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Salil Tripathi

 Blood & Silk: Power & Conflict in Modern Southeast Asia
by Michael Vatikiotis
(Weidenfeld and Nicholson)
4 stars

In 1993, American journalist Stan Sesser wrote a book about Southeast Asia titled The Lands of Charm and Cruelty. He revealed what makes the region attractive to travellers and journalists (hence the charm), as well as the deep, unresolved conflicts within, many of which are exceptionally brutal (hence the cruelty).

Southeast Asia is breathtakingly beautiful, its people are smiling, hospitable and energetic, and its culture rich. But it also conceals stories of unparalleled violence, and its political structures have remained stunted, preventing the region’s creativity from blooming.
This incongruence is not outwardly visible. You have to peel back the layers and see beyond the shadow puppetry to get closer to the truth.
Sweeping new history of the cold war a reminder of how stupidity, ignorance and arrogance almost brought the world to annihilation
Michael Vatikiotis, my former colleague at the Far Eastern Economic Review (who would later become its editor), is uniquely qualified to make sense of that complex region. He first went to Southeast Asia as a student, then became a journalist, and is now a senior official at an organisation that brings together conflicting parties to build peace.
Vatikiotis offers a lucid portrait of this fascinating region by bringing together a student’s sense of wonder and curiosity, a journalist’s scepticism and diligence in making sense of the reality, and a peacemaker’s compassion for the vulnerable. Fluent in Thai and Bahasa Indonesia, Vatikiotis has lived in Bangkok, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, and has developed a profound understanding of Southeast Asia. He knows the region’s political and business elite and has formed deep bonds with people from all walks of life.

In Blood & Silk – his account of his decades of fascination with the region – his love and commitment to Southeast Asia shine through. It offers important insights about what makes these lands of charm and cruelty what they are, and raises serious questions about what lies ahead.
Vatikiotis has decided to write what is often deliberately left unsaid in a region where public discourse shuns conflict, where “face” is important, and where aphorisms are expressed to say what cannot be spoken directly.
A Cambodian proverb helps him explain the cycles of violence: when the water is high, the fish eat the ants; when the water is low, the ants eat the fish. He also cites another metaphor used in Southeast Asia (and elsewhere) about the pragmatism of the common folk: when elephants fight, stay out of the long grass.
The book is timely. Three tectonic political shifts are changing the way politics and business have functioned in Southeast Asia. The rise of China has brought fresh investment to the region and forced other countries to reconsider the balance of power. The waning American interest in the region raises concerns about security as well as trade: Southeast Asian nations have thrived in the past because of the US security umbrella and open American markets for their exports. And the growth of militant Islam troubles not only Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, but can cause repercussions beyond.
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Persisting inequality has kept many of the region’s inhabitants poor, and Vatikiotis fears some of the dispossessed may fall prey to demagoguery. The coexistence of extreme wealth and dire poverty, he notes, is not sustainable. When times turn sour, it can give rise to divisive identity politics. Vatikiotis points out the hounding of former Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaha Purnama, also known as Ahok, who is Christian and Chinese and now jailed on blasphemy charges; he also highlights Buddhist intolerance, most visible in the persecution of the Rohingyas in Myanmar.
The institution the region relies on – the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) – has just turned 50. It is a remarkably durable institution. Formed to bring together non-communist Asian states during the Vietnam war, it found a fresh raison d’être during the Cambodian crisis and has grown to include a country with first world economic indicators (Singapore) and countries clearly in the lower income group (such as Laos and Myanmar).

As Vatikiotis notes, there are governments in Southeast Asia that are run by leaders whose mandate is questioned (Thailand and Malaysia); who are maverick (Philippines); whose writ doesn’t run large and who insists on making all decisions (Myanmar); and who insist on being called “Glorious Supreme Prime Minister and Powerful Commander” (Cambodia).
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He astutely points out where power resides in the region and how it is wielded, as well as how those who have power have prevented any reckoning of the violence of the past. He repeatedly returns to unhealed wounds of the massacres of Indonesia, and isn’t sanguine about the impact of violence today in the Philippines
He laments how some leaders who promised economic salvation for all ended up leaving their countries with their own families enriched, citing the examples of Suharto of Indonesia, Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia, and Thaksin Shinawatra of Thailand.

Can the region’s long-oppressed people rise against the powerful? Vatikiotis recognises the weakness of human rights institutions in the region, but nonetheless sees hope in civil society: “The slow response of government to grievances and use of divide-and-rule tactics to undermine opposition will force communities and groups to look after themselves and defy the powerful centre,” he writes.
Vatikiotis’ prognosis is bleak. The entities he would like to counter extremism or violence are not strong enough, and foreign interest in the region is declining. For the land to retain its charm and remain draped in silk, its leaders will have to take steps to prevent further spilling of blood and account for past cruelties. It is not an easy task, but Vatikiotis is right to ask.


Book review – Blood & Silk: Power & Conflict in Modern Southeast Asia offers a bleak prognosis for region’s future

Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, victims of divisive identity politics in Southeast Asia, at a refugee camp in Bangladesh. Photo: AFP

Blood and Silk cover

(FILES) This file photo taken on May 14, 2015 shows Rohingya migrants sitting in a boat drifting in Thai waters off the southern island of Koh Lipe in the Andaman Sea. A general is among more than 100 defendants awaiting a verdict on July 19, 2017 at Thailand's largest ever human trafficking trial, accused of running a brutal trade that left desperate Rohingya and Bangladehsi migrants stranded on boats and in jungle death camps. Tens of thousands of migrants were crammed over the years onto often barely sea worthy vessels to be ferried across the Andaman Sea to southern Thailand. / AFP PHOTO / Christophe ARCHAMBAULT

VIET NAM WAR-25TH ANNIVERSARY: A Viet Cong base being burned in My Tho, Vietnam on 05 April,1968. In the foreground is Private First Class Raymond Rumpa, St Paul, Minnesota, C Company, 3rd Battalion, 47th Infantry, 9th Infantry Division, with a 45 pound 90mm recoiless rifle. AFP PHOTO/NATIONAL ARCHIVES

(FILES) A file photo taken 02 October 1998 shows former Indonesian president Suharto leaving the Bimantara Mosque after the Friday noon prayer in Jakarta. The new Indonesian government of President Abdurrahman Wahid announced 27 October 1999 that it would reopen the graft probe into former president Suharto, as Wahid had stated that the former strongman should repay the state if he was found to be sitting on a illegal fortune. AFP PHOTO/MAYA VIDON

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An armed policeman on guard at a displacement camp for the minority Muslim Rohingya in Myanmar’s Rakhine State. Picture: AFP

This Alamy picture shows Aung San Suu Kyi at Grand Hotel in Oslo. [POSTMAGAZINE BOOKS 27AUG17] Photo : Alamy

This handout picture shows the cover "Myanmar's enemy within". Photo : Handout [POSTMAGAZINE BOOKS 27AUGUST17]

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Author Michael Vatikiotis’ love of the region shines through in his examination of its leaders and long-oppressed people, but he is unsure whether those in power are able to take the necessary steps to prevent further spilling of blood


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