You wouldn't know it from the Australian press, but there is a major drought in southeastern China producing devastating effects in three provinces: Yunnan, Guangxi and Guzhou.

Described as the worst drought in 60 years, its effects are most serious in Yunnan, where there has been no worthwhile rain since July 2009, drinking water is running short for nearly 5 million people and the economic loss in the agricultural sector is already close to A$1 billion. There is no expectation of relief rains until May at the earliest.

The drought is having a striking effect on the Mekong River (known in China as the Lancang Jiang), with its level in China reported to be at a 50-year low.

International shipping between southern Yunnan and the northern Thai river port at Chiang Saen has been interrupted, with no fewer than 21 boats having been been stranded. While I have not seen any extended commentary on the effect of the drought on the capacity of the three completed Chinese dams on the Mekong in Yunnan province to function in current circumstances, an official has said low water levels 'might effect the electronic plant' of the hydro-power dams. In Thailand there are reports of a sharp and unseasonable drop in the Mekong's level.

As I said in my recent Lowy Paper, 'The Mekong: River Under Threat', the Mekong does not figure much in broader discussion in Thailand except at times of drought. Current developments validate this view. Not only have Thai NGOs called for their government to ask the Chinese authorities in Yunnan about the level of water being held in their Mekong dams, the issue has now been taken up by the Bangkok press. And Thai authorities have indeed taken action, with the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Natural Resources, Saksit Tridech, asking the Mekong River Commission to negotiate with China to release water from dams in Yunnan.

Much has been made recently of the IPCC's unsubstantiated prediction that Himalayan glaciers will disappear by the year 2035.

I referred to this claim in my recent Lowy Paper, 'The Mekong: River Under Threat', published in November 2009, which was essentially concerned with dams on the Mekong but dealt briefly with climate change. In relation to the 2035 date I observed that 'this estimate may be excessively pessimistic', going on to say that 'the fact of the glaciers declining size cannot be disputed'.

In the various press reports seizing on the IPCC's error there have also been suggestions that what was involved was a transposition of digits, so that what had really been predicted was the suggestion the Himalayan glaciers would all be gone by 2350.

The person to whom the 2035 claim was linked, Indian glaciologist Professor Syed Iqbai Husnain, has now stated that he never made such a prediction. Instead, he says, as reported by Bloomberg, 'I had simply told the New Scientist in an interview that the mass of the glaciers will decline in 40 years...The date (2035) was their invention. I was misquoted in the report.'

Several points need to be made. First and foremost is the fact that a very large number of well-regarded scientists and organisations are unequivocal in their statements that the Himalayan glaciers are, indeed, retreating. There is a very much smaller number who reject this claim.

The break between Christmas and the New Year is a wonderful opportunity for reading both in relation to and outside one's research interests. These are some of the books I sampled over this period.

Last year brought the publication of the final volume in Richard J. Evans' trilogy dealing with the rise and fall of the Third Reich, 'The Third Reich At War'. Like the two previous volumes, it is a meticulous analysis of a terrible period in 20th century history, made the more fascinating by Evans' ability to retail the thoughts and concerns of Germans, both prominent and otherwise, about the the war's meaning. The term 'magisterial' is often misused, but it deserves to be applied to this book.

One of the reasons for my fascination with the German state's actions during the Second World War is my concern to try and understand another 'final solution' applied in very different circumstances: the 'autogenocide' as Jean Lacouture called it, in Pol Pot's Cambodia. No single book is ever enough to provide all answers on this grim subject, whether in relation to Germany or Cambodia, and analogy is never more than a partial help to understanding, but Evans is marvellous guide to how and why events took place in Germany.

Given that the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, officially the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), has now been in formal operation for three and a half years, observers with only a casual interest in Cambodia may be surprised to learn that no verdict has yet been brought down against any of the five defendants in custody.

The trial of Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, the director of the S-21 Tuol Sleng extermination centre where more than 14,000 'enemies' of the Khmer Rouge regime were executed after prolonged torture, and which began in March, finally came to an end in November. But it will not be until early 2010 that a verdict is handed down.

This leaves four other defendants awaiting trial: Nuon Chea, the Pol Pot regime's chief ideologue; Khieu Samphan, the regime's chief of state; Ieng Sary, the regime's foreign minister; and Ieng Thirith, Ieng Sary's wife and minister for social affairs. These defendants are to be tried for crimes against humanity. And now it has been announced by the ECCC that Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary and Khieu Samphan will also be indicted for genocide in relation to the persecution of Cambodia's Muslim Cham community and the resident Vietnamese community.

So it could be argued that there has been progress of a sort, but this glacial pattern should probably be judged against other facts that have received far too little attention.

Only because I was told by a friend from Bangkok on 16 December did I learn of the destruction by fire of the venerable Siam Society buildings in Bangkok.

Founded in 1904 and operating under royal patronage, the Siam Society has a claim to be the most most active learned society in contemporary Southeast Asia, though members of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society might dispute this. The once very active Burma Research Society has long since ceased to function, never recovering from its eclipse under the regime of Ne Win.

For scholars concerned with the humanities and social sciences in mainland Southeast Asia, and not just Thailand, the Siam Society has been a focal point with its excellent library in Soi Asoke and because of its outstanding Journal. No doubt it will literally rise from the ashes, but it's difficult not to conclude that the loss of its premises will handicap its activities for some time to come.

Meanwhile, all who have benefited from its existence as a scholarly port of call will hope that this major set-back can be rapidly overcome.

Photo by Flickr user matana, used under a Creative Commons license.

Readers who have consulted my recent Lowy Paper, 'The Mekong: River Under Threat', will be interested to learn of the publication of a joint report by the Australian Mekong Resource Centre (AMRC) of the University of Sydney and Oxfam Australia. With the title, 'Power and Responsibility: The Mekong River Commission and Lower Mekong mainstream dams',  it addresses in greater detail than is the case in my own paper the much-debated issue of the Mekong's governance.

With the Mekong River Commission (MRC) still to produce its own study of the possible effects of projected mainstream dams on the river after it flows out of China, this new paper is timely and realistic.

As I have argued for nearly a decade, many advocacy groups have unfairly criticised the MRC for what it is not. And in this AMRC-Oxfam paper, the limits of the MRC's role are clearly stated. The MRC, the paper notes, is not:

• a supranational organisation with regulatory power;
• an organisation that can make decisions to intervene in its own right; or
• accountable directly to the public.

So the question remains: how is it possible to mandate decisions in the broader interest of all countries through which the Mekong flows if individual states continue to take decisions solely in their perceived national interest?

Given the need to consider this issue against the strong likelihood that mainstream dams will dramatically reduce fish stocks in the Mekong, the AMRC-Oxfam paper repays study.

And it leads to a conclusion which I have argued is beyond dispute: if governance of the Mekong is ever to be achieved in the broad interests of all riparian countries it will only come as the result of commitment at the level of the governments of those countries. It will not be achieved through impassioned criticism of the MRC.

Photo by Flickr user Tobym, used under a Creative Commons license.

The Economist does many things well, not least its regular obituary page, but the offering from Banyan in its latest issue, with the excruciatingly twee pun as the lead, 'Without FEER or favour' to mark the demise of the 'Far Eastern Economic Review' fails signally to meet the mark.

There is little in Banyan's bloodless prose to capture the excitement that hung around the FEER in the sixties through the eighties, and indeed before.

It's fair enough to mention Eric Halpern as the founding editor, but to mark the end of the magazine without a mention of later editors such as David Wilson, or even more so Derek Davies, suggests the author is of a generation that has no sense of the scoops for which the FEER was famous or the rollicking atmosphere of the magazine's newsroom and even more the multi-martini lunches over which Davies presided. (A declaration of interest: I was an occasional contributor to the magazine, a beneficiary of Davies' hospitality more than once, and of the magazine's photo library for illustrations in one of my books.)

It was not by chance that some of the best reporting of what was happening in Indochina was to be found in the Review, particularly by Nayan Chanda, both before and after the Communist victories of 1975. When the Khmer Rouge were ousted from Cambodia in 1979 Chanda was one of the first journalists to report on what was happening in a devastated Phnom Penh.

With Morgan Chua as its principal cartoonist, the FEER could be cheeky visually as well as in prose, a cheekiness that regularly led to its being in trouble with the Singapore government.

Whether or not there was any truth to the story that in its early days the Review was partially backed by money from the British SIS, this was just another aspect of the rich memory that will be left by the magazine in its prime, a prime that sadly disappeared some years ago.

Although receiving minimal coverage in the international press, the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (formally the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia) grinds on at a glacial pace since beginning the trial of its first defendant in February of this year, and having so far cost some US$150 million.

Allegations of corruption among the Tribunal's Cambodian personnel continue to be made and have not been convincingly refuted. Changes at the administrative level have been vigorously criticised by outsiders. And the fact that it is now over three years since the tribunal was formally established has raised justifiable fears about the denial of delayed justice.

Now Prime Minister Hun Sen has again entered the discussion as to whether the tribunal should try more than the existing five defendants currently indicted, sharply denouncing such a possibility as reflecting a wish by outside powers to see 'civil war' in Cambodia.

The first defendant to have come before the court is Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, the chief of the notorious extermination centre at Tuol Sleng, designated by the Khmer Rouge as S-21, where at least 14,000 people were executed, often after months of torture.

There is no doubt about Duch's role, and guilt, as the head of S-21. He has repeatedly admitted to his part in most of what took place there. His lawyers have so far developed two defences: that he acted as he did because to have done otherwise would have led to his own death, and that he did not participate in the executions himself. So far, neither of these issues has been fully resolved.

While attention is focused on the formal legal process that has now begun against Duch, the head of the Tuol Sleng Extermination Centre, far too little attention has been paid to concerns of the Cambodian Government, and in particular Prime Minister Hun Sen, to limit the scope of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (The Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia or ECCC.).

Any doubt that the Government is opposed to extending the tribunal's reach beyond the five former Khmer Rouge figures currently in custody — Duch, now on trial; Nuon Chea, or Brother Number Two; Khieu Samphan, Chief of State; Ieng Sary, Foreign Minister; and Ieng Thirith, Minister for Social Affairs — was dispelled in a speech by Hun Sen on 28 February at Sihanoukville.

The question of whether there should be an effort to try more former Khmer Rouge figures became an issue before the ECCC in December of last year when the UN Co-prosecutor, Robert Petit, sought to extend the reach of the tribunal beyond the five former Khmer Rouge figures now in custody. A motion filed by his Cambodian counterpart, Chea Leang, opposing such a development and stating that to take such action would threaten 'national stability' was made public in January.

Given Chea Leng's close links to the government — she is the niece of Deputy Prime Minister Sok An — there was a presumption among foreign observers that she would not have acted without approval at the highest level. Now, to reinforce that point of view, Prime Minister Hun Sen has warned that putting more Khmer Rouge cadres on trial for crimes committed during Pol Pot's 1975-79 reign of terror could plunge the country back into civil war.

'I would prefer to see this tribunal fail instead of seeing war return to my country,' Hun Sen, himself a former Khmer Rouge commander, said a day after the joint U.N.-Cambodian court resumed its trial of Pol Pot's chief torturer. 'If as many as 20 Khmer Rouge are indicted to stand trial and war returns to Cambodia, who will be responsible for that?,' Hun Sen added.

If nothing else, Hun Sen has been consistent in his wish to have the issue of the Khmer rouge period and those associated with it relegated to the past. As he said as long ago as 1998, Cambodia and its population 'should dig a hole and bury the past'.

Many observers see this as a self-interested desire, given Hun Sen's own links to the Pol Pot regime before he defected to Vietnam in 1977. But since no evidence has ever been found to link Hun Sen to Khmer Rouge atrocities it is probably more correct to surmise that he is concerned about the many other former Khmer Rouge figures at large in contemporary Cambodia, some in positions of considerable influence.

For the Khmer Rouge tribunal to embark on a new search for persons who might be brought to trial might not lead to 'civil war', as Hun Sen suggests, but it could lead to embarrassment for a regime that has chosen to draw a veil over the past.

Photo by Flickr user willposh, used under a Creative Commons license. 

As the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, or ECCC) moves at glacial pace to bring the five defendants held in custody to trial, there has been a development that many commentators had envisaged as likely but which has only now become a reality.

Lawyers for Nuon Chea, known as Brother Number Two and the Khmer Rouge regime's chief ideologue, have now filed documents with the ECCC calling for the appearance before the tribunal of Prime Minister Hun Sen, President of the Senate and Chairman of the Cambodian People's Party Chea Sim, and former king and briefly Head of State of Democratic Kampuchea (DK), the now King Father Norodom Sihanouk.

The intention of this action is clear enough, with Nuon Chea's lawyers seeking to gain advantage from the fact that both Hun Sen and Chea Sim worked with the Khmer Rouge before they defected to Vietnam, in 1977 and 1978 respectively. Sihanouk's association with the Pol Pot regime was much more complicated, as he sought revenge for having been ousted by the coup d'etat of March 1970 and resigned from his powerless position as Head of State in April 1976 a year after Pol Pot and his associates gained power.

Why, the defence lawyers are likely to ask, have individuals such as Nuon Chea been put on trial when at the highest level of the Cambodian Government there are men who also served the Khmer Rouge regime? More...

Yesterday's announcement that Thai Foreign Minister Tej Bunnag has resigned is an important development in the confrontation between Thailand's elected government and a disparate group of opponents united under the title of the People's Alliance for Democracy.

Historian, diplomat and a member of the prominent Bunnag family that has played a role in Thai politics over many decades dating back to the nineteenth century, Tej Bunnag rose to be permanent head of the Thai Foreign Service before moving on to be one of King Bhumibol's closest advisers.

Unexpectedly, he was seconded from his position in the royal court to become foreign minister at the beginning of August at a time when relations between Thailand and Cambodia were deteriorating because of a dispute over territory associated with the Angkorian-period temple of Preah Vihear, a temple for which Cambodia was awarded sovereignty by a decision of the ICJ in 1962, but which is located at the edge of an escarpment that otherwise falls within Thai jurisdiction.

It's reasonable to suppose that Bunnag's appointment had the backing of the king, and it seems that Bunnag played an important part in lowering the temperature of the dispute between the two countries in meetings with the Cambodian foreign minister, Hor Namhong. But he has now resigned 'for personal reasons' associated  with his wife's health and it is impossible to believe that he would have done so without the approval of the palace.

Bunnag's resignation shows that Prime Minister Sama Sundaravej's tenure has become increasingly shaky, as the army is showing little inclination to enforce the state of emergency the prime minister has sought to impose. For his departure has all the elements of a signal that the king wants a rapid end to the uncertainty that grips Thailand.

Photo of Bangkok protests by flickr user johnjan99ca, used under a Creative Commons license.

Cambodia goes to the polls this coming Sunday, 27 July, in what will be the fourth general election since the country returned to something approaching normality in 1993. There is no uncertainty about the result.

Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) will be returned to office, almost certainly with an increased majority and in a result that will sound the political death knell for FUNCINPEC, the party originally associated with former king Norodom Sihanouk but led for most of its existence by Sihanouk’s son, Norodom Ranariddh. Over the past year and a half FUNCINPEC has engaged in self-destructive behaviour marked by the ouster of Ranariddh as the result of his erratic personal life and the tendency of parliamentary party members to defect to the CPP. More...

The near-completion of a new road linking Kunming, the provincial capital of China’s Yunnan province, with Bangkok is the latest step in China’s steadily developing policy of closer physical ties with its southern neighbours. Running for a distance of 1800 km, the event was marked by a ceremony on 31 March attended by the prime ministers of China, Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. The one remaining obstacle to be overcome in the completion of this route is the construction of a bridge across the Mekong River near the Lao town of Huay Xai and the Thai town of Chiang Khong. It is expected to be completed by 2011. More...