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ASIA
APRIL 19, 1999 VOL. 153 NO. 15
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Wooden Soldiers
Cambodia makes a show of cracking down on illegal logging but may be trying to save more than trees
By NISID HAJARI
The khaki-clad commandos made for quite a sight, dropping to earth in Soviet-made Mi-17 helicopters and leaping out, guns at the ready. Obviously they expected to meet more than the crowd of curious villagers gathered along the banks of the Mekong River. But the owners of what the military called an illegal logging camp, in Cambodia's northeastern Stung Treng province, had fled. Only a clutch of journalists watched as the troops razed a sawmill and some small huts scattered around the clearing.
That, however, could well have been their intended audience. When a group of donor nations agreed to resume aid to the Cambodian government in February, pledging $470 million for this year, they linked the support to reforms in several areas, including saving the country's forests. Weeks earlier Prime Minister Hun Sen had announced a crackdown on illegal loggers. Since the meeting, he has made all the right noises about streamlining the country's bloated civil service and demobilizing soldiers. Last week he even indicated that foreign judges and lawyers could play a limited role in the trial of former Khmer Rouge general Ta Mok--still the most public stumbling block on Phnom Penh's road to international legitimacy. The troops in Stung Treng are fighting a battle in this larger campaign, one where show is at least as important as force. Says army chief Gen. Ke Kim Yan wryly: "It's easier than fighting the Khmer Rouge."
For Cambodia's forests, though, the threat could be as great. "Illegal logging in Cambodia is like opium trading in the Golden Triangle," says Environment Minister Mok Mareth. "The logs are gold." High-quality teak and other hardwoods can fetch as much as $1,000 a cubic meter in the United States and Europe. But since the government levied a tax of only $14 per cubic meter until a recent price hike, and since an estimated 90% of all logging in Cambodia takes place illegally, the country's bone-dry treasury missed out on an estimated $60 million in revenue in 1997, according to a recent World Bank report. Even more worrisome, timber companies--legal and illegal--are felling trees at four times the sustainable rate and have ravaged Cambodia's national parks. The report warns that if the "anarchic situation" remains unchecked, the country could have no forests worth logging by 2003.
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