Aid for irrigation development or aid for arms? – The political discourse of the Green Isaan Project in Northeast Thailand

Abstract:

The so-called Green Isaan Project emerged in the late 1980s from the Cold War politics era of earlier decades as a discursive and material expression of a utopian “desert bloom syndrome”, as a certain peace returned to the Indochina region and the notion of turning “battlefields into market places” through regional development initiatives became a refrain of national leaders. Like earlier US-designed “multi-purpose” schemes and later variants, the Project was largely predicated on the alluring hydraulic development dream of tapping the abundant waters of the mainstream Mekong for overcoming the perceived natural constraints of the “arid”, “infertile” and “impoverished” Northeast region. The invariably contested political nature of water resources development is highlighted in this presentation; using a discourse analysis approach of public statements from press reports that show how this Project was nested in a wider multi-scalar discourse of national development, regional security and international strategic goals. It argues that the Green Isaan Project was used as a useful front by elite actors to further the scope for far larger-value commercial arms sales (i.e. “Aid for Trade” deals) between the UK and Thai governments, in a case reminiscent of the better known Pergau Dam scandal in Malaysia during the Thatcher government. Aside from powerful bureaucracies, military, private sector, civil society, politician and international donor interests were involved as strategic actors at different levels. Interestingly, both Thai and British royal family actors were apparently drawn into the web of interests (symbolically and otherwise), to later extricate themselves from the scheme and pass the public spotlight on to more accountable political figures, such as the quixotic former prime minister and chief of the armed forces, General Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, who built a significant part of his political career on the rhetorical promise of “greening Isaan”. The findings are partly derived from fieldwork data used in the author’s recently-completed PhD thesis titled, “Irrigationalism - ideology and politics of irrigation development in the Nam Songkhram Basin, Northeast Thailand”, focusing on the narratives and counter-narratives utilised by different actors and groups, that impacted on the eventual outcome of the Project and accompanying “sanctioned discourse”.

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Roy Huijsmans