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Article Excerpt
In mid-2008, with the turbulence in Thailand's Deep South halfway through its 5th year, the government, military and police claimed that tangible progress had been made in destabilising insurgent networks and reducing "daily killings" in the six month period since late 2007. Though statistics do indicate an overall decline in violent incidents and casualties over this period, the authorities still face the challenge of convincing both the borderland and national population, as well as the news media (both domestic and foreign) that they are making progress in ways that are both substantial and legitimate. It is a state that can appropriately be described as intractable.
Essentially there are two key reasons for this condition of intractability bedevilling Thailand's southern crisis. First, the security forces of the Thai state are unable to reach a decisive breakthrough in counter-insurgency and development efforts in the face of a determined and flexible guerrilla war being waged against them. Admittedly, the cell-based clandestine insurgent networks have been at least a decade in the making, so it is hardly to be expected that this guerrilla-style offensive can be quelled rapidly, and over the past few years military and government officials have repeatedly emphasized that it will take time to end the violence. Nonetheless, even with the current policy mix of law enforcement and peaceoriented development, it is unlikely that a reduction in current violence will be any more than gradual. Overshadowing this ongoing challenge is the fact that the daily killings afflicting the borderland are also committed by crime networks and rival local politicians who intersect with ideologically-motivated groups in varied and confusing ways. (1) Unofficial estimates of the proportion of total killings resulting from private and political conflicts range from between 15 to 50 per cent. (2) Nevertheless, the impelling force driving the violence and continuing insecurity in the borderland is clearly a form of Malay-Muslim separatism embraced by a looselystructured movement founded on cell-based military and political wings, one that has been able to attract support from a proportion of the local Malay-Muslim population, and otherwise demand the compliance and/or silence of many others.
Second, the condition of intractability is compounded by the continuing contestation over the key issues surrounding "the problem" of the south and solutions to it. Over the past year the civil society sector, numerous single-issue advocates and sections of the borderland Muslim elite have continued to condemn security forces as the prime aggressor, targeting in particular the continuing application of the emergency law of 2005 which permits security forces to detain and question suspects. While fervent in their criticism, these groups have not proposed realistic alternative measures for reducing the ongoing violence. During 2004 a number of perceptive Thai commentators, including the pseudonymous columnist "Barun" and Sathian Chantimathon, stressed that the conflict in the south would be primarily a conflict around the construction of knowledge. (3) Within a few weeks of the explosion of violence that followed the startling raid on a military camp in Narathiwat Province on 4 January 2004, there emerged a cluster of jostling arguments about the origins, character and solutions to the "southern fire". These stymied any clear consensus about its driving dynamics and primary solutions. They were generated by various key actors and interest groups, including members of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's government, the opposition Democrat Party, the media, academics, public intellectuals, justice advocates and serving and retired military figures. In a previous research paper, I suggested that these overlapping, but often competing paradigms could be grouped under a number of headings, including: "The Draconian and Short-sighted Thaksin State"; "The Marginalized and Persecuted Southern Muslim"; "Banditry, Underdevelopment and Manipulation"; "Security Threat and the Need for a Firm Military Response"; and "The Lawless and Neglected Borderland". (4)
After four and a half years of violence in the borderland, competing causal narratives on the unrest persist, though they might now be reduced to two principal ones, namely: "Violent separatism that feeds on pretexts of oppression in the face of a state that is now committed to the rule of law and providing development initiatives for borderland Muslims"; as against "Persistent state aggression and unjust emergency laws that are alienating ordinary Muslims and preventing them from trusting the state". Those producing the second narrative either ignore the realities of insurgent violence as an integral issue or proffer policies that are impractical, such as demands that village defence forces be disarmed, or acknowledge the brutality and span of insurgent violence but advance proposals that are startling in their naivety. For example, a Human Rights Watch report released in August 2007 (echoing an Amnesty International report of early 2006) roundly condemned insurgent violence against civilians, but concluded with key recommendations which any committed insurgent fighting in a total war such as this would find risible, including: "Separatist groups should cease all attacks on civilians whatever their religion or ethnicity", "Separatist groups should cease all attacks that do hot discriminate between combatants and civilians" and "Separatist groups should agree to abide by international humanitarian law". (5)
Major conundrums face the Thai government and its security forces, principal among which is: how to simultaneously pursue both law enforcement and remedial (i.e., development-orientated) actions while being constantly buffeted by charges that their actions are violating legal and human rights, claims that feed on and feed back into insurgent propaganda that portrays the Thai state as an aggressor remorselessly attacking the region's Muslims. The army is in fact far less concerned with the rumblings of intellectuals and academics in Bangkok than with the perspectives of local people in the borderland. As well, negative media reporting is of concern to the government and military-security establishment because of its potential to shape international opinion, and ultimately, legitimize foreign intervention, as exemplified by the cases of Aceh and East Timor. (6) Though some charges made against security forces for mistreatment of captured insurgents and suspects can be borne out, they are often fabricated by insurgent propagandists and exaggerated by others. The current turbulence, where insurgent attacks imbricate with personal and politically-motivated violence as well as criminal activities, is a conspicuous legacy of a sensitive, weak and poorly-governed borderland society, fissured by interest groups--state and non-state, Thai-Buddhist and Malay-Muslim--who continue to exploit these weaknesses as a means of building power bases. In this labyrinthine borderland, rumour remains a principal currency of knowledge and an important political instrument for competing groups. (7) Co-existing with this complex power-play are issues that have been ignored, deferred or inadequately addressed by the Thai state, spanning matters of language, education, history and economy. For example, there remains a serious under-representation of Malay-Muslims in senior bureaucratic positions, occupational opportunities for educated Muslim youth in the region have been restricted, and there are pockets of persistent poverty. Drug abuse is rife among Muslim youth, a paradoxical problem in an ostensibly conservative, and largely rural, Islamic society. The reasons for these imbalances and social problems are subject to debate, and Muslim elites are adept at passing blame onto the Thai state rather than addressing local causes within their own society. The direct connection between these issues and the emergence of the current insurgency may be limited, but they continue to exist as critical problems to resolve if the Thai state is to maintain legitimacy. (8) Also, the long-term marginalization of Pattani's history in Thailand's Buddhist-focused national narrative is of major concern to sections of the Muslim elite, an issue which academics and government agencies are attempting (though far too slowly) to address. Malay-Muslims in the borderland actually constitute a varied group in terms of attitudes and positioning viz-a-viz the Thai state, though many individuals and organizations claim to speak for them.
The challenge for the authorities is to carry out counter-insurgency efforts without marginalizing the putative 98 per cent of borderland Muslims who are not engaged in insurgent activities. The current multi-layered turbulence in the south represents one of the greatest challenges to be faced by the Thai state and society. Over the past few years, numerous state and royalty-sponsored projects for the Deep South, extending from economic development to education, have been launched. A host of other projects have been initiated, aiming, among other objectives, to enhance Buddhist-Muslim amity and address psychological tensions arising from the ongoing violence (ranging from children's goat rearing, to art and music therapy). (9) Millions of baht have been expended on compensation and assistance to victims of the violence. Yet, though they may have been weakened by recent military counter-insurgency efforts, armed separatist groups and remaining political cadre have demonstrated a determination to continue their activities and thus prevent the Thai state from delivering its remedial policies in an environment of stability.
Part One: The 2006 Coup and After
In September 2007, on the anniversary of the coup that ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, coup leader General Sonthi Boonyaratkalin, Muslim commander-in-chief of the Royal Thai Army (RTA), claimed that progress had been made in tackling the southern insurgency. He pronounced that authorities were receiving more support from the Muslim population in the Deep South. They were disrupting the clandestine insurgent networks and had gained increased knowledge of insurgent networks through interrogations, although most key leaders behind the violence could still not be determined. When assessed in light of the progressive increase in casualties during the term of Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont, however, these assertions were difficult for many to accept. At the time of the coup, the total death toll was approximately 1,400. At its anniversary in September 2007, this figure had risen to approximately 2,579. (10) Commenting on the limited achievements of the Surayud administration, the outspoken General Panlop Pinmanee (commander of the troops who stormed the Krue Se mosque in April 2004) pointed out that more people had been killed over this period than during the period of the Thaksin administration because of the government's "soft" reconciliation approach, which allowed insurgents to continue attacks with impunity. Critics from another direction attacked the government for not being truly conciliatory by allowing security forces to use the allegedly draconian emergency law of 2005 (and existing martial law provisions) to ride roughshod over borderland people's basic rights. (11)
Reducing the...
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