04 November 2009

Missed story of the week -

Perhaps with all of the media coverage of the "Obama Referendum" you missed the following news item, but relations between Thailand and Cambodia are worsening. Fast.

The Cambodian government has just appointed ousted and indicted former Thai Premier Thaksin Shinawatra to be a personal advisor to Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen, according to a story in the Singapore Straits Times.

This is a problem because Thaksin is legally on the lam from Thai government officials, and his supporters have rallied across the country repeatedly in the last few years, disrupting transportation in Bangkok and prompting counter demonstrations that shut down the international airport and significantly affected tourism, a major industry there.

This is also a huge "Screw you" from Cambodia to Thailand.

Civil society in Thailand is deeply divided over the coup that threw Thaksin from power in 2006 - the coup was urban and middle class, for the most part, while Thaksin is supported by poorer urban Thais and those in the northeast and east. A little bit of a Berlusconi figure without the buffoonery, Thaksin is a gazillionaire several times over and owns many media outlets in Thailand. He briefly owned Manchester City Football Club in Britain. He is politically populist, instituting universal health coverage for all Thais but also waging a bloody "War on Drugs" with extrajudicial killings, and he led a crackdown on those segments of the press he didn't own.

There has been residual unrest from the coup for the last three years, and a weak government is in place now, the third since his ouster in '06. Add to that the border tensions of Cambodia and Thailand, who have been shooting at each recently over an ancient temple that both claim (and I'm sure the resident gods whole-heartedly support THAT), separatist unrest in Thailand's Muslim south, and the Thai King's failing health, and things in Thailand could go very bad very fast.

If the Thai King's health continues to worsen, or if Thaksin makes mischief by rallying supporters from just across the border to demonstrate, overtly or covertly or tacitly, or if any of the fully armed troops from either army patrolling the border get trigger happy, the situation along the border could deteriorate into a hot war with disastrous consequences for both nations and regional stability.

Sources: The Nation and The Bangkok Post (Thailand), The Straits Times (Singapore)


CFox said...

Also Yemen. Bad things are happening in Yemen. It's easy to miss these things:


Bren in SoCal said...

C'mon, there's only so much one blogger can do before Nov 15th. And Yemen is a freakin' basket case. Look at their population pyramids. SCARY. Scary. Within ten years Yemenis will be prominent in the ground troops of any terror attack that's carried out.