Don’t Touch the Mekong

Posted by AsiaViews | Nov 13, 2017 | 0 |

The Bangkok Post

Nov 9, 2017

The battle over the Mekong River has resumed, and it will end badly for one side. Despite continuous government efforts to delay, a decision will have to be made shortly. There are no shortage of supporters for both views, but the battle lines are clear. On one side, the Chinese government wants to blast a Mekong River channel for the largest riverboats of its comprador businesses. On the other, Thai environmentalists and conservationists oppose this.

The dispute over development of the river actually centers on a very short stretch of the Mekong in Thai territory. A collection of shoals, reefs and islets off Chiang Rai province is the only serious block for 500-tonne Chinese riverboats past Thailand and all the way down to Luang Prabang in Laos. Beijing is once again applying economic and diplomatic pressure on Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha and the government. Gen Prayut doesn’t want to make any decision but probably will have to in the coming weeks.

China wants to blast the 1.5km Khon Pi Luang to clear the “rapids” off Chiang Khong district in Chiang Rai. Conservationists and civil rights activists, who have formed a coalition of sorts, want it left strictly alone. It is one of the most scenic stretches of the entire Mekong. Hundreds of villagers make their living there. And the No.1 concern of the government is that taking out the islets of Khon Pi Luang will change the river’s geography and actually reduce Thai territory.

On Monday, the chief executive officer of the secretariat of the Mekong River Commission (MRC), whose member countries are Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, plumped for clearing the pesky Thai islets and reefs. “Improvement” of Mekong navigability, wrote Pham Tuan Phan in this page, wouldn’t be a big deal. He wrote of laser-accurate shaving of some of the problematic islets and reefs. It would be “barely a surgical intervention” to remove and relocate some rock outcroppings. Some fish would have to die, he said, but not as many as fishermen already kill.

It is perhaps the most unpersuasive argument yet heard. At least the Chinese engineers planning the channel excavation use proper words like “dynamite” and “dredging” to describe their project. After many months of back-and-forth on this disputatious proposal, Mr Phan’s failure to describe exactly what the MRC and China, who is the MRC’s “dialogue partner”, want was disappointing.

The conservationists are as persuasive for their side as China is in arguing that the Mekong must be used to promote international trade. The ad hoc Rak (Love) Chiang Khong Group argues, quite correctly, that the ecology of the river would be forever changed if plans to clear the Khon Pi Luang go ahead. Multiple dams in China already control the water flow in the river, and making the Mekong a China free-trade waterway seems as drastic as it is unfair.

The Thai government is clearly leaning to Beijing’s side in this important dispute. Only the security question has so far delayed the laying of dynamite. Studies are supposedly being conducted well out of sight of the public to judge the effect of China’s proposed blasting on the course of the Mekong and how it would affect the Thai border.

As usual with the military government, those who matter are not even consulted. Neither Chiang Khong residents nor knowledgeable national voices — including the activists — have mattered to the government. The proper course is therefore for the military regime to announce clearly it will not permit any Mekong blasting.

Gen Prayut must turn the issue over to the next, civilian government. This might annoy China, but Beijing’s businessmen can wait. In dealing with nature, including the Mekong, the proper decision is to adapt, not meet problems with dynamite.

(https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/1357227/dont-touch-the-mekong)

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Indonesia urgently needs to revisit the possibility of repatriating the neediest of its young citizens stranded abroad, whose families had earlier joined ISIS. Most of these children are in camps in northern Syria but there are also small numbers in the Philippines, Afghanistan and Iraq. “Extricating Indonesian Children from ISIS Influence Abroad”, the latest report from the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC) argues that the government could begin by bringing back small groups of unaccompanied children under ten years of age, who pose minimal security risk and are most vulnerable to deteriorating conditions in the camps.“The problem is that health and security conditions are worsening by the day in the Syrian camps, and the children are growing older,” says Dyah Kartika, IPAC analyst. “They need access to schools, a nurturing environment, and medical attention. If the government waits too long, the children will be further exposed to ISIS ideology.” The new report examines a 2019 list of Indonesians in camps and prisons run by the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The Indonesian government has been trying to verify their citizenship, but with pseudonyms, misspellings and bad transliterations, it is a daunting task. At the time the data was collected, between March and June 2019, there were 555 Indonesians in SDF camps and prisons, including 367 children. Among the children, approximately 277 were under the age of ten and 34 were unaccompanied. In June 2021, there are fewer than ten children who are both unaccompanied and under the age of ten that could be prioritized for return. Bringing back children of ISIS families is no easy task. The report analyses the main challenges faced by the Indonesian government. These include definitional issues, bureaucratic competition, the difficulty of verifying nationality, evaluating the toll of exposure to conflict, assessing security risk, and finding relatives or others willing to provide care once the children are returned. In addition, COVID has meant stringent restrictions on travel, placing further obstacles in the way of repatriation. There are several models for rehabilitation of children exposed to violent extremism in Indonesia that could be modified to accommodate the needs of children repatriated from abroad. The report examines these models and argues that the government does not need to have every detail of rehabilitation programs in place before it starts extricating children from ISIS influence. It can start by bringing back the most vulnerable children and then modify programs as needed.

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Don’t Touch the Mekong