In Asia: Weekly Insight and Features from Asia

On November 4, a seminar jointly hosted by The Asia Foundation’s Center for U.S.-Korea Policy and the Foundation’s office in Korea will convene in Seoul to address opportunities for expanding the U.S.-ROK alliance in international peacekeeping, overseas development assistance, and maritime security. The Seoul seminar is being supported by the Friends of The Asia Foundation in Korea, a membership organization under the leadership of former Prime Minister and Asia Foundation Trustee Lee Hong-koo.

Read more »

The world economy is slowly recovering but the effects of the financial disaster are far-reaching, especially for the U.S. Besides the immediate impact of the crisis on economic growth and employment, there are serious questions about America’s confidence in its global leadership and the future of its relationship with Asia.

On October 23, Douglas Bereuter, President and CEO of The Asia Foundation, will deliver a keynote address at a conference on the effects of the financial crisis on the U.S. and its key Asian allies. Titled “Implications of the Financial Crisis on American, Chinese, South Korean and Japanese Soft Power in East Asia,” the October 22-24 conference will be hosted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in Chicago, Illinois.

Two billion dollars a year. Ever since the U.S. economy soured over a year ago, we have been bombarded with figures in the hundreds of billions and in the trillions – numbers most of us cannot really comprehend except in the most abstract ways. Compared to these figures, two billion doesn’t really seem like a whole lot. But put in more concrete terms, in Indonesia it is enough to send three million children to school or to build 14,000 local health clinics.

Two billion dollars is also how much Muslims in Indonesia give each year through various forms of Islamic philanthropy.

Read more »

“Today, Nahdlatul Ulama, with some 40 million followers, has the distinction of being the largest Islamic group in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country—Indonesia…. To understand why, look no further than Robin Bush’s new book, Nahdlatul Ulama and the Struggle for Power within Islam and Politics in Indonesia,” reads a Wall Street Journal review of The Asia Foundation’s Country Representative in Indonesia and expert on Islam, politics, and development Robin Bush‘s latest book. Read the full review, “The Battle for Indonesian Islam.”

Two weeks ago, in the In Asia post “Ondoy’s Onslaught” I noted that skies had cleared over Manila, but the coming of Typhoon Pepeng was dreaded. On October 3, Pepeng (international name Parma) veered north, and then moved back and forth across the Philippine archipelago for six days, making three landfalls. “This is the first typhoon in our history to behave in this strange manner,” said Nathaniel Cruz, a Weather Bureau spokesman in Manila.

(From http://www.typhoon2000.ph)

The end result was truly enormous amounts of rain in a very short time. Ondoy caused widespread flooding in Metro Manila by delivering 17.9 inches of rain. Baguio City, in the mountains of northern Luzon, received 86.5 inches of rain from Pepeng (almost five times as much). A mountain resort and educational center, Baguio City was designed by Daniel Burnham at the beginning of the American colonial period for 25,000 residents. Now in its centennial year, its 300,000 residents resorted to using the swan boats from its ornamental lake in the middle of town to rescue residents of the flooded City Camp neighborhood.

Read more »

On Friday, October 9, the people of Timor-Leste went to the polls to elect their local suco council members. There are over 440 of these councils, and the voting took place at 748 polling stations throughout the country.

Formally gaining independence from Indonesia in 2002 after a UN-administered transition, Timor-Leste has not had an easy start. Much of the country’s infrastructure was destroyed by the departing Indonesians and their supporters. Then in April and May 2006, Dili was rocked by violence between the military and police after one-third of the military was dismissed. This violence spread to civilian gangs in many neighborhoods of the capital, continuing up until March 2007. The fighting resulted in a return of foreign peacekeepers, as well as a large number of internally displaced people the government had to deal with. Further violence related to pre-existing social tensions broke out in 2007 around the presidential election, though confined to a few hotspots, and in the following year the president was critically injured in a dawn raid on his home by disgruntled elements within the military. The economy has been distorted by the high prices associated with the large international aid and peace-keeping missions, despite local citizens suffering from some of the highest levels of poverty and unemployment in Asia.

Read more »

On the night of Sept. 1, 2009, Vicente Valera, former governor of Abra – a province in Northern Luzon in the Philippines – was arrested in his posh Rockwell condominium in Makati, Metro Manila. Valera is now the prime suspect in the murder of Congressman Luis Bersamin, Jr. The murder took place Dec.16, 2006, just prior to the campaign season for the May 2007 local elections, and is widely seen as election-related. Investigators are still looking into the motives behind the Bersamin slaying; they have not ruled out political motives related to unrest in Abra nor the rumors that Bersamin would run for another term.

Read more »

What will bring five embassies, the European Union, and The Asia Foundation together for collaboration?

What will make diverse organizations reframe the way they do things, specifically in the area of funding, and adopt an approach that provides them a strategic opportunity to work collectively in the area of human rights?

During a recent donor’s forum, one of the regular meetings initiated and hosted by The Asia Foundation, an idea was proposed to hold a mini-”Development Marketplace” in order to encourage civil society groups and human rights organizations to devise innovative proposals to fund programs that address current human rights issues in the Philippines. Development Marketplace, a term coined by the World Bank in 1998 for the first Global Development Marketplace (DM) initiative, became a launching pad for new and creative ideas and approaches to development issues. From the Global Development Marketplace evolved the country-level Development Marketplace, which in the Philippines is widely known as “Panibagong Paraan” or New Way. The Foundation has consistently been an active partner and donor of Panibagong Paraan.

Read more »

A year ago at this time Thailand was in political disarray, with the anti-Thaksin People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD, or the “yellow shirts”) occupying the Prime Minister’s office, forcing the government to work out of the VIP lounge of the domestic airport. The chaos would intensify into late 2008 when the PAD took over Bangkok’s international airport for three days, but would subside when government was reshuffled to form a coalition with the Democrat Party in the lead. Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva faced an early test in March of 2009 when the pro-Thaksin National United Front of Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD, or the “red shirts”) disrupted an ASEAN meeting in Pattaya. Since then, Abhisit has engaged parliament in a dialogue on constitutional reform. This has produced a period of political calm, however tentative, as the government focuses on recovery from the economic crisis.

Read more »

The “Joint Vision for the Alliance of the United States of America and the Republic of Korea,” released by Presidents Barack Obama and Lee Myung-bak on June 16, 2009, forged a new agenda for the U.S.-ROK alliance extending to cooperation on common challenges beyond traditional security. Earlier this month, The Asia Foundation’s Center for U.S.-Korea Policy and the Brookings Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies presented a seminar at the Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C., that assessed the opportunities for expanding the U.S.-ROK alliance partnership on such newly-emerging issues as pandemics, counter-terrorism, and space cooperation. Speakers included James L. Schoff, Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis; Kevin Shepard, Kyungnam University; and Clay Moltz, Naval Postgraduate School. Their presentation abstracts are available for download.