US lifts curb on Cambodia, Laos trade

Asia Times Online
Jun 30, 2009
By Brian McCartan

BANGKOK - The removal of Cambodia and Laos from a United States blacklist that limits government support for US companies doing business with the two countries represents the latest strategic move by Washington to counterbalance China's rising influence in mainland Southeast Asia. The new designation will open the way for more American investment in two of Southeast Asia's poorest nations, both US adversaries during the Cold War era.

President Barack Obama has determined that Cambodia and Laos have both shown commitment to open markets, including through more liberal investment laws and fewer market controls, and should no longer be considered "Marxist-Leninist" countries


as defined by the 1945 Export-Import Bank Act, the White House announced on June 12.

With the trade restrictions removed, American companies can apply for financing through the Export-Import Bank of the United States for working capital guarantees, export credit insurance and loan guarantees to conduct business in Cambodia and Laos. Only six countries now remain on the US trade blacklist: Cuba, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Sudan and Syria.

With a combined population of 20 million, Cambodia and Laos do not represent an especially large or high purchasing power market for US companies. US exports to Cambodia in 2008 totaled US$154 million while those to Laos were a mere $18 million. Cambodia's exports to the US, which mostly consist of clothing and textiles, last year totaled around $2.4 billion while US-bound shipments from Laos were just $42 million. US trade with Thailand stood at $30 billion last year, and with Vietnam $15 billion.

Obama's decision was highly criticized by US-based ethnic Hmong groups, comprised of people who fled Laos after the 1975 communist takeover and claim their relatives continue to be persecuted by the authoritarian regime. Several thousand Hmong remain in a refugee camp in northern Thailand with another 158 Hmong recognized by the United Nations as refugees with real concerns for their safety if repatriated to Laos held in an immigration detention center in northeastern Thailand.

US-based Hmong activists have said that the Obama administration should first secure guarantees from the Laos government for the safety of the Hmong and investigate claims of human-rights abuses before agreeing to improved diplomatic and economic ties. The Hmong and their former Central Intelligence Agency and military allies during the Vietnam War have said the Hmong deserve better from a country they honorably served.

The US State Department's information site on Cambodia says, "In the past three years, bilateral relations between the US and Cambodia have deepened and broadened." That hasn't always been the case. When the Khmer Rouge deposed a US-propped regime in 1975, the American Embassy was evacuated and a mission was not reestablished in the country until 1991. A US embargo on trade with Cambodia ended with the normalization of economic relations in 1992 and full diplomatic relations were recommenced the following year.

A Congressional ban on direct assistance to the Cambodian government was imposed in 1997 following violent factional infighting between current Prime Minister Hun Sen and then co-prime minister Norodom Ranariddh. Further complicating US-Cambodian relations was a grenade attack that same year on a rally for opposition politician Sam Rainsy, where a US citizen was injured. A US Federal Bureau of Investigation probe that followed linked the attackers to government politicians and Hun Sen's special bodyguard unit. The congressional ban was only lifted 10 years later in 2007 and allowed for direct technical assistance.

The US sent over $57 million to Cambodia last year, scattered across programs in health, education, governance and economic development. The US State Department's website also lists as programs it supports as the fight against terrorism, reduction in HIV/AIDS, improving democratic institutions, promotion of human rights, elimination of corruption, accounting for MIAs and justice for victims of the Khmer Rouge.

Long on a diplomatic backburner, US-Laos relations have also seen a revival in recent years. Although diplomatic relations were never severed after the communist takeover in 1975, the US mission in Vientiane was downgraded and full diplomatic relations were not restored until 1992. Trade ties with Vientiane were normalized in December 2004 after congress passed the Miscellaneous Trade and Technical Corrections Act which extended non-discriminatory treatment of Lao products entering the US. The following year, a bilateral trade agreement between the two former adversaries entered into force.

Commercial countermove
The motivation behind these overtures, some analysts say, is growing US concern over the diplomatic and commercial inroads China has made the region. Since the late 1990s, China has stepped up its influence in both Cambodia and Laos. Although China is not the largest single donor to either country, its investments and aid projects are often strongly publicized, including high-profile infrastructure projects such as hydro-electric dams and roads and public projects like the main stadium for the 2009 Southeast Asia Games to be held in Vientiane.

The exact amounts of Chinese aid are difficult to discern since development assistance is often tied together with direct economic investment and loans. According to a January 2008 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report entitled "China's 'Soft Power' in Southeast Asia", the US disbursed some $55 million annually in aid to Cambodia during 2006-2007. China, which for the first time donated money through the Western-dominated Consultative Group that coordinates foreign aid to Cambodia, pledged $91.5 million in 2007.

According to the same CRS report, the US has been a small donor in Laos, with aid amounting to $4.5 million between 2005 and 2007. The US bolstered its disbursements last year, according to the US State Department statistics, with $18 million going to the removal of unexploded bombs and mines, counter-narcotics, health, education, economic development and governance. China has become increasingly important to Vientiane as a source of low-interest loans, grants, development projects, technical assistance and foreign investment.

US relations with Cambodia and Laos have been tempered by concerns lingering from the Vietnam War. In Laos, that includes issues involving the treatment of ethnic Hmong who supported the US during the war and accounting for US servicemen lost during the conflict. Laos and Cambodia, for their part, remain wary of engaging too closely with the US, which dropped thousands of tons of bombs on both countries during the 1960s and early 1970s and as unexploded ordinance continue to kill and maim innocent civilians.

Yet China has its own public image problem in both countries, including Beijing's support for the murderous Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. In Laos, there are new fears of being swallowed up by its massive northern neighbor, a perception reinforced by the growing presence of all things Chinese ranging from imported goods to migrant workers, who, Lao officials say, do not return home once their work obligations have expired.

China has worked to counter those criticisms, including through building high-profile infrastructure and public works projects. There have also been frequent visits of Chinese cultural missions, expansion of local Chinese language courses, scholarships for study at Chinese universities, technical assistance programs and Beijing-supported study tours to China for government officials.

Some analysts sense a shift, especially in the younger generation of officials whose formative years did not take place during the Vietnam War, away from erstwhile ally Vietnam to a more pro-China stance. China's recent extensive investments in both Cambodia and Laos have convinced many that the way to prosperity comes through working with the Chinese.

China's inroads into both countries have been helped by inconsistent US attention to the region. Under the George W Bush administration, Washington was perceived by many to have downgraded its commitment to Southeast Asia while concentrating its resources on the so-called global war on terror. When America did engage with the region, it seemed to be focused primarily on counter-terrorism.

It was not lost on countries in the region that then-secretary of state Condoleezza Rice skipped the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum in 2007, or that Bush postponed the US-ASEAN summit in September 2007 and left a day early the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting later that year.

Under the Obama administration, some sense a change in course, with this month's lifting of restrictions on Cambodia and Laos. Southeast Asian nations noted with some pleasure that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's included Indonesia in her inaugural tour of Asia and were heartened by her attendance of ASEAN's opening session in Jakarta. Clinton has also announced that she will be attending the annual ASEAN foreign ministers' meeting and ASEAN Regional Forum in Phuket, Thailand, next month.

Still, Beijing is considered the primary economic patron of both Cambodia and Laos, underlined in April when it announced a "special" aid package of $39.7 million to meet "urgent needs" in Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. The US's re-engagement in Cambodia and Laos, some say, has demonstrated a new willingness in Washington to provide both governments alternative avenues to prosperity apart from engagement with China.

At the same time, some say Obama must hedge his diplomacy to avoid upsetting its traditional regional ally, Thailand. Despite being made in 2003 a US non-NATO ally, Bangkok has shown signs of moving closer to China, especially under deposed former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Thai military officers say increased US prioritization of Cambodia, which is currently engaged with Thailand in a pitched border conflict, could push further Thai military ties with China.

Several articles have already appeared in the Thai and English language press expressing annoyance with America's move on Cambodia and Laos and dismay that Thailand as a key strategic ally was not first consulted. That's added to official consternation that began with a perceived snub by Clinton's choice of Indonesia over Thailand for her first Southeast Asia visit earlier this year.

There are still some formalities to iron out under the new relaxed trade regime and American officials have said it will be several months before loans can actually be extended to Cambodia and Laos. Whether US private companies are in a financial position to take advantage of the new designation of two of the region's more marginal economies is also in question. But Obama has now publicly stated and put money in the message that the US is keen to more strongly engage Laos and Cambodia, with the subtext of countering China's recent regional gains.

Brian McCartan is a Bangkok-based freelance journalist. He may be reached at brianpm@comcast.net.

(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

Concern at secret Thailand trial (Justice by the Powerful)

By Jonathan Head
BBC News, Bangkok
Friday, 26 June 2009 10:12 UK

The human rights group Amnesty International has condemned the secret trial in Thailand of a woman charged with insulting the royal family.

The woman was arrested a year ago after giving a speech in Bangkok in which she attacked the monarchy.

The start of her trial was delayed this week when her lawyer appealed against the decision to hold a closed trial.

King Bhumipol is highly regarded in Thailand

Critics say strict laws against insulting the monarchy are being used to stifle discussion of its future.

Thailand concedes that the lese-majeste laws are imperfect, but says they protect the monarchy.

'Popular revolution'

People in Thailand who have listened to the speech say they have never heard anything like it.

Daranee Charncherngsilpakul took to the stage at a protest in central Bangkok in June last year and sharply criticised the monarchy.

She even made personal attacks on the country's revered King Bhumipol Adulyadej, warning him that the monarchy would be overthrown by a popular revolution.

Going by the nickname Dar Torpedo, she was already well known as an outspoken supporter of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

Supporters of Thaksin Shinawatra say he was unjustly ousted

But the blunt language she used to criticise the King in a public arena, just a short distance from the palace, has shocked even those Thais who do not consider themselves ardent royalists.

'Risk of injustice'

Given the severe penalties for insulting the monarchy in Thailand, no-one was surprised when Ms Daranee was arrested shortly afterwards.

Her trial, however, which started this week, has alarmed human rights groups.
Red-shirt protesters in Bangkok on 12 April 2009
Supporters of Thaksin Shinawatra say he was unjustly ousted

The presiding judge ordered hearings to be held in secret, citing national security concerns.

Her lawyer is appealing, on the grounds that Thailand's constitution guarantees defendants the right to a public trial.

Sam Zarifi from Amnesty International has warned that "when a judge closes the doors on a trial it significantly raises the risk of injustice taking place.

"The Thai government will have a very difficult time explaining why the trial of someone charged with making an insulting remark could compromise Thailand's national security," he said.

Ms Daranee faces between nine and 45 years in prison if she is convicted.

Until recently the lese majeste law was rarely invoked in Thailand - but the number of cases has risen sharply during the political turmoil of the past three years.

A colleague of Daranee Charncherngsilpakul was jailed for six years last November.

Earlier this year a 34-year-old engineer was jailed for 10 years for posting a video deemed insulting to the monarchy on the website YouTube.

Neither trial was mentioned in the mainstream Thai media.

Republican sympathisers

In January this year an Australian man, Harry Nicolaides, was also jailed for three years over a novel he wrote four years ago in which he referred briefly to the scandalous private life of a Thai crown prince. He was later pardoned.

Police say they are now preparing to arrest several more anti-government activists on the same charge.

The pro-Thaksin red shirt movement is known to have a number of republican sympathisers and former communists in its ranks.

Mr Thaksin himself has been accused by his critics of harbouring plans to abolish the monarchy, accusations he has strongly denied.

The government has acknowledged that the lese majeste law has flaws - but says it is necessary to protect the monarchy.

Critics of the law argue that it is being used to stifle discussion of the monarchy's future, at a time of heightened public anxiety over the succession, because of the King's age and frail health.

Cambodia has it all, says Dom Joly

Sizzling cuisine, ancient temples, wild jungle, buzzing cities... you might not even make the beach

June 21, 2009
Dom Joly
Times Online (UK)

Growing up, as I did, in war-torn Lebanon, there was always only one serious rival for the news headlines: Cambodia. As with Lebanon, the latter half of the 1970s was an appalling time for Cambodia, with the Khmer Rouge presiding over an attempt to ­return the country to an ancient ­agrarian society — “Year Zero” in their terminology.

Estimates of the death toll vary between one and three million people. How does a country ever recover from such trauma and then attract tourists? Somehow, like Lebanon (one of this year’s Rough Guide must-see recommendations), Cambodia has done just that and is a “hot” destination.

No trip here is complete without a visit to the “Eighth Wonder of the World”, Angkor Wat. My first goal, therefore, is Siem Reap, a small town that has exploded with hotels and bars in the past 10 years as the world rediscovers the temples that surround the place.

My guide, Ohm, a wonderful former monk with a huge smile and a wicked sense of humour, is an expert in when to go to which temple.

He treats it very much like a military operation. The temperature can rise to a staggering 50C in the middle of the day; open spaces such as the main complex become huge ovens and are virtually deserted at this time.

We decide that, armed with my special Milletts anti­sweat T-shirt (a life-saver) and a wide-brimmed hat, I am okay with extreme heat. We opt to visit Angkor Wat at lunchtime, and make dawn raids on the less famous surrounding temples.

That night, I sit on the terrace of my hotel nursing a cool beer and watching a temporary downpour dislodge thousands of leaves from the surrounding gumtrees. The twin-blade leaves twirl down like clouds of tiny helicopters as locals dash for cover. I am in love with this country already.

The following morning I watch the sun rise over the extraordinary Temple of Bayon. It’s straight out of The Jungle Book — monkeys dance from tower to tower as the 200 stone faces that adorn the temple stare impassively out at visitors.

I am absolutely blown away. I keep expecting to see King Louis supporting one of the crumbling towers. I start humming “I’m the king of the swingers, oh, the jungle VIP...”. Ohm looks at me curiously.

He’s like some proud conjuror revealing trick after trick. We drive to Ta Prohm, an unbelievably atmospheric temple almost buried by the jungle. The roots of huge trees have wrapped themselves around the stones to become an intricate part of the structure.

It’s no wonder they filmed Tomb Raider here. Once again I am the only person among the old stones. I pad about the place in silence save for the chirruping of birds high in the misty trees above.

After a glorious 15 minutes of solitude, I spot a Polish tourist taking a complicated photograph of the tree roots. We stare at each other with hostility, both annoyed by an intruder spoiling our solitary adventurer fantasy.

I am loath to leave my new jungle home, but Angkor Wat beckons. We enter the huge complex on the stroke of noon.

Curiously, although by far the best known of the temples, it is my least favourite. This is, however, only due to the sublime beauty of the others. The pineapple-like domes dominate the landscape, the surrounding moat still keeping the hordes to a trickle. What a sight this must have been in the 13th century, when it was entirely covered in gold.

IN THE WETTER season I would have taken the option of a fast boat to Phnom Penh up the huge inland sea — it takes five to six hours and is supposed to be very scenic. It being the dry season, I hop on a plane and land in the capital about 40 minutes later. It’s mind-boggling actually to be in Phnom Penh, a city that dominated the World Service airwaves of my childhood.

When the Khmer Rouge took over in April 1975, they proceeded to boot out almost the entire population to a hellish life of forced labour in the countryside. For four years the city had no more than 50,000 inhabitants — a ghost town in a land of ghosts. How things have changed.

The capital today is a pulsating mass of humanity: the once-empty streets are packed with cars, tuk-tuks, mopeds, rickshaws, bicycles, trucks and elephants — all life is here.

I fall helplessly in love with the place from the moment I arrive. If I weren’t married with two children, I’d move here tomorrow. The city oozes life and vitality. I spend a couple of days just sauntering around, letting the place seep into my pores, and start to develop a routine.

In the morning I have a swim at the hotel — Le Royal, one of the grand old hotels of Southeast Asia. I think about the great journalists who have worked and played here: Jon Swain, who wrote the wonderful River of Time; John Pilger, whose harrowing documentary Year Zero, The Silent Death of Cambodia alerted the world to the terrible things that had happened here. I sip a freshly squeezed lemon juice and pretend that I’m a great foreign correspondent about to drive out of the city to smell the cordite and earn my spurs.

I take a tuk-tuk down to the riverside, where the mighty Mekong and the Tonlé Sap meet. A cooling breeze makes the air bearable. I sit and watch the flow of human traffic pass by. Saffron-robed monks take photographs of each other, as little kids play what seems to be the national sport — a kind of Hacky Sack with an oversized shuttlecock.

I think about trying to start this craze in the UK. I could source the shuttlecocks, fly over a display team: it would be the playground hit of next year... then I remember that I’m a rubbish businessman.

An elephant trudges calmly past alongside an elderly mahout. Cars seem remarkably unaffected and weave around it. I try to find the hilarious little girl who hassles tourists as they leave the impressive Royal Palace. Her schtick is to find out what nationality the visitors are and then fire a couple of phrases at them in their native tongue. My favourite was when she found out that one couple were Australian: “Omigod, a dingo stole my baby!” she screamed in a broad Aussie accent.

I spend the afternoon wandering around the “Russian Market”. It acquired this name in the 1980s, when Russians were the only visitors to this city. Like all great markets, it’s a confusing maze of stalls and alleyways. I find a little teashop in the centre and sip the sweet liquid in a shady alley.

It’s now devilishly hot and only mad dogs and Englishmen are out and about as most of the city sleeps. I find a large group of tuk-tuks under a tree. All the drivers are asleep along with most of the mad dogs. One driver eventually wakes up and groggily takes me to the Foreign Correspondent’s Club.

This is my home from home. I sit on the open terrace overlooking the river while nursing one of many cool Angkor beers to come. The Cambodians are obsessed with their world-beating temple. It is on both the national flag and their national beer.

I spend the evening reading The Gate, a brilliant book by François Bizot. He is a Frenchman who was captured and then released by the Khmer Rouge (a rare thing) and then survived the fall of Phnom Penh, sheltering in the French Embassy before being evacuated to Thailand.

Sitting high above this pulsating city, watching the medley of boats make their graceful way down the river, I catch a glimpse of what made this place such a paradise to so many ­before the war. To me, the newcomer, it still is a paradise, although of a different kind.

I haven’t even the time to visit the coast that is being hailed as the “new Thailand”. But who needs a new Thailand when you’ve got wonderful new Cambodia? If you visit one place this year, then let it be this beautiful, awe-inspiring, magnificent country. The credit crunch has delayed the deluge, but it won’t be long. Go now — you’ll never regret it.

Dom Joly was a guest of Audley
---------------
Travel details: Audley (01993 838160, audleytravel.com) can tailor-make trips throughout Cambodia. A nine-day itinerary, staying at the FCC (fcccambodia.com), in Siem Reap, and Raffles (raffles.com), in Phnom Penh, starts at £1,650pp. The price includes flights from Heathrow or Manchester with Singapore Airlines (via Singapore), as well as domestic flights between Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, and a guide and driver throughout the trip. Contact Audley for details of connecting flights from other UK regional airports or Ireland.

Other operators include Trips World­wide (0800 840 0850, tripsworldwide.co.uk), Cox & Kings (020 7873 5000, coxandkings.co.uk) or Bales World­wide (0845 057 1819, balesworldwide.com).

Cambodia orphans grab the reins of life

Walking tall: 15-year old orphan Aurm Aun leads a riding lesson at the Cambodia Country Club

Horse riding is giving HIV-positive orphans in Cambodia hope for a better future.

25 Jun 2009
By Clive Graham Ranger
The Telegraph (UK)

The car park at the Cambodian Country Club on the outskirts of Phnom Penh was an upmarket showroom of top-of-the-range Mercedes, Hummers and Cadillac SUVs. The tuk-tuk parked alongside them seemed out of place. The capital's high-rollers and diplomats had turned out to watch their children compete for a place in the Cambodian national team at an forthcoming gymkhana in neighbouring Thailand.

Among the youngsters in jodhpurs, polished leather riding boots and tailored jackets was another contrast: two teenage Cambodian girls in torn jeans, outsize cut-down Wellington boots and battered riding hats. They had arrived in the tuk-tuk.

Rapturous applause greeted the first group's efforts as fences were cleared; disappointed "oohs" and "aahs" followed refusals and crashing fences. Then the first of the two 15 year-olds, Kim Srey Neang, her face taut with concentration, entered the arena, followed later by her friend Aurm Aun.

Both girls had hesitant but clear rounds and the few remaining spectators looked on in mild disapproval as Aun and Neang hugged and kissed, laughed and bounced up and down with joy.

"They have cleared more than these hurdles," said Dr Kaing Sophal, the director of Anakut Laor, the girls' HIV/Aids orphanage in Stung Meanchey.

It is estimated that 335,000 Cambodians below the age of 15 have lost one or both parents, mostly to HIV/Aids. In 2007 it was estimated that 20,000 women aged over had the disease, as did 4,400 children.

It was in recognition of these bleak statistics that Jean-Yves Dufour, a former director of Pharmaciens sans Frontières in Phnom Penh, founded Anakut Laor in the spring of 2005 to house, educate and care for five abandoned girls from remote rural areas. Their crime? They were born HIV positive, had no close relatives and were social outcasts.

But Dufour knew that a daily cocktail of medication and retroviral drugs would keep the full impact of the disease at bay and ensure it did not become the death sentence of Aids. In less than four years and in a country where disease, poverty and malnutrition are an everyday reality, it's hard to look on the cheery faces of the Anakut Laor girls and believe you are in the right country… or that they are in their right minds. Even more remarkable is the ready and open-hearted welcome they have given the nine girls rescued by Sophal and Dufour over the years and the fact that those girls, not the original five, live on the same property in a house built last year to accommodate them.

Despite their vulnerability and dependency on a cocktail of controlling drugs – readily available in Phnom Penh and not the outlying provinces – the girls seize every advantage from every day. They used to have nothing to live for, now their life expectancy is much the same as other girls their age. Their smiles are the outward sign of a secret, inner confidence that they will now see, savour and enjoy another day.

Aun and Neang attend Maddox Chivan school where they study English, IT and sports and are regarded as hard workers, quick learners and doing well academically. All work and no play, though, can make for a dull life so when, two years ago, the French embassy offered free riding lessons at the CCC's equestrian centre, Sophal was quick to accept the opportunity on behalf of the girls.

The scheme was the brainchild of Soraya Ourrais, French-born director at the centre, who wanted to introduce disadvantaged Cambodian children to horse riding. It has been a stunning success, as the two Anakut Laor girls' high percentages in their practical and written exams to date have proven. The centre's instructors were also struck by their perseverance and enthusiasm.

"They are tough as nails," said Ray Fisher, an Irish instructor at the centre. "For kids with no background or experience of horses, never mind riding one over jumps, they are fearless. They fall off and there's no crying or tantrums, just a bruised ego and a need to get back in the saddle and try again." Ourrais is rightly proud of the way in which her idea has flourished and in turn produced young riders on the cusp of winning rosettes for their country. She has in her sights the prestige of fielding a Cambodian equestrian team in the 2010 Youth Olympics in Singapore. If that dream becomes reality it will more than repay her belief in the future success of the centre which, she points out, is the only one in Cambodia.

For Neang and Aun the search for their birth certificates has started, because those vital pieces of paper will ensure they get passports to pursue their dreams in another country. Mention it to them and the giggling starts all over again; another adventure beckons.

Whether they go to Bangkok or not pales into insignificance against their achievements, which transcend the restrictions of a disease that only a few years ago condemned them to a life without hope.
----------
A HAND UP

Anakut Laor’s running costs exceed $2,000 (£1,350) a month. If you would like to help keep the dream alive for its orphans, visit the Assistance Fund of Cambodia website at www.assistancefundofcambodia.org or email tafc777@yahoo.com.

If you would like to teach horsemanship in Cambodia, email Soraya Ourrais at sorayacec@yahoo.fr.

Cambodia signs 8.5 mln T forest carbon deal

25 Jun 2009 11:06:53 GMT

SINGAPORE, June 25 (Reuters) - Cambodia has signed agreements for a project that aims to protect 60,000 hectares of forest and reward local communities from the sale of carbon credits over several decades, the developers said in a statement.

The project in northwestern Oddar Meanchey province is expected to yield 8.5 million carbon offsets over 30 years and is the first avoided deforestation project in Cambodia for registration under the respected Voluntary Carbon Standard.

U.S.-based Terra Global Capital said in the statement it had finalised an agreement with the Cambodian Forestry Administration on marketing the carbon credits.

The group has also developed a method to measure and monitor the carbon locked away by the protected forest, which is in an area where the rate of deforestation was 3 percent a year between 2002-2006, the statement said.

It said nine local forestry groups comprising more than 50 villages agreed to protect the forest in return for carbon credit revenue aimed at developing alternative livelihoods.

"The success of the Oddar Meanchey project opens the door to long-term financing for Cambodia's national community forestry programme, which could eventually encompass and protect over 2 million hectares of forest," said Mark Poffenberger, head of Community Forestry International, who initiated the project.

The Cambodian project is one of a growing number under a U.N.-backed scheme called reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation, or REDD, that aims to reward developing nations for preserving forests in return for tradeable carbon offsets.

REDD is likely to be included in a broader U.N. climate pact to be negotiated in December and could usher in a multi-billion dollar trading scheme in forest credits that rich nations could buy to help meet emissions reduction targets. (Reporting by David Fogarty; Editing by Sue Thomas)

Cambodia confirms first case of new flu

24 Jun 2009 12:12:16 GMT

PHNOM PENH, June 24 (Reuters) - Cambodia and the World Health Organization said on Wednesday an American girl, who was visiting Cambodia as part of a student group, has been confirmed as having the influenza A(H1N1) virus.

The 16-year-old developed symptoms after arriving in Phnom Penh on Friday and sought medical care at a private clinic on Monday, a joint statement said.

The clinic was concerned the patient may have been infected by Influenza A based on her travel history and clinical presentation and put her in isolation to conduct tests, it said.

"With the virus now circulating globally, its eventual arrival in Cambodia was expected. We are pleased that the systems we have put in place have worked in identifying and isolating the case," Cambodia's Health Minister Mam Bun Heng said in the statement.

The girl is recovering without complications and the other members of her group were under voluntary observation, the statement said.

FIRST CASE IN INDONESIA

Indonesia on Wednesday also confirmed the country's first cases of the H1N1 virus after an Indonesian pilot in Jakarta and a British woman in the resort island of Bali tested positive for the virus. [ID:nJAK466174]

The 22-year-old British woman had been living in Australia, while the pilot, 37, had travelled to Australia and Hong Kong, Health Minister Siti Fadillah Supari said.

The minister also said she was concerned that if H1N1 got a foothold in Indonesia there was a risk it could combine with the much deadlier H5N1 bird flu virus.

Indonesia has the highest death toll from bird flu of any country, with the country's bird flu commission confirming 119 deaths from the disease.

The H1N1 virus has spread around the globe and the World Health Organisation has declared an influenza pandemic and advised governments to prepare for a long-term battle against H1N1.

There have been more than 50,000 confirmed cases of the H1N1 virus and at least 237 people have died. (Reporting by Ek Madra; Editing by Bill Tarrant)

Korean Securities Firm Ready for Bourse

By Ros Sothea, VOA Khmer
Origial report from Phnom Penh
23 June 2009

Tong Yang Securities is the only company that has so far opened for business in anticipation of a stock exchange that officials hope to have up and running by the end of the year.

“We came to Cambodia with a long-term perspective,” the company’s chief representative, Han Kyung Tae, told VOA Khmer. “We are ready to start our business.”

Tong Yang, a financial service provider in South Korea that set up here in 2006, hopes to offer security brokerage, stock deposits, subscription and sale of securities, merger and acquisition brokerage, bond issuance and discretionary investments.

“We are right now working with a couple of state-owned companies and a couple of private companies who might be listed on the stock exchange,” Han said.

Cambodia has said it will have its exchange up and running in December 2009, despite the global downturn and with the aid of South Korea.

Han said his company had been waiting for an official license to extend its business roles, such as broker and dealer, and to establish a private equity fund.

In South Korea, Tong Yang charges from 3 percent to 5 percent of the capital it earns trading bonds or shares. Han said he was not sure what commission the company will take in Cambodia.

Stock trading partly depends on security firms or investment banks. It also requires economic stability, a system of laws and strong companies listed on the exchange.

Vietnam’s stock exchange was established with only a few companies, Han said. But a decade later, more than 400 companies were listed. After 20 years, China’s stock market lists 4,000 companies.

In Cambodia, meanwhile, securities experts have estimated around 40 companies will be listed, while their earning potential remains to be seen.

“It depends on competition, the size of business,” Han said. “If competition becomes tougher in the investment banking business in Cambodia, which has a small size of economy, we will face difficulties in pursuing profit.”

Han also warned that if smaller securities firms are approved, the bigger ones will not enter Cambodia’s market.

Sam Ganty, a member of the government’s Securities and Exchange Commission, has said that bigger investment banks have more influence than smaller ones.

They might be stronger, have more experts, and a network of potential investors, he recently told VOA Khmer.

SEC President Minh Ban Kosal said that so far 10 securities firms are waiting to apply for business licenses.

The commission will carefully select the firms with minimum capital fit to its national economy, he said, adding that firms will be able to apply for licenses starting in August.

Democrat Endorsed Cambodia Invasion

President Richard M. Nixon, shown with then-House Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford in 1973, spoke to Sen. John Stennis (D) five days before the incursion (UPI)

Nixon Papers Cite 1970 Conversation

Wednesday, June 24, 2009
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer

Five days before U.S. and South Vietnamese troops made their surprise move into Cambodia on April 29, 1970, then-President Richard M. Nixon got the approval of the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee for that action, according for documents released yesterday by the Nixon library.

The unexpected U.S. incursion into Cambodia came as a surprise to the American public, most members of Congress and the new Cambodian government. What followed were a series of public demonstrations in Washington and later Kent State University in Ohio, which, in turn, expanded opposition to the war.

In an April 24, 1970, telephone conversation with Sen. John C. Stennis (D-Miss.), who was then chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Nixon said the administration was going to provide arms to the Cambodian government to prevent its overthrow by a pro-communist element, and continue secret B-52 bombing raids, "which only you and Senator Russell know about." Richard Russell (D-Ga.) was the former committee chairman.

"We are not going to get involved in a war in Cambodia," Nixon reassured Stennis. "We are going to do what is necessary to help save our men in South Vietnam. They can't have those sanctuaries there" that North Vietnam maintained.

Stennis replied, "I will be with you. . . . I commend you for what you are doing."

Several days earlier, in a memo to then-National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, CIA Director Richard Helms proposed a plan to covertly deliver thousands of AK-47s and other military equipment to the Cambodian government with help from Indonesia.

Yesterday, about 30,000 pages of documents were opened to the public at the National Archives facility in College Park and the Nixon library in Yorba Linda, Calif., part of a staggered declassification of papers and tapes from the Nixon years.

The memos and tapes shed light on fateful moments of Nixon's second term, the Associated Press reported, among them a peace deal with North Vietnam, sea changes in domestic and foreign policy, and management of the Cold War.

They also give insights into a well-known characteristic of Nixon and his aides -- a hair-trigger sensitivity to political rivals and quick resort to machinations against them.

A 1972 meeting between Nixon and his chief of staff produced an informal directive to "destroy" Democratic vice presidential candidate Thomas Eagleton, according to scribbled notes among the documents released yesterday that referred to Eagleton as a "pip-squeak."

In a 1969 memo, Nixon's staff assistant describes placing the movements of the Kennedys under observation in Massachusetts after Sen. Edward M. Kennedy drove off a bridge in an accident that drowned his female companion.

The materials show Nixon as sharp-witted, crude, manipulative and sometimes surprisingly liberal in comparison with mainstream Republicans today. In one letter, he solidly endorses the Equal Rights Amendment, saying that for 20 years "I have not altered my belief that equal rights for women warrant a constitutional guarantee." The amendment failed.

The library posted online more than 150 hours of tape recordings. The tapes cover January and February 1973, spanning Nixon's second inauguration, the peace deal with Hanoi, and the trial and conviction of burglars whose break-in at the Democratic headquarters at the Watergate complex precipitated the coverup that wrecked Nixon's presidency. He resigned in August 1974 under threat of being forced out by Congress.

Private Island Cambodia Set to Soar for Investors

Cambodian Sang Saa (sweetheart) Island

By Liam Bailey

(OPENPRESS) June 23, 2009 -- In Cambodia’s untouched Koh Rong Archipelago, an Australian company is setting a new standard for environmentally sensitive luxury resorts in what’s been described as one of the world’s last true tropical paradises.

The resort, when complete in 2010, will be located on Koh Ouen and Koh Bong - two pristine islands off the coast of Sihanoukville. The islands lie side by side and are known affectionately as Song Saa, which is Khmer for ‘The Sweethearts’.

Song Saa Island Resort was launched today and has five luxury two-bedroom villas on offer to likeminded investors seeking their own rare piece of paradise.

“Song Saa will really be at the top end of the market for luxury resorts in Cambodia and will offer the unique experience of an exclusive private island hideaway,” said Martin Foster Investment Risk Analyst for DSR Asset Management Ltd

DSR Asset Management , the company behind the resort, is showing how private operators can play a critical role in the protection of important marine environments.

DSR has established Cambodia’s first fully policed and privately funded marine protected area around the islands’ reefs . The area, protected since 2007, covers 1,000,000 square metres and takes in important coral species and habitat for a number of critically endangered sea horses, turtles, stingrays, anemones, giant clams, countless reef fish and many other marine species.

The resort has also employed a full-time marine biologist to monitor the health of the reefs and to help teach local communities more sustainable fishing methods.

“This has been great for both the environment and the community but also provides the added attraction of having an expert on hand to take guests and villa owners out diving or snorkelling on the resort’s own reef,” Mr Foster said.

“The knowledge that the waters around the island are protected from fishing adds to the magic of this unique location. Guests and villa owners have their own thriving reef to explore literally right on their doorstep,” he said.

Unlike the islands of Thailand, which have seen rapid development over the past decade, Cambodia’s islands remain largely undeveloped. Many are deserted, offering stunning scenery, abundant marine life and secluded white sandy beaches.

With the recent opening of the international airport at Sihanoukville, well-managed tourism in this tropical paradise offers tremendous potential for investors. “Imagine Thailand 40 years ago and you get an idea of the potential of Cambodia’s islands,” Mr Foster said.

“But we can learn from the Thai experience, and ensure this region never loses its incredible appeal through irresponsible development.

“Song Saa is a tremendous opportunity to secure a piece of this unspoiled paradise on a 99-year lease while contributing meaningfully to its protection.”

The villas are being built with a strong focus on sustainable construction materials, low emissions and waste management systems, including a water recycling system to ensure nothing harmful ever reaches the ocean.

War and conservation in Cambodia

Phnom Penh, Cambodia. An anti-wildlife trade billboard outside a local school. Part of a government education program that aims to educate Cambodians about the country's wildlife laws. TRAFFIC Asia 2006. Photo by: Adam Oswell of WWF.


Bokor National Park, Cambodia. Heavily armed forestry rangers and their Australian security consultant arrest a poacher with an endangered Hog Badger during a night patrol. TRAFFIC Asia 2006. Photo by: Adam Oswell with WWF.


The Kouprey Bos sauveli, a species of wild ox. Illustration by: Helmut Diller.


The Asian elephant has been hunted out of the forest around Sre Chis. Photo by: Rhett Butler


Critically Endangered Siamese crocodile in Thailand: the species has disappeared from the Sri Chis forests. Photo by: Rhett Butler.


While tigers still reside in the forest around Sri Chis, their population has declined according to interviews. Photo by: Martin Harvey with WWF.
Phnom Penh, Cambodia. An anti-wildlife trade billboard outside a local school. Part of a government education program that aims to educate Cambodians about the country's wildlife laws. TRAFFIC Asia 2006. Photo by: Adam Oswell of WWF.

June 21, 2009
Jeremy Hance
mongabay.com

Bokor National Park, Cambodia. Heavily armed forestry rangers and their Australian security consultant arrest a poacher with an endangered Hog Badger during a night patrol. TRAFFIC Asia 2006. Photo by: Adam Oswell with WWF.
The Kouprey Bos sauveli, a species of wild ox. Illustration by: Helmut Diller.
The Asian elephant has been hunted out of the forest around Sre Chis. Photo by: Rhett Butler.
Critically Endangered Siamese crocodile in Thailand: the species has disappeared from the Sri Chis forests. Photo by: Rhett Butler.
While tigers still reside in the forest around Sri Chis, their population has declined according to interviews. Photo by: Martin Harvey with WWF.

The decades-long conflict in Cambodia devastated not only the human population of the Southeast Asian country but its biodiversity as well. The conflict led to widespread declines of species in the once wildlife-rich nation while steering traditional society towards unsustainable hunting practices, resulting in a situation where wildlife is still in decline in Cambodia, according to a new study from researchers with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

Although many biodiversity hotspots have seen their share of conflict—the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Liberia, Vietnam—the relationship between war and conservation has rarely been studied. Social scientist Michael Mascia with WWF and Colby Loucks, Deputy Director of the WWF's Conservation Science Program interviewed Cambodian villagers to understand the impacts of war on village’s surrounding wilderness.

“Armed conflict is a social phenomenon often detrimental to wildlife and wildlife habitat, but the legacy of armed conflict for wildlife in post-conflict settings remains unexplored,” Loucks and Mascia, along with other authors, write in their paper published in Conservation Letters.

Since scientific data for wildlife abundance in Cambodia was lacking, Loucks and Mascia depended on the knowledge of locals in the Sre Chis commune, a collection of six villages in eastern Kratie province. Asking the interviewees about 18 different species, the researchers found that the decades-long conflict in Cambodia caused deep-declines in wildlife abundance, the loss of some species altogether, and moved the society from subsistence hunting to commercial exploitation.

“We looked at how conflict directly and indirectly shaped people’s use of wildlife – during and after conflict. The influx of guns, the emergence of new markets, the forced hunting teams – all were directly related to conflict. It was the conflict, lastly, for well over two decades that created the environment for permanent shifts in livelihoods to the dependence on the trade of wildlife,” Loucks and Mascia told mongabay.com

Wildlife declined from pre-1953 (when the conflict began) to 2005, but the most measured declines occurred in the 1970s—when the conflict was at its worst. The researchers found that 14 of 18 species declined, while five disappeared altogether, including the Asian elephant, the kouprey, Eld’s deer, hog deer, and Siamese crocodile. Before the conflict arrived in Sre Chis, the villagers only sold one species to outside markets—the guar—but by the 1970s seven more species were being trafficked: elephants, banteng, Eld’s deer, hog deer, tiger, leopard and sun bear.

“It is clear to [the villagers] that there are fewer individuals of the species…and that they need to go further from the villages to find them,” Loucks said.

Shockingly every one of these species (or subspecies) is threatened with extinction according to the IUCN Red List, except the Indochinese leopard which hasn’t been surveyed. The sun bear is considered Vulnerable, while the Indochinese tiger, Asian elephant, Eld’s deer, and hog deer are all listed as Endangered. The Siamese crocodile, the banteng, a species of wild cattle, and a wild ox known as the kouprey are each Critically Endangered.

As related by Loucks and Mascia, these declines consistently followed societal changes brought on by war: additional firearms, the beginning of a wildlife trade for international markets, and a Khmer Rouge policy that actually mandated hunting. Prior to the 1970s villagers hunted with the crossbow, since guns were either illegal or difficult to obtain, but when the Khmer Rouge came to Sre Chis they handed out guns to locals and paid them to hunt. During the conflict, wildlife meat went to soldier on the front lines.

The conflict in Cambodia ended in 1991, but the interviewers discovered that wildlife declines continued due to the technological and social changes brought on by war. Instead of hunting for soldiers, the villagers had now begun to hunt for commercial sale in markets both in Cambodia and abroad.

“Documenting these impacts and the subsequent ripple effects in post-conflict society – shifting livelihood strategies and the decline of wildlife – allow us to understand the links between conflict and wildlife decline,” Loucks and Mascia said. “This sheds light on the importance of re-engaging with communities, empowering them to manage their resources, and providing economic opportunities soon after the cessation of conflict. With this information, we can design more effective conservation strategies, tailored to local conditions.”

Importance of conservation to postconflict society

The UN has drafted important guidelines for ‘disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration’ of combatants (known as DDR), but they don’t take into account the conservation of natural resources, according to Loucks and Mascia. Even though many conflicts begin with—or in some way involve—over-exploitation of a nation’s resources.

Therefore the authors suggest “that conservation investments in postconflict societies should be integrated within and support broader peace-building efforts targeting combatants, noncombatants, civil society organizations, and the state”.

Mascia goes on to say that “many conservation strategies are consistent with current approaches to peace-building, such as capacity-building for government agencies and local communities, fostering good governance and rule of law, and promoting alternative livelihoods and income generating activities. In societies where natural resources are a source of conflict, strengthening civil society and good governance in the environmental sector is necessary not just for effective conservation of biodiversity, but for peace-building generally.”

Loucks and Mascia see conservation as a tool to aid with disarmament in postconflict society by justifying confiscating weapons when used for illegal hunting. In addition, conservation organization act as important support for newly formed governments by “promoting rule of law; encouraging participatory and transparent decision making; and supporting other activities that foster good governance within the conservation sector and beyond,” according to the paper.

Furthermore, the authors argue, conservation groups have the capacity to monitor postconflict efforts to make certain both individuals and large-scale investments are not engaging in unsustainable natural resource exploitation. Instead of handing such postconflict countries over to international corporations for large-scale monoculture plantations, industrial agriculture or mining—which may degrade the environment and stoke further conflict—conservation organizations could manage environmental restoration projects.

Such restoration projects “would serve multiple purposes” the authors write, including “employment of both ex-combatants and noncombatants, enhanced delivery of ecosystem services to resource-dependent communities, critical habitat for wildlife, and reduced wildlife trade by providing alternative sources of income.”

Finally, the authors recommend that conservation groups be allowed to perform capacity-building at the community level in order to reach out to remote areas, places where a new government may not have influence or even means of communication. According to the paper, such programs “can empower local actors and strengthen local governance regimes, absorb ex-combatants into the labor force, and provide legal economic opportunities for ex-combatants and noncombatants alike.”

The people—not just the wildlife—of post-conflict nations would benefit greatly from increased conservation and environmental awareness, according to the paper.

“We believe that the UN, governments, civil society, and NGOs all have a role they can play to integrate natural resource conservation, biodiversity protection, and peace-building efforts from the local to national or global scale. To design conservation strategies that are both ecologically and socially sustainable, we need to build tailored solutions that bridge the traditional divide between security and the environment.” Loucks and Mascia told mongabay.com.

Australian research helping Angelina Jolie's work in Cambodia

June 19, 2009
Herald Sun (Australia)

AUSTRALIAN researchers are helping Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie improve the lot of Cambodia's farmers.

Work is underway to expand an SMS-based information network developed by the University of Canberra, which provides market updates to ensure remote Cambodian farmers get a fair price for their produce.

While these farmers live in areas which often lack basic infrastructure, Cambodia does have 85 per cent mobile coverage and text messages cost as little as US3 cents.

"We wanted to help farmers access the price of maize or soybeans on demand, so they were in a stronger position to negotiate the sale of their crop," says Dr Robert Fitzgerald.

"Some traders and farmers knew some price information but that was not always shared, so the only way the farmer could find out about the price was to travel to town or ask nearby friends.

"Now farmers can text the agricultural information server and straight away find out about the prices."

Working with the Maddox Jolie-Pitt Foundation (MJP) - named after the Hollywood couple's adopted son from Cambodia - the scheme will be expanded on a trial basis to also offer health and pest warnings and other important information.

Only Zimbabwe and South Africa had higher rates of tuburculosis infection than Cambodia in 2007.

"We need, therefore, to find effective tools to quickly disseminate information to isolated and rural communities," says Stephan Bognar, Executive Director of MJP.

The project, also with involvement from the University of New England, is funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research.

The celebrity couple have also donated $1 million to a UN refugee agency to help Pakistanis displaced by fighting between troops and Taliban militants.

Jolie, the star of 2008 movies Changeling and Wanted, has visited Pakistan three times to witness United Nations relief operations since becoming a "goodwill ambassador" for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in 2001.

The agency said it was grateful for the donation from Pitt and Jolie, and added that more than 2 million people in Pakistan had been uprooted this year as a result of the conflict in the northwest part of the country.

Most Pakistanis forced from their homes are living in government buildings or with host families, but 260,000 of them are in camps run by UNHCR, the agency said.

The Hollywood power couple, who gave the $1 million through their Jolie-Pitt Foundation, donated $2 million in September to help children in Ethiopia stricken by disease.

Cambodian Professor, US Students Take a Trip

By Taing Sarada, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
16 June 2009

A Cambodian professor in southern California University brought a group of his students to Cambodia recently, to help them understand the Khmer Rouge tribunal and interview survivors and cadre of the regime.

For the 19 international relations students, the trip was a chance to learn more about the Pol Pot period, something that student Tiffany Handley said many Americans knew little about.

“You have the Holocaust, and people know all about that,” she told VOA Khmer. “I mean, my parents don’t know about this, my friends don‘t know about this. I write home to them and they don’t know what to say to me because they don’t have the information about what was happening.”

Path Kosal, a Cambodian professor of international relations at the University of Southern California, said he wanted his students to consider justice as it related to the trials of ex-Khmer Rouge leaders.

“The students have the opportunity for direct understanding when they meet with survivors, perpetrators, going to see the Khmer Rouge court, visiting the Documentation Centre of Cambodia to see what kind of document that they have over there. This is a new study style that seems to be more real,” he said.

Student Nirochika Bav said Cambodia’s reality came through in photos and documents at the Documentation Center. She said she understands the situation “100 times better” having seen these things in Cambodia.

Path Kosal said his students had also interviewed survivors of the regime and plan to present their research to other professors and victims of genocide, from the Holocaust to Rwanda.

Divining Angkor

After rising to sublime heights, the sacred city may have engineered its own downfall

By Richard Stone
National Geographic Magazine
July 2009 Issue

From the air, the centuries-old temple appears and vanishes like a hallucination. At first it is no more than an umber smudge in the forest canopy of northern Cambodia. Beneath us sprawls the lost city of Angkor, now in ruins and populated mostly by peasant rice farmers. Clusters of Khmer homes, perched on spindly stilts to cope with flooding during the summer monsoon, dot the landscape from the Tonle Sap, the "great lake" of Southeast Asia, some 20 miles to the south, to the Kulen Hills, a ridge jutting from the floodplain a roughly equal distance to the north. Then, as Donald Cooney guides the ultralight plane over the treetops, the magnificent temple comes into view.

Restored in the 1940s, the 12th-century Banteay Samre, devoted to the Hindu god Vishnu, recalls the medieval Khmer Empire at its height. The temple is cloistered inside two sets of concentric square walls. These may once have been surrounded by a moat symbolizing the oceans encircling Mount Meru, mythical home of Hindu gods. Banteay Samre is just one of more than a thousand shrines the Khmer erected in the city of Angkor during a building spree whose scale and ambition rivals the pyramids of Egypt. After we pass, I crane my neck for a last look. The temple has disappeared into the forest.


Angkor is the scene of one of the greatest vanishing acts of all time. The Khmer kingdom lasted from the ninth to the 15th centuries, and at its height dominated a wide swath of Southeast Asia, from Myanmar (Burma) in the west to Vietnam in the east. As many as 750,000 people lived in Angkor, its capital, which sprawled across an area the size of New York City's five boroughs, making it the most extensive urban complex of the preindustrial world. By the late 16th century, when Portuguese missionaries came upon the lotus-shaped towers of Angkor Wat—the most elaborate of the city's temples and the world's largest religious monument—the once resplendent capital of the empire was in its death throes.

Scholars have come up with a long list of suspected causes, including rapacious invaders, a religious change of heart, and a shift to maritime trade that condemned an inland city. It's mostly guesswork: Roughly 1,300 inscriptions survive on temple doorjambs and freestanding stelae, but the people of Angkor left not a single word explaining their kingdom's collapse.

Recent excavations, not of the temples but of the infrastructure that made the vast city possible, are converging on a new answer. Angkor, it appears, was doomed by the very ingenuity that transformed a collection of minor fiefdoms into an empire. The civilization learned how to tame Southeast Asia's seasonal deluges, then faded as its control of water, the most vital of resources, slipped away.

An intriguing firsthand account brings the city to life at its zenith. Zhou Daguan, a Chinese diplomat, spent nearly a year in the capital at the end of the 13th century. He lived modestly as a guest of a middle-class family who ate rice using coconut-husk spoons and drank wine made from honey, leaves, or rice. He described a gruesome practice, abandoned not long before his visit, that involved collecting human gall from living donors as a tonic for courage. Religious festivals featured fireworks and boar fighting. The greatest spectacles occurred when the king ventured out among his subjects. Royal processions included elephants and horses decorated with gold, and hundreds of palace women bedecked in flowers.

Angkor's daily rhythms also come to life in sculptures that have survived centuries of decay and, more recently, war. Bas-reliefs on temple facades depict everyday scenes—two men hunched over a board game, for instance, and a woman giving birth under a shaded pavilion—and pay homage to the spiritual world inhabited by creatures such as apsaras, alluring celestial dancers who served as messengers between humans and the gods.

The bas-reliefs also reveal trouble in paradise. Interspersed with visions of earthly harmony and sublime enlightenment are scenes of war. In one bas-relief, spear-bearing warriors from the neighboring kingdom of Champa are packed stem to stern in a boat crossing the Tonle Sap. The scene is immortalized in stone, of course, because the Khmer were successful in battle.

Although Angkor won that clash, the city was riven by rivalry, which heightened its vulnerability to attacks from Champa to the east and the formidable kingdom of Ayutthaya to the west. Khmer kings had several wives, which blurred the line of succession and resulted in constant intrigue as princes vied for power. "For centuries, it was like the Wars of the Roses. The Khmer state was often unstable," says Roland Fletcher, an archaeologist at the University of Sydney and co-director of a research effort called the Greater Angkor Project.

Some scholars believe that Angkor died the way it lived: by the sword. The annals of Ayutthaya state that warriors from that kingdom "took" Angkor in 1431. No doubt the prosperous Khmer city would have been a rich prize: Inscriptions boast that its temple towers were clad in gold, as Zhou's breathless account confirms. To reconcile tales of Angkor's wealth with the dilapidated ruins encountered by Western travelers, French historians a century ago concluded from the tantalizing allusion that Ayutthaya sacked Angkor.

Fletcher, who says his obsession is to "figure out what makes settlements grow and die," is dubious. Some early scholars, he says, viewed Angkor through the lens of the sieges and conquests of European history. "The ruler of Ayutthaya, indeed, says he took Angkor, and he may have taken some formal regalia back to Ayutthaya with him," says Fletcher. But after Angkor was captured, Ayutthaya's ruler installed his son on the throne. "He's not likely to have smashed the place up before giving it to his son."

Court intrigue may not have perturbed most of Angkor's subjects, but religion was central to daily life. Angkor was what anthropologists call a regal-ritual city. Its kings claimed to be the world emperors of Hindu lore and erected temples to themselves. But as Theravada Buddhism gradually eclipsed Hinduism in the 13th and 14th centuries, its tenet of social equality may have threatened Angkor's elite. "It was very subversive, just like Christianity was subversive to the Roman Empire," says Fletcher. "It would have been exceedingly difficult to stop."

Such a religious shift would have eroded royal authority. The regal-ritual city operated on a moneyless economy, relying on tribute and taxation. The kingdom's de facto currency was rice, staple of the conscripted laborers who built the temples and the cast of thousands who ran them. An inscription at one complex, Ta Prohm, notes that 12,640 people serviced that temple alone. The inscription also records that more than 66,000 farmers produced nearly 3,000 tons of rice a year to feed this multitude of priests, dancers, and temple workers. Add just three large temples to the equation—Preah Khan and the larger complexes of Angkor Wat and the Bayon—and the calculated farm labor required swells to 300,000. That's nearly half of the estimated population of Greater Angkor. A new, egalitarian religion such as Theravada Buddhism might have led to rebellion.

Or maybe the royal court simply turned its back on Angkor. Successive rulers had a habit of erecting new temple complexes and letting older ones decay, and that penchant for starting anew might have doomed the city when sea trade began to flourish between Southeast Asia and China. Maybe it was simple economic opportunism that, by the 16th century, had caused the Khmer center of power to shift to a location closer to the Mekong River, near Cambodia's present-day capital, Phnom Penh, affording it easier access to the South China Sea.

Economic and religious turmoil may have hastened Angkor's downfall, but its rulers were blindsided by another foe. Angkor became a medieval powerhouse thanks to a sophisticated system of canals and reservoirs that enabled the city to hoard scarce water in dry months and disperse excess water during the rainy season. Forces beyond Angkor's control threw this exquisitely tuned machine into disarray.

One of Angkor's holiest sites is high in the Kulen Hills at the headwaters of two rivers, the Puok and the Siem Reap. Under the shade of gnarled strangler fig trees, submerged in the clear water of a lazy creek, are row after row of circular bumps, each about six inches wide, carved into the dark sandstone riverbed. These are worn lingams, cylindrical stone sculptures representing the essence of the Hindu god Shiva. The lingams lead like a road to another sculpture in the riverbed: a thick-walled square, a yard wide, with a narrow inlet. It's a yoni, a symbol of the Hindu source of life.

Angkor's high priests came here to thank the gods for providing the lifeblood of the kingdom. A short walk upstream is a natural bridge of sandstone that lends this holy site its name, Kbal Spean—Khmer for "bridgehead." Water rushes through a cleft, splashing an adjoining rock face where Vishnu, legs crossed, meditates atop an angry ocean; sprouting from his navel is a lotus-flower-bearing Brahma. Here in the Kulen Hills the ancient gods enjoy perpetual libations from flowing water.

By harnessing the monsoon tide that gushed from the Kulen Hills, Angkor and its rulers flourished. From the era of Jayavarman II, who laid the kingdom's foundations in the early 800s, the empire's growth depended on bumper rice harvests. Throughout southern Asia, perhaps only the ancient cities of Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa in Sri Lanka and their famed reservoirs could compare to Angkor's ability to guarantee a steady water supply.

That reliability required massive feats of engineering, including a reservoir called the West Baray that's five miles long and 1.5 miles wide. To build this third and most sophisticated of Angkor's large reservoirs a thousand years ago, as many as 200,000 Khmer workers may have been needed to pile up nearly 16 million cubic yards of soil in embankments 300 feet wide and three stories tall. To this day the rectangular reservoir, or baray, is fed by water diverted from the Siem Reap River.

The first scholar to appreciate the scale of Angkor's waterworks was Bernard-Philippe Groslier, an archaeologist with the French School of Asian Studies (EFEO). In a landmark 1979 treatise, he envisioned Angkor as a "hydraulic city." The great barays, he argued, served two purposes: to symbolize the primeval sea of Hindu cosmogony and to irrigate rice fields. Unfortunately, Groslier could not pursue this concept further. Cambodia's civil war, the brutal reign of the Khmer Rouge, and the ouster of the regime by Vietnamese forces in 1979 turned Angkor into a no-go zone for two decades. After Vietnamese troops withdrew, looters descended on Angkor, swiping statues and even chiseling off bas-reliefs.

When Christophe Pottier, an architect and archaeologist, reopened EFEO's research station at Angkor in 1992, the first priority was helping Cambodia restore dilapidated and pillaged temples. But Pottier was drawn to the wilderness beyond the temple walls. He spent months crisscrossing the southern half of Greater Angkor on motorbike and foot, mapping once hidden house mounds and shrines near artificial ponds called water tanks. (Lingering lawlessness deterred Pottier from surveying the northern half.) Then, in 2000, Fletcher and his colleague Damian Evans laid hands on NASA radar images of Angkor. They were a revelation: The University of Sydney team, working with EFEO and APSARA, the Cambodian agency that manages Angkor, found vestiges of many more settlements, canals, and water tanks, particularly in Angkor's inaccessible areas. Donald Cooney's ultralight flights have helped Fletcher and Pottier, now a co-director of the Greater Angkor Project, examine these features in finer detail. Crucially, they found inlets and outlets to the barays, ending a debate catalyzed by Groslier's work about whether the colossal reservoirs were used solely for religious rituals or for irrigation. The clear answer is both.

The researchers were amazed by the ambition of Angkor's engineers. "We realized that the entire landscape of Greater Angkor is artificial," Fletcher says. Over several centuries, teams of laborers constructed hundreds of miles of canals and dikes that relied on subtle differences in the land's natural inclination to divert water from the Puok, Roluos, and Siem Reap Rivers to the barays. During the summer monsoon months, overflow channels bled off excess water. After the rains petered out in October or November, irrigation channels dispensed stored water. The barays may also have helped replenish soil moisture by allowing water to soak into the earth. In surrounding fields surface evaporation would have drawn up the groundwater to supply crops. "It was an incredibly clever system," says Fletcher.

That clever water system may have made the difference between mediocrity and greatness. Much of the kingdom's rice was grown in embanked fields that would otherwise have relied on monsoon rains or the seasonal ebb and flow of water on the Tonle Sap floodplain. Irrigation would have boosted harvests. The system could also have provided survival rations during a poor monsoon season, says Fletcher. And the ability to divert and impound water would have afforded a measure of protection from floods. When other kingdoms in Southeast Asia were struggling to cope with too little or too much water, he says, Angkor's waterworks would have been "a profoundly valuable strategic asset."

Thus Fletcher was baffled when his team unearthed one of the more extraordinary pieces of Angkorian workmanship—a vast structure in the waterworks—and found that it had been demolished, apparently by Angkor's own engineers.


It's almost noon on a June day about ten miles north of Angkor Wat, and even at the bottom of a muddy, 14-foot-long trench, there's no relief from the fierce sun. Fletcher takes off a dark blue baseball cap and wipes his brow. It looks as if the self-possessed researcher is going to launch into a precise explanation of the grayish red stone blocks his team, along with Chhay Rachna of APSARA, has unearthed. Instead, he sighs and says, "This is simply fantastic!"

The stone blocks fitting snugly together were hewed from laterite, a spongy, iron-laden soil that hardens when exposed to air. When Fletcher and Pottier first found a section of the structure a few years ago, they thought it was the remains of a small sluice gate.

"It's turned into a monster," he says. The blocks are the remnants of a spillway across a sloping dam that may have extended as long as a football field. Around the end of the ninth century, with Angkor blossoming, engineers excavated a long canal that altered the course of the Siem Reap River, redirecting it southward to the newly constructed East Baray, a reservoir nearly as big as the later West Baray. The dam, positioned in the river, diverted water to feed the canal. But part of the massive structure may also have functioned as a spillway during monsoon surges, when water would have overtopped the low structure and flowed down the former river channel.

The ruins of the spillway are a vital clue to an epic struggle that unfolded as generations of Khmer engineers coped with a water system that grew ever more complex and unruly. "They probably spent vast portions of their lives fixing it," says Fletcher. Some of the dam's blocks lie in a jumble; huge sections of masonry are missing. "The most logical explanation is that the dam failed," Fletcher says. The river may have chewed into the dam, gradually weakening it. Perhaps it was washed away by an unusually heavy flood, the kind that comes along every century or even every 500 years. The Khmer then ripped apart much of the remaining stonework, salvaging the blocks for other purposes.

Another clue that the water system was failing comes from a pond at the West Mebon, an island temple in the middle of the West Baray. Pollen grains preserved in the muck show that lotuses and other aquatic plants flourished in the baray until the early 13th century. Then new kinds of pollen appear, from species such as ferns that prefer marsh or dry land. Right at Angkor's zenith, one of its reservoirs apparently went dry for a time. "Something was going wrong much earlier than we expected," says Daniel Penny, a pollen expert and a co-director of the Greater Angkor Project.

Any deterioration of the waterworks would have left Angkor vulnerable to a natural phenomenon no engineer of that day could have anticipated. Starting in the 1300s, Europe endured a few centuries of unpredictable weather marked by harsh winters and chilly summers. Until recently there was only sketchy information on how other parts of the world fared during this period, called the Little Ice Age. Now it appears that Southeast Asia, too, experienced climatic upheaval.

Around Angkor, the summer monsoon season lasts from roughly May through October and delivers nearly 90 percent of the region's yearly precipitation. A dependable monsoon is critical for all manner of life, including people. To unmask monsoon patterns of long ago, Brendan Buckley of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York, ventured into the forests of Southeast Asia in search of trees with annual growth rings. He and his team knew it would not be easy: Most species in the region lack distinguishable growth rings or have ones that aren't laid down year by year. Several forays paid off with a clutch of long-lived species, including teak and po mu, a rare cypress. Some po mu trees they cataloged are nine centuries old, survivors of both Angkor's heyday and its demise.

The po mu trees told a stunning story. Sets of constricted growth rings showed that the trees had endured back-to-back mega-droughts, from 1362 to 1392 and from 1415 to 1440. During these periods the monsoon was weak or delayed, and in some years it may have failed completely. In other years, megamonsoons lashed the region.

To a tottering kingdom, extreme weather could have been the coup de grâce. Dec­ades earlier, Angkor's waterworks were already ailing, to judge from the idled West Baray. "We don't know why the water system was operating below capacity—it's a conundrum," says Penny. "But what it means is that Angkor really had no fat to burn. The city was more exposed to the threat of drought than at any other time in its history." Prolonged and severe droughts, punctuated by torrential downpours, "would have ruined the water system," says Fletcher.

Still, Penny says, "we're not talking about the place becoming a desert." People on the Tonle Sap floodplain south of the main temples would have been buffered from the worst effects. The Tonle Sap is fed by the Mekong River, whose headwaters in Tibetan glacier fields would have been largely immune to the effects of an altered monsoon. But Khmer engineers, skilled as they were, could not alleviate parched conditions in the north by moving Tonle Sap water against the lay of the land. Gravity was their only pump.

If inhabitants of northern Angkor were starving while other parts of the city were hoarding rice, the stage would have been set for severe unrest. "When populations in tropical countries exceed the carrying capacity of the land, real trouble begins," says Yale University anthropologist Michael Coe. "This inevitably leads to cultural collapse." A malnourished army, preoccupied with internal strife, would have exposed the city to attack. Indeed, Ayutthaya's invasion and the Khmer king's ouster happened near the end of the second megadrought.

Add to the climate chaos the shifting political and religious winds already buffeting the kingdom, and Angkor's fate was sealed, says Fletcher. "The world around Angkor was changing. Society was moving on. It would have been a surprise if Angkor persisted."

The Khmer Empire was not the first civilization felled by climate catastrophe. Centuries earlier, as Angkor was rising, halfway around the world a similar loss of environmental equilibrium was hammering the Maya city-states in Mexico and Central America. Many scholars now believe that the Maya succumbed to overpopulation and environmental degradation following a series of three punishing droughts in the ninth century. "Essentially, the same thing happened to Angkor," says Coe, who in the 1950s was the first to discern similarities between the Khmer and Maya civilizations.

Modern societies may need to brace for similar climatic challenges. According to Buckley, the most likely trigger of the Angkor megadroughts was intense and persistent El Niño warming of the surface waters of the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. Scientists debate whether human-caused climate change will lead to more pronounced El Niños, but the Vietnamese tree rings show that even natural oscillations in the Pacific can spark catastrophe.

Angkor's end is a sobering lesson in the limits of human ingenuity. The Khmer had transformed their world—a monumental investment that would have been excruciating for the kingdom's rulers to forsake. "Angkor's hydraulic system was an amazing machine, a wonderful mechanism for regulating the world," Fletcher says. Its engineers managed to keep the civilization's signal achievement running for six centuries—until, in the end, a greater force overwhelmed them.

(Greedily Unashamed) Thailand to seek review of Preah Vihear's heritage status

By: BangkokPost.com
Published: 17/06/2009 at 01:47 PM

Thailand will ask the World Heritage Committee to review the decision to register Preah Vihear temple, on the border of Si Sa Ket province, as a World Heritage site under the sole supervision of Cambodia, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said on Wednesday.

Last year, the World Heritage Committee (WHC), which operates under the auspices of Unesco, registered Preah Vihear as a World Heritage site, as proposed by Cambodia, and required Phnom Penh to set up an International Coordinating Committee to preserve the temple.

Mr Abhisit said the cabinet on Tuesday agreed the request should be submitted to this year's 33rd session of the WHC, to be held in Seville, Spain, from June 22-30.

At the meeting, Cambodia is due to report on the state of conservation of the ancient khmer temple.

The prime minister said a delegation of the Thai world heritage committee led by Natural Resources and Environment Minister Suwit Khunkitti will tell the meeting that the registration of Preah Vihear temple as a World Heritage site had brought about conflict and losses, and this would appear to be against Unesco's objectives in having heritage sites.

The prime minister said a World Heritage site is supposed to be an area where traces of culture and history are preserved, allowing tourists to see and admire them. But the registration of Preah Vihear had caused more conflict between the peoples of Thailand and Cambodia.



Mr Abhisit said Preah Vihear should be registered jointly as a World Heritage site by Thailand and Cambodia, not just by one country.

"I want to see the temple a peaceful area so that the people of the two countries can jointly benefit from this site of high historical importance," said the prime minister.

Panithan Wattanayakorn, the PM's deputy secretary-general and acting government spokesman, said Mr Suwit would attend the WHC meeting as a member of the Thai world heritage committee. He would submit the protest letter in the name of the committee, not the Thai government.

Thailand was not protesting against Cambodia's application that Preah Vihear be listed as a World Heritage site, but against the decision approving the insciption of the temple, which had caused more problems, he said.

Mr Panithan said many cabinet ministers expressed concern over this matter, saying that it is sensitive and could affect Thai-Cambodian relations.

The Foreign Ministry in May warned Unesco about the activities of officials and experts at Preah Vihear temple.

Virachai Plasai, head of the ministry's Treaties and Legal Affairs Department, reaffirmed to the chief of Unesco's information and knowledge management unit, Clive Wing, that UN officials and experts could travel through disputed areas around the temple only with the permission of Thai authorities.

The ministry had reminded Unesco in March that only the main building of the Preah Vihear temple was inscripted as a World Heritage site, where the UN and the World Heritage Committee could work.

The wider promontory, cliff and cave were not included - so Unesco officials could not pass through these areas without Thai permission.

The International Court of Justice ruled in 1962 that Preah Vihear temple belonged to Cambodia, but Thailand claims surrounding areas. The disputed area of 4.6 square kilometres has not been demarcated.

(Thailand Jealousy) Shock move by White House

16/06/2009
EDITORIAL
Bangkok Post

The latest decision on Southeast Asia by US President Barack Obama is the second disturbing action by Washington affecting this region. Late last Friday, after the main news cycles for the week had elapsed, Mr Obama announced a major new policy initiative. The low-level statement that he was declaring Laos and Cambodia eligible for major US loans and trade concessions took the rest of the region by surprise.

The first visit to Southeast Asia by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton largely ignored the longest and strongest US allies. Now, the decision to give special treatment to Laos and Cambodia came as a bit of shock, including in Thailand.

Mr Obama's "determination" about each country was a brief official statement, posted at the White House media room and website. Such presidential determinations are legal obligations in many cases in the United States; these were the 20th and 21st of an early presidency. But as these statements showed, they are often "game changers" by the president. In these almost identical statements, Mr Obama declared that Laos and Cambodia are eligible to be beneficiaries of US Export-Import Bank loans for American businesses in those countries.

The reason, Mr Obama said, is that each "has ceased to be a Marxist-Leninist country".

Mr Obama was apparently not concerned with the nuances of Marxist evolution. It was mandatory to declare Laos and Cambodia were not communist countries in order to achieve his true goal - to provide millions, and perhaps billions, of investment capital for American businesses to set up, operate in and trade with the two neighbouring countries.

Mr Obama did not explain why he set this goal. Indeed, the manner of the announcement was to keep all questions and justification to a minimum.

This apparently was to stifle the negative reaction of political groups in the US who are appalled at the treatment of Hmong tribespeople by Laos.

A more important result, however, is that Mr Obama has created negative fallout in Thailand and the region.

The US Exim Bank rarely is involved with Thailand, and generally supports one-time sales rather than investment.

In 2003, it provided support for sales of Boeing 747 aircraft to Thai Airways International, and there are occasional cases where the bank has backed smaller deals. As the Thai economy has developed, the US Exim Bank has been an ever-smaller presence.

That is why Mr Obama's unexpected support for Laos and Cambodia disappointed many in Thailand. For years, Thai businesses have expanded into these countries. The overseas business expansion - ironically with the frequent support of the Exim Bank of Thailand - has been a major engine of Thai growth. This in turn has led to decreasing dependence upon foreign help and special programmes by Washington.

The sudden entry of the US Exim Bank into these Thai markets will affect Thai trade and the economy. By failing to warn and prepare Thai authorities and businesses, the Obama administration has created a shock that will have negative implications, at least at the start.

This problem could easily have been avoided had the White House warned of the coming decision and allowed time for diplomatic talks and business preparations. Failing to do so again begs the question of whether the United States is seriously engaged with its long-time allies in this region.