International Crisis Group

“Trickery” and the rule of law in Timor-Leste 

from Crisis Group’s blog, Resolving Conflict in South East Asia 

By Cillian Nolan

The UN peacekeeping mission in Timor-Leste (UNMIT) is now in the final stages of its long-planned withdrawal. By the end of December, the only staff left will be packing up computers and dismantling the portable containers at its “Obrigado Barracks” headquarters. Following largely peaceful presidential and parliamentary elections earlier this year, Timorese are in confident spirits about the many challenges ahead. But after thirteen years of UN presence in the country, it is natural that there is some apprehension among some about security after the end of peace operations.

The Parliamentary Majority Alliance (AMP) coalition government in office from 2007-12 never found in the UN a fitting partner for reform. It saw more value in devising and implementing its own solutions. This was most notable in its response to the displacement that followed the 2006 crisis. While the UN favoured a phased, sustainable, decade-long approach to returning tens of thousands in IDP camps, the government instead handed out up to $4500 to households and closed the camps in two years. When then  President José Ramos-Horta was shot in February 2008, UNMIT’s response was criticised as slow and clumsy. The government quickly set up a joint army-police command to handle security, just as UNMIT was supposed to be articulating clearer divisions between the two forces. Pragmatic fixes have trumped long-term and deeper reforms as they have been seen to deliver quick results.

FULL POST (“Trickery” and the rule of law in Timor-Leste)

Photo: UN Photo/Martine Perret

Indonesian electoral roll plagued with errors | ABC News

By George Roberts

An expert on South East Asia says Indonesia needs to fix its electoral roll, or risk a constitutional challenge to the next elected president.

The International Crisis Group (ICG) says Indonesia’s list of about 170 million voters is largely inaccurate, with some people listed multiple times.

FULL ARTICLE (ABC News)

Photo: The Official CTBTO Photostream/Flickr

Lady Gaga: Indonesian hardliners’ latest victory | Al Arabiya

By AFP

Lady Gaga’s decision to cancel the Indonesian leg of her world tour due to threats by Muslim hardliners highlights how groups pushing a strict view of Islam are growing increasingly powerful, analysts say.

Home to the world’s largest Muslim population, officially secular Indonesia is often touted by Western leaders as a beacon of moderate Islam and a model for the Muslim world — as visiting U.S. President Barack Obama did in 2010.

But a series of attacks on Christians, Muslim minorities and those deemed “enemies of Islam”, combined with the apparent unwillingness of the government and courts to clamp down has sparked concerns over the rise of the hardliners.

FULL ARTICLE (AFP via Al Arabiya)

Photo: Reuters

Strategic Review | ASEAN needs observers to monitor the peace in its own backyard

Jim Della-Giacoma, 8 May 2012

Unarmed monitors have made news in recent weeks with the United Nations Security Council’s creation of the UN Supervision Mission in Syria to oversee the peace agreement brokered by special envoy Kofi Annan. Indonesia immediately offered to deploy six of its Lebanon-based peacekeepers to support this mission.

But Jakarta does not need to send its soldiers to the other side of the world to make a difference. There are peace agreements to be monitored in its very own backyard. Before this can happen though, ASEAN’s member states need a new mind-set for dealing with regional conflicts.

The rapid pace of peacemaking in Myanmar may soon create a new challenge. Since signing their first agreement on January 12, the Karen National Union (KNU) and the Myanmar government have been discussing a role for local and foreign observers. “It is very important for the international community to keep watching,” said Naw May Oo Mutraw, a KNU spokeswoman.

If a new monitoring mechanism is created, it will set an important precedent that could then be reflected in any future deal with the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO). Even if the recent uptick in clashes between the KIO and Myanmar government forces is cause for concern, the prospect of a cease-fire has improved following the creation of a new peace panel. Now, ASEAN members need to decide whether they can play a role in monitoring this important part of Myanmar’s national reconciliation process.

Monitors need not be uniformed soldiers or wear blue helmets. In negotiating the terms of reference for Indonesian observers to go to the Thai-Cambodian border in April and May of 2011, Thai diplomats went to some length to address the nationalistic concerns of their soldiers about the presence of foreign troops. “No military in the world likes to have foreign soldiers on their soil,” one retired Thai general told me.

It was a weak argument, as he knew very well that the Thai Army had itself volunteered to join the Australia-led INTERFET peacekeeping force in East Timor in 1999 and the joint ASEAN-EU Aceh Monitoring Mission in 2005, which deployed military-civilian teams. The Indonesian monitors for the Thai-Cambodian border were also to be mixed.

Jakarta showed flexibility, conceding that its enlisted men need not wear uniforms, insignia, rank or even flags. “We didn’t care what they wore,” one Indonesian official told me at the time. “We were ready to dress them like Pak Camat (subdistrict chiefs) if they would allow them to deploy.” It is such pragmatism for peace – substance over form – that needs to be encouraged within ASEAN.

There is active monitoring in Southeast Asia, but not through ASEAN structures. In the southern Philippines, the Malaysian-led International Monitoring Team (IMT) has worked to cement the cease-fire between Muslim insurgents and the government. The April 24 “decision points on principles” between the Philippines government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front  envision a role for monitors after the parties sign a peace agreement, which would likely draw on countries and organizations already involved in the IMT and International Contact Group that attend the negotiations.

It has been more than a year since Cambodia signed terms of reference on May 5, 2011 inviting Indonesian observers onto its soil around the Preah Vihear temple to monitor a shaky verbal truce. As yet another anniversary of this unfulfilled agreement passed this month, it is a reminder that there is still more to do to convince ASEAN members of the merits of observers.

With the demand for monitors continuing, it is worth reflecting on why the 2011 attempt to deploy them along the Thai-Cambodian border failed. While civilian leaders in Bangkok agreed to the plan as part of an ASEAN framework, the Thai Army considered it an insult and thus the deployment was blocked.

Indulging such obstinacy is a lingering problem for ASEAN. If not countered, it will become the default response by members. Internationally, inaction will be seen as one of its norms rather than a can-do attitude towards resolving conflict.

Its own political-security community blueprint envisages a “cohesive, peaceful and resilient region with shared responsibility for comprehensive security,” but limits observers to just watching military exercises. Without a more proactive stance, the vision for the region’s security will remain only pretty words with potential cooperation on other regional security issues through multilateral frameworks such as the ASEAN Regional Forum or East Asia Summit increasingly impeded.

Thailand and Cambodia also have a legal obligation to deploy observers to monitor the provisional demilitarized zone ordered by the International Court of Justice. Ignoring such obligations is a black mark against all in the region, especially as ASEAN members try to burnish their credentials as good global citizens by participating in other missions in places such as Syria.

ASEAN needs workable ways of dealing with its own conflicts, whether inside or outside its formal structures. Monitors are but one tool in what should be a better equipped regional toolbox. Rather than focus all attention on creating a new body, such as the ASEAN Institute for Peace and Reconciliation, it needs to take concrete steps to make peace now.

As was tried in 2011, ad hoc meetings of foreign ministers could empower envoys to make the peace and dispatch monitors to observe subsequent deals. Not every effort will succeed, but trying is better than doing nothing at all.

ASEAN’s 10 members need to be less risk-averse and ready to accept some failure as down payment on a harmonious region. The region is dotted with dormant conflicts, each with the potential to ignite the kind of tensions that can damage the solidarity needed to derive the dividends from grand visions such as economic integration.

Good global citizenship is to be encouraged, but when the next call comes for monitors from an ASEAN member, those who raise their hands to help should also come from within the neighborhood and not just from the other end of the globe.

(Strategic Review)

Photo: Jerry Morrison/Wikimedia Commons

The Democratic Voice of Burma | Suu Kyi embraces new role and compromise

For over two decades pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi defied Burma’s army rulers with steely resolve, but analysts say she has now embraced compromise, even if that means putting principles aside.

The Nobel laureate was sworn in Wednesday as a member of parliament, a week after initially refusing to take the oath of office over the wording of the army-drafted constitution.

She climbed down after President Thein Sein failed to offer concessions, indicating compromise may now be the order of the day as Burma creeps towards democracy in an astonishing reform process.

But the delay meant that on Monday when UN chief Ban Ki-moon became the first foreign leader to make a speech at the nation’s new parliament, Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy colleagues were conspicuously absent.

“The NLD has given the impression, once again, of having missed the train,” according to Renaud Egreteau, a Burmese expert at the University of Hong Kong.

Many of Suu Kyi’s supporters will welcome her historic debut in political office following the NLD’s sweep in April’s by-elections, held after an historic national vote in 2010.

But Egreteau says there are indications of a divide within the NLD between hardliners reluctant to work with the military, and a more pragmatic group that Suu Kyi is increasingly inclined to join.

FULL ARTICLE (AFP via The Democratic Voice of Burma) 

Photo: Htoo Tay Zar/ Wikimedia Commons

Reuters | Myanmar sanctions lifting a boon and a test for China firms

The lifting of decades of broad Western sanctions on Myanmar will prove to be both a boon and a test for China, for years the former Burma’s top investor and trading partner, bringing both risk and opportunity for long-established Chinese firms.

The United States, European Union, Japan, Canada and Australia have all moved in recent weeks to ease or suspend sanctions on Myanmar, as the once pariah nation embarks on landmark democratic reforms and seeks engagement with the world.

While sanctions have blocked many Western investments, China has become Myanmar’s biggest ally, investing in infrastructure, hydropower dams and twin oil-and-gas pipelines to help feed southern China’s growing energy needs.

But with European, U.S. and Japanese firms all chomping at the bit to get in, Chinese firms long present in Myanmar with little competition could be in for a shock.

FULL ARTICLE (Reuters) 

Deutsche Welle | Report says China policy is stirring South China Sea dispute

An International Crisis Group report blames Chinese structures for the failure to resolve South China Sea dispute. It adds that regional nationalism is exacerbating the tension.

ABC Radio Australia | Report raises fear of South China Sea war

In recent weeks China and the Philippines had a tense stand-off in the disputed waters of the South China Sea.

It involved fishing boats, armed coast guard vessels and eventually even warships.

It is not the first confrontation in the area but the International Crisis Group (ICG) says the situation is potentially getting worse.

A new ICG report, titled Stirring up the South China Sea, has identified key problems within China as making war in the sea potentially more likely.

The report says China’s approach to the sea is marred by competing government departments, nationalist sentiment, unclear laws and a sense of a country being cornered.

It warns those factors could one day push it into a regional war with Vietnam or the Philippines, drawing in the US.

The report found the Chinese government is actively trying to defuse tensions with its neighbours.

But it said that by having multiple Chinese agencies dealing with maritime disputes using armed coastguard vessels and competing for budgets and power, the situation has been made worse.

FULL ARTICLE (ABC Radio Australia) 

ABC Radio Australia | Maritime dispute “stirs up” South China Sea

A senior US Naval commander has reaffirmed the defence treaty with Philippines amid tensions in the South China Sea between the Philippines and China.

Responding to a reporter’s question on the Philippines island of Palawan, Commander of the US Marines in the Pacific Lieutenant General Duane Thiessen said, “The United States and the Philippines have a mutual defence treaty which guarantees that we get involved in each other’s defense and that is self explanatory.”

The comments are significant because of a standoff that began that began on April 8 when the Philippines found eight Chinese fishing boats at Scarborough Shoal, allegedly fishing illegally, and sent its warship to arrest the crew.

The standoff has since dissipated but it’s just the latest point of conflict amongst those who dispute the South China Sea which are a key shipping passage and are thought to be rich in natural resources.

The International Crisis Group has just released a report on China’s policy and enforcement of the seas.

FULL ARTICLE (ABC Radio Australia)

Photo: United States Navy/ Wikimedia Commons