Some things that happened while I was gone…

I spent the last few weeks in Cambodia, mostly in the service of the workshop Cambodia’s Economic Transformation. The workshop was very nice, and I learned a lot.  I also managed to spend some quality time with friends and my extended Khmer family, which was sorely needed. Lots of photos over at my flickr page.

Lots to say and think about, very little of which will happen here anytime soon. Some things are barely worth noting (such as the planting of three homemade bombs in Phnom Penh, which were detonated in a controlled explosion and offered Hun Manet a nice set of photo-ops).

Some things that happened while I was over there, which readers of this blog might enjoy:

• Born Samnang and Sok Sam Ouern were released. This is good news. They weren’t given their freedom, but were released until the appeal which will happen in about a month. Born Samnang and Sok Sam Ouern are clearly completely unrelated to the killing of local labor leader Chea Vichea. Their release is almost certainly related to the death of brutal top cop Hok Lundy. With him and Heng Pov out of the way, the people who ordered to murder feel relatively certain that no new investigation could implicate them. [Who Killed Chea Vichea, Phnom Penh Post, DAS]
• Keng Vannsak died. The towering figure among twentieth century Khmer intellectuals managed to piss off enormous numbers of folks with his comments about Angkor and especially Jayavarman VII, but his contributions cannot be minimized. Here’s the eulogy given by another great Khmer intellectual, Khing Hoc Dy.
• The Khmer rock opera, Where Elephants Weep, was attacked by elements within the Cambodian sangha. A modernization of the great Khmer epic Tum Teav (and less risque than the original), Where Elephants Weep could be criticized on other fronts, perhaps, but ‘offending’ the honor of the clergy really doesn’t make much sense. I can’t really speak to the content of musical, unfortunately. I was intending to watch its presentation on national television, but thanks to a few stuck up monks, I was unable to do so. Ridiculous. [ShambalaSun, Somongkol, Danny Fisher, DAS]
• Weird news about the American military providing ongoing support to the Khmer military. Geez. Will they never learn? (That’s rhetorical. We know they won’t).
• Less newsy, but no less interesting, AlisoninCambodia continues her valuable archeblogging, with astonishingly good posts on Sambor Prei Kuk and Khmer canals.
• Meanwhile, StuckInCustoms posted a fantastic picture of the inner sanctuary of Angkor Wat.

What KBR does with dead bodies

My “How to do things with dead people” class is coming to a close. I had a lovely time, and my students rocked. I came across this in today’s news/noise. Sweet Jeebus.

A lawsuit against the company recently filed in Houston federal court accuses its workers of exposing military and non-military personnel in Iraq to contaminated food, contaminated water, and improperly incinerated human remains. Yeah, that’s right. Human remains. Joshua Eller, the principal plaintiff, says he witnessed a wild dog running around base one day carrying a human arm in its mouth.

via Military Contractor KBR Sued over Dogs With Human Arms in Their Mouths – Boing Boing.

Is Pakistan Obama’s Cambodia?

It’s good to see that not all the lessons from the American-Vietnam war, and especially Cambodia’s role within that conflict, have been lost. Typically, this sort of analysis shows up within the defense analyst communities, rather than in mainstream reportage, or even in the blogosphere. That’s unfortunate. We’re repeating history, and enthusiasm for a well-meaning president-elect (possibly the first we’ve had since Carter, I’m reserving judgment on Clinton) is blinding many to the parallels.

President-elect Obama has committed himself to stepping up the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. It is not an overstatement to say that he will risk his whole presidency, and perhaps even unwittingly put nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists who might use them to attack the United States, if he leaps too far into neighboring Pakistan in pursuit of elusive victory.

The rub, as the Vietnam and Iraq wars showed us all, is unintended consequences. Our military leaders can, and almost certainly will, make a strong case to Obama that there is no way to defeat the Taliban and their allied tribes in Afghanistan without cleaning out their sanctuaries just over the Afghan border in Pakistan.

I can hear frustrated U.S. commanders on the ground in Afghanistan making the same kind of argument to Obama’s team tomorrow that I heard yesterday in Vietnam when I was a combat correspondent there.

I could empathize with this lament, for example, that I heard in 1968 from a 9th Division infantry battalion commander, whose mission was to rid his area — South Vietnam’s rice bowl, the Delta — of the stealthy Viet Cong guerrillas:

“I can have my kids chase the Viet Cong all day and all night. But whenever they catch up to a good number of them, they just run over the border into Cambodia where we can’t go. All I’m really doing down here is buying time with my kids’ lives for the diplomats to settle this thing.”

His was among the impressive military arguments I heard for either invading Cambodian border sanctuaries or getting the United States out of the otherwise unwinnable Vietnam War.

President Lyndon Johnson resisted invading Cambodia. He had concluded that this would only widen the war, infuriating an already skeptical Congress. Early on in Johnson’s presidency he confided to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, but not the public, that he saw the war as a no-win. Secret tapes of Johnson’s conversations, since made public, document him saying this to McNamara on Feb. 26, 1965: “I don’t think anything is going to be as bad as losing, and I don’t see any way of winning.”

His successor, Richard Nixon, who took office in 1969 after the Vietnam War had ruined Johnson’s presidency, including his dream of building a Great Society, rushed into Cambodia where Johnson had feared to tread.

More at Is Pakistan Obama’s Cambodia?

Thailand, Cambodia, Coups and Borders

I don’t have the time to properly address this. Thankfully, even the msm is doing a good job, and other sites, such as Bangkok Pundit and New Mandala, are doing fine work here too.

Seth Mydans notes that we’re starting to worry about a coup, especially since the army chief got on television demanding the prime minister resign. Well, yeah.

Bangkok Pundit notes that this was a tactical problem for the army, which is facing other problems:

There are rumours of a coup floating around and I think it would be unwise to dismiss the possibility of a coup, but I do think a coup is unlikely. Making predictions is perilous given the lack of information fromt he inside. On the scale of likelihood, I would only a 10% chance of a coup. Somchai’s resignation is most likely option after the ASEAN summit and I give this a 50% chance. This is followed by a dissolution at 30% and Somchai soldiering on at 10% (and a dissolution sometime next year).

Those other problems? The resurgent border conflicts between Thailand and Cambodia near Preah Vihear temple. This time, the bodies aren’t getting back up. Stories of captured Thai soldiers, villagers fleeing the area, delay of talks, and the collapse of joint border patrols do not encourage a sense of stability.

Cham stuff has been well-covered elsewhere. One person decided that the Cham should have their own homeland. People who have a better grasp of reality have taken the bull by the horns and publically, collectively, spoken back against this notion, which endangers the Cham themselves and does not seem to represent any significant portion of the Cham population itself.

Finally, the folks behind the important documentary film project “Who Killed Chea Vichea?” have achieved tax-deductible status! So, if you’ve been making a killing in the market lately, or if you have a few spare quarters from your couch, go drop something in their tip jar.

(Mostly) Southeast Asian Link Dump

• “Thai democracy is in a state of immolation.” via New Mandala
• Wall Street Journal Asia has an editorial on current events in Bangkok. Here, via Bangkok Pundit
• Geoffrey Cain in Asia Times, on how Cambodia’s muslims are geopolitical pawns. Really? Or a lot of hoo-hah about nothing? Chanroeun Pa has reprinted an article by Antonio Graceffo which is slightly more thoughtful.
• The Phnom Penh Post has a few articles of interest, on the resurgence of tensions on the border with Thailand, nothing that this tension has increased enlistments in the Cambodian military, and an article lavishing praise on the  System of Rice Intensification (SRI).
• One of Cambodia’s awesome three independent unions, the Cambodian Independent Teachers’ Association (CITA), issued a forceful statement on World Teachers’ Day which attempts to use the (hilarious) rectangular strategy as a rhetorical strategy to demand increases to the salaries of teachers (which are unbelievably low). Via the Mirror.
• PBS’ Frontline has released a short, well-done, documentary on Burma’s Saffron Revolution, pointed out by New Mandala. Very worth checking out.
• Here’s a post which is not strictly Southeast Asian, but comes to us from the land of Nepal. This landscape, of human-created rice terraces, is nothing short of astonishing. Via the agricultural biodiversity weblog

Umm….Military Urns….?

I guess you gotta make a living somehow right?

I’m just going to let these two (both of the above are actually urns) speak for themselves. Just too weird (and sad?) for words.

PTSD, Suicide, and Combat Deaths

In a paper I gave recently at the International Association of Buddhist Studies, in Atlanta, I had occasion to introduce the topic of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD. PTSD was a diagnosis fought for politically by veterans of the Vietnam-American war, though in all likelihood it shares a commonality with Shell Shock and other combat and trauma-originated disorders (the very fact that it is a disorder makes it difficult if not impossible to truly classify it).

I discussed this history and then applied it to Cambodia’s post-Khmer Rouge situation. I won’t discuss that here – far too depressing for a day I’m supposed to be writing. Instead, since I discussed the case of Derek Henderson, who threw himself off a bridge at the age of 27. Since I used the example of dead servicemen and women in that talk, I feel obliged to put some of these statistics out here.

Those without relatives or friends serving in active military duty often ignore the wars entirely. Those on the left without such acquaintances often make the horrible mistake of blaming soldiers for the wars they are sent to fight. Neither group, and occasionally even those who do have acquaintances in the military, are usually aware of the relationship between casualties in combat, and casualties at home.

The numbers are hard to come by – like the pictures of flag-draped coffins coming home, they have been deliberately obscured, hidden, and sometimes straightforwardly lied about. Still, it is clear at this point that the following numbers are accurate, at least as of last year:

• Since combat operations began, the U.S. Department of Defense has confirmed 4116 deaths in Iraq (this excludes Afghanistan, which recently began to exceed the combat death tolls of Iraq) [link].
• Every year, approximately 12,000 U.S. veterans attempt suicide in the United States. [link]
• Of those attempts, 6256 took their lives ’successfully’ in 2005. [link]
• That amounts to 120 suicides a week, or 17 a day; this out of a total of 230 attempted suicides a week, or 32 a day. [link]
• In other words, for those who need to be beat about the head to understand this, the soldiers and veterans of the U.S. Military, taken as a single group, have thus far lost approximately 7.5 times more the number of human beings to suicide in the United States, than they have to operations in Iraq.
• And that doesn’t even begin to include the loss of life represented by the deaths of non-U.S. forces, or the civilian deaths, which are documented at between 85,865 – 93,675, in Iraq alone. [link]

Read This – “Let Us Not Praise Coups”

In addition to Andrew Walker’s inventory of some of the surprising accomplishments of the Thai state in achieving its Millenium Development Goals, this post by wonderful journalist Awzar Thi (a pseudonym), over at his blog, Rule of Lords is today’s must-read.

Responding to Paul Collier’s half-baked, militarist suggestion that what countries in crisis (specifically, Zimbabwe) should hope for are military coups, Awzar Thi runs down the actual history of coups, and shows how awful they are for those over which they rule, no matter the high hopes of the populace (and international imperialists), nor the horrendous state of affairs prior to the coup. He concludes

Let us not praise coups, and let us certainly not wish them upon people who are already acutely suffering their iniquities. They are not a way out of trouble but a way into more of it. No better advertisement of this exists than Burma today.

Please, go read it.

Bad timing in the resumption of military aid from the USA to Cambodia

Am I missing something? The logic of this donation – in which 31 used GMC cargo trucks will be given to the Cambodian military – escapes me.

The United States has not given direct military aid to any Cambodian armed force since the 1997 coup de force that installed Hun Sen as the sole political leader in the country. Why resume now, when the U.S. military is facing unbelievable costs and strain as it pursues its war in Ira*? Why resume aid to a regime which has shown no determination to reduce the illegal logging and landgrabs which are destroying the natural base (and thus, the economic base for upwards of eighty percent of the population) of the country?

These trucks are more likely to be used to transport illegally cut and traded wood than for border security.

Zombie-King-Father Sihanouk

Always in the spotlight (even when he’s not the king), Sihanouk has been getting a bit more press this last week than previously. In addition to declaring his desire to remain in the Royal Compound as a zombie, the New York Times has published a recollection of the 1955 elections (the first after his abdication from the throne to enter politics). DAS brought it to my attention.

Receiving surrendering weapons from Dap Chhuon Khmer Issarak group [via KI-Media]

In his book Sihanouk: Prince of Light, Prince of Darkness, Milton Osborne includes the following quote:

The campaign for the September 1955 elections has been better documented than any other that took place while Sihanouk was in power. It was marked by widespread corruption and substantial violence. Terror was used as a weapon against candidates and their supporters by all sides, but most particularly by those backing the Sangkum. Just how many died is not certain. What is beyond dispute is that Dap Chhuon’s agents systematically intimidated their opponents, disrupting rallies, assaulting vote canvassers, and ensuring that only Sangkum posters were left untouched. (p.97)