Southeast Asia - Image of `ugly American` grows

BANGKOK - Nearly a week into the US-led invasion of Iraq, the political landscape across Asia is opening up to a fresh round of anti-US sentiment.

Typical of the new voices enraged by Washington is a hotel owner on one of Thailand's famous resort islands. Shortly after the invasion began on March 20, the resort owner went public to register his protest - by banning all American tourists from staying at his popular hotel.

In Vietnam, the state-run news agency delivered a rare political commentary this week, declaring that Washington's Waterloo would be the political debacle in Iraq instead of its anticipated military victory there.

"With a huge war machine, the US will gain victory in military terms. However, they cannot avoid political failure," the Vietnam News Agency said. "A regime established by violence will not exist for a long time." Furthermore, it asked: "Do the 26 million Iraqi population, 60 percent of whom have been depending on the Food for Oil Program, really pose a threat of terrorism for security in the US?"

In South Korea, the government has been forced to suspend a move to curry favor with the US government of President George W Bush - sending close to 700 non-combatant troops to lend support to the US-led invasion on Iraq.

Seoul's decision on Tuesday to halt its plans stemmed from the fear of a public backlash, given the rapid rise of anti-war sentiment already fueled by restiveness over Washington's policies toward North Korea and the death two South Korean teenagers accidentally run over by US troops last year. Recent newspaper surveys put the opposition to the US-led strike on Iraq as high as 80 percent, reflecting a key change in public attitudes in a country that hosts 37,000 US troops and has for decades been one of the strongest US allies in Asia.

For the Bush administration, all of these examples add up to give legitimacy to the image of the "ugly American" that undermines Washington's efforts at public diplomacy.

Likewise, the longer it takes the US-led troops to occupy Iraq, the stronger this image is likely to be in Asia's non-Muslim-majority countries - such as Thailand, Vietnam and South Korea - as well as in the predominantly Muslim nations such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

In fact, this Friday - a week into the war - should serve as a key pointer to the perceptions that the continent's Muslim populations have of the United States, when Muslims gather by the thousands in mosques to perform their special afternoon prayers. If last week's Friday prayers - the first after bombs from the US-led forces began exploding in Iraq - were any indicator, Washington should expect its image to get even uglier.

"An imam [prayer leader] at Jakarta's Al-Azhar mosque told his congregation on Friday that a superpower [the US] is attacking a weak country. These people will not stop waging war against Islam," wrote Chaiwat Satha-Anand, director of the Bangkok-based Peace Information Center, in Tuesday's Bangkok Post newspaper.

After the first day of the US-led onslaught on Iraq, "the headline in the popular Malay-language Utusan Malaysia read: 'America fights Islam'," added Chaiwat in his commentary.

Indonesia is the country with the largest Muslim population in the world - 170.3 million out of a population of 212 million people. Malaysia has 10.8 million Muslims out of 22.2 million people. For Chaiwat, the comments and headlines in the region's Muslim community "reflect a common perception among Muslims that 'we' are abused by a mighty empire engaging in a profoundly unjust and unauthorized war".

Washington, in fact, is not helping its case by applying pressure on governments in Asia to expel Iraqi diplomats since the invasion began. Thailand and the Philippines have been among those who have obliged, asking Iraqi diplomats to leave. Not so Malaysia or Indonesia. Indonesian Vice President Hamzah Haz said the government has rejected Washington's call to close the Iraqi Embassy in Jakarta.

"The [Indonesian] government cannot possibly close the Iraqi Embassy," he was quoted as having told Antara, Indonesia's state-run news agency. "We determine what we want to do."

The pressure applied by Washington on other governments to expel Iraqi diplomats based in their countries goes against the "third-country principle in diplomatic traditions", said an Asian diplomat, who requested anonymity.

This principle recognizes that diplomatic missions serve a bilateral function between two countries and that a third country should not undermine these relations for reasons of its own national interest, which in the case of the US government is its war on Iraq.

"This is an unhealthy practice, but the sin is not new," said the diplomat. "It has happened before, when the Arab governments pressured other countries to sever ties with Israel."

But little of that matters to the growing chorus of critics of Washington's military adventure - including, by Tuesday, the Southeast Asian section of the environmental lobby Greenpeace.

"The use of 'shock and awe' tactics is illegal under international law and will inevitably result in massive civilian casualties, damage to civilian infrastructure and an environmental disaster," Greenpeace Southeast Asia declared in a statement on the US-led forces' relentless bombing of Iraq.

"This is a war crime under the terms of the Geneva Convention and International Criminal Court statutes," it added.