THA TON, Thailand (Reuters) -For most of her life, 59-year-old farmer Tip Kamlue has irrigated her fields in northern Thailand with the waters of the Kok River, which flows down from neighbouring Myanmar before joining with the Mekong River that cuts through Southeast Asia.
But since April, after authorities warned residents to stop using the Kok’s water because of concerns over contamination, Tip has been using groundwater to grow pumpkins, garlic, sweet corn and okra.
“It’s like half of me has died,” Tip said, standing by her fields in Tha Ton sub-district, and looking out at the river that she is now forced to shun.
Across mainland Southeast Asia, more than 2,400 mines – many of them illegal and unregulated – could be releasing deadly chemicals such as cyanide and mercury into river water, according to research from the U.S.-based Stimson Center think tank released on Monday.
“The scale is something that’s striking to me,” said Brian Eyler, senior fellow at Stimson, pointing to scores of tributaries of major rivers, like the Mekong, the Salween and the Irrawaddy that are probably highly contaminated.
The Stimson report marks the first comprehensive study of potentially polluting mines in mainland Southeast Asia. Researchers analysed satellite imagery to identify mining activity including 366 alluvial mining sites, 359 heap leach sites and 77 rare earth mines draining into the Mekong basin.
Most alluvial mining sites are gold mines, though some also extract tin and silver. Heap leach mining sites include those for gold, nickel, copper, and manganese extraction.
The Mekong is Asia’s third-largest river and supports the livelihood of more than 70 million people as well as the global export of farm and fisheries products. It was previously perceived to be a clean river system, said Eyler.
“Because so much of the Mekong Basin is essentially ungoverned by national laws and sensible regulations, the basin is unfortunately ripe for this kind of unregulated activity to occur at a high level of intensity and the huge scale that our data reveals,” he said.
The toxic chemicals released through unregulated rare earths mining include ammonium sulphate, and sodium cyanide and mercury that are used for two different types of gold mining, according to Stimson researchers.
That exposes not only the millions of people who live along the Mekong in Southeast Asia to health risks, but also consumers elsewhere.
“There is not a major supermarket in the U.S. that doesn’t have products from the Mekong Basin, including shrimp, rice and fish,” said Eyler.
The emergence of new China-backed rare earth mines in eastern Myanmar, not far from the mountainous border with Thailand, initially set off concerns among researchers of the danger of downstream pollution along the Kok River, including areas like Tha Ton.
The contamination pattern on samples from the Kok River shows the presence of arsenic – linked to rare earth and gold mining – alongside heavy rare earths like dysprosium and terbium, said Tanapon Phenrat of Thailand Science Research and Innovation, a Thai government research agency.
“It has only been two years since the rise of rare earth and gold mining in Myanmar at the Kok River’s source,” said Tanapon, who conducted testing of the waters this year and warns of a sharp rise in contamination levels unless mining is stopped. Tanapon was not involved in the Stimson study.
Myanmar, which erupted in conflict after the military seized power in 2021, is one of the world’s largest producers of heavy rare earths, critical minerals infused into magnets that power the likes of wind turbines, electric vehicles and defence systems.
From mining sites in Myanmar, the raw material is transported for processing to China, which has a near-monopoly over production of these vital magnets, with Beijing deploying rare earths as leverage in its tariff war with the U.S.
Mines across Myanmar and Laos use in-situ leaching for rare earth elements that was initially developed within China, according to Stimson’s Eyler.
“In general, Chinese nationals work on these mines as managers and technical experts,” he said.
In response to questions from Reuters, China’s foreign ministry said it was not aware of the situation.
“The Chinese side has consistently required overseas Chinese enterprises to conduct their production and business operations in accordance with local laws and regulations, and to adopt stringent measures to protect the environment,” it said.
The Thai government has established three new task forces to coordinate international cooperation, monitor the mines’ health impact and secure alternative supplies for communities along the Kok, Sai, Mekong and Salween rivers, said Deputy Prime Minister Suchart Chomklin.
In northern Tha Ton, signs still hang on a bridge over the Kok River, calling for authorities to shut down the rare earths mines upriver, and farmers like Tip are desperate for an intervention.
“I just want the Kok River to be the way it used to be – where we could eat from it, bathe in it, play in it, and use it for farming,” she said.
“I hope someone will help make that happen.”
(Additional reporting by Vijdan Mohammad Kawoosa, Julio-Cesar Chavez and Gershon Peaks; Editing by Kate Mayberry)
1883-1945 – Cochin-China, southern Vietnam, and Annam and Tonkin, central and northern Vietnam, along with Cambodia and Laos make up colonial empire French Indochina.
1946 – Communists in the north begin fighting France for control of the country.
1949 – France establishes the State of Vietnam in the southern half of the country.
1951 – Ho Chi Minh becomes leader of Dang Lao Dong Vietnam, the Vietnam Worker’s Party, in the north.
North Vietnam was communist. South Vietnam was not. North Vietnamese Communists and South Vietnamese Communist rebels, known as the Viet Cong, wanted to overthrow the South Vietnamese government and reunite the country.
1954 – North Vietnamese begin helping South Vietnamese rebels fight South Vietnamese troops, thus BEGINS the Vietnam conflict.
April 30, 1975 – South Vietnam surrenders to North Vietnam as North Vietnamese troops enter Saigon, ENDING the Vietnam conflict.
The war was estimated to cost about $200 billion.
Anti-war opinion increased in the United States from the mid-1960s on, with rallies, teach-ins, and other forms of demonstration.
North Vietnamese guerrilla forces used the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a network of jungle paths and mountain trails, to send supplies and troops into South Vietnam.
The bombing of North Vietnam surpassed the total tonnage of bombs dropped on Germany, Italy and Japan in World War II.
Today, Vietnam is a communist state.
Source: Dept. of Defense
8,744,000 – Total number of US Troops that served worldwide during Vietnam 3,403,000 served in Southeast Asia 2,594,000 served in South Vietnam
The total of American servicemen listed as POW/MIA at the end of the war was 2,646. As of April 12, 2024, 1,577 soldiers remain unaccounted for.
Battle: 47,434 Non-Battle: 10,786 Total In-Theatre: 58,220
1.3 million – Total military deaths for all countries involved
1 million – Total civilian deaths
September 2, 1945 – Vietnam declares independence from France. Neither France nor the United States recognizes this claim. US President Harry S. Truman aids France with military equipment to fight the rebels known as Viet Minh.
May 1954 – The Battle of Dien Bien Phu results in serious defeat for the French and peace talks in Geneva. The Geneva Accords end the French Indochina War.
July 21, 1954 – Vietnam signs the Geneva Accords and divides into two countries at the 17th parallel, the Communist-led north and US-supported south.
1957-1963 – North Vietnam and the Viet Cong fight South Vietnamese troops. Hoping to stop the spread of communism in Southeast Asia, the United States sends more aid and military advisers to help the South Vietnamese government. The number of US military advisers in Vietnam grows from 900 in 1960 to 11,000 in 1962.
1964-1969 – By 1964, the Viet Cong, the Communist guerrilla force, has 35,000 troops in South Vietnam. The United States sends more and more troops to fight the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese, with the number of US troops in Vietnam peaking at 543,000 in April 1969. Anti-war sentiment in the United States grows stronger as the troop numbers increase.
August 2, 1964 – Gulf of Tonkin – The North Vietnamese fire on a US destroyer anchored in the Gulf of Tonkin. After US President Lyndon Johnson falsely claims that there had been a second attack on the destroyer, Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which authorizes full-scale US intervention in the Vietnam War. Johnson orders the bombing of North Vietnam in retaliation for the Tonkin attack.
August 5, 1964 – Johnson asks Congress for the power to go to war against the North Vietnamese and the Communists for violating the Geneva Accords against South Vietnam and Laos. The request is granted August 7, 1964, in a Congressional joint resolution.
January 30, 1968 – Tet Offensive – The North Vietnamese launch a massive surprise attack during the festival of the Vietnamese New Year, called Tet. The attack hits 36 major cities and towns in South Vietnam. Both sides suffer heavy casualties, but the offensive demonstrates that the war will not end soon or easily. American public opinion against the war increases, and the US begins to reduce the number of troops in Vietnam.
March 16, 1968 – My Lai Massacre – About 400 women, children and elderly men are massacred by US forces in the village of My Lai in South Vietnam. Lieutenant William L. Calley Jr. is later court-martialed for leading the raid and sentenced to life in prison for his role but is released in 1974 when a federal court overturns the conviction. Calley is the only soldier ever convicted in connection with the event.
April 1970 – Invasion of Cambodia – US President Richard Nixon orders US and South Vietnamese troops to invade border areas in Cambodia and destroy supply centers set up by the North Vietnamese. The invasion sparks more anti-war protests, and on June 3, 1970, Nixon announces the completion of troop withdrawal.
May 4, 1970 – National Guard units fire into a group of demonstrators at Kent State University in Ohio. The shots kill four students and wound nine others. Anti-war demonstrations and riots occur on hundreds of other campuses throughout May.
February 8, 1971 – Invasion of Laos – Under orders from Nixon, US and South Vietnamese ground troops, with the support of B-52 bombers, invade southern Laos in an effort to stop the North Vietnamese supply routes through Laos into South Vietnam. This action is done without consent of Congress and causes more anti-war protests in the United States.
January 27, 1973 –A cease-fire is arranged after peace talks.
March 29, 1973 – The last American ground troops leave. Fighting begins again between North and South Vietnam, but the United States does not return.
Southeast Asian foreign ministers have called for a “Myanmar-owned and led solution” to the crisis in Myanmar that began when the military seized power in a coup three years ago, and has left thousands dead.
The call from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) followed a meeting on Monday of the 10-member grouping’s foreign ministers in Laos, which was attended by an official from Myanmar for the first time in two years.
The ministers also gave their backing to efforts by Alounkeo Kittikhoun, Laos’s special envoy on the crisis, in “reaching out to parties concerned”.
Myanmar was plunged into crisis when the generals removed the elected government of civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi on February 1, 2021, and seized power, responding with brutal force to mass protests against its rule and sparking an armed uprising.
More than 4,400 civilians have been killed since and the military is holding nearly 20,000 people in detention, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a local monitoring group.
ASEAN, which Myanmar joined in 1997, has been leading international diplomatic efforts on Myanmar but has made little progress since unveiling the so-called five-point consensus to end the crisis at a summit attended by coup leader Min Aung Hlaing shortly after the power grab.
The generals have ignored the plan and have been banned from attending ASEAN’s summits and ministerial meetings.
Laos, a one-party communist state on Myanmar’s northeastern border, is chairing ASEAN this year.
Kittikhoun travelled to Myanmar earlier this month where he met Min Aung Hlaing and the two discussed “efforts of the government to ensure peace and stability”, according to Myanmar’s state media. Neither ASEAN nor Laos have commented on the trip and it is unclear whether he met any anti-coup groups.
The conflict has deepened since an alliance of anti-coup forces and ethnic armed groups began a major offensive towards the end of last year in northern Shan State and western Rakhine.
The alliance claims to have overrun dozens of military outposts and taken control of key towns.
More than 2.6 million people have been forced from their homes over three years of fighting.
The military government has shown no willingness to open talks with its opponents and describes them as “terrorists”. It has also accused ASEAN of interfering in its internal affairs.
Laos stresses engagement
The ASEAN statement did not elaborate on whether the “Myanmar-owned and led solution” would involve discussions with the National Unity Government, the administration established by elected politicians who were removed in the coup as well as supporters of democracy in the wake of the power grab.
The military sent Marlar Than Htike, the ASEAN’s permanent secretary at the Foreign Ministry, to the meeting in Laos, accepting for the first time ASEAN’s invitation for it to send a “non-political” representative to meetings.
Laos’s Foreign Minister Saleumxay Kommasith welcomed Myanmar’s attendance.
“This time we feel a little bit optimistic that the engagement may work, although we have to admit that the issues that are happening in Myanmar will not resolve overnight,” he said.
“We are sure that the more we engage Myanmar, the more understanding … about the real situation that is happening in Myanmar.”
The crisis has caused friction within ASEAN with some members pushing for a firmer line with the military and engagement with the NUG.
A spokesman from Indonesia, which chaired the grouping last year, insisted Monday’s attendance was not a sign that policy had changed.
“It is true that a Myanmar representative was present at the ASEAN FM meeting in Luang Prabang. The attendance was not by a minister-level or political representative. So, it is still in line with the 2022 agreement of the ASEAN leaders,” Lalu Muhamad Iqbal told the AFP news agency.
Laos’s Foreign Minister Kommasith told reporters that Thailand would provide more humanitarian assistance to Myanmar.
“We think humanitarian assistance is the priority for the immediate period of time when implementing the five-point consensus,” he said, referring to the April 2021 consensus.
The plan calls for the immediate cessation of violence in Myanmar, a dialogue among all concerned parties, mediation by an ASEAN special envoy, provision of humanitarian aid through ASEAN channels and a visit to Myanmar by the special envoy to meet all concerned parties.
Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Brunei and Laos have a combined population of nearly 650 million people and a total gross domestic product (GDP) of more than $3 trillion.
Laos is the group’s poorest nation and one of its smallest.
It has close ties to China with which it also shares a border.
Bangkok, Thailand – The Golden Triangle – a region where the jungle borders of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet – has long been notorious as the centre of an illegal drug trade operated, controlled and protected by warlord-like military leaders allied with regional organised crime figures.
Synthetic drugs produced in the Golden Triangle have flooded regional markets. In 2021 alone, more than a billion methamphetamine pills were seized by authorities in Southeast and East Asia, according to the United Nations.
Organised crime syndicates and armed groups had joined forces in the Golden Triangle, with their expanded drug production exploiting the twin vulnerabilities of the recent pandemic and political instability in Myanmar, the UN said last year, leading to a drugs trade described as “staggering” in scale.
New data released last month by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) also showed that opium poppy cultivation has surged by 33 percent in the Golden Triangle and opium yields have the potential to burgeon by 88 percent.
Last year, 40,000 hectares (99,000 acres) of opium poppies were cultivated in Myanmar, with an estimated potential opium yield of almost 800 metric tonnes.
Myanmar’s overall illicit opiate economy is now estimated to be worth $2bn while the regional market for heroin is valued at a staggering $10bn, according to the UN.
The resurgence of opium production in the highlands of the Golden Triangle will reverberate all the way down to the “wider drug economy centred around the lower Mekong region” and far beyond, the UN warned.
To understand the forces at play in the Golden Triangle drug trade, Al Jazeera spoke with Jeremy Douglas, UNODC’s regional representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
Al Jazeera: At the recent launch of the UNODC report on opium poppy cultivation in Myanmar, a key theme was that the Golden Triangle is back. Can you please expand on that?
Douglas: The Golden Triangle has always been there but what we’ve seen over recent years is a really stark shift from opium and heroin towards methamphetamine and recently some ketamine.
That change was extremely profound and it started as we saw a migration of major organised crime into the Golden Triangle to produce synthetic drugs in late 2013.
The situation that has taken hold after February ’21 [when the military seized power in Myanmar] is that the dynamic in the Triangle has changed yet again. We’ve seen a further scale-up of synthetic drugs but we’ve also seen a severe economic contraction in the country and a return of the other side of the Golden Triangle – the traditional opium, [and] the heroin that follows – in a profound way.
So we’re seeing the Golden Triangle return to its roots to some extent, and at the same time, the synthetic drug economy remains outsized.
Al Jazeera: Why had opium production dropped off in the Golden Triangle?
Douglas: A variety of factors. There was the massive supply that was coming out of Afghanistan … which was feeding global markets. And then around 2014, 2015, we started seeing a massive surge of synthetic drugs following the migration of major crime groups’ operations into the Triangle and the supply starting to drive demand, drive the regional market, and a significant increase in synthetic drug use across the region.
At the same time, there was another phenomenon that took place in 2014 when Myanmar opened and foreign investment flooded in. The economy inside the country profoundly changed. A lot of people who would have had no other choice but to engage in opium farming … had other [opportunities]. There were other forms of income being generated in the country which they could benefit from.
And we were running some programmes which are really good to help farmers transition out of opium towards crops like high-value coffee and tea.
UNODC staff collect data on opium cultivation in Myanmar in 2022 [Courtesy of UNODC]
Al Jazeera: The UN notes the regional impact that the increase in opium production in the Golden Triangle will have. Can you speak to that?
Douglas: The increase in opium that has taken place over the past year will result in an increase in heroin supply. An increase which will feed into the regional market – a suddenly more diverse drug market. And this additional challenge has a profound health impact.
Heroin is an injectable drug which brings with it health and societal impacts. It will also generate further wealth for traffickers, which is going to … involve a range of other illicit activities like money laundering and precursor trafficking, that are already a challenge for the region to deal with.
So when we say regional impact, we mean there’s the immediate health issues that I’ve touched on and the fact is that the countries of this region are going to experience the brunt of this, like they are experiencing the brunt of the methamphetamine, the ketamine.
Al Jazeera: Are we going to see opium poppy cultivation continue to increase in the Golden Triangle?
Douglas: Right now, we’re collecting and verifying in the field, but initial reports from the teams are that we’re looking at further increase. The question is the magnitude of it, we simply don’t know.
Al Jazeera: The situation with the drug trade in Myanmar appears to be inextricably linked to the political situation in Myanmar. That one has to be solved to resolve the other.
Douglas: You cannot separate economics from politics, security and stability in any country. And when you have a political crisis of this nature and a pre-existing illicit economy that was sizeable – and you have a contraction in the real economy to the extent that it has happened – of course, the illicit economy will step in and fill the void.
Fundamentally, there has to be a candid, honest discussion about the convergence of politics, economics, security and the drug trade in the country – illicit economies – and it is, in fact, a regionalised illicit economy. The borderlands of Thailand and Laos are profoundly impacted and they will be increasingly impacted in the years ahead.
But the impact cascades across East and Southeast Asia and addressing it will require political engagement by neighbouring countries, but also by the ASEAN group and China together with Myanmar.
Jeremy Douglas, Southeast Asia and the Pacific regional representative for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime [File: Hoang Dinh Nam/AFP]
Al Jazeera: You have said that corruption greases the wheels of the drug trade. How systematic and organised is the corruption around the drug trade in the Golden Triangle?
Douglas: Corruption is inbuilt in the drug trade. For the heroin to move from the labs of northern Shan [state] to Thailand, there would have to be pre-arranged payment agreed. Payments would also be made when it gets to the Thai border where the price per kg escalates. If authorities tasked with interdiction on the Thai border are not successful, drugs get through. But, at the same time, there’s always the potential for corruption at the border.
In essence, what I’m describing is the chain: from source right through to export and end market involves corruption.
Al Jazeera: You have also mentioned the role of money laundering. Profits are so massive in the drug trade that those profits have to go somewhere.
Douglas: Increasingly large drug profits have had to move somewhere and casinos have played a special role in recent years. As have other cash-based businesses that built up around them, some of the hotels, some of the entertainment businesses. They can take in cash which is then pushed through their books and which can end up in banks.
So, it is important for the casino industry to be carefully monitored and possibly worked with to help address the laundering. As well, banks that are banking on behalf of casinos in the Mekong [region] have to be aware that much or some of the money going through them is associated with the drug trade and it ends up in the regional banking system.
Al Jazeera: Could you speak to your description of opium farming as an employer of last resort?
Douglas: I would say our understanding from the farmers – and we’ve talked to them for years and years – is that they’re ready to give up opium. They turn to opium when they don’t have other options. And as they lose options or they don’t have other opportunities, they go back to it. So in a sense, when I say last resort, I mean it’s like an employer of last resort. It’s the old standby in a way … And especially now as they’re being incentivised and helped to go back into it by brokers that are representatives of heroin producers, and without other options, they go back to it.
Al Jazeera: Heroin producers encourage farmers to produce opium. Is there also a degree of intimidation there as well?
Douglas: So what we have been informed of by people from across the opium-producing areas is that representatives that buy opium have come into the territories, encouraged farmers to go back to it, provided seeds, fertilisers, and in some parts irrigation and sprinkler equipment.
They finance certain costs and then come back and buy their crop back from them and collect money for what they helped them get started with – the starting materials. It’s almost like a contract farming type arrangement like you see with other crops or agricultural products in the region. But I should say as well that they’re not pleasant to deal with, is what we are told by the farmers. They’re being advised to go into this. But, the techniques that are used can be “We want you to go back and do opium farming”, if you know what I mean.
And it’s a difficult proposition to say no to when you have someone come to you who is representing powerful interests. How does a poor farmer or village say no to those powerful interests?
Al Jazeera: What of the role of ethnic armed organisations in this? Do they rationalise what they do behind a philosophy of earning income from opium that allows them to buy weapons to fight for their freedom?
Douglas: I think there used to be that element of it and I think maybe that is still there. But I think we should not romanticise the involvement in drug trafficking and the partnerships with organised crime. Traffickers are business people. Heroin and methamphetamine traffickers are fundamentally ruthless business people.
They’re in the drug trade to make a lot of money. So while there is money from the business that finances groups and armed resistance, there are others including some major traffickers that disingenuously wear a uniform because it gives them a certain level of legitimacy. But at the end of the day, they’re traffickers, they’re organised crime figures.
An opium poppy field in flower in Myanmar’s Shan state, December 2022 [Courtesy of UNODC]
Al Jazeera: What is the relationship between the Myanmar government and some of the ethnic armed groups that are cultivating opium?
Douglas: There are groups that are under the umbrella of the security services of Myanmar and there are others which are not under that umbrella, which are independent and advocating for their autonomy. The ones under the umbrella have a formalised relationship, and they have their territory and they’re more or less left alone.
It’s hard to believe that they don’t know what’s going on in territory of the border guard or people’s militia forces, which we know, and the Thais know, and everyone seems to know, are involved. But then there’s the others, which are not under that umbrella, and many are producing and trafficking as well. And so it’s an extremely complex landscape of who’s producing and who’s not.
Al Jazeera: With a civil war in Myanmar, armed groups and drugs, how can you be hopeful in a situation like that?
Douglas: I think there are some, from time to time, signs of hope. Given what we’ve described, though, in terms of the synthetic drug economy and now opium and heroin, the related criminality, these are really difficult times for the country and the region. But again, that’s why we have to redouble efforts, quite frankly, and why we are saying to the region it’s time to have a political and strategic discussion about this.
The region cannot police its way out of this. It’s not going to work. So while it isn’t an optimistic situation, it’s a situation that has to be dealt with and we’ve got to get to that point, of candidly getting leadership to say it’s time now to do something different here.
A police officer from the Office of the Narcotics Control Board guards bags of methamphetamine pills during a destruction ceremony in Ayutthaya province, north of Bangkok, Thailand, 2015 [File: Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters]
Al Jazeera: Drug interdiction and policing alone are not a solution?
Douglas: The drug policy of this region is heavily tilted in a certain direction, which clearly hasn’t really worked well.
It’s been decades of trying to seize more drugs, and it’s more drugs every year. Let’s be honest, it’s not working. And we’ve been saying it for years. Address demand. Prevent the growth in demand, and address the health and societal impacts. But also adjust law enforcement strategy. You cannot seize your way out of this, particularly with synthetic drugs, which are infinite.
You have to radically change your approach. You have to dismantle the business model of organised crime. Disrupt their banking, disrupt their chemical trade, disrupt the facilitators of their business, their lawyers, their money launderers. They have to be dealt with.
The problem is the region continues to chase the drug supply and make seizures and measure their success by seizures. Clearly, that’s not working.
We hope that regional leaders will start prioritising this beyond policing because right now it’s still a police discussion. So we have to get beyond that and it has to be changed at a policy level.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has oozed a casual resentment when describing the “irreversible and even tectonic changes” that he says have led the West to become a spent force in the world.
“Western countries are striving to maintain a former world order that is beneficial only to them,” he told attendees at the Eastern Economic Forum in the Russian city of Vladivostok in September.
Those days were numbered, he insisted.
The future was in the “dynamic, promising countries and regions of the world, primarily the Asia Pacific region”, he said. Putin was followed on the podium by Myanmar coup leader Min Aung Hlaing – the symbolism was not lost on close observers of regional politics.
This week Putin was invited to attend the Group of 20 meeting, which opens on Tuesday on the Indonesian island of Bali. It appeared to be the perfect venue for him to double down on his overtures to the Asia Pacific, particularly in Southeast Asia — one of the world’s most economically dynamic regions.
But it was not to be.
Putin skipped his moment in the Balinese sun due to undefined “scheduling” reasons.
With Putin a no-show, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had a captive audience when he addressed the summit virtually on Tuesday after his invitation to attend by the summit’s host, Indonesian President Joko Widodo.
Putin’s absence from the G20 also undercuts “talk of a Russian pivot to Asia”, wrote Susannah Patton of the Lowy Institute, an Australian think tank.
Now with the Russian army retreating in parts of Ukraine and international sanctions biting deeply into Russia’s economy, some old friends in Southeast Asia appear to be avoiding direct eye contact as Putin looks east. Others are actively looking the other way, and Myanmar seems to be Moscow’s last true friend in the region.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Myanmar’s Senior General Min Aung Hlaing meet at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russia, in September 2022 [File: Valery Sharifulin/Sputnik/Kremlin pool via AP]
Hanoi, in particular, remembers Russian support during the war against the US-backed regime in South Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s — a war from which it emerged victorious in 1975.
Vietnam and Laos abstained from UN resolutions condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the annexation of Ukrainian territory, and voted against suspending Russia from the UN Human Rights Council.
In Monday’s vote on a resolution requiring Russia to pay reparations for the damage caused to Ukraine, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia were among the 73 members of the assembly that abstained. Among countries in the region, only Singapore and the Philippines backed the resolution.
Vietnamese communist soldiers moving forward under covering fire from a heavy machine gun during the Vietnam War, circa 1968 [File: Three Lions/Hulton Archive/Getty Images]
Vietnam’s decision to abstain at the UN is perfectly legal, argued Huynh Tam Sang, a lecturer at Ho Chi Minh City University of Social Sciences and Humanities. But it is also “morally questionable” as Vietnam had failed to defend the “principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity”, he writes. That is no small oversight for a country whose successful liberation struggles against foreign occupiers — China, France, and the United States — is a defining national motif.
“Vietnam’s move is aimed at avoiding criticism and potential retaliation from Moscow,” said Huynh Tam Sang, pointing out the material behind the fraternal: trade links between Hanoi and Moscow amounted to almost $2.5bn in the first eight months of this year, and Russia is a primary investor in Vietnam’s oil and gas sectors.
Russia is also Vietnam’s largest arms supplier.
“It is not in Vietnam’s interests for Russia to be weakened,” Carlyle A Thayer, emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales Canberra, told Al Jazeera in a recent interview.
Historical threads
Vietnam’s support for Russia needs to be understood in terms of Hanoi’s traditionally fraught relationship with neighbouring China. Vietnam fought its own border war with China in 1979 and has often relied on its relations with Moscow as a counterweight to pressure from its historic rival.
Neighbouring Cambodia, however, with its Putin-esque authoritarian leader Hun Sen who has held power for 37 years, has shown surprising insubordination to its former Soviet-era aid donor and political supporter.
The then Soviet Union was one of the earliest countries to help rebuild Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge regime when the government in Phnom Penh — installed by Vietnam — faced near-total Western sanctions. One of Phnom Penh’s most popular markets is still known as the “Russian Market” owing to the large population of Russian diplomats and technical assistants from Soviet states who frequented its stalls during the 1980s.
Just last year, Hun Sen received Russia’s Order of Friendship medal.
Vladimir Putin shakes hands with Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen during their meeting at the ASEAN-Russia summit, in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Russia, in 2016 [File: Alexander Zemlianichenko, pool/AP Photo]
But that has not prevented the Cambodian leader from taking a “surprisingly hard-line stand” against Moscow over the war in Ukraine, according to Ian Storey, a senior fellow at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.
Hun Sen has not just called Russia’s invasion of Ukraine an “act of aggression”, but he has also questioned Russia’s ability to emerge victorious, and expressed a willingness to take in Ukrainian refugees, Storey notes.
Hun Sen’s pro-Ukraine stance appeared to prompt the Russian ambassador to remind him in a tweet that it was Moscow who came to Cambodia’s assistance “in the most difficult period in its history” following the Khmer Rouge.
📌 Discussed both history and prospects of 🇷🇺🇰🇭 relations at the online conference within the project “#Russia in the South Seas”. Our two nations have always maintained friendly relations. It was Moscow that assisted Phnom Penh in the most difficult period in its history. pic.twitter.com/GMpm9HUOBD
Phnom Penh has been a cosponsor of condemnatory UN resolutions on Russia’s invasion — although it has abstained on some Ukraine-related votes — and more recently, Hun Sen invited Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to address by video link last weekend’s summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Phnom Penh. The invitation was apparently torpedoed by the need for consensus among the ASEAN leaders.
Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia have been more cautious in their public pronouncements on the war, with G20 host Indonesia careful to preserve its traditional non-aligned stance.
But, Indonesia’s Widodo did visit Kyiv first and Moscow the next day in late June when he went to discuss the global food crisis with Zelenskyy and Putin, and presumably extend personal invitations to the Bali summit.
Russian market for arms
Russia’s arms industry is the “single largest supplier of major weaponry to Southeast Asia”, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
Russia accounted for more than a quarter of all major weapons deliveries to the region over the past 20 years, according to SIPRI, and when Moscow cannot sell its weapons for hard cash, it has been willing to do barter deals or provide loans instead.
The Indonesian government planned to buy 11 Russian-made Sukhoi Su-35 fighter aircraft from Russia in a deal that involved payment of half the cost with the equivalent in agricultural and other produce, according to reports.
In the Philippines, Russia said in 2018 that it was “more than willing” to provide a soft loan so that Manila could buy its first-ever — but Russian-built — submarine, the country’s Philippine News Agency reported.
As SIPRI points out, sales of Russian weaponry to Southeast Asia are “an important element of Russia’s total export income and essential to maintaining the economic viability of the Russian arms industry”.
But with US sanctions imposed on Russia following its annexation of Crimea in 2014 and alleged interference in the 2016 US presidential election, some regional governments have already begun to move away from Russia.
Manila did not buy the Russian submarine, and Jakarta announced in December that the Sukhoi fighter deal was dead.
Now, with a plethora of Ukraine war-related sanctions awaiting those dealing with Moscow, Russia’s export arms industry looks set to feel the collateral damage of Putin’s Ukraine invasion.
The government of Marcos Jr’s predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, had signed the deal with Russia in November 2021. But even Duterte wanted to put distance between himself and Putin, whom he had once described as his idol, after the Ukraine invasion.
“I’ve long told you Filipinos that I really kill. But I kill criminals, I don’t kill children and the elderly,” he said, comparing his brutality to that of Putin in Ukraine.
“We’re in two different worlds,” he added.
’21st-century imperialism’
The Southeast Asia outlier is military-ruled Myanmar, which has thrown its full support behind Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Already warm relations between Russia and Myanmar have deepened further since the invasion of Ukraine and last year’s coup by the military that toppled the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.
As the International Crisis Group notes, the Myanmar military has positioned itself as “Russia’s most uncritical post-invasion partner in Asia”, and Russia has backed the military regime in terms of providing international diplomatic cover and advanced weaponry.
Ian Storey of the ISEAS sees three factors at work: “Diplomatic validation, arms sales and energy cooperation.”
Military leader Min Aung Hlaing has declared Russia to be Myanmar’s “forever friend”, in comparison with China being described merely as a “close friend”, as Storey notes.
Similar to Vietnam, Myanmar’s military also needs Russia as an alternate supplier of weapons and a counterweight to China. Myanmar announced in September it would buy Russian oil and pay in roubles.
But the Russia-Myanmar relationship is more than an odious alliance, it is also a timebomb for ASEAN.
Storey notes that Moscow’s arms shipments are driving the Myanmar regime’s ability to wage a sustained war against its population and armed ethnic groups, which undermines the potential for peace talks and a negotiated settlement, which ASEAN wants to see achieved.
In this image taken from drone video provided by Free Burma Rangers, black smoke rises from burning buildings in Waraisuplia village in Kayah State, Myanmar, in February 2022, where the military targeted civilians in air and ground attacks [Free Burma Rangers via AP]
Gregory Poling, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC, said Southeast Asia’s relationship with Russia is complex.
Russia does, traditionally, hold appeal for those with anti-Western sentiment in the region, and Putin’s hyper-masculine image chimes in a region with a history of personalist, strongman politics.
Countries in the region “look and see a resurgent Russian empire, and that this is imperialism in the 21st Century,” Poling said.
That sentiment was articulated in a speech by Singapore’s foreign minister, Vivian Balakrishnan, condemning Russia’s invasion and announcing sanctions on Moscow in February, Poling said.
“Ukraine is much smaller than Russia, but it is much bigger than Singapore,” Bakakrishnan said at the time.
“A world order based on ‘might is right’, or where ‘the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must’, such a world order would be profoundly inimical to the security and survival of small states,” he said.
![An opium poppy field in flower in Myanmar's Shan State in December 2022 [Courtesy of UNODC]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Opium-fields-flowering-central-Shan_December-2022.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C578)
