a buffer zone against any would-be truck bombing terrorists.
Budgets were tight and department officials told us that there was no money nor would we even be on the list for new construction over the next five to 10 years. Given the immediate threat, I felt that that was way too long and that we could not leave our employees at such risk. My deputy ambassador and I made trips to Washington to plead our case and sent message after message explaining our situation, but this was to no avail.
Finally, the State Department sent me a cable message signed by the secretary of state instructing me to proceed with limited security improvements to our compound and to remain there. Those improvements could not be made without my agreement. After thinking about it overnight, I called a meeting of my staff and told them that I was faced with two choices: to accept the orders from Washington and go forward with limited but inadequate enhancements to our compound, or to refuse the State Department’s orders. I told them that I was choosing their safety over complying with the instructions from Washington.
I next sent a personal message to the secretary of state saying that I put my employees’ safety above all other considerations, and while I understood the ramifications involved, I could not in good conscience follow her orders and thus refused to do so.
My deputy, a very brave young officer, then sent a follow-on message in which she said, in effect, “If the ambassador is removed, I won’t follow the orders either.”
It’s a big deal to refuse to carry out the State Department’s orders. But in this case, it got action. There is now a new, very safe embassy in Phnom Penh with a great deal of setback and Marines guarding the compound.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

KENNETH QUINN of Des Moines is a retired Foreign Service officer who served the United States in such hot spots as Vietnam and Cambodia. He was ambassador to Cambodia from 1996-99 and now is president of the World Food Prize Foundation. Contact: kquinn@worldfoodprize.org

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