Southeast Asia Archive

BANGKOK, Thailand — Regular bombings, killings and skirmishes between rebels and the military in southern Thailand have forced Thai authorities to finally grasp the scope of a conflict that has scarred thousands and changed the lives of millions. Previously, Thai police, military and politicians had dismissed the attacks as random violence committed by bandits or a handful of disgruntled Islamic militants. Such attempts to play down the carnage were dismissed by Western governments, who see the confrontation with ethnic Malay-Muslim separatists in the south as a persistent threat to regional security. Now, as the rebellion enters its sixth year, Thai […]

Second of a three-part series. Part I can be found here. Part II: Border Antics JAIGON, India — In the Indian town of Jaigon on the border with Bhutan, a day’s journey from the refugee camp in Nepal that he now calls home, 47-year-old refugee N.B. Giri waits silently in a small hotel room for his old friend, Gopal. Like Giri, Gopal is an ethnic Nepalese who claims Bhutanese citizenship. But after the expulsions of 1991 that caused Giri to leave, Gopal was one of an estimated 100,000 ethnic Nepalese who remained in Bhutan. N.B. Giri stands outside his hut […]

KUDAT, Malaysia — A recent escalation in violence on the troubled Philippine island of Mindanao has led Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia to tighten international security across their maritime borders, and threatened to undermine U.S.-led peace efforts. From Kudat on the northern tip of Malaysian Borneo, south to Sulawesi in Indonesia and eastwards to the strife-torn southern Philippines, authorities have clamped down in response to mounting casualties, after a truce between the Philippine government and separatist Muslim rebels collapsed last year. Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur were to deploy battalion-force strength to their border areas, while Manila rolled out a plan […]

CAMBODIA MARKS ANNIVERSARY, BUT NO CLOSURE — Cambodia marked the 30th anniversary of the demise of the Khmer Rouge regime Jan. 7 with memorials for the suffering of millions. But the country remains haunted by the knowledge that perpetrators of Cambodia’s greatest crime have yet to stand trial for their crimes. Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime held sway over Cambodia from 1975-1979, a period in which millions of Cambodians died from torture, overwork, starvation and executions. In early 1979, a joint Vietnamese-Cambodian force toppled the regime, bringing in a new government largely beholden to its Vietnamese allies. Some Cambodians object […]

I’ve seen quite a few headlines recently trumpeting the Sri Lankan government’s victory in its counterinsurgency against the LTTE (Tamil Tigers) terorist/guerilla insurgency. That comes on the heels of the military’s capture of the LTTE’s “capital” of Kilinochchi. But the news out of Sri Lanka today about the murder of Lasantha Wickrematunga, an anti-government newspaper editor, made me feel like Brian Calvert’s fascinating, three-part series (here, here and here) on the information war that is part and parcel of the government’s counterinsurgency was worth a second look. Especially Part II, which begins as follows: No one understands the importance of […]