The Weekly N&C for October 13th, 2008

A Heritage of Conflict

The UNESCO World Heritage List enshrines (and endows) 878 sites around the world to aid in their preservation and frankly, to encourage a rousing tourist trade for the host country of each site. In all fairness, both are good things when done right. There is nothing quite like making the local businesses and governments richer for the trouble to get cooperation with a cosmopolitan historical goal that might otherwise be unfathomable to them. Unfortunately, when it comes to events like wars and “cultural purity campaigns”, there is not much that being on the list does to help besides add to the list of crimes against humanity being committed. Just ask the townspeople of Dubrovnik (Ragusa) how much it slowed down the Yugoslavian Army-Serbian besiegers in 1991~1992.

With that dark event in mind, please consider the circumstances of the Prasat Preah Vihear (Temple of Preah Vihear), one of the most recent additions to the World Heritage List. This Hindu temple dedicated to Shiva was constructed over a period from the 9th to 12th centuries, and is notably unique in its layout, architecture and decoration. It is also on top of a cliff in the middle of what could charitably be called “outer nowhere”, at the edge of the Dangrek Mountains on the border between Thailand and Cambodia. It is an absolutely commanding position, towering over 500 meters above the Cambodian Plain (it is at 625m elevation, roughly 2,000 feet above sea level). Here is a map reference of Cambodia specifying the location of the province.

But what the map reference *doesn’t* show is that the location of this most noteworthy cultural site is in the heart of a section of border that has been under various disputes since the first attempt to demarcate it in 1904. French Colonial Officers mapping the border between their colony and then-Siam seem to have made sure that a minor violation of the terms of the border-setting would make it onto the official map, putting the Temple on the French (Cambodian) side of the line. The Kingdom of Siam however accepted that map as presented, and did not actively contest the matter for years. They did occupy the region as spoils of cooperating with Imperial Japan during World War II, but in a political effort to be considered a non-belligerent gave the land back to the French at the end of the war. Therein we find the first complication, because rightly or wrongly demarcated, recognized borders became legally “set in stone” after 1948 excepting declared cases like de-colonization. (That last piece of legal prevarication is what accounts for such acts as the Seizure of Goa being “legal” even though they happened after that date.) Following roughly just such a line of thinking, when the French abandoned their colony in 1954, the now-Thai government sent in the troops and occupied the area. Claim and counter-claim brought this before the International Court of Justice in 1959, and they ruled on it in June of 1962, confirming the extant map and Cambodia’s claim to the temple site. Thai authorities immediately rued allowing the claim to go before the ICJ, and blamed (amongst other things) American bias and interference in the ruling. The flames of incendiary national pride had now been lit.

Now it would be unfair to say that either the Cambodia or the Thailand of today is the same sort of country as it was in late 1962. From one perspective in particular, Cambodia after the various Southeast Asian wars is nothing like the same nation it was just after regaining independence. Both countries are unstable politically, and both have some need of a “distraction”.

The Kingdom of Cambodia has slipped part-way back into the thrall of autocracy, with the Hun Sen government having out-maneuvered and out-brutalized the opposition parties in the years after the UNTAC international protectorate gave way to something of a government with democratic trappings. There wasn’t much left to govern after the Khmer Rouge government of Pol Pot got done massacring much of the population, after all. Add in the arrival about four million immigrants of dubious legality from Viet Nam and it is no wonder that former Vietnamese-communist quisling Hun Sen would end up with the largest political base. The extraordinarily weak monarchy of the country simply accepts his government, as do what international agencies and activities that still remain in Cambodia.

In the opposite corner, the more-often-than-not-stable Kingdom of Thailand has been putting on a rousing display of how to make a terrible mess of a perfectly good country in recent years. There is a Muslim insurgency in the south of the country that is being answered militarily, but that can be considered just opportunism on the part of the insurgents. Since the election of Thaksin Shinawatra and his party to power and its removal by military coup fairly shortly thereafter (Sept. 2006 coup), the major population centers of Thailand have been political powder-kegs. The effort by the Monarchist (CDRM)military junta to rule in the King’s name inspired neither the populace’ nor His Majesty’s formal mandate and that has led to their reforming as the Council for National Security (CNS) to remain the power-behind-the-government. Efforts to re-form a parliament and cabinet have met mixed results and near daily street protests. As of the most recent change of front-men, the administration is in the hands of Somchai Wongsawat (since Sept. 2008) and it is teetering on the edge of collapse. Faced with the disaster of the riot police having killed three protesters during last week’s violent anti-government clashes, he says he won’t resign as “it is not the right solution to (the crisis)”. Very well, he might last another week. The CNS is still mostly pulling the strings in any case.

Which leads us to “what strings they are pulling”, and that seems to be the string connected to that old-fashioned (and remember, incendiary) Thai national pride. The Royal Thai Army has been contesting terrain around the Temple of Preah Vihear since the declaration of the site as being on the World Heritage List this summer, and has in the last weeks pushed across the line again only to discover Cambodian Army troops *and land mines* in the area. Two Thai troopers got maimed by mines and the resulting shooting match wounded at least one Cambodian solider. It seems safe to say that puts serious doubt into the mid-August agreement to have pulled back troops. The Hun Sen government is furious and has upped the rhetoric to the war with Thailand being possible as soon as “tomorrow”. Given reports place the troop positions of each side are within 40 meters of the other, it certainly need not wait that long. Worse, the line of potential contest has extended kilometers outside the general area of the Temple.

Unless some astoundingly uncharacteristic cool-thinking on the part of the governments involved happens very soon, expect more shooting, more danger to the site, and more fear and avoidance by researchers and tourists.

The once-overlords of the United Nations are even rumored to be pondering declaring the site “stateless”; making it an international protectorate and demilitarizing the zone around it.

This author is probably first in line when opportunity comes to promote the cause of a nation reclaiming stolen territories, but in this case it simply looks like there is no duality of claim. The Kingdom of Thailand is a great nation, and has many real threats around it with the insurgency in the south and the text-book example of a troublesome neighbor, ‘Myanmar’ (Burma), on the western border.

They don’t need to start something with the Kingdom of Cambodia, especially over something that they should have contested in 1907… or at least 1947.

I am certain the Royal Thai Army could take the place again. I am fairly certain they could even hold it. What I am not at all sure of is whether or not the Hun Sen regime might not haul out the artillery and obliterate some part of the Temple. We are talking about a government (Hun Sen’s) that throws hand grenades at political protest marches.

It has taken years to get the Temple site back into any real accessibility since the Cambodian wars, and it has just been luck that has spared the place serious damage in the past.

Let us not chance it again.

Pull back.

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End Notes:

All are embedded as links. Wiki-p links used (for convenience only) and must be separately sourced.