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Welcome to the most unlikely comparison piece ever written. I am going to compare Kuwait with Cambodia. For the simple reason that I spent 10 months in the latter until last year and Kuwait is the next country I went to after that. First I will talk about myself, comparing my motivations for going to each country. Then I will cover how they face off against each other on a useful online GIS called If It Were My Home. Then I will talk about history. This will take a bit of research as I don't know much. I think this piece will develop. Hell, it might just become a list. As things come to mind, I'll just add new sections for as long as I see fit:-)
MOTIVATION
I went to Cambodia to develop. I developed my database skills and ability to run networking events. I also learnt how to make map animations in QGIS, how to make cartograms in ArcGIS and how to illustrate movement of people using lines connecting eviction and relocation points. I also went there to develop the skills of others. I was attracted to the position because it was a capacity development role. I had been working for a large gas mining project before the placement and it felt like everything I'd set out in life not to do. Here I had an opportunity to do the opposite to helping some corporate giant munch through the landscape. I would be helping staff improve their mapping skills at a small non government organisation devoted to advocacy for the urban poor, in one of the poorest countries in the world. I blogged about the experience too.
The reason I went to Kuwait was simple. A recruiter in Dubai called me up and offered me an adventure. Sitting in a grey little cubicle in Toowong, Brisbane making maps for another mining company again I was offered the chance to work on a large scale environmental rehabilitation project in a region I'd never visited before. I was sold on it so hard I couldn't negotiate properly. It finally felt like everything had fallen into place. I'd always wanted to use my mapping skills for environmental rehabilitation or monitoring work ... finally it was happening. Oh, and status. Money, not so much. GIS pays surprisingly well at a small oil exploration company in Australia. Very well.
IF IT WERE MY HOME
A few years ago I discovered a great geographic information system called If It Were My Home. This basically just grabs data from the CIA World Fact Book for pairs of countries you select. It also makes a somewhat dodgy attempt to overlay countries on top of one another but screws it up half the time due to projection issues. Anyway, it's a great way to get an understanding of how life would be in another country, statistics-wise. For the lazy:
If Cambodia were your home instead of Kuwait you would...
A) have 6.1 times higher chance of dying in infancy
B) consume 99.77% less oil
C) use 99.4% less electricity
D) make 96.49% less money
E) die 15.37 years sooner
F) be 8 times more likely to have HIV/AIDS
G) have 59.09% more chance of being unemployed
H) spend 89.96% less money on health care
I) have 19.09% more babies
As can be seen there and in the image, Kuwait is generally the better place to live. By a country mile. The only thing making Cambodia better for the locals is the size. Both are desperately small places compared to Australia. At least Cambodia offers a variety of natural resources to exploit though and it is safe to live outdoors most of the year whereas Kuwait only has oil and because its' a sandy desert it is dangerous to be outside in during summer.
COUNTRY ABBREVIATIONS
The both start with K. KH for Cambodia (presumably meaning Khmer) and KW for Kuwait.
CURRENCY
The most expensive currency in the world is that of Kuwait. Cambodia, on the other hand, has the US dollar. Sure, there is the Riel, but at around 4000 per dollar its more convenient just to use greenbacks. I've never been to the US but at least I know what their money is like! When I was there a KH government official was quoted as saying that the widespread use of USD reduced the effect of fiscal policy. A nice little illustration of the basic effect of foreign presence in KH. The economy has come to depend on foreign aid. Overseas money, literally, fundamentally shapes Cambodia. For one KWD you could buy more than KHR14,000 (13.7.13). Wow.
MAPPING MEETUPS
KH wins. They have the monthly Phom Penh Mapping Meetup. Kuwait has the odd event organised by different people. For example Google Developers Group Kuwait organised two Mapups in the past. Nice name! I plan to change this situation. Talks have begun to initiate the Kuwait Mapping Meetup. Watch this space.
WAR
Both countries have been through devastating wars. A quarter of the Khmer population was wiped out by Saloth Sar/Pol Pot's genocidal regime when they became a client state of Communist China. And they still are. It's kind of cute seeing all the Western countries there trying to kiss ass with aid money and win the leaders' favour - China has been in Cambodia for thousands of years. All the businesses of note are touched by the Chinese. The main recent political ideology change has been caused by Chinese ideology too. The biggest contemporary indicator though of Chinese influence is what happens to Monivong Boulevard during Chinese New Year. Goes from a constant traffic jam to nothing for 3 days. At Christmas time and Western (Gregorian?) New year nothing happens except the street sellers suddenly have Santa decs for sale (but they don't sell) instead of Angry Birds t-shirts.
Thanks to China and Pol Pot we have a new phrase in our language, killing fields. Fields filled with decomposed bodies. Pits filled with bodies. In at least one field, Choeng Eik (which local tuk tuk drivers will include in a tour of the capital taking in other sites such as the firing range by the airport where you used to be able to take out cows with RPGs...), there was a tree which the babies of enemies of the revolution were bashed against. Held by their feet. Whilst patriotic songs blared over a loudspeaker, the murderers celebrating each one as a cleansing.
That there are only about 40 qualified mental health practioners in the country and s***ty NGOs exist like Ragamuffin Project (seriously, WHO thought of that name!) - offering non evidence based approaches like art and drama therapy with government and aid donor backing - about sums up the response to this quiet, casual decimation of a people.
In Kuwait there was an invasion by Iraq 20 years ago. This lead to hell on earth in the form of the Kuwait oil fires, the worst environmental disaster in history. 800 odd wells spewing oil, many spewing oil AND ON FIRE, and 250 odd oil lakes from the spilled oil. Salinity problems everywhere due to using sea water to put out the fires. Some lakes 12squ km in size. Watch the Imax show about it on YouTube. The sky was black, the earth was made to spew black goo and it was all on fire. Some fundies somewhere probably sold up and said their goodbyes thinking it was the end of days.
The oil lakes are only now starting to be cleaned up, 20 years later. Funnily enough, the project has UN funding - an organisation also having a strong impact on Cambodia but not necessarily for the better. I find the contribution of the UN equally open to question in Kuwait, which supplies something like 10% of the world's oil. There are poorer places the UN could be spending the world's aid money, especially given that Iraq paid compensation to Kuwait for the damage. Anyway, at least something is at last being done to fix up the oil lakes - the main issue here is that it has taken such a ridiculously long time to start fixing them. A lot are now covered with sand or have a thick layer of hard 'tarcrete' on top. The damage is no longer fresh, the impact of the oil and megalitres of salt water used to put out the fires has basically had time to take its full impact.
This delay in addressing the situation is parallelled in Cambodia in another issue that the UN has been involved with. The Khmer Rouge Trial. This farcical operation has been set up, 30 years after the end of Pol Pot's maniacal exercise in brutal slave driving, to visit some justice on the perpetrators. Pity a lot of them are now dead from old age or too infirm to stand trial. Interrogating a defendent with Alzheimer's isn't going to get very far.
So perhaps we can learn something from the experience of both countries in dealing with the UN. It might finally offer some sort of fix for past injustices or disasters, but a few decades late. The lateness has been an insult in both cases, mocking the seriousness of both events.
EVICTIONS
A focus of my time in Cambodia was advocacy work for people suffering forced evictions in the capital, Phnom Penh. As this latest Global Witness report and film states, this issue is not just confined to the city. So far as I'm aware, thankfully forced evictions are not a problem in Kuwait. There is a related issue though. An expat deportation drive has been happening in Kuwait for at least as long as I have been here. This issue is attracting a lot of attention from the media, bloggers and
human rights groups. The government is aiming to reduce the expat population by 100,000 per year so that Kuwaitis can do the jobs traditionally done by expats. This is a bold move and may cause a seismic shift in Kuwait because the division of society based on labour types is obvious. Presently expats, especially Eastern expats, do the labouring type jobs that one might wish to avoid if one had the funds and necessary connections.
Many expats and journalists have spoken out about the unpredictable and sometimes vindictive way in which they have been deported as a result of this policy. Many eastern expats feel afraid to go out at night and avoid driving for fear of being extradited for even minor traffic offences or forgetting to take their papers with them. The only positive I have heard people saying about all of this is it has reduced traffic congestion, although it would be good to have some data about this, including whether the reduction in congestion has been reflected in a reduction in accidents or fatalities. This feeling of uncertainty and the perceived futility of challenging the command to leave is similar to that of those in urban poor communities in the capital of Cambodia who face forced eviction for property development projects or subsistance farmers in the provinces being evicted from rubber farming concessions.
That's enough for now. I'll keep updating this as interesting comparisons come to mind or in response to fact checks.
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