THAILAND: Coup Leaders Engage Shadowy Malay-Muslim Rebels

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Oct 13 2006 (IPS) - Since violence erupted in Thailand’s southern provinces nearly three years ago, the local Malay-Muslim population could have been excused for saying, at times, that Bangkok’s troops were fighting ghosts.

Uncertain of who the real enemy was, the Thai military resorted to guessing and arbitrary arrests of suspects. Bangkok was also clueless as to the political aim of these elusive rebels, except what appeared on the odd unsigned leaflet.

Now this failure by Thai intelligence to establish clearly the identity of Malay-Muslim rebels in the country’s south has returned to haunt Bangkok, as excitement grows about the prospect of talks to restore peace in the area.

Consequently, researchers who have been chronicling the insurgency in the provinces near the Thai-Malaysian border warn that little may be achieved if talks are held without roping in the rebel groups that matter. Topping this list is the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (National Revolutionary Front) Coordinate, or BRN-Coordinate.

For the moment the military, which has been calling the shots in Bangkok since a Sep. 19 coup – and leading the way for peace talks – appears at a loss as to how or where BRN-Coordinate leaders can be reached, according to local media reports.

“The BRN Coordinate is the group most responsible for the violence,” Zachary Abuza, a United States academic specialising in terrorism in South-east Asia, told IPS. “I do not think they are quite ready to show their hand yet. I am concerned that the people the Thai officials are meeting with are not necessarily running the insurgency.”

The Thai military is pushing forward with a plan to engage with ageing leaders of the Malay-Muslim separatist groups that were active in the 1970s. Among these groups are the Pattani United Liberation Organisation (PULO) and Berastu (or Unity), which encompasses four Malay-Muslim militant groups.

“Authorities have decided to hold talks with several groups as they did not know who or which group could order insurgents to halt the violent attacks,” the ‘Bangkok Post’ reported Thursday. “Authorities are trying to reach two key figures in southern separatist groups who are believed to have power to order insurgents to end violent attacks.”

But that is not the only hurdle which the military-backed Thai administration will have to surmount to restore peace in the southern region, where over 1,500 people on both sides of the conflict have died since an attack on a military camp in January 2004. The structure of the new insurgent groups operating in the provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat remains unclear.

“A picture has begun to emerge over the last three years of small, village-level cells, comprised mostly of young men, but also some women, scattered throughout the three southern provinces, being involved in the current insurgency,” said analyst Francesca Lawe-Davies in an interview with IPS, while expressing doubts about “the extent and nature of any leadership structure”.

Lawe-Davies, who works with the South-east Asia chapter of the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, said that while the movement is “capable of impressive coordination and synchronised attacks, it is also clear that much of the violence is not centrally directed or controlled”.

The intelligence void that Thai authorities are grappling with became apparent soon after the government of prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was deposed in last month’s coup, responded to the first signs of the current insurgency with an iron-fisted policy, including martial law.

“The local population (has not been) cooperating with the security forces because they have been abusive, heavy handed and acted with complete impunity,” says Abuza. “They…have established hit squads. At the same time, the Thai security forces aren’t doing enough to protect the villagers from the insurgents.”

Preceding that was an equally significant blunder by Thaksin soon after his first parliamentary victory in 2001. He dismantled a military-civilian coordinating agency that had been created in the 1980s to pacify the Malay-Muslim regions, help address local political concerns, and build a network of informants to keep a track of separatist sympathisers.

However, the current push for talks has received a shot in the arm following the recent disclosure that former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad has been playing a behind-the-scenes role to lay the groundwork for a dialogue between the government of Thailand and Malay-Muslim rebel leaders.

Berastu “is willing to open talks with the Thai government at any location or time to be decided by Bangkok,” Bernama, the Malayisan state news agency, reported on Tuesday. “Its leader, Dr. Wan Kadir Che Man, said the Thai side could choose any venue or neutral ground that both sides could feel comfortable (with).”

Omar Farouk, an academic from neighbouring Malaysia who has studied Thailand’s southern insurgency, is hardly surprised by this Malaysian link to a possible peace deal in Thailand. It is a step that the Malay-Muslim separatists will also find hard to avoid, he says, since the insurgents who have often sought refuge in Malaysia know that “there can be no safe haven for them” there.

“The post-Sep. 11 scenario has also made it impossible for Malaysia to be seen to be supporting the Malay-Muslim insurgency inside its territory,” he explained in an interview, in reference to the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. “Most of the leaders of the Malay-Muslim insurgency are acutely aware that they are very vulnerable in Malaysia and practically have very little space elsewhere to operate. Hence, their choice to remain nameless.”

The current cycle of violence is the latest in a conflict going back decades – and rooted in charges of cultural, linguistic and economic injustice that the Malay-Muslims say they have been subjected to by successive Bangkok administrations. The three southern provinces were once part of the kingdom of Pattani, which was annexed in 1902 by Siam, as Thailand was then known.

The first spark of a separatist rebellion struck the region in the 1960s, and continued as a low-intensity conflict through the 1980s. Among the groups involved were PULO, whose surviving leaders have fled Thailand to live in exile, first in Malaysia and then in Sweden.

“The cause of Malay-Muslim separatism was severely undermined in Thailand in the mid-1980s when the Thai state adopted conciliatory measures towards the insurgents,” says Farook. “The new period of Thai democracy in the 1990s reinforced this trend of reconciliation undermining further the cause of PULO and other separatist organisations.”

But the jury is still out on whether a once successful attempt at peace can be replicated, given that the Malay-Muslim rebels who are currently active belong to a new generation.

“There are very few indications that these exiled leaders would actually be capable of reigning in the militants on the ground – or indeed that there is any unified leadership,” said Lawe-Davis.