Our Original Project: Defence and UN
The Situation
The UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) in 1992/1993 was running Cambodia with a mandate to stabilise the country, run democratic elections and hand over to the newly formed government. The UN had a large scale operation based in Phnom Penh and at a whole series of sites across the county, made up of both military and civilian staff numbering over 20,000 people. After the elections and to stabilise the country to enable the UN to extract cleanly, it was decided to pay all the military factions who had signed up to support the new government. This task was contentious and dangerous, not least because several of the military factions were currently fighting one another. The task was given to our Sector Monitoring Team in Kampong Cham to come up with a plan and then trial it. If successful it would be rolled out across Cambodia within days; if unsuccessful it would provide evidence that the task was impractical. There was a sense that some people on the home team would be happy for this to fail.
The Approach
I was brought into the Sector Team as a Staff Officer to design and run Operation Paymaster, having been a UN military observer in a team in Suong. The mission was to pay all the factions in our sector (less the Khmer Rouge, who had rejected the peace proposals). The money would be sent to us in a helicopter in cash, along with pay rolls that originated in Phnom Penh. We must get every Cambodian we paid to sign an oath of allegiance to the new government, we were responsible for the money, must account for every riel we got and this was to be done whilst protecting the safety of UN staff. That was it- that's all we got.
My immediate thought was to use the UN infantry battalion in our sector (the Jammu and Kashmir Rifles) who were armed and had transport- however this was ruled out from Phnom Penh. They were able to offer support to secure the helicopter landing site and transfer the money to the bank in Kampong Cham, but were unable to help further. Other than that, I had access to the unarmed military monitoring teams deployed around the sector, equipped with Toyota Land cruisers. We also had help in the bank from bank staff to count the money. It was clear that transporting bags of cash in white painted unarmed UN vehicles in the middle of an armed conflict would have at best risked armed robbery and at worst a direct attack. How then to resolve the dilemma of not losing control of the money yet protecting our people?
I decided to take a risk and rely on individual Cambodian units to provide a paymaster and transport the cash from Kampong Cham to their HQ. The UN team would meet up with them there, run the pay parade and then depart with signed oaths and no cash. To secure this we had to gain the agreement of each of the generals of each of the factions within the sector, making clear they were personally responsible for the security of the cash once we handed it to their officers. We carried out a round of briefings and developed instructions on how the operation was to be carried out, all translated into Khmer. We even had to outline how a pay parade worked logistically- the British Army were all paid by BACS and I'd only ever taken part in one pay parade.
The Outcome
The initial planned operation to secure the helicopter landing zone worked like clockwork- the JAK Rifles were an outstanding battalion to work with. We all waited in the early morning for the helicopter with the money. After a couple of hours we received a message from Phnom Penh to say the mission was cancelled because it was the last day of the month and they had run out of budget for helicopter hire. As the next day was a new month, we postponed 24 hours and repeated the operation, somewhat more tense this time as by now everyone knew huge sums of cash were being flown in.
The money arrived and we loaded our convoy and got to the bank. In town we formed a perimeter around the bank and placed the cash in the bank vault. The next day the payrolls and cash were reconciled and signed for by the Cambodian faction paymasters (who all got on OK despite local fighting). We photographed each paymaster with the cash as an extra security measure- I was asked by one why we did this and said it was in case any money went missing- we'd hand the photo over to the unit who wouldn't get paid. Security of the cash was very variable- some units sent patrols of soldiers to guard it and some just a soldier on a motorbike.
The pay parades went well, the cash reconciled and the signed oaths returned. The oaths were a bizarre twist as few of the soldiers could read or write- a signed oath is only really a big deal to the literate. There were some errors identified on the payrolls and we were given assurances they'd be corrected the following month.
In the run up to the next pay round, I came under increasing pressure from the local general who was based in Kampong Cham to make sure the pay details were correct. I learned from this that the largest Cambodian faction he represented had a different boundary to the UN, so we actually had a much more senior general in our region who was his boss. His boss wasn't happy and was concerned about maintaining discipline if this didn't go well, and our local General's neck would be on the block. I visited the senior general and outlined our plans for the next round, reiterating that the pay rolls would be corrected next time. He gave me his support, however stressed his concerns that this had to go well.
The second pay round was a duplicate for the first, unfortunately down to the same pay rolls with the same errors- nothing had changed despite the assurances I received. People were missing or were in the wrong rank and thus would get the wrong pay. I had 10 minutes to decide what to do about this- to go ahead as is or alter the payrolls without authorisation to make the corrections. I called over my senior Cambodian paymaster who had been my colleague throughout and told him I'd decided to alter the pay rolls. It took about 4 hours to go through unit by unit and make the changes, totalling up each page and unit and reconciling the totals in 90 degrees heat and high humidity- all with a calculator, UN stamp and typex. I had a small balance from the previous pay round, but kept a close eye on the net impact. I was delighted to discover this wasn't a one way ratchet- they dealt honestly with some promotions, some demotions, some additions and some deletions. At the end the books balanced and we had enough cash.
The second pay round went ahead successfully and we had good feedback both from the UN teams and from the senior general, who said he would support the operation across his military region (outside our own). The lessons learned were shared with the other UN sectors and they based their own operations upon this basic template. The UN started to re-deploy and aside from some theft of UN vehicles, the withdrawal was successful.
The lessons from this we transferred into our consulting business, not least about:
The UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) in 1992/1993 was running Cambodia with a mandate to stabilise the country, run democratic elections and hand over to the newly formed government. The UN had a large scale operation based in Phnom Penh and at a whole series of sites across the county, made up of both military and civilian staff numbering over 20,000 people. After the elections and to stabilise the country to enable the UN to extract cleanly, it was decided to pay all the military factions who had signed up to support the new government. This task was contentious and dangerous, not least because several of the military factions were currently fighting one another. The task was given to our Sector Monitoring Team in Kampong Cham to come up with a plan and then trial it. If successful it would be rolled out across Cambodia within days; if unsuccessful it would provide evidence that the task was impractical. There was a sense that some people on the home team would be happy for this to fail.
The Approach
I was brought into the Sector Team as a Staff Officer to design and run Operation Paymaster, having been a UN military observer in a team in Suong. The mission was to pay all the factions in our sector (less the Khmer Rouge, who had rejected the peace proposals). The money would be sent to us in a helicopter in cash, along with pay rolls that originated in Phnom Penh. We must get every Cambodian we paid to sign an oath of allegiance to the new government, we were responsible for the money, must account for every riel we got and this was to be done whilst protecting the safety of UN staff. That was it- that's all we got.
My immediate thought was to use the UN infantry battalion in our sector (the Jammu and Kashmir Rifles) who were armed and had transport- however this was ruled out from Phnom Penh. They were able to offer support to secure the helicopter landing site and transfer the money to the bank in Kampong Cham, but were unable to help further. Other than that, I had access to the unarmed military monitoring teams deployed around the sector, equipped with Toyota Land cruisers. We also had help in the bank from bank staff to count the money. It was clear that transporting bags of cash in white painted unarmed UN vehicles in the middle of an armed conflict would have at best risked armed robbery and at worst a direct attack. How then to resolve the dilemma of not losing control of the money yet protecting our people?
I decided to take a risk and rely on individual Cambodian units to provide a paymaster and transport the cash from Kampong Cham to their HQ. The UN team would meet up with them there, run the pay parade and then depart with signed oaths and no cash. To secure this we had to gain the agreement of each of the generals of each of the factions within the sector, making clear they were personally responsible for the security of the cash once we handed it to their officers. We carried out a round of briefings and developed instructions on how the operation was to be carried out, all translated into Khmer. We even had to outline how a pay parade worked logistically- the British Army were all paid by BACS and I'd only ever taken part in one pay parade.
The Outcome
The initial planned operation to secure the helicopter landing zone worked like clockwork- the JAK Rifles were an outstanding battalion to work with. We all waited in the early morning for the helicopter with the money. After a couple of hours we received a message from Phnom Penh to say the mission was cancelled because it was the last day of the month and they had run out of budget for helicopter hire. As the next day was a new month, we postponed 24 hours and repeated the operation, somewhat more tense this time as by now everyone knew huge sums of cash were being flown in.
The money arrived and we loaded our convoy and got to the bank. In town we formed a perimeter around the bank and placed the cash in the bank vault. The next day the payrolls and cash were reconciled and signed for by the Cambodian faction paymasters (who all got on OK despite local fighting). We photographed each paymaster with the cash as an extra security measure- I was asked by one why we did this and said it was in case any money went missing- we'd hand the photo over to the unit who wouldn't get paid. Security of the cash was very variable- some units sent patrols of soldiers to guard it and some just a soldier on a motorbike.
The pay parades went well, the cash reconciled and the signed oaths returned. The oaths were a bizarre twist as few of the soldiers could read or write- a signed oath is only really a big deal to the literate. There were some errors identified on the payrolls and we were given assurances they'd be corrected the following month.
In the run up to the next pay round, I came under increasing pressure from the local general who was based in Kampong Cham to make sure the pay details were correct. I learned from this that the largest Cambodian faction he represented had a different boundary to the UN, so we actually had a much more senior general in our region who was his boss. His boss wasn't happy and was concerned about maintaining discipline if this didn't go well, and our local General's neck would be on the block. I visited the senior general and outlined our plans for the next round, reiterating that the pay rolls would be corrected next time. He gave me his support, however stressed his concerns that this had to go well.
The second pay round was a duplicate for the first, unfortunately down to the same pay rolls with the same errors- nothing had changed despite the assurances I received. People were missing or were in the wrong rank and thus would get the wrong pay. I had 10 minutes to decide what to do about this- to go ahead as is or alter the payrolls without authorisation to make the corrections. I called over my senior Cambodian paymaster who had been my colleague throughout and told him I'd decided to alter the pay rolls. It took about 4 hours to go through unit by unit and make the changes, totalling up each page and unit and reconciling the totals in 90 degrees heat and high humidity- all with a calculator, UN stamp and typex. I had a small balance from the previous pay round, but kept a close eye on the net impact. I was delighted to discover this wasn't a one way ratchet- they dealt honestly with some promotions, some demotions, some additions and some deletions. At the end the books balanced and we had enough cash.
The second pay round went ahead successfully and we had good feedback both from the UN teams and from the senior general, who said he would support the operation across his military region (outside our own). The lessons learned were shared with the other UN sectors and they based their own operations upon this basic template. The UN started to re-deploy and aside from some theft of UN vehicles, the withdrawal was successful.
The lessons from this we transferred into our consulting business, not least about:
- Innovation- doing something no one has done before.
- Flexibility to adapt the plan as the situation changes.
- Taking calculated risks.
- The benefit of an indirect solution to a seeming irreconcilable dilemma.
- Trusting colleagues and the client's staff- it is a reciprocal relationship.
- Managing the internal and external politics.
- Not losing sight of why you are doing something- the outcome you are seeking.
- A sense of perspective about the risks being taken in comparison with a corporate client.
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