by Peter Church
Immediately following Suharto's departure from office, some commentators speculated on the possible breakup of the Indonesian state as waves of ethnic and religious unrest swept the archipelago. In the decade since then, commentators have noted with concern in particular East Timor's succession and independence, separatism in Aceh and Papua (as Irian Jaya is now known), and communal violence in central Sulawesi and Maluku. The 2004 tsunami hit the Acehnese separatist movement (GAM) hard, but succeeded in focusing world attention on their plight and proved to be a catalyst in a comprehensive agreement negotiated in Finland in 2005 in which GAM agreed to abandon its armed independence struggle, disarm its fighters, and accept the integrity of the Indonesian state. In return, the province was granted “self‐rule” and much greater control in keeping and disbursing locally raised revenues (including oil and gas royalties). GAM was legalised and could freely operate as a political party. Its former fighters were granted an amnesty and foreign observers oversaw the phased withdrawal of the Indonesian army from the province. Both sides have largely complied with the terms of the agreement. In 2006, provincial and district elections—pronounced free and fair by international observers—resulted in GAM‐backed candidates winning a convincing majority of positions, including governor and vice governor. Peace agreements were also reached with warring communal groups in central Sulawesi in 2001 and with those in Maluku in 2002. At times sporadic outbreaks of violence still occur, but these are usually quickly contained by local security forces before they have a chance to spread. Also too much should not be read into the case of East Timor. Its independence is highly unlikely to threaten the future unity of the Indonesian state as East Timor was, for most Indonesians, a special case since the UN and most countries never formally recognised Indonesia's annexation.
Elsewhere in Indonesia the idea of being Indonesian is still strong among the elites, not only in Java but throughout the other provinces. Few want to break up the nation. The hostility of non‐Java elites, until recently most obvious in Aceh, is directed not at the idea of Indonesia but at what they see as the Javanisation of Indonesia and the unfair drainage of revenue to Java under Suharto's rule. A less centralised state, begun under Habibie and continued by his successors, has dissipated much of this tension. Nevertheless, the structure of the Indonesian state will continue to undergo change.
Marking a sea change in the country's politics, Joko Widodo (usually known by his nickname of “Jokowi”) was elected as president in July 2014. Previously he was mayor of Surakarta from 2005 to 2012 and governor of Jakarta from 2012 to 2014 and had run a small furniture business in the past. He is the first Indonesian president not to have emerged from the country's political elite or as an army general. He has a clean and efficient reputation and is very much seen as a man of the people. However, as a relative newcomer to Jakarta and its long‐established political and business elites, he has had limited success in pushing through his objectives where these threaten the interests of those elites. Other than policies to reduce corruption and improve the welfare of the poor, Jokowi aspires for Indonesia to become a global maritime power. He believes that as a maritime country, Indonesia must assert itself as a force between the Indian and Pacific oceans.
One personal policy he has pushed quite differently from his immediate predecessors is the use of the death penalty for convicted drug dealers. Since becoming president he has executed convicted drug dealers from many countries including Australia, Brazil, and the Netherlands despite strong representation from the governments of those countries. However, based on the popular support president Duterte of the Philippines has received for extra‐judicial killings of suspected drug dealers (just as former prime minister Thaksin found many years earlier in Thailand), while Indonesia's execution of foreign nationals may concern the governments of those executed, such executions will either be supported or be a non‐issue for most Indonesians.
Indonesia is the giant of South‐East Asia, both in its geographic reach and population, and the stability of South‐East Asia depends to a large extent on Indonesia's political and economic health. At the time of publication, Indonesia is in a positive position compared to a number of its neighbours although red tape, corruption, and a rising sense of nationalism (and particularly in the resources sector) certainly can hold the country back.
5
Lao PDR
The Lao People's Democratic Republic or Lao PDR (previously Laos) occupies an area of some 237,000 square kilometres but only has a small population of around seven million. It is a land‐locked country, sharing borders with Thailand, Burma, China, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Much of it is mountainous, and only about 5 percent of the land is under continuous cultivation. Primary or secondary jungle (the latter resulting from transient slash‐and‐burn farming) covers 75 percent of land area.
As a nation, Laos is a semi‐artificial creation of the colonial era. The French devised its borders, cutting through many diverse ethnolinguistic groups. The preponderant Lao lowlanders brought to the emerging nation a long history of bitter division amongst themselves. Laos, as a neighbour of Vietnam, would also be wracked by ideological division and war for 30 years after World War II.
In 1975, the area of Laos was united under one indigenous government for the first time in almost 300 years. The doctrinaire socialism of this government led, however, to economic stagnation and the flight of almost 10 percent of the country's population across the Mekong River into Thailand. Today, the government, at least ostensibly, pursues “market socialism,” welcoming domestic and foreign private enterprise and aid from the capitalist world. But the country's geography, ethnic complexity, and turbulent history mean that Laos is starting from far behind most South‐East Asian countries in nation‐building and economic development. Even by official figures, by 2002 a quarter of the urban and half of the rural population were living below the poverty line, and the UN estimated that nearly half of all children were stunted as a result of having an inadequate diet. The same proportion of adults were illiterate.
THE CREATION OF LAOS AND ITS EARLIER HISTORY
The borders of the modern state of Laos were established by the French colonial government in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They were based primarily on French strategic and administrative considerations, paying regard to the region's human geography and traditional political relationships where it suited the French to do so. They sliced through ethnic groupings and historic sociopolitical ties, arbitrarily determining the future population of the country.
The population of the newly defined territory was relatively sparse—about 819,000 people were counted in 1921—but nevertheless ethnically and culturally complex. A little over half the population were of Tai ethno‐linguistic origin, one result of the great migration which scholars believe brought Tai peoples out of western China into mainland South‐East Asia between the 7th and 13th centuries, and ultimately located Tai stock not only in modern Thailand, but also in eastern Burma, in Laos, and in north‐west Vietnam. People of Tai stock in Laos included both the lowland‐dwelling Lao and a number of upland‐dwelling groups of the northern provinces, such as the Lu; Tai Neua; and Black, Red, and White Tai (so named for the principal colours in their women's traditional costumes). Today all these people are grouped as “lowlander Lao” (Lao Loum).
The lowlander Lao became the dominant force in the region, politically, culturally, and economically, but their political structures were not strongly integrated. In the mountainous terrain, rivalries of family and clan flourished. Four series of rapids on the Mekong River, with lengthy stretches of water between them, tended to focus Lao society around three distinct centres; from north to south, Luang Prabang, Vientiane (Vieng Chan), and Champassak. The Tai people of the uplands were even less politically integrated, although the villages of each group were organised into small principalities (muong) presided over by leaders of dominant clans.
The second‐most substantial ethnolinguistic grouping was upland‐dweller
s of Mon‐Khmer origin, presumably descendants of the peoples who had settled in the region before Tai immigration. The Tai‐speakers referred to them disparagingly as “Kha” (slaves); today they are grouped as “upland Lao” or Lao Theung. Both terms encompass many self‐consciously distinct communities with their own names for themselves. Political organisation beyond village level was rare in these communities, but occasionally they could unite, under particularly charismatic chieftains, to oppose lowlander exploitation.
Amongst the smaller ethnolinguistic groupings, the most notable by the time of French boundary‐drawing were people with languages of Tibeto‐Burman origin, today grouped as Lao Soung and including the Hmong and Yao, or Man. (The Hmong resented the lowlander term for them, Meo, which means “savage.”) These people began to migrate into the area as recently as the late 18th or early 19th centuries and settled on upper mountain slopes, where amongst other crops, they grew the opium poppy. The Hmong shared a myth of a future Hmong kingdom, but for most practical purposes political organisation was rare beyond the level of village chief.
Human settlement in the region is known to date back many centuries BC. The most famous evidence of the region's prehistory consists of the huge stone mortuary jars found on the north‐central Xieng Khouang plateau, which have given the area the name “Plain of Jars.” Little is known about the society that created the jars, which date from the last centuries BC into the early Christian era. The known history of the region follows from the Tai migrations mentioned above. In the 13th century, Tai people constructed their first states, drawing together hitherto tribal communities under rulers claiming quasi‐divine authority and kingly status. Examples of such states were Chiang Mai and Sukhotai (both located in what is now Thailand) and Luang Prabang.
The exact origins of Luang Prabang are shrouded in myth but there, in 1316, a royal prince, Fa Ngum, was born. He was brought up in the royal court of the great kingdom of Angkor, which then claimed an empire extending over much of modern Thailand, central and southern Laos, Cambodia, and southern Vietnam. Fa Ngum married a Khmer princess and became a devout Theravada Buddhist. With Khmer forces he brought under his control large areas to Angkor's north and in 1353 established the kingdom of Lan Xang (“a million elephants”), with his capital at Luang Prabang.
Initially a tributary of Angkor, Lan Xang, became an autonomous kingdom as Angkor declined. For several centuries its power was arguably as significant as the growing Thai state (based on the city of Ayudhya) to its west, and the growing Vietnamese state to its east. At its height, Lan Xang controlled, at least in loose, tributary fashion, territories considerably more extensive than those of modern Laos, including much of modern Thailand's north and east and reaching into the south of modern China and the north‐west of modern Vietnam.
Lan Xang was a Buddhist kingdom and, for long periods, a renowned centre of Buddhist scholarship. However, its Buddhist practices took on a distinctively Lao identity as the religion assimilated the traditional animist beliefs and rituals of the region. Buddhism also acted as a conduit for ideas, Indian in origin, of society as divinely ordained hierarchy. Lan Xang's polity came broadly to resemble that of its Theravada Buddhist neighbours, the Burmese, Thai, and Cambodian states. The king and aristocracy deserved reverence, taxes, and services from their subjects because of their superior “merit” and pious support of Buddhism. Such politicoreligious social integration extended only to the lowlander Lao, however. The “Kha” (uplanders) mostly resisted Buddhism, clinging to their diverse animist beliefs and local independence. And even amongst the lowlanders, Lan Xang's rugged geography and necessarily decentralised administration by regional overlords militated against a lastingly strong state.
Nevertheless, Lan Xang weathered internal rivalries, wars with the Thais and Vietnamese, and a generation of Burmese overlordship in the late 16th century. In the 17th century, now with Vientiane as its capital, Lan Xang reached its height under King Souligna Vongsa, who came to the throne in 1637 after defeating four rival claimants and reigned for a remarkable 57 years. He negotiated good relations with the neighbouring states, and within the kingdom gained a reputation for firm, just rule. The first European visitors to Vientiane reported on the city's prosperity and imposing religious buildings.
But, in an act worthy of epic tragedy, Souligna Vongsa refused to intervene when his only son seduced the wife of a senior court official and, under the prevailing law on such matters, was sentenced to death. Souligna Vongsa died in 1694 without a direct heir, and the subsequent rivalries for the throne, exploited by the Vietnamese and Thais, led to the kingdom's irrevocable breakup.
In the early 18th century the cities of Luang Prabang and Vientiane became the capitals of antagonistic states, the latter under Vietnamese patronage. In the south, Champassak fell under Thai patronage. In the mid‐18th century the Burmese became predatory again, reducing Luang Prabang to subjection and menacing Vientiane. Rather than supporting one another, the mutually hostile Lao states encouraged these outside powers to subdue their Lao rivals. The unhappy century closed with Vientiane under Thai overlordship, although Vientiane independently attacked and sacked Luang Prabang in 1791.
In 1805, the Lao prince Chao Anou became ruler at Vientiane, and won Thai and Vietnamese approval to reintegrate the central and southern provinces. In 1826, however, Chao Anou acted on a rumour (which proved false) that the British were attacking Bangkok. Chao Anou and his forces, eager to join in the humbling of the Thais, almost reached Bangkok before being repelled. Chao Anou fled, ultimately taking shelter from Thai vengeance in Vietnam.
These events opened a decade of devastation for the Vientiane state. In 1828, Thai forces sacked Vientiane and drove many thousands of the population westward into territory under Bangkok control. Vientiane and Champassak became minor Thai provinces. Chao Anou was captured by the Thais when he returned to his territory with ineffective Vietnamese backing; he died in Bangkok in 1835, bringing the Vientiane monarchy to an end.
Meanwhile, Vietnam was forcefully asserting its claims in the eastern provinces, particularly in Xieng Khouang. The Vietnamese were probably content to take the east while the Thais took the west and south, but in 1833, simultaneously with a Thai–Vietnamese clash in Cambodia, the Thais sent a force against the Vietnamese garrison in Xieng Khouang. The Thais were helped by forces from Luang Prabang, and by a local uprising in Xieng Khouang against the Vietnamese. As with Vientiane, the Thais adopted a scorched‐earth policy in Xieng Khouang, deporting westward up to 80 percent of the population (although some were able to return later). Thai–Vietnamese warfare continued until 1835, and concluded with the Vietnamese dominant in the east, as they had wished, and the Thais dominant in the western and southern provinces. The surviving northerly kingdom of Luang Prabang prudently acknowledged the overlordship of both its neighbours, though for practical purposes it, too, was within the Thai orbit.
FRENCH CONQUEST AND RULE TO 1940
The French takeover of Cambodia and Vietnam between the 1860s and 1885 led to keen French interest in the Lao territories for several reasons. They saw (wrongly) the Mekong as a potentially major trade route with China. They feared Thai interests in the territories, which they believed might be championed (also wrongly, as it transpired) by their imperial rival, Britain. From the 1870s, northern Laos and Vietnam were disturbed by armed bands of renegade Chinese (collectively referred to by the Thai term “Ho”) and the French were anxious to pacify these areas. Finally, by 1885, the French controlled the Vietnamese emperor's claims to overlordship in the Lao territories.
The Thais had been sending armed forces to Luang Prabang and other areas in an attempt to subdue the Ho and confront possible French intervention. But in 1887 they were dramatically outmanoeuvred by the French explorer, Auguste Pavie, who rescued the king of Luang Prabang when the Ho attacked and sacked his city. King Un Kham gratefully accepted French protection for his kingdom. Pavie went on to negotiate similar protection for other regional overlords.<
br />
In 1893 (with French gunboats menacing Bangkok) Thailand reluctantly signed a Franco‐Siamese treaty which transferred to the French all Lao territories east of the Mekong. Further agreements in 1904 and 1907 added to “Laos” the parts of Sayaboury and Champassak provinces west of the Mekong. However, for most of its course through historically Lao territory the Mekong had now become an international frontier. The agreements on other borders with British Burma, China, and French‐controlled Vietnam similarly conflicted with the historic settlement patterns and movements of Lao and other people of the region.
The French soon came to regard Laos as a quiet backwater, when they realised that it could offer no rapid economic return of any significance. Most people of the region continued as subsistence farmers, the lowlanders growing wet rice and the uplanders pursuing slash‐and‐burn cultivation. The colony's most important products became tin, mined by Vietnamese workers, and opium, grown by the Hmong and other mountain‐dwellers. The tin contributed only a tiny percentage of the total exports of French Indochina (Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia). Opium, on the other hand, became Laos' single greatest revenue earner when purveyed by a French state monopoly throughout Indochina. An illegal opium trade also flourished with China, despite official French efforts to control it.
