fighting with ghosts askew
TRANSCRIPT
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Selected Research Article
Fighting with Ghosts:Confronting Thailands Enigmatic Southern Fire
Marc Askew
Senior Research Fellow, Centre for
Conflict Studies and Cultural Diversity,
Prince of Songkhla University, Pattani, Thailand
Go down south and exorcise the ghost! The young Prime Minister Aphisit depicted as a boypuppet sent to confront the spectral and politically explosive southern problem.(Thai Rath
newspaper, 16 December 2008)
This is a revised and updated version of a paper presented by the author at
the conference on Southern Thailand: Anatomy of an Insurgency, 2004-2009,
Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, 10-11 March 2009.
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It occurred to me that the true nature of war is that your declared
enemy is not your only enemy.
(Ted Morgan, My Battle of Algiers: A Memoir, 2005)
Introduction: Ghostly Problems
and the Spectral Enemy
The title of this paper, Fighting with Ghosts, is based on a common
metaphor used by frustrated Thai military and police commanders
describing their struggle with assailants who are waging a new form of
guerrilla aggression against the state on a distinctively new clandestine
organizational basis in Thailands southern border provinces. This
discussion, however, stresses that the ghosts behind the southern
turbulence are not only mysterious insurgents, but also the imponderable
and problematic issues that still plague discourse and policy surrounding the
southern borderland after five years of unrest. This essay explores several
key issues that remain under-examined in assessments of this crisis. First, it
addresses the problematic issue of depicting the unrest solely as an
ideologically-driven insurgency. Though the current instability is
undoubtedly insurgent-centred, a mix of pragmatic political motivations
and other conflicts lie behind many killings and attacks, exposing a systemic
instability in this borderland. Secondly, it outlines the insurgency-related
dimensions of the violence and the unprecedented character of insurgents
organization, identity, aims and tactics, which ultimately lie at the heart of
the key dilemmas facing the Thai state in efforts to quell the violence. It
next examines the principal competing public texts that have emerged tocomprehend and contest the southern problem over the years since 2002.
Finally, I address the generally ignored topic of the varied positions of the
Malay Muslim population of the borderland and the implications of this for
discussions of the meaning of insurgent violence and solutions to the unrest.
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Marc Askew 221
Insurgency and Opportunistic Violence
in a Disorderly Border
There now appears to be a consensus (certainly among English-
language commentators), that the situation of violent unrest in Thailands
southern border provinces constitutes an insurgency (or separatist
insurgency). The term is an easy and convenient label for journalists or
academics to apply, but what does naming the situation insurgency mean
precisely in the current context? Insurgency is conventionally defined as
an organized movement seeking to undermine the authority of an
established state through subversion and guerrilla warfare, with the inherent
or explicit objective of replacing that state with a new form of government.1
In response to the complex challenges confronting US and allied forces in
Afghanistan and Iraq, counterinsurgency specialists have questioned this
cold war definition. Chris North argues that organized movements are hard
to identify and insurgencies now include extremists, tribes, gangs, militias,
warlords, and combinations of these, with different aims. Some are
networked with loose objectives and simply aim to enhance their survival,
and many do not actually seek the overthrow of established governments.2
He thus prefers an open-ended definition of insurgency as a violent
struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and/or influence
over the relevant populations.3
In Thailand, much of the southern violence
and the identity/organization of its perpetrators certainly justifies using the
definition insurgency both in its classical and revised versions, based on
three key demonstrable elements, namely: 1) ideology or legitimacy claims
supporting insurgent action, regardless of whether or not there is an end
game or ultimate political objective; 2) organization (however loose) and
3) forms of guerrilla-type subversion to contest state authority, together with
1. Jeffrey Record, Beating Goliath. Why Insurgencies Win (Washington DC:
Potomac Books, 2007), p. ix.
2. Chris North (Lt-Col.) Redefining insurgency, Military Review (Jan-Feb
2008), p. 117.
3. Ibid.
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the calculated application of violence and intimidation to enhance control
over people and territory.4
The instability in Thailands south is officially called khwam mai
sangop (turbulence or disturbance) and its instigators disturbance
makers (phu ko khwam mai sangop). Significantly, there is no
corresponding single term in the Thai vocabulary for insurgency. Key
words applying to contests for state power are kabot(illegitimate rebellion),
ratprahan (a successful seizure of state power) and batiwat (revolution).
Then there is baeng yaek din daen (separatism), the most heinous political
offence against the centralized and unitary Thai state. Interestingly, the
latter term is not explicit in Thai public or media discourse on the current
southern unrest, though its implication is ever-present, and the highly
flexible abbreviation chon (bandit) which was formerly endorsed in a
longer compound expression for separatist insurgents, is still habitually used
in popular press headlines.5
The official term making disturbance (kan ko
khwam mai sangop) refers to violent actions which may have a political
objective, but may also simply aim to create chaos for pragmatic ends. It is
only recently among a few Thai security academics, Army Staff College
personnel, and commanders that kan ko khwam mai sangop has beenexplicitly matched to the English expression insurgency, ie., to mean
politically/ideologically-inspired irregular warfare aiming to subvert state
authority.6
Sangkop riap roi (peace and order) is a state/bureaucratic and
middle-class value that deems its opposite condition ofkhwam mai sangop
as deeply negative. It is an intrinsically authoritarian concept because it
4. On the use of violence and control over populations, see Stathis N. Kalyvas,The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2006) pp. 195209.
5. Notably, separatist was extracted from the official name Bandit
Separatist Movement in 1972 and replaced with the pathologizing expression
Bandit Terrorist Movement. In 1995, the word movement was removed, to
leave simply Bandit Terrorists (Chon Kokanrai).
6. Samret Srirai (Maj-Genl), The BRN-Coordinate Movement and the
Insurgency in the three border provinces and 4 districts of Songkhla province in
the period 2005 2007. Unpublished research dissertation, National Defence
College, Thailand, 2008, p. 7. [in Thai]; Surachart Bamrungsuk, Insurgency in
Southern Thailand(Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University, 2008) [in Thai]
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leeches political meaning from disorder.7
The Thai state uses khwam mai
sangop as a soft euphemism for the unrest. The expression serves to de-
politicize the intent of the violence by semantically uncoupling insurgent
goals from their methods. Foregrounding and pathologizing the methods
and impact of insurgents chaos, disorder and terror is the standard
way that states de-legitimize opposition.8
Yet, ko khwam mai sangop does have the capacity to describe forms
of turbulence that are driven by non-ideological interests. There has been a
long history of fomented and disguised disturbances and violence in the
south. The current wave of violence is no exception to this pattern, making a
narrow (or casual) use of the English language term insurgency
inadequate to define the totality of the violence. Something more than an
insurgency is going on in the current mix of violent events. I prefer
describing the situation as insurgency-centred turbulence, or insurgency-
driven violence, because a comprehensive disorder is being experienced,
which is the legacy of a chronically exploited and disorderly borderland,
with drug rings and vested interest groups also involved.9
Though the
involvement of these groups might be viewed essentially as opportunistic
violence proceeding in parallel with insurgent aggression and takingadvantage of a weakened state and enforcement structure, there are now
confusing overlaps between insurgents, competing local political groups,
and criminals. In addition to the agglomeration of criminal violence there is
also a generic type of conflict represented by the many killings among rival
local politicians (mainly Muslim), which reflects the chronic violence
prevalent in Thai society generally.
Writers commonly introduce their accounts of the violence in the south
by citing the total number of deaths and/or casualties, giving the impression
that all of these are due to insurgent violence. This is misleading, because
these figures do not disaggregate private and politically-motivated killings
7. See eg., Nithi Ieowsriwong, Thai Political Culture, Paper delivered to the
9th Annual Congress of King Prajadhipoks Institute, Bangkok, 8-10 November
2007. [in Thai]
8. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence, op. cit., p. 17.
9. See Marc Askew, Thailands Recalcitrant Southern Borderland:
Insurgency, Conspiracies and the Disorderly State. Asian Security, vol. 3, no. 2
(2007): 99120.
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from the total number. It is difficult to do this, but some attempt should be
made. Police statistics for the period January 2004 to late 2008, though
problematic, suggest that private killings may account for one quarter to a
third of all violent deaths in the borderland since 2004. Over this period,
police listed 4, 296 cases of shooting, of which 950 (22 per cent) were
determined as resulting from personal disputes, and 2,344 (54.5 per cent)
were classified as security related. Significantly, in a further 998 cases of
shooting incidents (23 per cent) the cause and culprit could not be
determined by police investigation, which could make the percentage of
personal/political motivated attacks even higher.10
The classifications for
shooting cases contrasted with other cases of violence such as beheadings,
bombings, arson, theft of weapons etc., which were almost all classified by
police as security (ie., insurgency) related.11
The proportion of personal-
political killings may be higher than identified in police statistics because
official figures understate actual numbers for several reasons. District-level
military and police commanders note that cases are classified as security-
related even though clear evidence is unavailable to demonstrate cause or
culprit. On the other hand, shooting cases initially determined as private
by the police are sometimes switched to the security-related categoryfollowing appeals from victims relatives who are seeking state
compensation payments (unavailable to victims of private killings). Some
police commanders suggest privately that personal/political motivated
killings could be responsible for 40 to 50 per cent of total civilian deaths,
but a more plausible overall figure is probably thirty per cent.
Crime networks and rival local politicians intersect with ideologically-
motivated groups in varied and confusing ways in the violence. The much-
publicized bombing of the CS Pattani hotel in early 2008 was claimed by
journalists to mark an escalation in militant violence. Though evidence
subsequently unearthed by police confirms that the bombing was undertaken
by insurgent bomb-makers, information about the vehicle used in this attack
(and a simultaneous, but failed, car bomb attack in Yala) points to the
10. Note also that some of these unattributable shootings no doubt include cases
of clandestine assassination by police and army hit-squads.
11. National Police Forward Command Centre, Yala, Summary of Disturbance
events in the 4 southern border provinces 2004 July 2008. [in Thai]
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involvement of a prominent local Muslim politician suspected to have
sought revenge against the hotel owner (a senator) who had supported his
political rival in a provincial election. In Thamuang sub-district of Thepa,
the killing of a local politician which had been ordered by the president of
Thamuang council was committed by an insurgent gunman who also
happened to be a police informant. In 2008, a major bombing in Sunghai-
kolok outside the citys police headquarters was staged by a leading drug
trafficker in revenge against the police. Disguising attacks as insurgent-
related events (through leaving leaflets) is also a common occurrence. The
kinds of violence overwhelmingly committed by insurgents are events such
as the bombing and ambushes of army and police patrols, the killing of
school teachers and other officials, and the burning of schools and the
sabotage of various facilities (eg. railway tracks, mobile phone towers) but
these are mixed in with more ambiguous attacks. This has given rise to
contrary claims concerning the nature of the violence and its perpetrators.
The role of drug traffickers in fomenting violence and funding insurgents
was claimed from the very beginning (notably by Prime Minister Thaksin),
but there is no clear evidence for comprehensive connections between these
two groups.In summary, the violence currently afflicting the border provinces is
multi-faceted and not solely a product of insurgents, even though they are the
driving core of the current instability. They have nested their violence within
an existing disorder, reflecting the particular character of this endemically
weak borderland, and the generic features of a violent society.
The New Insurgency Fighting with Ghosts
An Enigmatic Movement
The role of separatist insurgents in the southern violence was suspected
even before the startling raid and theft of weapons from the base of the
Fourth Development Battalion in Cho-Airong District, Narathiwat on 4
January 2004. From 2002, when attacks on police and army outposts began
to rise noticeably, some security personnel on the ground suspected that a
new insurgency was brewing, but they remained silent in the face of the
dominant official view that criminal groups were primary instigators.
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Subsequent investigation indicates that the 4 January raid was a well-
planned operation undertaken by forces connected to the BRN-Coordinate
network, but the raid did not quell prevailing suspicions about the
involvement of vested interests and criminal groups.12 The move towards
interpreting the unrest as organized ideologically-driven subversion gained
momentum among security agencies following the questioning of captured
militants involved in the 28 April attacks. From this time (and increasingly
from 2006, when intelligence gathering improved) information gained from
documentation and captured assailants revealed that much of the violence
was the work of a new cell-based insurgent network that had been at least a
decade in gestation.
On the question of ideology, aims and structure of the assailants
organization, the paradigms among analysts have swung from a speculative
model of an internationally-linked and regionally mobilized jihadi terrorist
movement to one emphasizing a separatist insurgency generated by local
grievances. In the context of the anxiety generated by the Bali and Jakarta
bombings as well as the capture of Hambali in Thailand (2003), the
prominence of the global and regional terror theme was understandable, but
the coherence of the evidence was ultimately weak. By 2005 the broadconsensus was that this was a local insurgency, albeit inspired by
regional/global examples of Islamic resistance. However, the potential for a
convergence between local and international/regional actors and agendas
(eg., connections with Jemaah Islamiyah) continues to generate interest and
discussion.13
The available evidence does suggest that the current crop of
Malay Muslim insurgents have rejected the overtures of outside jihadist
groups from Indonesia and elsewhere.
Nonetheless, there is clearly an aggressively Islamic ideological base
for the insurgency, and an aim to re-claim territory for creating a
12. Srirai, The BRN-Coordinate, op. cit., pp. 905; see Marc Askew,
Conspiracy, Politics and a Disorderly Border: The Struggle to Comprehend
Insurgency in Thailands Deep South (Washington D.C. and Singapore: East-
West Center and ISEAS, 2007), pp. 1526.
13. SE Asia militants fleeing to Philippines-analyst, Reuters, 20 January
2009; Zachary
Abuza: Thai Democrats can't see insurgency for what it is. New Straights
Times, 15 Mar 2009.
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thoroughgoing Islamic state. The Berjihad di Patani document found after
the 28 April 2004 attacks explicitly highlighted jihad as a legitimizing
motivation for fighting the Thai state.14
Although this doomed uprising
(inspired by a charismatic religious mystic) was an eccentric deviation from
militants preferred tactics, the call to jihad in defence of religion and to
legitimize violence is broadly shared among the insurgents, as demonstrated
in subsequent interrogation and captured indoctrination material. Insurgents
personal accounts of their entry into the movement (provided to this author
and to other investigators) emphasize religious motivation as the principal
impulse and mechanism of commitment.15
Insurgent leaflets have
commonly demonized the Thai state and Buddhists as kafir (unbelievers),
claiming that Muslims are under attack and that Thai troops have been sent
to the south to kill Muslims. This commitment to jihad does not necessarily
translate to global jihadism. It reflects both a traditional form of
mobilization expressed by Muslim communities opposing external threats,
together with a transformation of Malay Muslim nationalism in response to
world trends in militant Islam.16
The local grievances advocates argue that what is at stake for the
insurgents and their putative constituency is ethnic identity and that religionfunctions essentially as an ethnic marker: ie., calls to Muslim solidarity are
essentially calls to Patani Malay solidarity in the face of cultural and
political marginalization by the Thai state.17
The current insurgency in
southern Thailand can certainly be portrayed as a continuation of Malay
Muslim separatist impulses in mutated form rather than a distinctively new
phenomenon, and the case for interpreting the escalation of violence in a
primarily domestic context has some merit. But there are new features,
including an undeniable and powerful international context which frames
14. Wattana Sugunnasil, Islam, Radicalism, and Violence in Southern
Thailand: Berjihad di Patani and the 28 April 2004 Attacks, Critical Asian
Studies,vol. 38, no. 1 (2006): 124130.
15. Authors interviews with recently captured insurgent leaders, Police
Forward Command Headquarters, Yala, March 2009. Also see recent interview in
Issara News, 24 April 2009.
16. Sana Haroon, Frontier of Faith: Islam in the Indo Afghan Borderland (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2007).
17. David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla. Fighting Small Wars in the Midst
of a Big One (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 2134.
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the current events. The stridently religious basis for legitimizing the new
insurgencys unprecedented repertoire of violence should not be
underestimated or relegated to a rhetorical function alone. Religious
fervour was explicitly identified by the former BERSATU leader, Wan
Kadir Che Man, as a driving force of the new insurgency.18
Moreover, it is
clear that this insurgency would not have emerged without the nourishing
examples of Islamic mobilization throughout the world and the region (eg.,
the mujahideen movement in Afghanistan, the Aceh independence struggle)
and the escalating defensiveness of the Islamic world, both before and
following the 9/11 attacks. Such trends have resonated and imbricated with
changing power balances and transformations in the border provinces over
the past decades, especially the expansion of Islamic educational
institutions, which arguably enhanced a trend towards religious and cultural
narcissism among certain groups. Malay and Muslim identities are clearly
mutually reinforcing, but the ideological gravity of the current insurgency is
weighted heavily towards the religious pole of that dual identification, and
this has been developing from the early nineties. The exiled PULO (Patani
United Liberation Organization) leadership in 2001 expressed
disappointment that many Malay Muslims of the borderland now acceptedthat they were Siamese, highlighting that Malayness was no longer a
sufficient ground for galvanizing resistance to the Thai state.19
On this
assessment, it would follow that the only effective focus remaining for the
galvanizing of a viable resistance movement against the Thai state was
religious in nature, and this is indeed what seems to have occurred. One
analyst describes the ideological orientation of the new insurgency as
Islamist Nationalism.20
It is also appropriate, following Mark
Juergensmeyer, to describe the informing ideas of this insurgency as
religious nationalism an ideology built around an imagined community
of believers, sustained by a sense of righteousness which carries with it the
18. Dr. Farish Noor interviews the head of the Patani BERSATU movement,
16 June 2005,
19. "Aku Anak Patani" 23 July 23 2001. From (no
longer accessible).
20. Human Rights Watch, No One Is Safe: Insurgent Violence against Civilians
in Thailands Southern Border Provinces, vol 19, no. 13 (C) (August 2007), p.18.
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authority to utilize violence against the designated enemies of that
community.21
The goals, structure and development of the insurgency were a topic of
investigation and speculation since the January 2004 attack and even earlier.
In 2002, General Kitti Rattanachaya (former commander, Fourth Army
Region) insisted that an active separatist movement aiming to establish an
independent Patani State was well established in the three provinces with a
definite base of support.22
In 2004 he elaborated on this claim, pointing to a
well-established underground coalition of largely religious-driven separatist
groups (based on four levels: hardline leadership, armed forces, youth in the
religious schools, and a united front of ordinary supporters) that had been
developing for a decade without adequate detection by intelligence
agencies. Using documentation found by Border Patrol Police in the home
of the religious teacher Masae Useng in 2003, Kitti argued that the
insurgents were following a Seven Stage plan for implementing their
goal.23
A number of versions of this plan were located, but they all shared a
set of phased objectives beginning with the fostering of religious and ethnic
consciousness and promotion of the ideal of a Patani state, followed by
organization building, recruitment of youth for armed forces, attacks onstate officials, and a penultimate seventh stage which combines political
methods (propaganda), economic pressure and armed struggle to wrest
control of the three provinces from the Thai state. From late 2004 the plan
became widely accepted among Thai security commentators as reflecting
the insurgents strategy and ultimate objective.24
From mid- 2004 and progressively throughout the following two years
it became clear from interrogations of captured militants that the insurgent
groups were cellular in organization, their actions coordinated but flexible,
the leadership decentralized, and the identities of the higher echelons
heavily protected. Further, the insurgent groups had no demonstrable
21. Mark Juergensmeyer, The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts
the Secular State (Los Angeles : University of California Press, 1993), pp. 32-3.
22. Phuchatkan Raiwan, 29 March 2002.
23. Kitti Rattanachaya, Revealing the igniting of the southern fire establishing
a Pattani State (Bangkok: Phichit Printing, 2004), pp. 127 ff. [in Thai]
24. Harn Leenanond, Quenching the Southern Fire (3), Matichon Raiwan, 19
January 2005 [in Thai]; Surachart, Insurgency, op. cit., pp. 6972.
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organizational links with older bodies such as PULO, though this did not
stop the latter making public pronouncements about the war of liberation.
It is markedly distinctive from earlier separatist movements which featured
clear manifestos of aims, knowledge of leaders identity among ordinary
cadre, and permanently armed forces. It is this clandestine feature of the
organization and its various wings (operating at village, district and
province level) that has stymied the Thai state in its efforts to neutralize it or
gain access to its leadership. The BRN-Coordinate (a faction of the former
BRN) has been a favorite candidate in the search for a principal over-
arching insurgent organization, and its leading role is affirmed in the armys
most recent operational documents.25
Kitti argued that BRN-C was central
in the progressive mobilization towards implementing the seven-stage plan,
focusing initially on propagation and indoctrination of youth, but from 2001
turning to armed insurgency.26
There was skepticism in some quarters about
the BRN-C thesis, some suggesting that the Thai military was imposing an
unrealistically rigid template onto a fluid and possibly leaderless coalition of
fighters.27
However, independent researchers during 20062007 were also
finding through interviews that BRN-C was highlighted as the leading if
not the broad umbrella group.28
It is hardly surprising that lower levelcadre including the juwae (guerrilla fighters, central Malay: Pejuang)
have little knowledge of the BRN-C, because cell-based organizations
operate on a strictly need-to-know basis, functioning to contain
knowledge and protect identities.
During 2005 there was increasing knowledge of broad functional
groupings connected to the insurgency including the PERMUDA (youth)
movement. A unifying body known as the DPP (Dewan Pembabasan
Pattani, or Patani Liberation Council) was revealed in captured
documents. This secret council topped a pyramidal control structure
comprising a set of divisions (military, economy, youth, public relations and
25. ISOC, Combat Lessons Learned (Pattani: ISOC Region 4 Forward
Command, 2008), pp. 2038. [in Thai]
26. Kitti, Revealing the igniting, op. cit., p. 160.
27. See Duncan McCargo, Tearing Apart the Land: Islam and Legitimacy in
Southern Thailand(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008), pp. 16972.
28. HRW, No One Is Safe, op. cit., pp.1828.
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propaganda) leading down to cells at the district and village level.20
The
document represented an ideal structure, but it did correspond in some
respects to the reality on the ground, viz.: that in certain areas (over 200
villages of a total of 1, 300 villages) de facto government, support networks
and influence are maintained by the insurgents. Some sources estimated that
by 2006 the number of people engaged in the movement at all levels
amounted to 40,000, with its military wing comprising perhaps thirty
bombing experts and up to 3000 armed fighters.
Estimates for insurgent
strength in later years have varied. In mid-2008 one high-ranking military
source in ISOC Forward Command stated that there remained about 300
armed insurgents active (with a further 3,000 trained but inactive), no lessthan 30,000 supporters, and up to forty principal leaders, some living in
Malaysia.29
At the close of the same year a ranking police officer claimed
there were about 3,000-5,000 guerrillas operating, though army sources
doubted this.30
David Kilcullen highlights four principal tactics of contemporary
insurgency which correspond closely with those used today in southern
Thailand, namely: 1) Provocation staging events to provoke repressive
action by government forces to alienate local people from the state, orprovoke religious/ethnic conflict; 2) Intimidation preventing local
populations from cooperating with governments by killing or intimidating
collaborators; 3) Protraction prolonging conflicts in order to exhaust
opponents resources and erode the political will of governments and public
support for them; and 4) Exhaustion to impose continuous costs in terms
of lives and resources that that will eventually lead to a collapse of
government and popular morale.31
The striking feature of the current
violence in the south is that civilians have been the primary victims.
Members of the Thai Buddhist minority were singled out for attack,
sparking a movement of Thai Buddhists away from the provinces and from
remoter villages to larger towns in the region. This suggests a clear
dimension of ethno-religious genocide in insurgents tactics, justified by
29. Authors interview with senior commanding officer, ISOC Region 4
Forward Command, May 2008.
30. Bangkok Post, 25 December 2008.
31. Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla, op.cit., pp. 302.
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them as retaliation against anti-Muslim state aggression and their defence of
religious territory. But ordinary Muslims are conspicuous targets,
particularly those who have opposed insurgents activities or cooperated
with the state. By early 2006, insurgent attacks on civilians (whose victims
include women and children) began to draw the criticism of international
human rights groups.32
In the mix of violence, drive-by shootings and
motorcycle bombs have been the most common, and many of these
assailants have been able to avoid capture or identification, largely because
witnesses have been too afraid to come forward to testify in public.
Intelligence gathering improved from late 2007, largely due to assistance
from local Muslims alienated by insurgent violence, and extensive lists of
insurgents are now maintained by the police. While it can be suggested that
the authorities are no longer fighting ghosts because identities of many
insurgents are now known, the culprits of attacks remain elusive and
difficult to prosecute. Despite increasing use of forensic evidence, an
estimated 80 per cent of security cases brought to the courts have been
dismissed by judges on the grounds of insufficient evidence.33
Propaganda and skillfully deployed rumor implicating the state in
killings have been as important as armed attacks in the insurgents quest toundermine trust in the state. A number of notable cases of the killings of
religious leaders were widely viewed as implicating Thai officials in
assassinations.34
Insurgents remorseless use of agitprop techniques was
conspicuous in the first half of 2007, which was marked by a number of
large demonstrations reacting to alleged rape and murder of Muslim women
by volunteer Rangers. As the columnist Barun observed in 2006, this is a
war of information between state agencies and insurgents for the trust of
ordinary Muslim people. The armys spokesman similarly remarked that
this war would be decided on the basis of information, and the army could
32. Amnesty International, Thailand: If You Want Peace, Work For Justice, 4
January 2006 [ ASA 39/001/2006]; HRW, No One Is Safe, op. cit.
33. Authors interviews with senor public prosecutors, Pattani Province,
February and March 2009.
34. Bangkok Post, 31 August, 2 September 2005.
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lose the war if it did not effectively counter insurgent agitprop and
rumour.35
How to Make Friends and catch the Bad Guys:
the persistent conundrum 2006-2009
Despite variations in the language of policy, the key challenges for the
Thai state and its security forces by the time of the coup in September 2006
remained the same as they had been from the first policy declaration of
Thaksin in April 2004 (for which see following section). The most
immediate task was to reduce the attacks which were demoralizing both the
local population and state officials so that local administration and schools
could function. Once violence was reduced, state agencies could deliver the
development programs deemed to hold the answer to winning the hearts and
minds of the local population. The purpose of all such development
programs has been to affirm the legitimacy of the Thai state and the unity of
all Thais. The intimately-connected challenge was to catch the right culprits
and to do so without alienating the local population.
In late 2006, the junta-installed government of Surayudh Chulanont
pronounced a policy mix of law-enforcement, justice and reconciliation,but it was unable to reduce the ongoing violence or the controversies
surrounding the newly empowered armys counter-insurgency effort,
despite the advent of the development-focussed SBPAC as the new friend
of the borderland people. In mid- June 2007 the military initiated a
concerted program of security sweeps on villages and districts dominated by
insurgents (Operation Defend the Southern Border), aiming to reduce
violence by the end of the year. Its key objective was to separate insurgent
leaders from communities (separate the fish from the water).36 By early
August around 2000 suspects had been detained and questioned, though
many were subsequently released. Security forces discovered caches of
weapons, military uniforms used by insurgents to disguise their identities,
35. Akkara Thiprot (Col) The War this Time will be Decided by Information,
Issara News, 16 July 2006 [in Thai]; Barun (pseud.), Why is the army failing in
the War of Information?, Nation Weekend, vol. 14, no.738 (21 July 2006). [in
Thai]
36. National Intelligence Agency documents, May, June 2007.
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and bomb-making materials. Despite these achievements, insurgents
continued their attacks, turning their attention to attacking softer targets
such as school teachers and health workers, impacting strongly on the
already sagging morale of these government workers.37 In September,
Sonthi announced that the armys operations had been successful, netting
500 confessed insurgents. But the cordon-and-sweep operations, detention
and training of suspects drew criticism and alienated those who were
innocent. Despite the governments reconciliation and rule-of-law mantra,
violent events in the south actually increased over its period in office (1,815
in 2006 to 1, 861 in 2007). Its greatest achievement was on the
international front, where (largely through General Sonthi, a Muslim) it
successfully engaged with the Organisation of the Islamic Conference,
undercutting insurgent efforts to represent the conflict to the Islamic world
as being one about religious persecution.
In late October 2007 new army commander General Anuphong
Phaochinda refined Sonthis earlier measures in a strategy that combined
military, development and public relations activities, incorporating a
timetable for ending the turbulence within four years (ie., by 2011).The first
phase (late 2007 to September 2009) aimed to reduce daily killings andcontrol the ground. Patrols and checkpoints were increased. With the aid
of better intelligence, police and military cordon-sweep operations became
more surgical, aiming at individual houses of suspects rather than whole
villages, thus reducing the potential for village-wide alienation. A host of
development projects flooded the border provinces at the behest of the
SBPAC and the militarys province and district level task forces. Small
army and Ranger groups named Development and Peace Units moved
closer in to villages to pressure insurgents and befriend locals.38 From early
2008, the police and military announced an improvement in the overall
situation, based on a significant reduction in the number of violent events,
even though bombings were causing proportionally more casualties per
37. Matichon, 6 September 2007.
38. ISOC Region 4 Forward Command, Memorandum, 22 November 2007. [in
Thai] For details see Marc Askew, Thailands Intractable Southern War: Policy,
Insurgency and Discourse, Contemporary Southeast Asia, vol. 30, no. 2 (August
2008): 186214.
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explosion than earlier. Security forces could point to some tangible changes,
even though daily violence continued. For example, insurgent attacks
appeared now to be restricted to the three provinces: tourism had returned to
the souths commercial hub of Hat Yai (rocked by bomb attack in
September 2006), and the Muslim-majority districts of Songkha Province,
which had experienced an upsurge in attacks in 2007, were now quiet.
The positive message of the military during 2008 was compromised by
a number of claims of torture and mistreatment of captured suspects by
troops. There was continued opposition by advocacy groups to the three-
monthly renewals of the emergency decree. The states war of
information was still being waged, not only with insurgent propaganda in
village tea shops, but with journalists and other public critics. Officials
improvement mantra has continued into 2009, and is certainly borne out
by the overall trends of statistics of events and casualties. However, the
determination of remaining insurgents to continue attacks is equally
palpable, as evidenced by a rise in attacks beginning in mid-March 2009
(coinciding with the anniversary of the founding of the BRN). In this
environment, the dispute has continued as to whether the southern crisis is
abating quickly enough with the right methods, and whether the state iswinning enough hearts and minds in the borderland.
A Panoply of Texts: The Struggle for
the High Ground of Truth
Texts of truth- the problem of the south.
There has never been an authoritative official text defining the
dynamics, causes and solutions to the southern problem, one that is
accepted by all the actors engaged in debate surrounding its comprehension,
whether they are politicians, bureaucrats, the military, academics, the press,
advocacy groups, or leaders of various stripes in the borderland, much less
ordinary people of the region. I mean by text a set of propositions or truth
statements defining key issues as a ground of policy that is universally
accepted and acknowledged as legitimate. The reason for this is that not
only are the dynamics informing the southern disorder inherently complex
and murky, but also because the problem is highly politicized and driven
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236 The Royal Golden Jubile International Seminar Series LXX
by varied interests. This section considers the key official texts and
opposing and alterative texts over the period 2004 2008 to highlight
convergences and differences in how the violence, its dynamics and origins,
have been represented.
The First Official texts: from banditry to a security
and development problem
Official texts on the southern problem since 2004 reflect the imperative
of governments to affirm overall control of the defining narrative of the
southern situation in order to legitimize policy. The most prominent
official characterization of the southern problem prior to 2004 was
undoubtedly Thaksins brief and now widely-derided claim in 2002 that
common bandits were behind the increasing number of violent attacks in
the border provinces.39
It was the corollary of the claim that ideologically-
inspired separatism in Thailands south was virtually extinct. This was the
key justification given by Thaksin for his disbanding of the Southern Border
Provinces Administrative Centre in 2002 and the Civilian Military Police
Task Force 42 (CPM - 43) together with the transfer of principal security
duties away from the military to the police. Thaksins claim about banditsdistilled the formal preamble to his Prime Ministerial Order dissolving the
SBPAC. Though disputed even then, this preamble represents the dominant
official text of the southern problem before 2004. The main task in the
south, it claimed, was to address economic and educational deficiencies and
stamp out dark influence causing disturbances in the borderland.40
After the Narathiwat arms raid of 4 January 2004, and as the violence
subsequently developed to climax in the controversial police and army
crackdown on assailants on 28 April, Thaksin back-pedaled somewhat from
his earlier bandit- centered thesis, though he continued to claim that
criminal and influence groups were choreographing this violence. Thaksins
statements in his weekly radio broadcasts in the first half of 2004 highlight
his interlinked themes of under-development and crime as key causes of
39. Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit, Thaksin: The Business of Politics in
Thailand(Chiang Mai, Silkworm Books, 2005), p. 237.
40. Prime Ministers Office Order 123/2545, 30 April, 2002.
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southern instability.41
Aside from radio statements and the bland
announcements of the public relations bureaucracy, the only extended
pronouncement amounting to a revised official view of the southern
situation by mid 2004 was the preamble to Prime Ministerial Order 68/2547
The Policy for Promoting Peace and Happiness in the Three Southern
Border provinces (approved in May), which set the framework for ending
the disturbances and re-establishing stability within three years. Drafted by
Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, (then Deputy Prime Minister for security affairs),
the order was spurred by Thaksins meeting with the king in February, when
he was enjoined to approach the southern crisis according to the three
principles of Understanding, Reaching Out, and Development.
The preamble began by stating that post war geopolitics had stimulated
a global confrontation based on belief, nationality and identity, with
inequality being the major condition for its emergence. It continued by
noting that within the border region, the special ethno-religious, linguistic
and cultural characteristics of the Malay Muslim population had been
exploited by various movements both within and outside the country to
foment opposition to the authority of the Thai state among young people.
Among external factors, a broad hostility in the Muslim world to the Westhad exacerbated increased violence which might bring foreign terrorists into
Thailand. Disturbances in the border provinces occurred continuously, with
their origins stemming from movements (they are not specified as
separatists), local influence groups, and the states inability to reduce
criminality, so that state authority was persistently undermined. As a result,
officials were not receiving cooperation from local people in solving the
unrest. Further, there was no unity or initiative in the action of security
agencies, leading to further demoralization of officials, businesspeople and
the population generally. The urgent tasks of the government were to: 1)
destroy the structure of the various insurgent, influence and criminal groups,
particularly by gaining victory through thought (ie., psychological
operations) and avoiding actions that would exacerbate the trend of
violence; 2) give the state the opportunity to establish sustainable peace and
41. How the Situation in the South is Improving. Summary of weekly radio
Broadcast by Thaksin Shinawatra, 15 May 2004, in Inside Thailand Review 2004.
Public Relations Department of the Foreign Office.
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238 The Royal Golden Jubile International Seminar Series LXX
development and ; 3) do so with a commitment to embracing cultural
diversity and emphasizing the cooperation of all Thais in furthering national
development. The latter goal anticipated numerous government and military
declarations over the next four years about undermining insurgent networks
and taking the initiative.42
The events of 28 April and the tragedy at Tak
Bai in October showed how distant was official practice from nicely-
phrased policy principles.
Dissonant texts of 2004
During 2004 other texts were advanced that contested official
pronouncements. Some of these were supported by members of Thaksins
government and bureaucracy. These dissonant texts reflected both a
crystallization of opposition to Thaksins policies that had been emerging
since 2002 and reactions to more immediate events such as the imposition
of martial law, the police abduction of Muslim rights lawyer Somchai
Neelaphaichit (in March), the security crackdown on 28 April, and the Tak
Bai event of October. There were other texts of the southern problem
circulating at this time, but the most conspicuous fell into two
complementary clusters.43
Most prominent was the narrative that can belabelled The Draconian and Short-sighted Thaksin State. This targeted
Thaksins leadership and policies as the primary factors escalating the
unrest, particularly the extrajudicial police killings associated with
Thaksins war on drugs campaign of 2003, and the disappearances of
borderland Muslims during this period, which had supposedly provoked
Muslim hostility. In addition, Thaksins dissolution in 2002 of the SBPAC
and CPM 43 allegedly removed a critical mediating and intelligence-
gathering apparatus, permitting militant separatist activity to get out of
control. Further, Thaksin was criticized for employing a heavy-handed
military approach, as reflected in the states response to the attacks of April
28 and the treatment of protesters at Tak Bai on 25 October 2004. This text
42. Prime Ministerial order 68/2547 The Policy for Promoting Peace and
Happiness in the Three Southern Border provinces. Text reproduced in Bunkrom
Dongbangsattan, The Last War of General Chavalit Yongchaiyudh (Bangkok:
Offset Press, 2005), pp. 18492. [in Thai]
43. For an early characterization of differing narratives, see Chang Noi,
Interpreting the South, Nation, 10 May 2004.
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Marc Askew 239
was produced by Bangkok intellectuals, civil society and human rights
advocates, southern Muslim leaders, and the largely southern-based
opposition Democrat Party. Another closely related text can be described as
The Marginalized Southern Muslim and the Hegemonic Thai Buddhist
State. Southern Malay Muslims were represented as suffering
marginalization and victimization in both current and historical terms. This
was exemplified in data appended to Deputy Prime Minister Chaturon
Chaisaengs peace plan (presented in April 2004 and shelved by Thaksin)
showing that at this stage local Muslims believed most killings were being
committed by state officials, and by statements of Thailands Human Rights
Commission. Citing their own well-worn themes, various Muslim
academics and public figures pronounced that the violence was a reflection
of the long-term cultural and linguistic marginalization of southern Muslims
by the Thai state.44
The Reconciliation Text: Clamouring from The Outside
The most prominent alternative text on the nature of the southern
problem was the report of the National Reconciliation Commission. The
NRC was founded as an independent agency in March 2005 in the wake ofthe furor surrounding the Tak Bai events, and became a platform for a
coalition of leading civil-society advocates and moderate Muslim
intellectuals drawn from Bangkok and the south. Led by the highly-
respected former prime minister Anand Panyarachun, the NRC adopted a
stance opposed to insurgency-focused assessments of the crisis.
The NRCs final report was released in June 2006, though its diagnosis
had been established months earlier, as shown in a draft produced in
October 2005. The leading peace academic Chaiwat Satha-anand who
penned the report also framed its approach to the problem. Violence
(khwamrunraeng) was described as an ailment afflicting society: it was a
systemic problem for which all Thais were responsible. Reconciliation
through non-violence was the cure for this ailment its aim was to reduce
the conditions producing anger and resentment, and to promote forgiveness
and acceptance of differences. Causes of the violence, it was argued, could
not be pinned down to separatism, which played a minor role in the
44. See Askew, Conspiracy, op. cit., pp. 812.
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240 The Royal Golden Jubile International Seminar Series LXX
current turmoil. The task of peacemaking was to address structural factors
and long-term solutions that involved, among other things, promoting
educational and economic development consistent with the culture and
religion of the majority Muslim population of the three provinces.45
Embodied in the report and its recommendations were all the key axioms of
grass-roots participatory development and peace theory.
Anand emphasized that there was no guarantee that the measures
proposed by the NRC would lead to a diminution of the current violence in
the immediate future, but that the NRC had addressed the root causes or
conditions for violence, based on an investigation of border Muslims needs.
The southern problem is not a conflict about religions or separatism, he
noted, But these two issues have been exploited to advance respective
concerns. Certainly, separatism remains an issue there but it is not the root
cause.46
Having subsumed daily killings by militants into the generality of
violence, the NRC sidestepped the hard questions about the identity,
motivations and support base of insurgents. Short-term solutions proposed
by the NRC included withdrawing the military and establishing unarmed
peace teams.47
The NRC proposed that parliament consider passing an
Act on Peaceful Reconciliation in the Southern Border Provinces whichwould authorize the establishment of three bodies to serve as instruments to
reduce violence and mistrust. They included a Southern Border Provinces
Peace Strategy Administration Center (SBPPSAC). This closely resembled
a resuscitated SBPAC, so it is not surprising that Thaksins government
ignored it. A proposed Council for Development had no administrative
authority, and was evidently a watered down version of stronger
recommendations which were discouraged by a big person who has
warned Anand not to propose anything smacking of regional autonomy.48
The NRCs leading members, though vocal in the public arena, were
political outsiders and the Thaksin governments shelving of their report
45. National Reconciliation Commission, Defeating Violence with the Power
of Reconciliation. Draft final report. Bangkok: NRC, 10 October 2005, Esp. pp.
1216, 7177. [in Thai]
46. Bangkok Post, 6 June 2006.
47. Krung Thep Thurakit, 5 June 2006.
48. It is likely that he was referring to Prem Tinsulanond. Authors interview
with prominent NRC member, resident of Pattani, 16 September 2006.
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Marc Askew 241
confirmed this. Following the coup of September 2006, however, former
NRC outsiders now became insiders, and their vocabulary strongly
informed the new conciliatory official text on the southern problem and its
solutions.
The Conciliatory Text of Surayudhs post-coup Government
After the September 2006 coup, General Sonthi (Chairman of Council
for National Security) and the junta-installed Prime Minister Surayudh
embarked on an approach towards the southern crisis that emphasized both
reconciliation and the rule of law. These objectives were embodied in Prime
Ministerial Order 206, entitled The Policy to Promote Peace in the
Southern Border Provinces, and Order 207, which re-established the
SBPAC and the Civilian (ie., civil service) Police and Military Command as
well a new army-based Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC)
Region 4 Forward Command. The preamble to Order 206 declared that the
southern turbulence was confusing, with many dimensions, but it asserted
that the key basis of the unrest was the activity of a small group who are
using conditions of identity to expand their impact and creating an
atmosphere of fear and mistrust until most people have fallen into a state offear, which has become an obstacle to cooperation in solving problems and
developing the area. The order obediently declared a commitment to follow
the Kings royal injunction to enact policy through Understanding,
Reaching Out and Development. In many ways it resembled Thaksins
Order 68/2547 in its diagnosis: movements were distorting religious ideas,
playing on ethnic solidarities and spreading disinformation to erode trust in
the state, though crime and influence groups were not mentioned as culprits.
The principal difference was that Surayudhs declaration incorporated the
core issues and associated buzz words that had been enunciated over the
previous two years by public intellectuals, peace and rights activists,
including justice, peaceful methods, reconciliation, and peoples
participation in addition to the obligatory royal principle of the
sufficiency economy.49
The government and its military backers aimed to
distinguish their approach from that of the tainted Thaksin administration.
49. Prime Ministerial Order 206, Policy to promote peace in the southern
border provinces, 30 October 2007 [in Thai].
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242 The Royal Golden Jubile International Seminar Series LXX
To this end, in early November 2006, Surayudh publicly apologized to the
borderland Muslims of the south for the mistakes of the previous
government.
A keystone of the coup-governments policy for peace-building in the
south was the resuscitation of the SBPAC and the allocation of a division of
labour between SBPAC as a civilian organization focusing on development
and the army-based ISOC Region 4 Forward Command emphasizing
security. In reality, in its aim to project to the borderland public the armys
friendship, ISOC deals as much with development projects and public
relations as it does with security and military interdiction.50
The new
SBPAC was somewhat different from its earlier incarnation, with Justice
Ministry officials added to its mix of civil servants from the Defence,
Education and Interior Ministry.51
Unlike its forebear, the SBPAC was
firmly subordinated to the security apparatus of the militarys ISOC Region
4 Forward Command which authorised its budget. The Democrat Party and
others argued that the organization should be given independent
bureaucratic status (by Act of Parliament). SBPAC officials complain that
their work is hampered by their limited autonomy, but it is rather too
convenient to blame the army for their institutions shortcomings. Much ofthe SBPACs limitations in fact lie in its character as a typical bureaucratic
department, with all the ceremony, hierarchy and procedural sluggishness
that stymies the countys administrative apparatus.
Continued Critique and the limits of the Conciliatory Text
The Surayudh governments reconciliation initiatives were welcomed.
It moved towards accommodating formerly marginalized voices and views,
and placed justice front-and-centre in the principles and rhetoric
underlying southern policy. But though key southern Muslim leaders and
rights activists were selected for the appointive National Legislative
Assembly, an oppositional text on the southern problem persisted. In
November 2006 the NLA established a special committee to investigate
and study the state of the disturbance in the southern border provinces. It
50. Prime Ministerial Order 207, The Administration of Government Officials
in the Southern Border Provinces, 30 October 2007 [in Thai].
51. Bangkok Post, 28 October 2006.
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Marc Askew 243
included prominent figures associated with peace advocacy and Muslim
rights, including former members of the defunct NRC. The committees 105
page report was submitted at the end of 2007, as the Surayudh government
was stepping down. It represented a distinctive and uncompromising text of
the southern problem, focusing on victims and laying the blame for the
unrest primarily on deficiencies in government security policy and practice.
The report contained a summary of persisting complaints as represented to
committee members in their investigations among groups in the borderland,
ranging from the uneven and slow distribution of compensation to victims
of violence to unjustified detention and apparent mistreatment of suspects
by officials. There was a persisting lack of transparency in the application of
laws, with the result that there was still a lack of trust among people in the
border provinces towards the state. As for the issue of insurgents, they were
mentioned only three times in the report, and were lost among all the
references to the negative impacts or faults in government policy. The
southern problem it seemed, had little to do with insurgent-driven
violence.
The nub of the reports message was that justice and peaceful
means were not being fully employed by the state, and this deficiencyexplained the persistence of violence. According to the ideology of
peacemaking embraced by the report writers (the introduction was lifted
from an essay by the academic and philosopher Mark Tarmthai, former
subcommittee chairman of the National Security Council and ally of the
report writer Jiraphorn Bunnak), peace was only possible with full public
participation and delegation of power to localities. The introduction extolled
the virtues of the National Security Policy for the Southern Border
Provinces (1999-2003) which had embodied the principles of their
peacemaking approach. This innovative security policy, they claimed, had
failed to prevent violence re-emerging in 2004 because it had not been
genuinely applied and accepted by officials. Peacemaking dogma could not
admit the possibility that its principles could be wrong, so by this logic
conflict could only occur because the principles had been ignored or poorly
applied.52
52. Special Committee of the National Legislative Assembly, Report of the
findings of the Investigation and Study of the State of Disturbance in the Southern
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The period from late 2006 saw the forging of an officially-sponsored
conciliatory text of the southern problem and its solutions, centred on
categorical affirmations of justice, participation, peace and peaceful
means. From 2008, the governments led by Samak Suntharavej, his ill-
fated successor Somchai Wongsawat, and following this the Democrat
party-led coalition under Aphisit Vejjajiva, have maintained this broad
official text of the southern problem. These buzz words flooded the
borderland, appearing on roadside signboards of ISOC and the SBPAC, and
have ever since dominated the language of workshops, seminars and
conferences. However, this profusion did not signal unanimity about their
meaning or their application. Violence, like a ghost, continued to reappear,
haunting the pet theories of peace-makers.
By 2009, after five years of violence in the borderland, competing texts
on the causes and character of the persisting unrest continued, though now
they can be condensed into two main texts, namely 1) the government-
sponsored text, that: Violent separatism is feeding on pretexts of
oppression in the face of a state that is now committed to justice and the rule
of law and providing development initiatives for borderland Muslims; asagainst 2) an opposing text, that: Persistent state aggression and unjust
emergency laws are compromising genuine justice and alienating ordinary
Muslims, preventing them from trusting the state.
Where is the Malay Muslim?: A Persisting Lacuna
Ultimately, debate on the meaning and solutions to the southern unrest
converge on the key question of Malay Muslims of the borderland: how do
they view the current violence, and just how do they position themselves on
a range of matters extending from ethno-religious identification, relations
with and experiences of the Thai state, and attitudes towards separatist-
inspired insurgency? There has been no shortage of advocates, both outside
and inside the region, who claim to speak for the Malay Muslim but most
commentary remains appallingly oversimplified, and the qualifications of
these advocates to represent large groups of people is in question. So too,
Border Provinces] (Office of the National Legislative Council, December 2007)
[in Thai]
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detailed and nuanced portrayals of the structure of Malay Muslim society,
its competing elites and its internal dynamics, remain woefully sparse and
oversimplified (though some recent research by Duncan McCargo has
begun to explore this).53 In the highly charged atmosphere of the southern
unrest, reification of the Malay Muslim has been the norm, whether among
academics or Malay Muslim leaders. Political groups (conspicuously the
Democrat party) have pandered to these reifications, and state officials have
deferred to them, as reflected in habitual use of the standard phrase culture
and way of life as a summary for a sacrosanct and irreducible Muslim
identity in the three border provinces.
My own sustained encounters with many Malay Muslims in a diverse
range of settings over the past three-and-a half years leave me unable to
characterize in simple terms the positions of Malay Muslims, who vary in
their views of the origins and meaning of the violence. For every Malay
nationalist who regards the Thai state as the perpetrator of injustice there is
another who resents insurgent groups and affirms the claim to belong to an
entity called Thailand. For every Malay Muslim who may recount part of
the historical narrative of loss or suffering flowing from the defeat of thePattani sultanate by Siam two hundred years ago there are many more who
profess no interest in the past. Ordinary Malay Muslims (ie. non-elite
Muslims) are not the apathetic or unthinking mass of peasants depicted by
Surin Pitsuwan in his elite-centred account of Islam and Malay nationalism
over twenty years ago. They are a highly mobile population with a diverse
range of occupations and experiences, and their orientations towards the
different Islamic movements that compete in the region are also diverse.
The essentializing anecdote Scratch a Malay Muslim and you find a
separatist underneath (cited by McCargo)54
marginalizes a host of variant
views and positions. It is just as common to scratch a Malay Muslim and
hear one using the expression Rak Chart (love the country/Thailand) and
happy to identify as Thai, yet conducting most of his/her daily life in the
local Malay dialect. That is not to say that the people dont criticize the state
or resent the endemically feudal character of the bureaucracy and its
53. McCargo, Tearing Apart the Land, op. cit.
54. Ibid., p. 4.
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sluggishness in delivering development and other services in the region
that criticism (common also among local Thai Buddhists) is ultimately
separable from the issue of allegiance to a broader national community.
Indeed, given the Thai states legacy of dysfunctionality, it is perhaps
remarkable that a comprehensive uprising has not emerged. As one Malay
Muslim villager expressed the matter when I raised the issue of separatism:
if we wanted to separate we [Patani Muslims] would have done it by now,
because we are the great majority here, and it could easily be done. It is a
rhetorical claim, but it makes a point. Michiko Tsunedas recent
ethnographic research in the Thai-Malaysian border-crossing district of
Sunghai-kolok (Narathiwat), highlights great diversity among Muslim
Malays in the Deep South. She concludes her study with the remarks:
The recent regional unrest has once again led the Thai government and
media to portray the Nayu population in the southern border region as a
monolithic mass. Militants also call for a unity of the ethno-religious
minority in the region. Yet such portrayals discount the diversity that
exists within the region and the sense of membership to Thailand that many
Nayu residents have cultivated over the years. The Nayu population in the
southeastern border region of Thailand is diverse, and holds competing
notions of past and present, as well as notions of what it means to be
Muslim, Malay, and Thai.55
The tendency to simplify Malay Muslim attitudes was highlighted
twenty years ago by the anthropologist Andrew Cornish in his rare study of
Malay-Muslim interactions with Thai officials in Yala. He criticized elite-
centred studies of separatism, which posited a bifurcation between peasant
apathy and the Malay elite leadership of nationalist movements, proposing
instead that rural Malay attitudes fitted neither separatist nor loyalist
models.56
In the context of the current insurgent-driven unrest and the
positions people take vis--vis the Thai state, it is far too simple to group
55. Michiko Tsuneda, Navigating Life on the Border: Gender, Migration, and
Identity in Malay Muslim Communities in Southern Thailand, Ph.D Dissertation,
University of Wisconsin Madison, 2009, p. 368.
56. Andrew Cornish, Whose Place is This? Malay Rubber Producers and Thai
Government Officials in Yala (Bangkok: White Lotus, 1997), pp. 109125.
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Malay Muslims into the two camps of allegedly authentic Malays and the
deferential Uncle Toms who support the state, as the journalist Don
Pathan has done.57
Nor have Thai and Malay neighbours polarized to the
extent that has been predicted in the wake of the violence. The habitual
classification of communities into Buddhist (minority) and Muslim
(majority) does not necessarily correspond to neighbours perceptions of a
more collective locality-based identity that transcends singular ethnic
identification. That is to say, exclusive Malay identification is situational
and relational. An inclusive locality-oriented form of identification crossing
ethno-religious boundaries can be seen operating in some mixed
neighbourhoods that have been determined to resist polarization.58
Neighbourhood-focussed loyalty is expressed in some purely Muslim areas
where groups fervently oppose insurgents. In two districts of Pattani and
Yala provinces with which I am familiar, Malay Muslims have taken
matters into their own hands by organizing hit squads to eliminate Muslim
insurgents. This phenomenon is something that has never been discovered
by commentators, who seem intent on identifying stereotypes of solely Thai
Buddhist vigilante militias, thereby reproducing comfortable ethno-
religious binaries in their representations.59
Aside from these, there are well-publicized stories of Muslim village head men or sub-district chiefs
(kamnan) who have openly opposed insurgents in their localities. What are
we to make of them? Do we call them Muslim Uncle Toms? I dont
think so. Commentators easily digestible moral and romantic ethno-
religious polarities are challenged by the plurality of Malay Muslim
allegiance and identification.
Returning to the question of Malay Muslim elites, we can note that
their orientations to Islam and matters connected to the southern unrest and
its solutions vary, as Srisompob Jitpiromsri discovered in survey research on
57. On Don Pathans Muslim Unce Tom references, see Nation, 27 June 2005,
4 January 2006.
58. Marc Askew, Landscapes of Fear, Horizons of Trust: Villagers Dealing
with Danger in Thailands Insurgent South, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies,
vol. 4, No. 1 (Feb., 2009): 5986.
59. SeeInternational Crisis Group, Southern Thailand: the Problem with
Paramilitaries, Asia Report no.140, 23 October 2007.
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the question of regional governance.60
Nor can we extrapolate from elites
the views of the wider population. This assumes that elites have authority to
speak for them, which is questionable. It is a clich, often propounded by
Thai Buddhists, the military and bureaucrats (such as those in the SBPAC),
that Malay Muslims follow their leaders. I have not found this to be the
case in villages that have studied in Pattani Province. There, people take
little notice of village headmen or even of the local imam. The ongoing
efforts of officials to engage with Muslim leaders (through innumerable
seminars) are based on the presumption that they will return to
neighbourhoods and communicate the governments message to ordinary
people. This does not usually happen. It is even less the case that ordinary
people have access to, or are interested in the pronouncements of the
regions Muslim academics who have projected themselves to the media
and authorities as cultural guardians and interpreters of the southern
problem since 2004. I found illuminating the response of one Muslim rights
and identity activist to my point that the ordinary Muslims I had spoken to
showed no interest in the themes of Muslim Malay identity, which so
animated Muslim public intellectuals. His response was that this didnt
matter; it was the duty of the elites to guide them. As for the villagers,they had never heard of him, despite his publications on the southern
question.
This question who do the Malay Muslim elites speak for? can also be
asked of putative separatists, who by their actions position themselves as
presumptive elites. Here we confront a void. In the case of the current
insurgency we are faced with the mystery not only of what the insurgents
ultimately want, but who they actually speak for (through their violence as a
political and symbolic language). When commentators talk of the
insurgency as essentially local and based on local grievances, there is
an unstated assumption that the insurgents are the de facto privileged
bearers of the great burden of Pattanis problematic past and they somehow
represent a great number of people. That, however, is an assumption which
needs demonstration. The Muslims elites have long competed among
60. Srisompob Jitpiromsri and Duncan McCargo, A Ministry for the South:
New Governance Proposals for Thailands Southern Region, Contemporary
Southeast Asia, vol. 30, no. 3 (December 2008): 403428.
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Marc Askew 249
themselves. Their struggles have often not been visible to those outside the
region both because of a fatal lack of interest by most Thais in this other
country of Thailand, and also because these elites themselves have an
interest in obscuring such matters from outsiders view. One thing is very
clear: questions of religion and identity are an important ground of political
capital for competing Malay Muslim elites, and the separatist option has
been another ground for legitimacy at various times. The question of just
what this means for ordinary Muslims still remains obscure.
Conclusion: Five Years On- Is the glass half-empty
or half full?
By early 2009, the sixth year of unrest in Thailands Muslim majority
Deep South, the Thai state still faces two disturbing ghosts, despite a
palpable reduction in violent attacks: 1) a clandestine militant organization
that has proven highly resilient to the authorities efforts to neutralize it,
whether by interdiction or development blandishments, and 2) a pre-existing
crime/corruption-driven disorder that is the legacy of a chronically weak
borderland. Major conundrums face the Thai government and its security
forces, principal among which is: how to simultaneously pursue both lawenforcement and remedial (i.e. development-orientated) action while being
constantly buffeted by charges that these actions violate legal and human
rights, critical challenges to the states mission to demonstrate that it is
fundamentally just and law-abiding. These charges feed into insurgent
propaganda which takes advantage of any slip-up in security operations to
confirm rumours that the authorities are draconian. Realists in the military
argue that it will be a hard slog to fully extinguish the violence (at least ten
years), but the press and other monitoring groups are less patient, with any
new bombing or beheading attracting speculation that it may be a prelude to
a new spike in the violence and demanding an answer to the impossible
question when will it end?61
Not surprisingly, the latest army Combat
Lessons learned report spells out clearly that insurgents cheapest and most
effective weapon against the Thai state is Thailands public media: which
reports ever-repeatedly whenever our side makes a mistake.62
61. Eg., Matichon Raiwan, 25 February 2009.
62. ISOC, Combat Lessons, op. cit., p. 513.
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There has never been unanimity about the problem of the south since
the earliest signs of the new insurgency and the wave of opportunistic
personal and political violence that has accompanied it. The fact that this
discursive log-jam persists in public, scholarly and journalistic narratives
highlights not only prosaic differences of perspective, but most critically a
combination of deep denial (in the case of some Muslims and other
advocates), ideological difference, political opportunism, as well as the
persisting academic fashion of blaming the Thai state as the sole culprit.63
While strident claims have been made to define the problem from various
angles, the most glaring lacuna in understanding concerns ordinary Malay
Muslims, whose varied positions are routinely simplified in the polemical
quest to control the meaning of the insurgency and its implications.
63. Michael. J. Montesano and Patrick Jory,Introduction, in M. J. Montesano
and P. Jory (eds.) Thai South and Malay North: Ethnic Interactions on a Plural
Peninsula (Singapore: NUS Press 2008) p 4