During a recent trip to Bangkok, Thailand, I saw an interesting story in the 19 Aug issue of the Bangkok Post, Thailand’s main English-language newspaper. It concerned a longstanding border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia over a small (4.6 sq. kilometer) patch of land containing an important Buddhist temple. In the previous week, Cambodian and Thai troops had both moved into the disputed area to assert their nation’s claim to it. So far there had been no shooting or casualties, but tensions had been rising.
The front-page story reported that Thailand’s Prime Minister, Samak Sundaravej, visited Thailand’s military encampment in the area to help defuse the situation. He cooked up a big batch of rice with stewed chicken (khao na kai), served it to the troops himself, and advised them to be patient as the countries resolve the dispute. [Photo and story]
“All soldiers should help maintain ties between Thailand and Cambodia. You should be patient and ignore any attempt to cause rifts between the two countries,” he told them. He stressed the importance of Thai-Cambodian relations. Both countries are members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and are trading partners. Sundaravej noted that Thailand has only 200 troops in the area, compared to Cambodia’s 500, and said he hopes Cambodia will reduce its force to match that of Thailand.
His advice to the soldiers to “ignore … attempts to cause rifts” struck me as a unique and laudable approach to avoiding armed conflict. He knows that there are people — in Thailand as well as Cambodia — who are beating the war drums, trying to whip up a shooting fight. He told his soldiers to “ignore” that and instead work to foster friendly relations with Cambodia.
It might be worth trying something similar in Iraq and Afghanistan. What would that mean? It would mean directing our troops to ignore attempts to draw them into fire-fights, and generally to avoid conflict rather than initiating or drawing attacks. It would mean instructing coalition and local security forces to ignore warlords’ claims that “those other guys are bad guys — go kill them”.
Our military could post signs and leaflets in the local language saying something like:
“If you want us to leave, then stop fighting us! We don’t want to be here any more than you want us here. We don’t want to fight you. We want to leave your country in peace. We will gladly go home once you convince us that there will be no sectarian blood-bath or re-emergence of the leadership that we deposed. If you have a complaint or dispute about us or what we are doing here, send someone to talk with us. Stop shooting at us. Stop sending your own people to their deaths as suicide bombers. Stop setting roadside bombs and mines. Such actions only keep us here longer.”
To show our good will, our troops could also devote more resources to infrastructure development projects rather than military operations. European NATO soldiers already do this in Afghanistan, and as a result see much less hostility from the local people.
Finally, we could, as quickly as possible, draw down our combat-trained troops and replace them with trained peacekeepers, preferably from the U.N.. Troops trained as peacekeepers are, of course, better at keeping the peace than are troops trained for combat.
In short, we should try waging peace instead of war. It may work; it may not. But history shows that waging war certainly will not achieve “victory” in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.” — A.J. Muste
