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This article examines a number of armed conflicts in Southeast Asia and draws out common threads of causality and impact. First, it is argued that internal conflicts continue to afflict the region and act as an obstacle to political reform. Next, the slow process of conflict resolution is highlighted and several reasons stated for why this is the case. The example of Southern Thailand is highlighted to show how poorly some of these conflicts are being managed. Finally, several suggestions are made to help policy-makers in the region improve the process of conflict resolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan is playing an active human security role in post-Cold War Southeast Asia, especially in crises where thousands of lives are at stake, displaced, or even last. This approach includes: providing massive financial assistance to the region during the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, engaging in peacemaking in Cambodia and Aceh, peacebuilding in East Timor, Aceh, and Mindanao, offering financial and medical assistance when East Asia was hit by the SARS epidemic, and deploying the largest contingent of Japanese troops since the end of World War II for humanitarian assistance to tsunami-stricken Aceh in early 2005. A broad human security framework which encompasses peacemaking, post-conflict peacebuilding, and the dispatch of troops for humanitarian relief in Southeast Asia allows Japan to not only play a more active political role but also to avoid being branded as an aspiring military power by its domestic and international critics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]