Conflicts spoil Southeast Asia's party Michael Vatikiotis International Herald Tribune Thursday, November 25, 2004
HONG KONG On Saturday, heads of government from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or Asean, will gather in Vientiane, the capital of Laos, with a feeling of relief that their economies are growing for the most part at a healthy clip. Tricky leadership transitions have taken place in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, and elections across the region were held peacefully. There are even signs at last, with the recent release of political prisoners in Myanmar, that the region's most thorny problem could be inching closer to resolution. . But while there are grounds for optimism about Southeast Asia's prospects after a year of economic and political success, it would be wrong for the leaders gathering in Vientiane to be overconfident. For one of the region's most chronic problems remains unsolved and in many respects could be getting worse - with precious little evidence that Asean has a coherent strategy to address the issue. . Since the end of the colonial period, unresolved territorial boundaries and demands for self-determination by minorities have stoked simmering conflicts on the margins of the region's constituent states. In the Indonesian province of Aceh, along the border between Myanmar and Thailand, across the highlands of Laos and Vietnam, in southern Thailand, in the large Philippine island of Mindanao and as far east as Indonesia's province of Papua, people have been battling for decades against central authority in a bid for freedom, or at least some sort of dignity and autonomy within the framework of the state. . These irredentist insurgencies have flared up and quietened down over the years; they have become lightning rods for radical ideologies like communism and, more recently, militant Islam. Tens of thousands of people have died - more than 10,000 in Aceh alone since 1976 - and the suffering in terms of poverty and deprivation is incalculable. With the exception of East Timor, which won independence in 1999, not one of these conflicts has been finally resolved. . One reason for the slow progress on resolving conflicts has been the long-established practice of Asean states of refraining from interfering in one another's internal affairs. But now, with the professed desire of the 10 heads of government to move in Vientiane toward establishing an Asean Community by 2020, it is time to start rethinking this "see no evil" policy. . In the case of southern Thailand, where more than 500 people have died this year in a resurgence of conflict between the majority Malay Muslim population and the Thai Buddhist minority, the need for regional cooperation could not be clearer. . If, as the authorities and some local observers suspect, external militant Islamic influence is stoking the anger of the Muslims in the south, then surely the lesson of the war against terrorism is clear. As Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly put it recently, "Terrorists routinely disregard national boundaries. We need to reach across them to defeat them." . But while countries like Indonesia and Thailand have been willing to cooperate fully in the hunt for dangerous transnational terrorists to avoid upsetting the United States and scaring off investors, it seems that they are less happy about cooperating if the problem impinges on issues of national sovereignty. When Indonesian officials asked their Thai counterpabout the trouble in southern Thailand at a regional security meeting in Beijing this month, they were flatly told that it was an internal matter. . In fact, Indonesia and Thailand could learn a lot from each other in dealing with separatist problems. Thailand could learn from Indonesia how to deal with angry Muslim sentiment sensitively, while Indonesia could use Thai civilian mediation to help develop grass-roots representation in Aceh that could dampen local anger toward Jakarta. . These are not far-fetched scenarios. Malaysia has been helping the Philippines deal with its Muslim separatists in Mindanao. Despite Thailand's clumsy handling of the Muslim south, its military and police have played constructive roles in East Timor and in Aceh. . No doubt Asean leaders in Vientiane will brim with self-congratulation once they have signed an agreement on a framework for an Asean Community. But while the region's conflicts simmer on, reality will make their alluring vision hard to realize. . (Michael Vatikiotis is a former editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review.) [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! 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