resource conflict and ethnic peace in northern thailand

Resource conflict and ethnic peace innorthern Thailand

Neil A. EnglehartDepartment of Political Science, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH 43403-0225, USA.

Email: [email protected]

Abstract: Although northern Thailand has experienced both ethnic discrimination and resourceconflicts, neither has produced significant organised violence. The relative absence of ethnicallymobilised natural resource conflict in northern Thailand is due in part to the historical pattern of stateformation, and in part to the Thai state’s capacity to deter and mediate conflicts before they escalateinto organised violence.

Keywords: Burma, ethnic conflict, resource conflict, state capacity, state formation, Thailand

Introduction

It is easier to explain why something happenedthan why it did not, and so accounting for thelack of violent ethnic and resource conflict innorthern Thailand poses a challenge. NorthernThailand is ethnically diverse, with numerousconflicting interests over the control of naturalresources. Yet there has been remarkably littleviolent conflict over either resources or ethnic-ity. This relative peace is in sharp contrast toneighbouring Burma/Myanmar, where similarethnic diversity and resource endowments haveproduced almost 60 years of civil war (Lintner,1994; Smith, 1999).

In general, we can think of the relationshipbetween ethnic conflict and resource conflictrunning in either of two directions. Ethnic griev-ances could lead to competition for resources,as it has in Myanmar. There aggrieved ethnicgroups with access to armed force have sus-tained insurgencies through the exploitation ofnatural resources, including timber, gems, jade,and the conversion of upland forest to opiumproduction.

On the other hand, resource conflict couldlead to ethnic conflict. This may happen whenavailability of a newly tapped resource givesaggrieved groups additional leverage or capac-ity to sustain armed conflict, as in Aceh. It couldalso happen when a group begins to exploit

resources in a way that conflicts with existinguses by other groups. The resistance of thePenan of Borneo to logging is an example ofsuch a conflict.

In northern Thailand, this latter trajectory ismost relevant. If ethnic conflict were to erupt, thecause would most likely be the use of uplandforest resources by minority groups, and itsimpact on the livelihood of lowland farmers.Such frictions have occurred, and althoughresources have generally been the immediatecause, they often assume an ethnic characterbecause ethnicity overlaps economic interests.Plenty of ugly ethnic chauvinism has been dis-played in these conflicts, and upland communi-ties have suffered a long history of discriminationat the hands of lowlanders and the Thai state.Lack of grievances therefore does not explainrelative ethnic peace in northern Thailand: thereare plenty of grievances to go around.

This essay explores two related reasons forethnic peace in Thailand, one having to do withthe historical roots of Thai state formation, andthe other with the relative strength of the Thaistate. Historically, the Thai state incorporatedethnic groups on a non-ethnic basis, in contrastto most neighbouring countries, and this hashad a long-lasting legacy for ethnic relations inthe country. While Thai government policytowards northern communities has been incon-sistent, it has generally leaned towards ignoring

Asia Pacific Viewpoint, Vol. 49, No. 1, April 2008ISSN 1360-7456, pp98–110

© 2008 The AuthorJournal compilation © 2008 Victoria University of Wellington

doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8373.2008.00363.x

mailto:[email protected]

or assimilating ethnic groups, rather than fol-lowing a colonial strategy of playing them offagainst each other and thereby exacerbatingconflict. The major exception to this rule is theMuslim minority in the south, which is dealtwith separately later.

In addition, the Thai state generally has thecapacity to deter and mediate conflicts beforethey precipitate organised violent conflict,whether over resources or over ethnicity. A rela-tively strong state based on citizenship ratherthan ethnicity has thus contributed substantiallyto the absence of large-scale organised violencein northern Thailand.

Gravel and forest, water and cabbage

I begin with two vignettes to illustrate someimportant features of the practice of protest andthe meaning of ethnicity in northern Thailand.

Gravel and forest

In 1996 a small Shan community in northernThailand organised a protest against a gravelmine.1 Although some villagers supported theproject because it would bring jobs to the area,most opposed it because they were worriedabout contamination of their water supply, dustand increased truck traffic on the roads. Theprotest involved bussing villagers to the provin-cial government offices to address the provin-cial council and the governor, the latter acentral government civil servant. A ceremony toordain trees in a newly established communityforest followed. Bands of yellow and white clothwere wrapped around the trees as monkschanted, symbolically making associating thetrees with the Buddhist monkhood.

The fact that these Shan were not of Thaiethnicity did not prevent them from employingvery Thai forms of protest, binding villagersto the central government and Thai nationalculture. They addressed their complaint tocentral government officials, and they followedwith a ceremony that linked them to the statereligion, the King and Bangkok elites. Tree ordi-nations have become a favourite mode of envi-ronmental protest across Thailand, because itdraws on Buddhist symbolism to protect not justthe trees but the resources under and aroundthem (Darlington, 1998; Tannenbaum, 2000).

The popularity of such rituals was enhancedwhen the King requested that trees be ordainedin honour of the 50th anniversary of his rule, agesture that demonstrated par excellence howmainstream the idea had become (BangkokPost, 1997).

In contemporary Thailand protests, evenwhen conducted by regionally or ethnicallydistinct groups, have tended to follow culturalidioms familiar to central Thais. The repertoireof protest and contestation is typically aimed ata national audience, relying on national mediaand hoping to generate interest and sympathyacross the country. It therefore tends to draw oncentral Thai cultural symbols, and exclusiveethnically based organisation has been rare.

Groups such as the Shan who resemble theThai in key respects have had an easier timewinning acceptance from the Thai majority.Thais have long evaluated ethnic groups on aspectrum based on certain characteristics, mostimportantly the practice of Theravada Buddhismand wet rice agriculture. Most civilised arethose groups who, like the Thai, practise both.Such groups include the Mon, Lao, Lue, Phuanand the northern Thai people called khonmeuang. Further down the spectrum are groupswho sometimes grow wet rice and practiseBuddhism, but sometimes do not. These groupsinclude the Shan and Karen, the latter being themost numerous upland minority group in thecountry (Keyes, 1997: 217). Further down thespectrum are those who reside in upland areas,often practise animist religions or Christianity,and grow dry rice. Groups that rely on swiddenagriculture in particular are considered verydifferent from, and inferior to, the Thai. Theseinclude the Hmong, as well as smaller groups,including the Akha and Lisu.

This ethnic spectrum has been the basis formuch discrimination in Thailand, but the policyof the central government is currently that allthese groups should be part of the Thai nation inthe sense of being citizens. While discrimina-tion certainly occurs, both in daily life and oftenin official policy, it is not a major barrier toinclusion in the Thai nation and its political life.Even if they are considered inferior, they are stillThai in the civic sense.2 The government hasencouraged assimilation in various ways, forinstance, by sponsoring Buddhist missionaryactivities (Kamala, 1997) and providing

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education in central Thai. If educated in Thaischools and fluent in the central Thai dialect,members of these groups can often ‘pass’ asThai if they wish.

Today most Thai think of hilltribes as theonly significant minority groups in the north.However, until relatively recently lowlandnortherners now considered Thai also wereregarded as ethnically distinct. The northernersnow called khon meuang were less than acentury ago called Shan or Lao by missionariesand foreign diplomats. The chief city of theregion, known in Thai as Chiang Mai, wasusually referred to in English by the translitera-tion of its Burmese name, Zimmay. Yet today thekhon meuang are considered unproblematicallyThai. Like Italian- or Irish-Americans, they maybe perceived as having interesting culturalidiosyncrasies, but these represent colourfullocalisms rather than non-Thai characteristics.Charles Keyes refers to this as an ‘ethnoregional’rather than ‘ethnic’ difference, meaning that‘cultural differences have been taken to be char-acteristic of a particular part of the countryrather than of a distinctive people’ (Keyes, 1997:213). In fact, some elements of northern Thaiculture are picked up by central Thais for theirown purposes, such as the cursing ritual dis-cussed later.

Water and cabbages

In 1998 lowland northern Thai villagersmobilised by a Buddhist environmentalnon-governmental organization (NGO), theDhammanaat Foundation, engaged in a seriesof protests that included blockading roads intothe mountains and burning in effigy five promi-nent professors at Chiang Mai University.3 Theywere angry about what they perceived as thediversion and contamination of water byHmong uplanders, and claimed to be protectingwatersheds from further degradation.

Tensions between lowland farmers and theHmong had been simmering since the early1980s, and were based in part on stereotypes ofthe Hmong common among Thais. The majorityof refugees in northern Thailand are Hmongfleeing war in Laos and Burma. The Hmong inthis dispute were Thai citizens, although it isunclear whether the protesters understood this.Like most Hmong, they were not Buddhists.4

These Hmong were perceived by Thai audi-ences stereotypically, if not accurately, as non-Thai intruders.

The Hmong are notorious for their formerpractice of burning forest to prepare fields foropium cultivation. When fields were exhausted,they would repeat the process in a new area.This highly destructive practice drew relativelylittle attention until the 1970s, when the RoyalForestry Department (RFD) forbade the movingof villages within forest boundaries. Enforce-ment was stepped up in the 1980s when theThai government, in response to foreign pres-sure, began eradicating opium production. Withthe aid of foreign and domestic NGOs, includ-ing the royal family’s Royal Project, Hmongwere encouraged to switch to cash crops, par-ticularly cabbage. The Hmong responded, inpart because the cabbages yielded almost asmuch income as raw opium had. However,cabbage required more intensive inputs ofwater, fertilizer and pesticides. Downstreamwater flow and quality was affected. Lowlandfarmers growing wet rice noticed the change inwater quality.

This incipient conflict was mobilised by aThai monk, Phra Phongsak Techadhammo. Anative of the area who had studied under thefamous social activist monk BuddhadasaBhikku, Phra Phongsak returned to found aforest monastery in 1983. He was shocked tofind little forest left. The lowland forest had beenlargely cleared by loggers and farmers, and theupland forests were being severely degraded bythe same actors. With assistance from a wealthynoble, he created the Dhammanaat Foundation,which attracted mostly urban, middle-class pro-fessionals as members, including a number ofRFD employees.

As Pinkaew (2000) points out, the Dham-manaat Foundation adopted a double standard:forest destruction by the lowland farmers wasregarded as a changeable behaviour linked topoverty. As non-Thai and non-Buddhists,however, the Hmong were regarded as intrinsi-cally destructive, and the only solution theFoundation could see for the problems theycaused was relocation (Luangaramsri, 2000:60). Because the Hmong were illegally residingin protected watershed areas, the RFD tended toagree. However, others, including prominentacademics and international NGOs, infuriated

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the lowland farmers by supporting the Hmong,pointing out that they were already altering theiragricultural practices by reducing cabbage pro-duction, switching to less polluting crops suchas fruit trees and flowers, and voluntarily refor-esting some areas.5

This conflict has not been resolved. Thepolice and security forces have restrained thelowland farmers from using violence, causingthem to resort to symbolic violence such asburning the Hmong’s academic supporters ineffigy and using a northern Thai cursing ritual,which has recently entered the national reper-toire of protest (Rajah, 2005). Government offi-cials have negotiated with the Hmong aboutresettlement, but this is impossible until aresettlement area can be located. In an environ-ment of increasing land pressure in the low-lands and increasingly strict forest conservationmeasures in the uplands, the probability offinding such a site is low.

In this case the Thai protestors failed to getwhat they wanted, despite apparently havingnumerous advantages: Thai ethnicity versusnon-Thai, Buddhist versus non-Buddhist, offi-cial support from the RFD versus illegal squat-ters. The Hmong have not relocated, and haveactually entrenched their position by recruitingoutside supporters. Despite the symbolic vio-lence – cursing, burning in effigy and someproperty damage – there has been little actualviolence, none of it organised.

Two remarkable facts emerge from thesevignettes. One is that ethnically non-Thaigroups can successfully launch protests usingshared national symbols. Ethnic identity doesnot debar them from employing strategies asso-ciated with the dominant ethnic group. Theother is that the state does not tolerate the use ofviolence, even by Buddhist ethnic Thais againstnon-Buddhist non-Thais. The state itself hassporadically deployed violence against thesegroups, but typically it has been in the contextof dealing with threats that were not perceivedas specifically ethnic in nature, most impor-tantly in defeating the communist insurgency ofthe 1960s and 1970s.

In general, ethnicity has been secondary tocitizenship, and the state prefers to deter ormediate conflicts rather than permit citizens toengage in private violence. Neither of thesepolicies is natural or obvious, and they stand in

contrast to many of Thailand’s neighbours.Indeed, neither has been consistently applied inThailand: these are tendencies, not absolutes.Thai governments bombed Hmong villages inthe 1970s and permitted right-wing vigilantesto attack suspected communists in the 1970s(Tapp, 1989; Pasuk and Baker, 2002). Yet overallthe Thai state has not tended to foster ethnicantagonisms or permit others to do so.To understand why, we need to look to theformation of the Thai state in the nineteenthcentury.

The expansion of the Thai state

It is fashionable to depict the expansion ofthe central Thai state in the nineteenth centuryas a form of imperialism (Anderson, 1978;Thongchai, 2000; Loos, 2006). The central Thaipolity began to exert greater influence overperipheral kingdoms, gradually transformingsuzerainty into sovereignty. Rulers of thesesmaller polities in what is now northern Thai-land may have seen this encroachment as aform of illegitimate domination, much as therulers of Vietnam, Malaysia and Burma sawEuropean encroachment, although there is nohistorical evidence of this view. However, it isclear that the process of state formation in Thai-land had quite different implications than it didin its colonized neighbours.

In Europe’s overseas colonies, only tinynumbers of Europeans actually came to thecolonies. Colonial administrations depended onthe availability of native elites willing to co-operate with colonialists (Robinson, 1972). Toensure a steady supply of such elites, Europeancolonial powers encouraged ethnic divisions,exacerbating them where they had not beenimportant before, or even creating them.6

Frequently they empowered minority groups,giving them privileged places in the colonialadministration. Such privileged minorities couldbe trusted to be loyal because they were depen-dent on the colonial regime for their position.

In Thailand, in contrast, there was little incen-tive for the central government to create suchdivisions. Far from emphasising ethnic differ-ences, it was important for the expanding Thairegime to project an impression of unity. Con-flict and disunity could have invited interven-tion by foreign powers.7



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Creating the impression of unity was facili-tated by traditional Thai political strategies,which had tolerated and even celebrated diver-sity. On an ideological level, the traditionalpolitical system glorified the kingly ideal of auniversal monarch. On a more practical level,Thai kings tended to tolerate a great deal ofdiversity and local autonomy in the interest ofretaining as many people as possible in thepolitical hierarchy.

The primary function of the traditionalSiamese political system was to control labourrather than land. Land was abundant; what wasin shortage was the labour to make it pro-ductive. In this context, any king wanting toincrease his power needed to encourage theallegiance of any and all available groups(Englehart, 2001). Insisting on ethnic puritywould have been counterproductive, even irra-tional, because it would have arbitrarily limitedthe pool of labour available.

An immense variety of groups were inte-grated into the Siam kingdom: Burmese, Indian,Karen, Khmer, Lao, Mon, Shan, Thai, Vietnam-ese and others. This ethnic diversity reinforcedan ideological identification of the king as aworld-conquering chakravartin. These wereancient kings of such great karmic merit that theentire world spontaneously submitted to theirrule. The model for such a monarch was theIndian emperor Ashoka, an important earlypatron of Buddhism (Strong, 1983). Thai mon-archs adopted this image as part of the officialcourt ideology, using it to justify their rule andlink themselves to the Buddhist religion(Quaritch-Wales, 1965; Akin, 1969; Wilson,1970; Tambiah, 1976; Piyachat, 1983). The pro-fusion of ethnicities was not a problem in theold system: kings positively gloried in it.

This ideological position fit comfortably withthe autonomy enjoyed by most local leaders.Leaders with influence over groups of common-ers had to be given ample leeway and incentivesto bring their people into the system. A signifi-cant advantage of local leaders was knowledgeof where their followers resided, which was vitalin the dense jungle that dominated much of thekingdom. When local leaders died without anheir, their followers were sometimes lost to themanpower system because no one else couldlocate them. In addition, central governmentofficials were constantly worried about com-

moners and their leaders ‘fleeing to the forest’and thereby disappearing from the officialpatronage network. They conducted periodicexpeditions to find and register unregisteredcommoners, and kept elaborate records, buteven so they never came close to including allcommoners in the official manpower system.People joined when they were persuaded to doso, usually by a local notable of some kind, whowas rewarded with an official title and rank.

Ethnic minorities were included in this systemas manpower groups, typically under headmenof their own ethnicity who struck deals withhigher-level officials in a way similar toheadmen of Thai ethnicity. Leaders of minoritycommunities were welcome to bring their fol-lowers into the official hierarchy and to berewarded with titles and honours in the sameway that Thai leaders were. The status of par-ticular communities was not a function ofethnicity, but rather of their recent history andthe political acumen of their leaders.

Because the system was personalistic, ethnic-ity was not a threat to the kingdom, which didnot have a distinctively Thai character tothreaten. It was only with the coming of themodern state that connected citizens directly tothe central government that the creation of ahomogenous Thai national identity becameimportant (Reynolds, 1991; Barmé, 1993).

When the central Thai polity began to expandits authority in the nineteenth century, it builton the traditional structure of authority. Manysuzerain principalities were folded into theexpanding Thai state wholesale. Ethnic minori-ties were included in the Thai state not as ethnicgroups per se, but as constituent elements ofthese principalities. As a consequence, thesegroups did not share a common ethnic historywith respect to their inclusion in the Thai state.They were included at different times under dif-ferent circumstances, depending on when andhow their communities were integrated into thestate.

Resource conflicts set off by this processtended to be not between ethnic groups butbetween political networks centred in provin-cial towns. These units, called meuang in Thai,were the backbone of provincial administrationin Thailand. They comprised not just the officialsof the towns, but the networks of followers theyorganised through local headmen. Such net-

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works were often multi-ethnic in composition,although the lowest-level units were typicallymade up of a single ethnic group. Because thesedecentralised networks were based on personalallegiance rather than territory, the sameresources might be exploited by more than onemeuang.

Take for instance the case of Thak and Thoen,neighbouring meuang that coexisted peacefullyuntil the state-building process territorialisedauthority. Disputes then arose over timberrights. European-owned timber companiesoperating in the region treated meuang officialsas owners of the timber, and paid substantialsums for the right to log. It became vitallyimportant for officials to have their authorityover particular tracts of forest recognised by thecentral government. The problem was that Thakand Thoen both claimed rights to the sameforest. Both Thak and Thoen were able to makegood cases for their respective claims, bothhaving settled villages in the region, suppressedbanditry and extracted resources to send toBangkok as taxes in kind. Until the timberdispute arose, these two meuang had over-lapped territorially.8

This example provides a remarkable illustra-tion of the non-territorial nature of the traditionalSiamese political system, but it is equally note-worthy for another reason: despite the fact that itoccurred in an ethnically diverse area, the eth-nicity of the villagers in the disputed area did notfigure in the appeals made by either meuang tothe Ministry of the Interior. The Minister of theInterior clearly understood the ethnic diversity ofthe area, noting in passing that most of theThoenvillagers were Lao and most of the Thak villagerswere Thai, but this was an antiquarian note notconsidered relevant to the problem at hand.

Across the border in Burma colonial stateformation was very different. At roughly thesame time that the central Thais were consoli-dating their state, the British were building acolonial administration that later became thebasis of the Burmese state. The British inheriteda situation in which ethnicity was already moremarked and conflictual. Burmese kings appar-ently put a higher value on ethnic assimilationthan the Thai had.9

The British reinforced and exploited ethnicdivisions in Burma to consolidate their relativelyweak administration. Most importantly, they

gave special status to the Shan and Karen.10

They also recruited the army from particularethnic groups, notably the Kachin and Karen,while including few Burmans. The British wereable to maintain the peace during their admin-istration, but these ethnic imbalances breddisaster after independence. The Burman major-ity and the minority ethnic groups were suspi-cious of each other, and each had legitimategrievances. The fact that the British created eth-nically pure military units meant that someethnic groups had armed force at their disposalafter independence. These groups could userevenues from natural resource exploitation –timber, gems, jade and later opium – to financerebellion. The result has been 60 years of con-tinuous conflict.

In contrast, Thai state formation entailedremarkably little violence. Tensions and con-flicts developed during the process, but thebloodshed was minimal, especially when com-pared with the bloody history of state buildingin Europe.

In northern Thailand the most important con-flict was the 1902 Shan rebellion. Shan had beenintegrated into the northern meuang for a longtime before central government officials arrivedon the scene, but the new system of administra-tion had a particularly severe impact on them.

The demarcation of the border with BritishBurma encouraged cross-border crime. The veryexistence of the border meant that bandits couldslip across easily, while the authorities on eitherside needed to make time-consuming arrange-ments to capture or extradite them.11 Long-distance cattle trade was a Shan specialty, andmany Shan had friends and relatives on bothsides of the border. This gave them a kind ofcompetitive advantage in banditry, which led toall Shan being perceived stereotypically asthieves by central government officials.12

Between 1891 and 1902 Shan gangs wereinvolved in a series of violent incidents, givingthe Shan a bad name.13 In response, centralofficials tried to implement an internal passportsystem aimed primarily at the Shan. This made itdifficult for Shan cattle traders to earn their live-lihood (Ramsay, 1979: 292). Northern Thaivillage headmen also made it difficult for Shanmigrants to acquire land for farming andhousing, and they were denied permission tobuild temples.14



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In July of 1902 a Shan gang attacked the townof Phrae.15 The conduct of these Shan wasstrangely specific for a bandit raid. After defeat-ing a group of policemen, they cut the telegraphline and attacked the home of the SiameseCommissioner. Recruiting help from the localcommunity, they also looted central govern-ment offices. They broke open the jail andreleased all the prisoners, dressing them in theCommissioner’s clothes. They announced anend to taxation, and enlisted the help of localsto hunt down and kill central Thai officials. Allother property and people – northern Thai,Shan and European – went conspicuouslyuntouched. The Shan were clearly out to get thecentral Thai, and they got ample assistance fromthe local population.16 The rebellion was subse-quently broken after the Shan gang launched asimilar but abortive attack on Lampang.

Traditional local elites had divided loyaltiesin the Shan rebellion. The central governmentwas usurping the authority of local rulers, butsome had found positions in the new adminis-tration (Ramsay, 1979: 291; Tej, 1981: 41–43).The ruler of Phrae fled to French possessionsafter the raid, amid rumours that he and otherlocal officials had conspired with the Shan.17

While the leadership and initiative for the raidclearly came from the Shan bandits, they wereaided and abetted by both the local populationand the rulers. This suggests that the rebellion isbest understood in economic and politicalterms, rather than ethnic ones. The ‘ethnic’grievance was really an economic one: thehampering of the cattle trade. This assumed anethnic dimension because the cattle traderswere mostly Shan. Violent resistance wasenabled by the fact that armed Shan gangs werethriving in the area. Yet it appears to have beenencouraged by northern Thai rulers and abettedby the local northern Thai population.

Class and status in Thai opposition movements

Notably, the Shan rebellion was the most seriousarmed conflict faced by the central governmentin the north until the 1970s.18 This relative qui-escence persisted even while the Thai centralgovernment was weakened and distracted bysuccessive coups and counter-coups after 1932:violent ethnic and regional resistance wasexceedingly rare until the 1960s. The violent

opposition that developed in the 1960s was notethnic, but rather a Communist insurgency.

The Thai government initially perceived com-munism as a Chinese immigrant problem. TheChinese had long been a privileged minorityin Thailand, although high immigration rateshad led to a brief backlash against the urbanChinese community in Thailand (Skinner,1957). Many Chinese immigrants in Thailand inthe 1950s retained strong ties to China, andwere influenced by the Communist victorythere (Chai-Anan et al., 1990: 50). The Commu-nist Party of Thailand (CPT) was founded byimmigrant Chinese, and largely responded todirectives from the Chinese government. It ini-tiated violent resistance in 1965, in the impov-erished north-eastern region of Isaan. There theparty received assistance from Laos, and inIsaan it recruited Thai peasants of Lao ethnicity.However, the CPT rapidly made common causewith a number of other disaffected groups,including poor Thai peasants, hilltribes, labouractivists, Muslim secessionists in the south, andafter 1976 radicalised students fleeing a viciouscrackdown by the military.

In the north the CPT actively recruited Hmong,who often joined to escape harassment by Thaiofficials. CPT recruiting was assisted by the Thaigovernment’s decision that all Hmong weresympathetic to the insurgents, leading to indis-criminate attacks on Hmong villages. However,the Hmong were only one aggrieved groupamong many that joined the CPT. Furthermore,they often found grounds for new grievances,‘encountering within the CPT the same sort ofethnic discrimination which they had sufferedfrom before joining the CPT’ (Tapp, 1989: 77).

The insurgency thus did not have any distinc-tive ethnic or regional character. The CPT foughta national insurgency, incorporating manygroups with grievances against the governmentregardless of ethnicity.

Similarly, the most effective non-violent oppo-sition movements in Thailand have not had adistinctive ethnic character. Those based on eco-nomic grievances have had the greatest appeal.Pioneering in this respect was the Peasants’Federation of Thailand (PFT), which had roots inthe north but was a national organisation. Theorganisation was founded in 1974 by farmersfrom the north. Despite its regional origins, thefocus of the organisation was national. It

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recruited members from all over the country,rapidly enrolling 1.5 million members. Its goalswere predominantly national as well: thepassage and enforcement of legislation to protecttenant farmers from high rents and other abuses(Pasuk and Baker, 2002: 315–316). After the1976 military crackdown, it was suppressed andmany of its leaders were assassinated.

The Assembly of the Poor is a successor to thePFT in spirit, founded in 1995. Although thefounders of the organisation came from Isaan, ittoo is a national organisation. It was conceivedas a decentralised, cooperative network toenable poor farmers to engage with the govern-ment. In 1997 in a dramatic 99-day protest inBangkok, they extracted a number of importantconcessions from the government. Many of thesewere subsequently rolled back by the next gov-ernment during the 1997 currency crisis, but theorganisation persists and conducts local actions(Baker, 2000; Missingham, 2003). Like the PFT,the Assembly of the Poor emerged from a distinctregional setting, but its achievements stemmedfrom the fact that it became a national organisa-tion. It conspicuously deployed symbols ofloyalty to the Thai nation, including flags andportraits of the royal family, and its successdepended in part on engaging the sympathy ofaudiences around the country.

Because the Thai government is highly cen-tralised, effective protest movements are onesthat capture a national constituency. Further-more, by regional standards, Thailand has arelatively high-capacity state, which enables thegovernment to constrain the behaviour ofprotest movements in important ways. It candeter violence and mediate conflicts by strikingcredible bargains with disaffected groups.

State capacity

The contemporary Thai state is relatively effec-tive by regional standards. It has more capacity todeter and resolve conflicts peacefully than mostneighbouring states, and thus violent conflictorganised on any basis has been uncommon.

State capacity refers to the ability of the stateapparatus – the civil service, police and military– to translate government policy into action.High-capacity states typically have a competentbureaucracy, a professional military and effec-tive policing. While Thais are fond of complain-

ing about bureaucratic corruption, ineffectiveand corrupt police and a politicized military, incomparison with conditions in neighbouringcountries, Thailand is relatively good. OnlyMalaysia has a more effective state, and all ofThailand’s other neighbours – Cambodia, Laosand Burma – are markedly worse. Table 1shows the ratings of these six countries on twostandard indicators of state capacity. The first istax revenue as a proportion of GDP. This is agood general indicator of state capacity becausein order to collect revenue states must be ableto collect information about society, assessingappropriate levels of tax based on that informa-tion, and prevent revenue from being siphonedby corrupt officials (Arbetman and Kugler, 1997;Fauvelle-Aymar, 1999; Lieberman, 2002). Thesecond is Kaufmann et al.’s (2005) scale ofgovernment effectiveness, which measures theability of governments to enact their stated poli-cies. It ranges from 2.6 (best) to -2.6 (worst). Ofthe six countries listed only two – Malaysia andThailand – have a positive score on Kaufmanet al.’s scale. These are also the countries withthe highest tax as a proportion of GDP.

State capacity is important for preventingviolent conflict in at least two ways. First, ahigh-capacity state has tremendous coercivepowers at its disposal. Weber stylised this as a‘monopoly of the legitimate use of force’. Whilethere are few genuine monopolies, effectivestates do have a massive preponderance of forcethat discourages violent challenges. Burmaagain provides a useful contrast: at indepen-dence the state clearly lacked control over coer-cion because there were numerous armed

Table 1. State capacity indicators for Thailand andneighbouring countries, 2000

Tax/GDP Governmenteffectiveness

Malaysia 18.9 0.68Thailand 14.2 0.21Cambodia NA -0.27Laos NA -0.67Burma 2.97 -1.31World average 19.7 -0.01

Sources: World Bank (2005), Kaufmann et al. (2005). TheMalaysia tax/GDP figure is for 1997, the closest year forwhich data are available. No tax data are available at all forCambodia and Laos.



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groups in the country, including gangs, resis-tance cells left over from the Japanese occupa-tion and thugs controlled by local politicalbosses (Taylor, 1987; Callahan, 2003; Englehart,2005). In addition, a large segment of the armedforces was organised into ethnic units, providinga strong temptation to leaders of those ethnicgroups to rebel. One of the primary reasonsviolent conflict erupts is that potential rebels canhope to succeed against weak governments(Fearon and Laitin, 2003). In Burma at indepen-dence the state looked extremely weak, andethnic rebels with long-standing grievances fromthe British colonial period took advantage of this.

In Thailand, in contrast, it has long been clearthat insurgency will not be able to succeedagainst the military. This was demonstrated in1902, and again in the 1970s. Recent extremistviolence in southern Thailand thus has taken theform of terrorism rather than outright civil war,because insurgents cannot directly challengethe military power of the state.

The second reason that a strong state tends toreduce violent conflict is that it can mediatedisputes more effectively: strong states can makecredible commitments. Weak states cannotmake such commitments, because it is wellunderstood that they cannot keep them. Thissharply reduces their options in bargaining withaggrieved groups or mediating conflicts betweengroups. Azam goes so far as to argue that ‘theability to commit credibly is the relevant basis fordistinguishing between weak and strong states’(Azam, 2001: 435). Credible commitmentsmight include promises to alleviate conditionsfor aggrieved groups, but might also includethreats to repress or sanction them if they con-tinue to protest or use violence to register theirdemands. The concept of state capacity does notassume that states are good, but only that theycan effectively achieve their goals.

Here again there is an important contrastbetween Thailand and Burma. In Thailand thegovernment was able to demobilise the CPT inpart by making credible offers of amnesty tofighters. In Burma, in contrast, the governmenthas not been very successful at getting rebels tolay down their arms, in part because the rebelsare suspicious of promises made by governmentnegotiators. Insurgents who have agreed uponceasefires have nearly all insisted upon retain-ing their arms.

Centralisation, combined with state capacity,has helped defuse specifically ethnic mobilisa-tion and protest in Thailand. Groups withgrievances find that local authorities can helponly with relatively minor matters. Majorissues must be addressed at the national level.This means that national organisations are gen-erally more effective than local ones. By defi-nition those national organisations need to beinclusive, and they mobilise around sharednational symbols rather than ethnically par-ticular ones. Pre-eminent is Buddhism, whichhas become identified with the Thai nation tosuch a degree that it is constantly invoked bypolitical entrepreneurs on all sides of anyquestion.

Another important symbol is the monarchy,which provides the basis for an emotionalappeal to a Thai nation that is not necessarilydefined in ethnic terms. Loyalty to the royalfamily can serve as an anchor for nationalistsentiments among minority groups, a phenom-enon that recalls the ancient ideology of thechakravartin and one that recent governmentsand the royal family have encouraged. Thus, theroyal family has been very active in develop-ment projects benefiting uplanders since the1960s. According to Jane and Lucien Hanks,anthropologists who have worked in the north-ern uplands since the 1950s, ‘uplanders inevery village believed that since all land was“owned” by the king he was their proper patron.Their loyalty was rock firm’ (Hanks and Hanks,2001: 140). This relationship is useful for themonarchy, because it helps build the throne’ssymbolic importance and ensures that it will notbe sidelined again, as it was by military regimesbetween 1932 and the 1950s. The relationshipalso benefits uplanders by securing a patron andallowing them to demonstrate their loyalty tothe Thai nation that has so much control overtheir lives, without necessarily having to shareother markers of Thai identity such as practisingTheravada Buddhism or speaking central Thaifluently.

Using the monarchy allows oppositiongroups generally to demonstrate their loyalty tothe nation while objecting to the policies of thegovernment, for instance, by displaying photo-graphs of the king and queen. Recognition bythe monarchy can provide a major boost to amovement.

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In countries that are more decentralised,mobilisation at the local or regional level maybe effective. This encourages organisation alongethnic and regional lines, making ethnic con-flict and secessionist impulses more likely. InBurma, for instance, the high degree ofautonomy permitted certain ethnic groupsunder British rule allowed them to develop astrong sense of separate identity and organisa-tions that provided the basis of secessionistrebellions after independence.

Proving the rule: Muslim separatism in Patani

Southern Thailand provides an important andtelling contrast with the peaceful north. In thesouthern provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathi-wat, there has been serious organised ethnicviolence. The reasons for this violence mirrorthe reasons for its general absence in the north.

The provinces marked by violence were for-merly part of the Patani sultanate, which had along history of conflictual relations with theThai. The sultanate alternately recognised andresisted Siamese suzerainty for centuries,depending on the opportunities afforded byregional politics. The Siamese ultimatelyannexed Patani at gunpoint, subsequently divid-ing it into three provinces to weaken localresistance.19

Thai government in the former Pataniresembled a colonial administration more thananyplace else in the kingdom. Central Thaisdominated the administration, playing localgroups off against each other. They favoured thelocal Thai Buddhist minority in various ways,including access to government employment.They created special Islamic family courts,drawing legal distinctions between Thai Bud-dhists and Malay Muslims (Loos, 2006). As aconsequence, ethnic Malay Muslims did notenter the national community in the way thatnorthern ethnic groups did.

In addition, the Thai state was weaker in thesouth than elsewhere. The region was consid-ered a hardship post, and so lower-quality civilservants and military officers tended to beposted there. The region was notorious for offi-cial corruption, malfeasance and incompe-tence, which only added to Muslim grievances.

The situation calmed beginning in the 1980s.The central government began treating local

grievances more seriously, establishing two newagencies to enhance mutual understanding andcooperation with the Muslim communities.Attacks dropped sharply as a consequence, somuch so that many analysts assumed the insur-gency was a spent force (e.g. Rabasa, 2003).

The government of Prime Minister ThaksinShinawatra apparently agreed with this assess-ment. In an attempt to disrupt strong patronagenetworks supporting the opposition DemocraticParty in the south, Thaksin dissolved the specialadministrative agencies for the south and gavethe police control over counter-insurgency there(Croissant, 2005). Shortly after, Thaksinlaunched his notorious war on drugs, essentiallygiving police a free hand to assassinate sus-pected criminals.

The uncertainty and fear generated by the waron drugs gave new life to the insurgency.According to a member of an insurgent groupinterviewed by Human Rights Watch, ‘villagerswere desperate and requested us to give themprotection. We gave them training . . . in paral-lel with political indoctrination about thestruggle for independence. This is how we rees-tablished control of the population’ (HumanRights Watch, 2007: 14). The newly revitalisedinsurgency thus benefited from repressivetactics on the part of the government. The resultwas an enormous escalation in the level of vio-lence: according to the National ReconciliationCommission, there were 82 attacks in 2001, 84in 2002, 1843 in 2003 and 1703 in 2004(National Reconciliation Commission, 2006: 9).

As separatists, the insurgents repudiate thestandard Thai repertoire of protest. They attacksymbols of the Thai nation, assassinating monksand burning schools. In doing so, they empha-sise that they do not regard themselves as part ofthe Thai nation.

Conclusion

Many observers of Southeast Asia in 1948thought that newly independent Burma hadexceptionally bright prospects, compared withthose of neighbouring Thailand. Burma hadhigher per capita income, a more diversifiedeconomy, high literacy rates, a democratic gov-ernment and abundant natural resources. Sowhy did Burma collapse into conflict while



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Thailand, with a similar ethnic composition inthe north, has improved steadily?

In Burma ethnic grievances and tensions fromthe British period erupted into armed conflict assoon as the country became independent. Manyof the ethnic groups involved were alreadyorganised to pursue collective violence, havingbeen trained as military units or organised asirregulars during the Japanese occupation. Themilitary weakness of the central governmenttempted these groups to address their griev-ances through military action. Natural resourceconflicts were drawn into this insurgency, asboth sides turned to natural resource exploita-tion to finance the conflict.

In northern Thailand, in contrast, there hasbeen little collective violence organised alongethnic lines. The relatively high-capacity statehas preferred assimilation, and has been able tosuppress or mediate incipient conflict.

Culturally diverse groups therefore haveincentives to participate in a national forum,rather than emphasising their distinctivenessand turning it into a political cleavage. Keyes(1997: 197) argues that ‘what makes culturaldifferences “ethnic” differences is a politicalsetting that separates the stories . . . that peopletell about their heritage from the officially sanc-tioned stories that are told about the commonheritage of those who are said to belong to thesame nation.’ In northern Thailand differentethnic groups – even if they face discrimination– participate in a common heritage.

Popular protest on environmental issues inthe north has thus typically employed Thai,monarchist and Buddhist idioms virtuallyidentical to strategies used elsewhere in thekingdom. It is addressed to the central govern-ment or its local representatives, invokes Bud-dhism as a legitimising ideology and pays overtrespect to the King and Queen as symbols of theThai nation. It seeks national media attention towin the interest and sympathy of a nationalaudience. More particularistic strategies arelikely to alienate central Thai audiences andlead to failure.

Ethnic violence has plagued southern Thai-land, but there separatists have not desired toparticipate in the national community. They seethemselves as members of a community definedby the old Patani sultanate, not a Thai nationalcommunity. Hence particularistic strategies are

appropriate for them, and violence – whichtends to harden ethnic and religious boundaries– is functional.

Ethnic peace in northern Thailand is thus dueto a strong central government that was createdfree of the legacies of colonial ethnic politics.This peace is not perfect, and it certainly has notalways been just, but theThai record seems quitegood in contrast to its neighbour to the west.

Acknowledgements

For comments and critique, the author isindebted to Jefferson Fox (East-West Center),Melissa Miller (Bowling Green State University),Arun Swamy, Thongchai Winichakul (Universityof Wisconsin, Madison) and Nicola Tannen-baum (Lehigh University).

Notes

1 I am indebted to Nicola Tannenbaum for sharing thisincident with me. See her published account in Tan-nenbaum (2000).

2 As of 2001, all uplanders born in Thailand are eligiblefor Thai citizenship (Yindee, 2001). Currently about200 000 of the roughly one million uplanders are con-sidered illegal aliens ineligible for Thai citizenship.These are refugees who entered the country after theNational Statistical Organisation began its hilltribepopulation survey in 1985. These people have beenpermitted to stay in the country on rolling one-yearextensions, a policy that cannot be altered anytimesoon because it would in practice be impossible todistinguish the refugees from the additional approxi-mately 200 000 uplanders entitled to citizenship wholack documentation (Aguettant, 1996).

3 This account is based on Renard (1994), Luangaramsri(2000), Buergin and Kessler (2000), Rajah (2005).

4 Most were animists, and a few were Christian.5 Other Hmong villages have adopted similar strategies,

in part to remake their image as destructive opiumgrowers into stewards of the forest, akin to the reputa-tion enjoyed by the Karen ethnic minority (Tomforde,2003).

6 The seminal work in this tradition is Cohn (1990).7 The French administration in Laos, for instance,

actively tried to recruit political leaders from the Laoprincipalities of what is now north-eastern Thailand, onthe ground that they had assumed all claims held bythe Lao monarchs of Luang Prabang. See Thai NationalArchives, Bangkok, Thailand (TNA) R. 5 M. 2.25/5,2.25/6, 2.25/7, 25/27, 25/28, 25/29, 46/8, 58/18 and208. The British similarly attempted to claim ethnicgroups and principalities that had been subject to theKing of Burma, although their claims were based onpolitical affiliation rather than ethnicity per se. Asummary of the British view of their Siamese border

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issues can be found in India Office Records, The BritishLibrary, London, UK (IOR) L/P&S/18/B62/1 and 2.

8 TNA R. 5 M 2.1/15. Lest it be thought that this is apeculiarity of the north-west, Piyachat and Theerachaiboth note the same phenomena in the north-east. SeePiyachat (1983: 65–66) and Theerachai (1985: 194). Sodoes Khomnet, who focuses on the central plains(Komnet, 1991: 140).

9 When the British annexed Pegu, for instance, theyfound that Karen living in the area had numerous griev-ances against Burmese officials who governed themunder the old regime. The British redressed this situa-tion by appointing Karen officials to govern Karensettlements, an arrangement that satisfied the Karenbut also reinforced ethnic divisions. IOR L/P&S/5/218Enclosures to Secret Letters from India, #7 of 18 Feb-ruary, 1854, pp. 139–154. The British also claimed thatthe Burmese kings had attempted to extinguish theMon language in the region. IOR V/10/2 Report on theAdministration of Pegu for 1855–1856, p. 22.

10 See for instance IOR P/2431 (November 1885), P/2660(December 1886) or P/2882 (February 1887). For atelling view of British attitudes towards different ethnicgroups, see the Indian Army Field Manual in IOR V/27/280/5, entitled ‘Races of Burma’.

11 See for instance TNA R. 5 B 1.2/28 Thi 75/50 or R. 5M. 58/89.

12 TNA R. 5 M. 58/77.13 TNA R. 5 B. 1.2/31 Thi 211/110, M. 2.12 K/41 and

M. 63/1.14 TNA R. 5 M. 63/3.15 TNA R. 5 M. 63/3, from which the following account is

derived.16 Not all local groups were anti-Thai, however. Chinese

figured very prominently on the list of those the centralgovernment rewarded for assistance in suppressing therebellion. Chinese economic interests were served bythe centralisation programme. TNA R. 5 M. 2.4/15.

17 TNA R. 5 M. 63/4, M. 63/10, Tej (1981: 34–36).18 There were additional conflicts in other parts of

the country, similarly brief and localised. See Tej(1981).

19 The conflict is thus about politics as much as religionand ethnicity. In Thailand’s other majority Muslimprovince, Satun, the situation resembles the northmuch more closely, with Muslims identifying ethni-cally as Thai. I am indebted to Thongchai Winichakulon this point.

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