Southeast Asia Archive

SIEM REP, Cambodia — Twelve-year-old Van Nak remembers like it was yesterday the force of the blast that took his right arm and his father. “It hit me here,” he says tapping his chest with his only hand, “and knocked me over.” Van was just 6 years old when he accidentally triggered a landmine near the Thai-Cambodian border while planting rice with his now deceased dad, one of the tens of thousands of victims of subterranean explosives that litter the countryside. According to the government-run Cambodian Mine Action Center, anywhere between four and six million mines and pieces of unexploded […]

BANGKOK, Thailand — Astrology and superstitious belief are part of everyday life in impoverished Burma, where hope for every family hangs on some fortune-teller’s prophesy. But there is one prediction no one in the country is prepared to make — who will succeed ailing leader Than Shwe. Rumor is rife in Rangoon that the hardhearted general who cherishes his family life is seriously ill with intestinal cancer. His death or withdrawal from a position of influence is seen by some Burma-watchers as a small chance for a break in the long-running deadlock between the hard-line military regime and the suppressed […]

BANGKOK, Thailand — While a jittery Thai capital has been warned to brace for more bomb attacks from unidentified terrorists, the country’s military-installed government is sowing fear among Thailand’s foreign business community. New laws promulgated by the unelected interim regime following the September army takeover seem to have less to do with the coup’s professed aim of putting the country back on the road to national unity than with blatant nationalism. Foreign companies in Thailand are seething in the wake of a law that tightens restrictions on foreign business ownership. This follows a clumsy diktat in late December on foreign […]

In both his public speech to the nation Wednesday evening and his private meeting the day before with House Democrats, President Bush warned that a U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq would encourage international terrorism and gravely damage America’s standing in the Middle East. On this basis, he has called for increasing the commitment of U.S. troops and other resources to the region. Although the crisis in Iraq is important, the administration needs to pay more attention to other regions of equal if not greater long-term significance. In particular, the conflict has already generated major trends in East Asia gravely harmful […]

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — For the cool price of $555, Lan Kosal will escort a client to a remote location in the Cambodian countryside to blow up a cow with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, a grizzly form of entertainment popular among some backpackers visiting this poor Southeast Asian nation. The use of the Soviet-era launcher and its artillery is the relatively inexpensive part of the package, said Lan. “The real cost is the cow. You have to buy it before we let you kill it,” he explained matter-of-factly. Many tourists, he noted, aren’t interested in firing bazookas at bovines or […]

BANGKOK, Thailand — In an effort to bolster its armed forces, Myanmar’s ruling junta continues to diversify the sources of its military hardware, finding willing suppliers in countries that are eager to gain access to the Southeast Asian nation’s abundant energy resources. Although China remains the principal dealer of military equipment to Myanmar, India has recently offered a multi-million dollar military assistance package to the junta’s leaders. According to the New York-based watchdog Human Rights Watch, the assistance package, presented by Indian air force chief S.P. Tyagi on a visit to Myanmar’s new administrative capitol at Naypyidaw in late November, […]