Over the past several weeks there have been conflicting reports about the Lao Government's controversial plans to build a dam on the Mekong River's mainstream at Xayaburi, with The Economist's 'Banyan' column of 5 May noting that the Thai construction firm, CH Karnchong, had notified the  Bangkok stock exchange that work on the dam had begun in March.

Similar reports have led to vigorous protests from Cambodia, with Sin Niny, Vice-Chairman of Cambodia's National Mekong Committee, threatening action against the dam in the international court and the country's minister for water-resources protesting to his Lao counterpart. Objections to the dam's construction have also come from Vietnam's National Mekong Committee though not, so far as I can tell, from government ministers. The protests from Cambodia and Vietnam have been matched by those coming from a range of NGOs and environmental groups.

But amid the sound and fury and the claims by CH Karnchong that it is going ahead with the dam, the Lao Government is stating that its critics are wrong and that it has no plans to build the Xayaburi dam, at least for the moment. What CH Karnchong has been doing is only preliminary work around the dam site, Lao spokesmen have said. But what happens in the future may be another matter, since, in the words of Lao Vice Minister of Energy and Mines Viraphonh Viravong:

There are indeed good reasons for asking, as James did yesterday in reply to my piece, how the Angkor Archaeological Park (above) spends the entrance fees it charges foreign visitors. Eric Campbell's investigation of this issue for ABC TV raised many still-unanswered questions.

That said, there is a pressing need for additional funds to be allocated to cope with what has now become a mass tourist destination, and an Australian gift of the order of $1 million is no bad thing, even if issue of corruption attends the administration of the Park, as with so much else in Cambodia. Constant maintenance is required to maintain the temples, as is the presence of guards to prevent further theft of cultural artifacts.

Understanding all does not necessarily mean forgiving all, but it's worth remembering that, whatever was the case forty or so years ago, Cambodian pride in the Angkor temples is now widely held. In these circumstances, the gift seems both appropriate and likely to have been well received. If it goes some small way towards ameliorating the problems caused by mass tourism, so much the better.

If there are grounds for concern about Australian gifts to Cambodia in light of the country's reputation for endemic corruption, the announcement that the Government is contributing a further $1.61 million to support the work of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (ECCC) certainly is a basis for it.

It's unusual enough to have a single item about Cambodia in the Australian media, and yesterday there were two.

First, an allegation that one of Prime Minister Hun's nephews is linked to drug trafficking and money laundering (the man in question has issued a denial). And, secondly, the announcement that our newly appointed Foreign Minister, Senator Carr, has been touring the Angkor temples, where he announced that Australia would make a welcome donation of $1 million to assist Cambodian authorities in dealing with what is now a massive tourist influx of upwards of 20,000 daily visitors to the archaeological complex.

Whatever his considerable political skills, Hun Sen does not seem to be blessed by his relatives, particularly his nephews, who have been regularly in the news for behaviour ranging from assault to involuntary manslaughter. At a gathering of the Hun Sen clan in 2009 he warned his nephews and other relatives about their behaviour.

And then there is Senator Carr's visit to the Angkor temple complex, which DFAT tells readers in a press release is a '700 year old temple complex.' Now, it may be a case of shooting in fish in a barrel to draw attention to the error here, but at a time when there is concern to be 'Asia literate' (I much prefer the Asialink terminology of 'Asia capable'), DFAT can't even get its dates right.

Conventional dating for the Angkor complex begins in 802 of the Common era and ends some time after 1431. The temple Senator Carr visited, Ta Prohm (pictured), dates from 1186. The most famous of all the temples, Angkor Wat, dates from the first half of the eleventh century. By the time DFAT chooses to date the complex, Angkor was in decline and almost all of the temples we see today had been built. Someone in the RG Casey Building needs to do their maths.

Photo by Flickr user Peter Nijenhuis.

At a time when there is much debate about the respective roles and strengths of China and the US in Asia, a new book discussing China's control over Asia's freshwater resources refocuses attention on the quip attributed to Mark Twain that 'Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting over.'

You don't have to take the quip to its logical conclusion to accept the importance that freshwater plays in international relations, though there is probably too much emphasis placed on the disputes arising from the existence of many trans-boundary rivers throughout the world. Among the many readily available articles on this issue, few are better than one published in the Economist nearly four years ago; it gave as much attention to the successful management of some international rivers as to those cases where this has not occurred.

But South and Southeast Asia have not been blessed by many successes relating to trans-boundary rivers. Readers of The Interpreter will know that my principal concern is with the management, or rather lack of it, of the Mekong as an international river that passes through or by no fewer than six countries (China, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam), and to a lesser extent with developments on the Salween, which flows out of China into Burma.

Now, very recently, I have had an opportunity to read Brahma Chellaney's Water: Asia's New Battleground, which undertakes the ambitious task of looking at international rivers on a pan-Asian basis.

Written with a fine sense for acerbic commentary on the political misjudgments of his own country's politicians, including in relation to the Indus Treaty between India and Pakistan ('Nehru's long seventeen years in office stood out for not learning from mistakes and continuing to operate on ingenuous premises') the key fact that pervades his book is the extent to which China's administration of Tibet means that it has the capability to control all of the major rivers of flowing into South and Southeast Asia.

Even a short visit to Cambodia earlier this month is sufficient to underline why Prime Minister Hun Sen has been so ready over many years to describe China as his country's best friend. Discussion of China's aid to the country is a constant in almost every conversation.

In December 2011 Hun Sen inaugurated a major 103 MW dam at Kamchay in Kampot province built by Sinohydro, one of the largest Chinese construction groups, the latest major infrastructure project built with Chinese assistance at a cost of US$208 million.

In preceding years (and as Hun Sen always insists, 'without strings') Chinese aid to Cambodia has ranged from the construction of a bridge over the Se San River in Stung Treng province, through road construction, to the provision of military vehicles and uniforms for the Cambodia army. In May 2010 alone China committed itself to total aid of US$1.2 billion in grants and loans at a time when a US shipment of military vehicles had been frozen.

With the Kamchay dam completed, there are plans for two more Chinese-built dams in the Cardamom Mountains of Pursat province. Like Kamchay, their construction will be for the generation of hydroelectricity, but unlike Kamchay, the proposed dams will be sited on rivers that eventually flow into the Mekong River system. This raises familiar concerns about the degradation of fish stocks, an issue that has been at the heart of the opposition to the construction of the Xayaburi dam on the Mekong's mainstream.

At a meeting of the Council of the Mekong River Commission (MRC) in Siem Reap, Cambodia, yesterday the issue of whether or not Laos should be able to go ahead with its plan to build a major dam on the Mekong at Xayaburi was fudged, with the council members concluding that 'there is a need for further study on the sustainable development and management of the Mekong River including impact from mainstream hydropower development projects'.

In effect, this means construction of the Xayaburi dam has been postponed for the moment.

The anodyne official statement glosses over the sharp divisions that have emerged and continue among the four member states of the MRC (Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam) on the proposed Xayaburi dam.

It is the first of many dams proposed for the Mekong after it flows out of China. With much preliminary work already completed, it is poised for construction work to begin across the river.

As planned, Xayaburi is no minor, 'run-of-the-river' dam. If built it would stretch 830m across the Mekong and rise to a height of 40m. Its reservoir would stretch back 60km (see my earlier post on the dam and the more detailed Lowy Paper, The Mekong: River Under Threat).

According to environmentalists, civil society groups and, most importantly, the governments of Cambodia and Vietnam, the Xayaburi dam is a 'game changer'. Thailand has taken a hands-off position, not opposing the dam but saying it would hold Laos responsible if the dam caused problems in the future.

Judging by the release of important books on the subject, it's not been a year to bolster confidence in the future of Afghanistan, whatever position one takes on Australia's involvement in that country. Two books specifically dealing with British involvement are certainly worth reading, Toby Harnden's 'Dead Men Risen: The Welsh Guards and the Real Story of Britain's War in Afghanistan', and Sherard Cowper-Coles, 'Cables from Kabul: The inside Story of the West's Afghanistan Campaign'.

Harnden's book, which was a cause celebre even before it was published, is a searing account of the Welsh Guards deployment in Helmand province in 2009. Embedded for a period with the Guards, Harnden recounts the near-impossible task set a highly professional unit with inadequate equipment. The Ministry of Defence, advised by its most senior generals, initially tried to prevent the book's publication, then sought many changes to its content, and finally paid over £100,000 to the publisher for the first edition's pulping. In its final form, it is grim but compelling read.

If Harnden's book tells the story from the soldiers' point of view — and it does so for rankers as much as for officers — Cowper-Coles is the view of a senior Foreign Office official, first sent to Afghanistan as British ambassador and then acting as Britain's Special Representative to Afghanistan.

As one would expect from his mandarin's background, Cowper-Coles writes with wit, scatters classic tags along the way, and makes very clear his deep frustration with the failure of many of his Foreign Office colleagues to understand the nature of Afghanistan or the interaction between political and military objectives. In a phrase that ought to be pondered in the RG Casey Building in Canberra, he observes that when it comes to inter-ministerial discussions about Afghanistan, the Foreign Office tends to occupy the place of 'last among equals.'

I don't expect readers of The Interpreter to rush out to find my next offering, though it is an important publication. For years scholars have been waiting for a full-scale history of Southeast Asia to replace the pioneering work of DGE Hall's monumental 'A History of South-East Asia', first published in 1955, and then republished three times, with a final edition in 1981. Now, this year, there is a replacement, a multi-authored volume edited by MC Ricklefs, 'A New History of Southeast Asia'. As with any book like this, it is not the last word, but for the moment it is the best comprehensive and substantial work available.

Throughout the long, drawn-out course of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, or ECCC) detailed in various Interpreter posts, observers have repeatedly expressed concern that the age of the four defendants before the court in Case 002 could mean that death could intervene before a verdict is reached in their trial. Nuon Chea, chief ideologue in the Pol Pot regime, is 84; Ieng Sary, the regime's foreign minister, is 85; Khieu Samphan, the regime's head of state, is 79; and Ieng Thirith, Ieng Sary's wife and minister for social affairs, is 79.

Now, not death but mental illness has intervened in the case of Ieng Thirith (pictured) On 17 November the ECCC announced it would not proceed further in its case against her as she is suffering from Alzheimer's disease. Shortly after, both the Cambodian and international co-prosecutors filed an appeal against this decision, arguing that it involved errors in law and calling for further consideration to be given to the possibility that Ieng Thirith's condition could improve.

Whatever happens now in relation to Ieng Thirith, this may not be the last occasion mental illness becomes an issue in the trials, since Nuon Chea has for some time been claiming difficulty in following the court's procedures.

None of this will concern the Cambodian Government, which only reluctantly agreed to the establishment of the tribunal. But the prospect of further delays in proceedings will be regretted by those observers who have hoped that some measure of justice would flow from the trials that have finally occurred.

Photo courtesy of the ECCC.

On 6 and 7 October the bodies of 13 Chinese were found floating in the Mekong where it flows past Chiang Rai province in Thailand's north.

The bodies, blindfolded with hands bound and showing bullet wounds, were identified as the crews from two Chinese cargo boats making the journey down the river from southern Yunnan to northern Thailand. Subsequently, the two vessels were reported captured after a gunfight involving the military and, it is now claimed, those who had hijacked the vessels.

Commentary in both Thailand and China immediately linked these events with long-established drug smuggling in the Golden Triangle region, and in particular with the activities of an ethnic Shan warlord, Nor Kham. When the two boats were recovered, they were said to be carrying up to a million amphetamine 'speed' pills. For a period China suspended all cargo traffic traveling down the Mekong and then allowed its resumption with the provision of escorts.

The events are shocking but far from surprising, as smuggling is endemic to the region. When, in 2003, I traveled from Guan Lei in southern Yunnan to Chiang Saen in northern Thailand on a Chinese cargo boat as the only non-Chinese passenger, all passengers were ordered below shortly after leaving Chinese territory while the boat made an unscheduled stop to load and unload cargo, undoubtedly part of a smuggling operation.

There surely is no greater survivor among international political figures of the past and present centuries than Norodom Sihanouk, now titled the King Father of Cambodia, who turns 89 today, or 90 by Cambodian reckoning. He returned to Phnom Penh last week after three months of medical treatment in Beijing and vowed never to leave Cambodia again.

Over more than half a century Sihanouk has been king (he has abdicated twice), prime minister and chief of state of his country. Ousted in a coup in 1970, he became the nominal head of the Khmer Rouge-dominated National United Front of Kampuchea fighting against the Khmer Republic. He was then briefly chief of state of Pol Pot's Democratic Kampuchea.

Severing his ties with the Khmer Rouge after that regime's overthrow in 1979, he finally returned to mount the Cambodian throne again in 1993 after playing a predictably complex role in the negotiations that led to the settlement of the Cambodian problem. He abdicated for the second time in 2004.

Born into the Cambodian royal family in 1922, Sihanouk never expected to become king. He was plucked from relative obscurity as a student at a colonial lycee in Saigon by the French and placed on the throne in 1941 at a time of deep crisis in their colonial possessions in Indochina. 

The French felt sure they could manipulate the shy 19 year-old and until almost the end of the Second World War the French were largely correct in their estimation. But from 1946 they found they were dealing with a different man. He proved to be, as a French general observed and Sihanouk has never ceased to quote, 'a madman of genius.'

I offered my own judgments on Sihanouk's career up to 1994 in an unauthorised biography published in 1994 (Sihanouk: Prince of Light Prince of Darkness), but on this notable occasion Sihanouk's unusually introspective judgment of himself in his memoir, Souvenirs Doux et Amers, published in 1981, is worth quoting:

It is true that I have been an authoritarian head of state, or more exactly a blend of Sukarno of Indonesia and Nasser of Egypt. But I have never been in the same class as Amin Dada of Uganda or Macias N'Guema of Equitorial Guinea, even less their undisputed master of cruelty, Pol Pot of Democratic Kampuchea. Neither have I been this insignificant and feckless 'little king' depicted by some right-wing French newspapers, which see me as a kind of 'negro king'...with yellow skin...Quite simply, I am a man. With his good points and his bad. I am neither more or less virtuous than my brother men, created in the words of 'Genesis', in the image of God, but having to assume the inheritance of original sin.

Photo by Flickr user patrickmloeff.

Cambodia is that kind of place. Just when you think you are doing the right thing it turns out that the tentacles of the past are waiting to grab you.

Not only is The Guardian running bitter little stories about the fact that Angelina Jolie has been photographed lolling on a boat in a Cambodian swamp with a £7000 Louis Vuitton bag, she is now being portrayed as entering into a land deal with a notorious Khmer Rouge commander in Cambodia's Battambang province.

It's a complicated story but linked to an issue noted on several occasions in The Interpreter, the fact that international prosecutors at the Khmer Rouge tribunal have been blocked by government interference in their attempts to bring additional high-ranking Khmer Rouge figures before it.

The detailed story about the land deal has appeared in Global Post-International News, with the claim that the Maddox Jolie Pitt Foundation purchased land from a former Khmer Rouge commander, Yim Tith. Whether this deal was carried out knowingly, as a former and supposedly disgruntled Cambodian associate claims, or was the result of ignorance is not clear. 

Three points are worth noting. First, there seems little doubt that Yim Tith was indeed a Khmer Rouge figure of importance and that his ownership of the land resulted from a policy pursued by the Phnom Penh government of providing former KR leaders with land as a means of preserving their non-involvement in current politics.

Secondly, although I have not seen his name listed before, it may well be that Yim Tith is one of the additional potential defendants that international prosecutors want to see brought before the Khmer Rouge tribunal but have been blocked from doing so.

Finally, of course, the whole affair of Angelina Jolie's involvement in Cambodia relates to the now vexed issue, as the article pointedly notes, of celebrity philanthropy. There is no question about Jolie's commitment to helping Cambodia and its inhabitants, but if this story is correct it is a classic case of unintended consequences resulting from the charitable acts of an outsider with little appreciation of internal issues in an underdeveloped country.

Photo by Flickr user World Economic Forum.

In keeping with the less than glacial pace at which the Khmer Rouge Tribunal has functioned (officially the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, or ECCC) since its formal establishment in 2006, it now seems probable that no verdict will be reached in relation to the four defendants in Case 2, currently before the court, before 2012 at the earliest (details of the defendants in this case may be found in my post, 'Khmer Rouge tribunal problems, again').

To date, the only conviction recorded by the tribunal has been that of Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, the director of the infamous S-21 extermination centre at Tuol Sleng.

Controversy has again emerged because of the international prosecutor's attempt to have additional cases heard by the ECCC. Two key elements have been involved in the latest undermining of the tribunal's standing. First has been the resignation, earlier this month, of the German international judge, Siegfried Blunk, who has alleged interference from the Cambodian Government in the tribunal's procedures.

This allegation has been accompanied by renewed criticism of the role played by the UN, with suggestions that body has failed to act when allegations have been made about the tribunal. These points are summarised in an article by James Goldston of the Open Society Initiative, which has long been critical of the tribunal and its processes.

In response, the UN has issued a statement stating that Goldston's article 'mischaracterises' the UN's position and that its representative will travel to Phnom Penh to look into the allegations of government interference.

Given the restrained fashion in which the UN has acted in relation to previous allegations of government interference and the payment of kickbacks within the tribunal, it would be optimistic to expect much to come from this visit. Moreover, Prime Minister has Hun Sen has made clear that he does not want the tribunal to undertake any more cases, let alone sanction any investigations about issues of interference or kickbacks.

These continuing disappointments take place against massive floods that have devastated Cambodia at the same time as the much better reported floods in Thailand. Losses of life in Cambodia have been much higher proportionately in Cambodia than in Thailand. What is more, and in a dramatic and unprecedented move in peacetime, Hun Sen has cancelled the most popular festival of the Cambodian year, Bon Um Tuk, the Water Festival, which was due to take place in mid-November.

Photo by Flickr user chrissam42.

I have been hesitant to use my long-ago experience in Vietnam as a basis to enter the debate about Australia's role in Afghanistan, not least because of the great differences between the two countries. But General Peter Leahy's suggestion that Australia is pursuing the wrong Afghan strategy and should place more emphasis on civilian aid prompts me to do so.

Between 1966 and 1971 I was a regular visitor to Vietnam, spending time with both the Task Force in Phuoc Thuy province, with members of the Australian Training Team, and twice as the house guest of a member of the South Vietnamese Senate's Defence Committee, traveling with that committee to all four corps areas to observe developments in the field. I talked to a range of observers of counter-insurgency, including specialists from RAND and individuals such as a the late Gerald Hickey, one of the best informed commentators on Vietnamese village life.

In all cases, I was particularly interested in civic action programs. This was because I had published a monograph on the inapplicability of the Malayan Emergency New Villages program as a basis for the Strategic Hamlets program in South Vietnam. Some of the issues involved in that monograph are outlined in my Lowy Perspectives Paper, Getting the Job Done: Iraq and the Malayan Emergency, published in February 2005.

Whether Australian interests are served by our commitment in Afghanistan is one issue, and I have grave doubts on this score. But the purpose of this post is to question the suggestion that Australia is in a position to contemplate the sort of strategy General Leahy proposes.

For not only in Vietnam but in every counter-insurgency campaign of which I am aware, the goal of overcoming insurgents through programs that emphasise civic as well as military action can only be contemplated when both the non-military personnel who are carrying out that action and their clients can be protected.

It seems evident to me that such a situation does not exist in Afghanistan, and is not likely to be achieved in any foreseeable future, whatever brave statements are made to the contrary.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

In the analysis that has followed the election victory of Pheu Thai, led by Yingluck Shinawatra, commentators have repeatedly identified the support that she and the party received as coming from 'the rural and urban poor' (see The Australian and various articles in The Economist as examples). But like William Boot's famous reply to his master at The Beast in Evelyn Waugh's 'Scoop' —  'Up to a point, Lord Copper' — this characterisation needs, at very least, either qualification or a rather particular definition of 'poor'.

Certainly 'the poor' have supported Pheu and its new leader, just as they supported Thaksin, but the catch-all term fails to take note of the extent to which the anti-Democrat Party support comes from voters in both the rural and urban regions who do not fit in with any usual definition of people living In poverty.

I can't place the person who first said it, but much of the Red Shirt support, and so Pheu Thai's, comes from people who have been described as 'having some high school education and driving a pickup truck'.

Having been in Thailand at the time of the Red Shirt protests and immediately after (as recounted at the Institute in June of last year at a Lowy Lunch) among the many images that have stayed with me, in addition to the Red Shirt 'camps', the razor wire outside my hotel, and the arson-wrecked buildings afterwards, was encountering a Red Shirt convoy coming into Bangkok as I drove north out of the city. There they were in half a dozen pickups, red banners streaming behind them and loudly chanting slogans and singing songs — a different kind of poverty.

Only dedicated followers of events associated with the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (officially the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, ECCC) will have kept track of the maneuverings of the past six months in relation to the possibility of bringing additional defendants before the court.

As matters stand, there has been the one conviction, of Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, in Case 1, while four defendants are due to face court later this month in Case 2: Khieu Samphan, the former Khmer Rouge head of state, aged 79; Nuon Chea, the KR chief ideologue, aged 85 (pictured); Ieng Sary, the KR foreign minister, aged 85; and Ieng Tirith, Sary's wife and former minister for social affairs, aged  79. (The court has been in existence since July 2006, and Case 2 is expected to run for many months, if not years.)

As long ago as 2009, Prime Minister Hun Sen made it abundantly clear that he would not permit the tribunal to operate beyond Case 2. But the international co-prosecutor, Andrew Cayley, is pressing for additional defendants to be examined, while his opposite Cambodian number, Chea Leang, has opposed this suggestion — she is a niece of the Cambodian deputy prime minister, Sok An.

Thailand's election is due on the 3 July. Some suggested reading:

• Both the Bangkok Post and the Nation offer very good coverage. In relation to the latter, articles by Kavi Chongkittavorn are always worth reading. Kavi is one of the Nation's senior editors and columnists and not afraid to ruffle feathers.
• Of note are recent reports of Army Chief General Prayuth Chan-ocha's intervention in the election, in the form of a barely disguised call for electors to vote for the Democrats and Abhisit rather than for Thaksin's sister and Pheu Thai. Not much sense there of the supposed return to the barracks by the military.
• Asia Sentinel is worth checking regularly. Here is a link with several recent Thailand stories.
• As for the blogs, New Mandala is continuing its good record, with an interesting piece by Nicholas Farrelly on what might happen if Thaksin's sister were to win the election.
• Rather oddly, the NYT/IHT correspondents in Thailand, Seth Mydans and Thomas Fuller, don't seem to be filing anything on the elections at the moment. That may change before the vote.

At a Mekong River Commission (MRC) meeting on 19 April in Phnom Penh, Cambodian and Vietnamese officials recorded their Governments' firm opposition the Xayaburi dam the Lao Government has proposed building on the Mekong's mainstream between Luang Prabang and Vientiane. This was followed by sharp rejections of the dam from the prime ministers of their two countries, Hun Sen and Nguyen Tan Dung.

Thailand's position in relation to the dam was less clear-cut, but its representatives also indicated their concerns about its likely effect on downstream countries.

The first of eleven projected hydropower dams on the Mekong downstream of China, Xayaburi would, if built, be constructed by the major Thai construction company, CH Kamchang, and be financed by Thai banks (this proposed dam and opposition to it has been discussed in several of my previous posts and in my Lowy Paper, The Mekong: River Under Threat.)

In principle, no decision about the controversial dam will now be made until a meeting of the MRC's Ministerial Council in October. Professor Phil Hirsch of the Australian Mekong Resource Centre at the University of Sydney has summarised the situation as it now stands in a detailed article in the Bangkok Post.

Initially, it seemed possible the government in Vientiane was ready to proceed with construction of the Xayaburi dam in defiance of its fellow MRC members' opposition, and this was certainly the impression CH Kamchang was ready to give.

For the past six months, the Mekong River Commission (MRC) has been seeking submissions about the proposal by Laos to build a dam on the Mekong at Xayaburi, a location some 150 kilometres downstream from Luang Prabang.

Projected to be over 800 metres wide and with a height of 32 metres, it would have a reservoir of 49 square kilometres. Estimates of how many people would be affected by the dam vary widely, but at the very least it appears 49 villages would require relocation.

Equally, the extent to which the projected dam would affect fish catches in the river is a matter for dispute. The overwhelming scientific opinion is that the dam would have a serious negative affect on catches, including the iconic giant catfish which has great symbolic importance to the local population.

Most importantly, it would if built, be the first dam on the mainstream of the Mekong below China.

Although the MRC has been able to play a role in calling for submissions on the project and drawing attention to those aspects of the 1995 Mekong River Agreement which call for consultation, it ultimately cannot direct the Lao Government not to build the dam. This is despite the fact that a Strategic Environmental Assessment commissioned by the MRC has called for all decisions on dams below China to be deferred for ten years, until further environment issues are resolved (see my post of 25 October and 6 December 2010).

If Laos decides that it is going to build the dam, the MRC cannot prevent it. Neither can Laos' ASEAN colleagues who make up the other members of the MRC: Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam. At best, the only option they have open to them is moral suasion. This makes for an interesting situation, as the reactions of those three countries to the plans for the dam at Xayaburi have varied.

Until now, there has been very little indication of the Vietnamese Government's view of plans to build dams on the mainstream of the Mekong River in Laos and Cambodia. As reported in my November 2009 Lowy Paper, 'The Mekong: River Under Threat', officials I interviewed in Hanoi were reluctant to criticise their ASEAN partners regarding possible dam construction.

This reluctance continued through 2010, but while there was sparse official commentary, there was increasing journalistic comment, particularly from 'Thanh Nhien', the journal of the Ho Chi Minh City Communist Youth League. It focused its attention on developments in the Mekong delta which, as Vietnam's great food bowl, has much to lose if the Mekong's hydrology deteriorates.

More recently, Thanh Nhien's critical comments about future dam construction have been echoed by 'Tuoi Tre', the organ of the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Organisation and now the largest circulating newspaper in Vietnam. Tuoi Tre's 23 February edition, published in English, covered a meeting of Vietnam's National Mekong River Committee, held in the Ha Long Bay region and attended by officials and experts.

The report makes clear that senior officials are now ready to make sharp criticisms of the Lao Government's plans to construct a dam at Xayaburi, on the Mekong lying between Luang Prabang and Vientiane, from which Laos plans to sell hydroelectric power to Thailand.

The commentary and criticism from Nguyen Thai Lai, Standing Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment, is stark: 'If built, Laos' Xayaburi dam will greatly affect Vietnam's agricultural production an aquaculture'. And: 'the international community and most scientists share the opinion that it is inadvisable to build dams on the mainstream of the river'. Participants at the meeting called on the Lao Government to delay the Xayaburi project, which is currently subject to consultations organised by the Mekong River Commission.

While the dramatic developments associated with the Thai-Cambodian Preah Vihear temple dispute have made headlines as an example of a problem for ASEAN unity, it is likely the Mekong dams will prove to be a longer-running point of contention between those ASEAN members through which the river flows.

Photo by Flickr user danielguip.

Cambodia's small but growing Islamic community — perhaps 500,000 in a total population approaching 15 million — receives very little attention, even within Cambodia itself. Following the arrest of Jemaah Islamiyah leader Hambali in 2003 and the revelation that he had spent months living clandestinely in Phnom Penh before being found in Thailand, there was a brief flurry on interest in the community and I published a Lowy Issues Brief on the subject in November 2004.

One of the conclusions offered in that brief was that external aid to the Islamic community in Cambodia, particularly from the the Middle East, was causing divisions within it, as some groups were rejecting the previously relaxed observation of Islam and the readiness to accept syncretic forms of local ceremonies that had characterised major sections of the community.

That these divisions remain an active issue today is made clear in a recent article by a researcher from the Documentation Center of Cambodia, which repays reading.

Photo of the Nur ul-lhsan Mosque in Phnom Penh by Flickr user Jonas Hansel.

For the past week, Thai and Cambodian forces have been exchanging fire near the Preah Vihear temple and other nearby locations along their common border, resulting in five deaths. This is far fewer than occurred in clashes in 2009, but the rising rhetoric from both sides suggests little likelihood for an early settlement of a long-running dispute about sovereignty over a major 11th century Angkorian-period temple site.

The conflict reflects long-term Thai-Cambodian antagonism, particularly since the Second World War. More immediately, it is an issue linked to Thai domestic politics. Thai ultra-nationalists, particularly those associated with the Yellow Shirt 'People's Alliance for Democracy', are seeking to undermine the Abhisit Government, which they regard as too centrist. They are looking to the Preah Vihear dispute as a way to pursue their aims.

The question of which country has sovereignty over the temple is complicated, not least because of its physical location at the top of a 525m escarpment overlooking the northern Cambodian plain, a location much more easily accessed from Thailand than Cambodia. The temple was 'found' to be within Cambodian territory as the result of a joint Franco-Thai border commission in 1906-07, which appears to have deviated from a principle agreed by both parties that the border between the two countries would be related to the north-south watershed.

Despite this fact, and the possibility that Thai acquiescence to this apparent departure from principle may have been a reflection of where power lay in the early 20th century, the question of sovereignty was not challenged from Bangkok while France held power over Cambodia.

I found 2010 was a mixed year for reading about the history and politics of those parts of the world that most interest me, Southeast Asia and Europe, particularly France.

Sixty-five years after the end of the Second World War, the publication of substantial reappraisals of familiar subjects and issues, and by familiar authors, continues unabated. One of the more admirable is Max Hastings' Winston's War: Churchill 1940-1945. That Churchill was a man of deep flaws as well as remarkable gifts is not a new assessment of Britain's wartime leader, but it is hard to think of any writer who has so successfully interpreted his character and achievements, good and bad, with so much skill.

It was with this book behind me that I turned eagerly to Antony Beevor's D-Day: The Battle for Normandy, and was, surprisingly, disappointed. The author of Stalingrad and Berlin: The Downfall, and the much less well-known but excellent Paris after the Liberation: 1944-1949, written with his wife Artermis Cooper, could not write a bad book. But as D-Day shows, he can write an account of the Normandy campaign in which detail overwhelms a sense of the big picture. Olivier Wieviorka's Normandy: The Landings to the Liberation of Paris, published two years earlier, is more satisfying.

Churchill's contemporary, ally and opponent, Charles de Gaulle, is the subject of a new biography, The General: Charles de Gaulle and the France he Saved, by Jonathan Fenby. This book was a real disappointment, particularly given the achievement Fenby has displayed in his other books, most particularly his outstanding On the Brink: The Trouble with France, published over a decade ago and curiously never reprinted. Always readable, and full of anecdotes both amusing and scabrous, the de Gaulle biography is ultimately unsatisfying for anyone who has taken a long-term interest in the French leader and who will find little that is new here. Jean Lacouture's multi-volume biography, three volumes in French and two in its English translation, has not been transcended by Fenby's work. 

Since my last post detailing the strong arguments against building dams on the Mekong's mainstream below China, further grist has been added to the anti-dam mill through the release by the Mekong River Commission (MRC) of two reports by Panels of Experts on basin development plans previously submitted to the MRC.

Among the many important points raised in these reports, two stand out: first is the view that plans to build dams on the mainstream of the river should be postponed to await further investigation. Second, the reports say there is a need to engage with China in relation to the dams it is building on its section of the river in Yunnan province because of the effects the Chinese dams will have on the lower reaches of the Mekong.

The reports will be heartening for those who are opposed to the proposed dams, but they are essentially at odds with those who look to the possible development of hydro power on the mainstream of the Mekong below China, as is apparent in a further report released by the MRC, the latest draft Basin Development Strategy for the Lower Mekong Basin. Tellingly, this draft lists among the studies that should be carried out in relation to basin development a series of issues that assume dam-building could go ahead. These include:

• Mitigation of the impacts of converting much of the mainstream to a series of slow moving waters between proposed mainstream dams.
• Assessment of mainstream and tributary hydropower potential and alternative power options, including innovative hydropower schemes that do not affect connectivity in the lower basin.
• Detailed modelling of flood-related impacts upstream of Kratie to understand the impacts of flow changes on different river reaches, and how mainstream dams will affect these.

So, the battle lines between those opposed and those in favour of dams are becoming ever more clearly drawn. Missing is any indication of how the various reports being issued by the MRC are being received by the two government most involved in the proposed plans for dams on the mainstream, Cambodia and Laos. Until there are official indications of their positions, the best that can be said is that the issues are now clear.

Photo by Flickr user Un rosarino en Vietnam.

Repeating his earlier opposition to expanding the list of defendants to be brought before the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has now told the visiting UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, that he will not allow the projected additional indictments of alleged senior Khmer Rouge figures to go ahead. This was confirmed by the Foreign Minister, Hor Namhong, when he quoted Hun Sen as saying that 'case three will not be allowed'.

While many in the international community and the international prosecutors at the tribunal have argued for a further five or six former Khmer Rouge figures to be brought before the court after the trial of the remaining four defendants now in custody, Hun Sen has been bitterly opposed to this proposal. He has claimed that to continue with additional indictments would lead to 'civil war', or at very least would undermine Cambodia's stability.

Hun Sen's opposition to expanding the tribunal's case load seems to outsiders to be an over-reaction, but within Cambodia it is more correctly seen as part of his long-stated determination 'to bury the past', a past in which far too many serving officials worked with the Khmer Rouge. From Hun Sen's point of view, the sooner this fact is glossed over the better. And his view will prevail since, first, he has indicated he will not permit any additional officials being being brought before the tribunal for questioning; and secondly, because the Cambodian judges on the tribunal are not ready to join with their international colleagues in approving additional indictments.

Photo courtesy of the ECCC.

A thorough environmental assessment has called into question plans for the construction of dams on the Mekong River, plans which are backed by the Lao and Cambodian governments.

On 15 October the Mekong River Commission (MRC) released the Final Report on the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) of planned hydropower dams on the Mekong mainstream. The report, prepared by ICEM Australia (International Centre for Environmental Management), recommends that plans to build dams on the Mekong mainstream after the river flows out of China should be deferred. This is in direct opposition to the commercial interests that wish to build the dams and to the announced support for such dams from the governments of Laos and Cambodia.

It also calls into question the reported remarks over the last several months of the MRC's chief executive officer, who on several occasions has spoken as if the construction of some dams on the river was certain.

The SEA is a substantial document which examines the likely impact of the eleven dams and one water diversion project, all designed to generate hydroelectricity. Until now, no dams have existed on the Mekong's mainstream after the river flows out of China. (The background to this issue is discussed in detail in my Lowy Paper published in November 2009, 'The Mekong: River Under Threat').

With widespread opposition to the dams from environmental NGOs, read more

The concern of the Australian media to analyse in depth Tony Abbott's less-than thoughtful remarks justifying his decision not to travel to Afghanistan with the Prime Minister — the ABC devoted nearly ten minutes to the issue on AM alone this morning — contrasts with the overall paucity of hard-nosed writing on Australia's commitment to the country and events in it.

For this reason, Paul Kelly's offering in today's Australian and Ahmid Radshid's gloomy piece in today's FT provided a welcome contrast to so much of Australia's coverage, or lack of it.

Photo by Flickr user DVIDSHUB, used under a Creative Commons license.

As previewed, Kaing Guek Eav (better known as Duch) the director of the Tuol Sleng extermination centre (known as S-21 during the Pol Pot regime) was sentenced to 35 years imprisonment for crimes against humanity by the judges of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge Tribunal (ECCC) on 26 July.

 The key paragraph of the tribunal's press release recording the sentence is:

KAING Guek Eav was convicted of crimes against humanity (persecution on political grounds) (incorporating various other crimes against humanity, including extermination, imprisonment and torture), as well as numerous grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, for which, by a majority, the Chamber imposed a single, consolidated sentence of 35 (thirty-five) years of imprisonment.

In deciding on an appropriate sentence, the Chamber noted a number of aggravating features, in particular the gravity of the offences, which were perpetrated against at least 12,272 victims over a prolonged period.

But according to news reports, the tribunal has taken account of the eleven years Duch has already spent in custody and of the fact that for a period he was illegally detained before coming under United Nations jurisdiction. As a result of these considerations and his admissions of guilt, the period that Duch is actually condemned to serve is nineteen years.

This means that Duch, currently aged 67, will be due for release in 2029 at the age of 86, should he live that long. There are already Cambodian commentators who are sharply critical of the verdict, not least because there was a widespread belief in the country that Duch would be sentenced to life imprisonment. And it is possible that the prosecution, which had called for a sentence of forty years, might appeal the verdict.

While Duch's sentencing has been a media event with a large foreign press corps present in Phnom Penh, it is worth remembering several important facts that risk being forgotten. read more

Four years after its establishment in July 2006, the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (officially the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia) will on 26 July finally bring to a close the trial of the first defendant to appear before it.

This will involve the sentencing of Kaing Guek Euv, better known as Duch, the director of the Tuol Sleng Extermination Centre, where at least 14,000 were killed, mostly after prolonged torture. Duch, who was convicted of crimes against humanity at the end of last year, will probably be sentenced to life imprisonment, despite his final plea to the court for a lesser sentence, based on his time already spent in custody and his admission of guilt, qualified by his claim that he had no other choice than to act on the orders he had been given, since to do otherwise would have led to his own death.

While few will argue against a heavy sentence for Duch, the fact that the sentencing has taken so long makes the court a ready target for criticism.

And to this criticism can be added the doubts held by many, myself included, about the adequacy of a system that is unlikely to bring to trial the other four senior Khmer Rouge figures currently held in custody before 2012, and remains subject to a range of interference from the Cambodian Government.

In the latter regard, efforts by the international prosecutorial team at the tribunal to examine an additional six individuals suspected of having been associated with crimes against humanity during the period of the Khmer Rouge regime have been blocked by the Cambodian Government. This is not surprising given Prime Minister Hun Sen's repeated statements indicating that he wants the tribunal to cease its activities, or at very least to do no more than to try the remaining four defendants held in custody.

Photo by Flickr user SarahFranco, used under a Creative Commons license.

It's not just Charles de Gaulle who is informing the prime minister's utterances on issues bearing on Australia's relations with the outside world. Now it's the late Henry Bolte, longtime premier of Victoria.

As population and migration have become election issues, Ms Gillard is reported as having said on 18 July, 'One of the things Australians often say when we've spent a few days in a crowded, congested city in Europe or the United States: it's a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there.'

Living in Melbourne as I did many years ago, I well remember the Sir Henry Bolte comment that Julia Gillard now seems to be channeling. Speaking after a visit to Europe, he reflected on the passeggiata, the nightly stroll of people along the streets of Italian cities and towns. This takes place, Bolte said —and here I have to paraphrase since even Google won't find the exact words for me — because unlike us, they don't have backyards in which to spend their time.

Who will Ms Gillard channel next?

 Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

It has taken me a couple of days to realise that, so far as boat arrivals are concerned, Prime Minister Gillard is working from the Charles de Gaulle playbook. Yes, that Charles de Gaulle, French President 1959-69.

Of all the many speeches de Gaulle made over the years, none, including the rightly famous but actually little heard rallying speech from exile in London on 18 June 1940, was more striking for its immediate political effect than that which he delivered at the Forum in Algiers on 4 June 1958.

With chaos threatening in both France and Algeria, de Gaulle had travelled to Algiers where he addressed a huge crowd of both pieds noirs and Muslim Algerians. It took three minutes for the crowd to lapse into silence as de Gaulle took to the microphone. And then he uttered his famous words, 'Je vous ai compris' ('I have understood you').

The crowd, pieds noirs and Muslim Algerians alike, went wild, cheering de Gaulle as if he had, in some Delphic fashion, answered their disparate prayers.

Of course, de Gaulle's masterly oratory was a prelude to his selling the pied noirs down the river. No one is really sure how far he had thought ahead when he chose to begin his speech in such a remarkable fashion, but with all we know of him, it is difficult to believe he had not already recognised that France had no future in Algeria.

Indeed, Alistair Horne, who has written of this period in Algeria with more insight than almost anyone else, suggests that de Gaulle was speaking in two voices, 'one for the elated masses, another for his own clairvoyant pessimism'. And Horne notes that, back in Paris immediately afterwards, de Gaulle commented (in terms that would sit well with the Graham Richardson playbook) 'L'Afrique est foutue et l'Algerie avec' (which for the purposes of this publication I will translate as 'Africa is stuffed and Algeria with it').

Prime Minister Gillard's Lowy Institute speech had all the elements of 'understanding', but one has to doubt whether she had thought matters through in the way it seems de Gaulle had done those many years ago.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.