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210 15 Gas Pipelines and Security in South and Southeast Asia a critical perspective adam simpson I regret very strongly that a company . . . owned by the government, was part of a deal which bought gas from Burma and hence opened up the conditions for the suppression of the Karen [communities] in the area where the gas pipelines have to pass. So I think that—for better or worse—we have blood on our hands. Sukumbhand Paribatra, 1997 Former Thai Deputy Foreign Minister (cited in Giannini et al. 2003, 167) Introduction This chapter examines security issues relating to electricity-generating crossborder natural gas pipeline projects, but it does not, unlike much of the energy security literature, focus specifically on the energy requirements of the nationstates involved. Rather, a critical security approach is undertaken, which questions the development paradigm used to justify the projects and analyzes the human and environmental security of communities in the vicinity of the pipelines.1 Gas pipeline projects undertaken in majority world countries of the global South, such as those discussed here, are rarely vetted through a process of environmental or social impact assessment. If these processes do occur, they rarely have input from local or indigenous peoples and have little impact on the project itself. This situation is exacerbated when the political regime promoting or administering the project is particularly repressive or authoritarian in nature (see Doyle and Simpson 2006). Yet, it is often the case that the communities surrounding these projects are indigenous, dispossessed, or marginalized and have little chance of mitigating the adverse effects that flow from the development. Most of the benefits of the projects are reaped further afield, in elite circles of the urban centers where the development decisions are usually made. The interests of these elites are Gas Pipelines and Security 211 largely antagonistic to the general populations, despite populist overtures, and this is reflected in development decision-making processes (Goldsmith 1996, 257). Attempts by developers and governments to either enrich elites or, at best, provide electricity for the urban middle classes invariably result in ethnic minorities or indigenous peoples baring the brunt of the environmental and social costs associated with the projects while having little input into the development process itself. While the discourse of energy security is often employed by the pro-development lobby, the environmental security of local communities can be severely undermined but is rarely considered. Environmental security can be either defined narrowly or understood more broadly, as demonstrated by the multifarious definitions offered throughout this volume. A broad definition includes the energy security deficit felt by many communities in majority countries who often see no relief from the deficit when an energy project is completed. While the discourse of energy security justifies the project, communities living in the vicinity of the project may remain without electricity even after the project is completed and have other elements of their security, such as food or water, undermined.2 In this situation it becomes poignant to ask whose security is actually being addressed and whose interests are being served by the project (Eddy 2004; Simpson 2007). The projects to be discussed in this chapter include three transnational gas pipelines in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), at various stages of their development, that link together a proposed South Asian regional energy grid with the proposed Trans-ASEAN gas pipeline grid (Chaturvedi 2005, 125). Of particular interest is the Yadana gas pipeline, the first cross-border pipeline in Southeast Asia, which runs from southern Burma into Thailand and which, in many ways, is prototypical for this kind of project. It has been a contentious project in both Burma and Thailand and was the subject of two long-running human rights court cases in the United States. The role of the authoritarian Burmese military regime, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), was central to social and environmental dislocation throughout the project, although transnational corporations and the Thai governments of the 1990s were also complicit. There are now other regional gas pipelines being developed where similar problems are, or are likely to, arise. The Thai-Malaysian gas pipeline project is virtually complete, but there have been numerous occasions when an increased martial presence in Thailand’s predominantly Muslim south has resulted in the arrest or beating of local residents who are protesting against the project due to social and environmental concerns. The southern region of Thailand, where the pipeline and gas separation...

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