Thailand's southern blame game

David Fullbrook, Asia Times
December 18, 2004

PATTANI, Thailand - Despite the arrests of four Muslim men accused of playing key roles in a wave of violence that has swept through southern Thailand since January, the government says it is still hunting nearly 100 key Muslim militants suspected of being ringleaders behind the unrest and warns that the region's troubles may not end soon.

"Our control of the situation is better. But we still have to be patient and swallow a lot of blood. Innocent people are still being killed every day," said Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, according to a report in the Bangkok Post. The arrests this week of the four key ringleaders, all teachers at private Islamic schools in Yala province, came amid fresh violence that led to the deaths of a southern village chief and two other Buddhists on Wednesday.

Since the upsurge of violence began early this year, Thailand's three Muslim-Malay majority provinces have seen almost daily attacks on low-ranking security forces, junior government officials and teachers, plus a few Buddhist monks and seemingly hapless villagers. Though security sources claimed to have identified several prime suspects, Thailand had made little headway in arresting the masterminds of the violence.

Police and officials insist the southern bloodshed is the work of separatists or Muslim fanatics. The government wags an accusing finger at some Muslim religious schools, or pondoks, for teaching a gospel of hate and violence, a charge religious leaders deny. Local people on the other hand have sharper ideas, largely blaming crime, ignorance and divisions within Islam and the local communities.

"There's no clear picture, no clear answer. Even the government authorities themselves admit they don't know the facts. It's easy to blame everything on separatists. One thing you have to notice is that nobody claims responsibility for any acts. Local people know that many of the killings have a personal factor, political, criminal or other," says Anusart Suwanmongkol, president of the Pattani Tourism Association.

For the government's part, fingering separatists and firebrand imams (Islamic clergy) papers over difficult problems and uncomfortable realities behind this year's rising violence in Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala provinces. While at least some killings are almost certainly the work of armed groups, though their motives are open to question, placing the blame for the majority of attacks on a campaign intended to win independence is a hard claim to sustain. Proof of a mujahideen army forming is scant. A few imams and religious teachers spout fiery rhetoric, but as much for their own aims as for any war against infidel oppressors.

Yet Thai officials who remember the well-organized separatist campaigns of the 1970s and 1980s, which finally petered out in the early 1990s thanks to closer security cooperation with Malaysia, fear that insurgency may be returning, mixed with militant Islam that has links to foreign radicals willing to wage a bitter campaign that could include suicide attacks. That fear, not irrational given that Thailand's No 1 industry, tourism, depends on the country appearing safe to visitors, persists despite the flimsy evidence turned up so far.

More troops, rifles and gunships are the answer, thinks the government, though intelligence remains thin. This is something generals readily admitted in a Senate committee hearing in late November, the Thai-language press reported. Yet still they lay the killings at the feet of separatists.

Causes of violence

Violence is not new to Buddhist Thailand. The country's thriving underworld is inevitably deadly, and it is not uncommon for business disputes to be resolved violently here, partly because plaintiffs cannot rely on graft-ridden courts for justice. Extrajudicial killings are also not unheard of. Murders soared last year during a drug-trade crackdown by the government. Human-rights activists charged police death squads with the murders; the government responded by blaming criminals seeking to silence one another.

"There are so many possible reasons for each killing, it is very hard to know the truth. They [the government] just throw it to the separatists, yet there are other strong reasons like drugs, government dealings, business and more, then they close the case," says Ammart Somboon, a respected Malay-Muslim academic formerly with Prince of Songkhla University.

Separatist leaders, banished to Malaysia decades ago, play their part as well, increasing calls for independence and uprising through websites, blocked in Thailand by the government. Their status, business and connections derive in large part from the romance of their guerrilla pasts - though signs seem to show that their influence here may be waning.

"I think the separatists have had very little support - they've been very angry with Thai Malays, very critical of them speaking Thai," says Dr Saroja Dorairajoo, a National University of Singapore anthropologist researching Thai Malay-Muslims for six years.

But despite the seeming lack of support for separatist movements, the fact that violence is hitting three border provinces where 80% of the population is Muslim strikes a chord with a world fearing another instance of Muslim fundamentalists embarking on jihad, or holy war.

"In the south you have this special X factor which is Islam - it draws international attention. If these problems were happening elsewhere, say in Isarn [northeastern Thailand], the Red Cross wouldn't be paying much attention, nor would the UN be asking for an inquiry," says Dorairajoo.

Islam in these provinces, a theological heartland alongside Indonesia's Aceh for Muslims from across the Malay archipelago, is changing. Over the past few decades more Thai Malay-Muslims studied in the Middle East and Pakistan, thanks to an increase in scholarships, economic growth and cheaper travel. A handful of them allegedly fought in Afghanistan.

"Some of them study there, some of them have friends, some of them may have extremist ideas. But so far it is a weak tendency - it is not strong enough [for them] to fight with our government. However, if our government doesn't change direction to solve the problem, it can be," says Ammart.

As theological bonds with Islam's cradle thicken, so has debate about what is Islam; what traditional beliefs and practices are right or wrong? Believers are divided, with imams competing for the faithful, whose donations fund mosques and Islamic seminaries. Some observers think this competition is also causing violence.

Guns, grenades and a media spin

Not all those murdered have been Buddhist Thais, and not all the apprehended or shot-dead attackers have been Malay-Muslims either. Murders, bombings and arson are by no means unique to these provinces.

"In other large provinces, like Nakhon Sri Thammarat, there are many shootings, but it is not reported. In these three small provinces it has become news, but it is not unusual really. Most are about personal conflicts," says Praneet Thaworn, municipal secretary in Sungai Kolok.

Guns, grenades and explosives are abundant, a consequence of raging insurgencies and wars on one border or another for five decades. It is a martial society. Police uniforms have a strong military tinge, as do civil servants' and teachers'. "The favorite toy a parent will buy for a child is a toy gun," says Dorairajoo, recalling her time here.

Violent murders provide tabloid-newspaper editors and television producers with more bloody photos and shocking stories then they can handle. Some magazines specialize in these crimes.

Take December 2 for instance. On that day, a vocational student opened fire on a bus, two rocket-propelled grenades hit a parliamentarian's house, and police apprehended three hitmen with two assault rifles, a few submachine-guns, two dozen 25mm grenades, and ammunition.

These fairly common events were not front-page news because they happened in Bangkok, Korat and Kanchanaburi, respectively. A few killings in the three Malay provinces, on the other hand, did jostle with gossip, scandal and politics on the front pages, because blame fell on separatists.

Thais forget theirs can be a violent country, awash in weapons and conflicts fueled by crime, corruption and politics, often intertwined. That violence rarely strikes randomly perhaps makes it relatively safer for the average citizen or visitor than similar heavily armed countries.

Many locals feel the largely government-controlled press is stoking the misperception of insurgency; were police to comment only after exhaustive inquiries, and were the press more patient, a different picture would emerge.

"The journalists report the situation day by day, where and when, but they don't understand, research, explain the situation and present other issues concerning the situation, the life and family of the people who die in each situation," says Kusuma Kooyai, a mass-communications lecturer at Prince of Songkhla University, researching the media's role in the unrest.

With no local media to speak of, reports from the Bangkok-based media undermine local people's confidence. "I cannot tell you the name of these villages, because it will bring more harm to them," says a Narathiwat business leader requesting anonymity. That fuels suspicion, exacerbating lingering disputes in communities. Some allegedly are splitting along religious lines.

A complex situation

These provinces' violence stems from unemployment, absent opportunities and poor education. And as the unrest escalates, the government is starting to recognize these causes. According to a report in the Bangkok Post on Friday, Premier Thaksin vowed to bring "drastic change and transformation" to Thailand over the next four years, with the goal of shifting the Thai economy into a "higher gear". Even then, however, high birthrates, drugs and cultural schisms, as young people sway between tradition and consumerist modernity, further complicate a complex situation.

"In the last 10 or 20 years, Muslim teenagers have changed much very quickly. They are heavily influenced by media. Drug use has also increased dramatically," says a Malay-Muslim community researcher, requesting anonymity.

Animosity remains between Malays, generally older villagers who speak little Thai, and the Thai-speaking bureaucracy. These Malays despise some local officials and police for abusing their power and mistreating people. Such events, however, are by no means unique to these three provinces.

"The gap [between rural Malays and the state] can be closed by the government using soft policies rather than the military. If not, I fear the gap will get wider," says Dr Ibrahem Narongraksaket, Islamic-studies head at the Prince of Songkhla University.

Yet rather than tackle these unglamorous, difficult problems, the government deploys troops and police, stoking nationalism ahead of February's general election. Mixing these elements with alarmist reporting is raising fears of attacks by foreign Islamic militants.

"If you are talking about an attack on Bangkok, I don't think it will come from the locals; it will come from outside, although they may use a few locals to help," says Dorairajoo, whose fears are shared by locals, Bangkok academics and intelligence officers.

In recent weeks, rumors by security sources have claimed that Islamic militants were planning large-scale attacks in Bangkok and the southern provinces in January to mark the first anniversary of the violence, which has led to the deaths of more than 500 people this year. Such an attack would make the prospect of a nationalist backlash against southern Muslims very real, lighting the touch paper for a downward-spiraling conflict.