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THAILAND: Bombings Say Muslim Rebels Won’t Negotiate

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Feb 19 2007 (IPS) - Malay-Muslim militants in southern Thailand marked the arrival of the Chinese Lunar New Year with a show of force that has left the military-appointed government in Bangkok scrambling for answers.

Malay-Muslim militants in southern Thailand marked the arrival of the Chinese Lunar New Year with a show of force that has left the military-appointed government in Bangkok scrambling for answers.

They succeeded, for the first time, in striking simultaneously in all the four provinces of Yala, Narathiwat, Pattani and Songkhla that are adjacent to Malaysia during a night of well-coordinated bombings, arson attacks and shootings.

The trail of death and destruction left by the strike, launched shortly after nightfall on Sunday, exposed, yet again, how vulnerable civilians of that region are to the current cycle of violence. People who were targeted in the attacks on hotels, karaoke bars and shopping areas in commercial centres were those largely of Thai-Chinese ancestry, celebrating the dawn of the Year of the Pig.

By Monday, officials said that nine people were killed and close to 50 injured during the attacks, which included 31 bombings, 14 arson attacks and two shootings in the four provinces. The bombs went off over a one-hour period, suggesting the ‘’level of efficiency’’ among the shadowy insurgents linked to this escalating urban guerrilla campaign, say analysts.

‘’This confirms that the government and the military have not found a suitable policy to respond to this urban guerrilla warfare,’’ Panitan Wattanayagorn, a national security expert at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, told IPS. ‘’Last night’s attack was aimed at the Thai-Chinese because of the New Year. It is to sustain the level of violence they (the insurgents) have been pursuing to create panic among the public and to force migration among the local Buddhists and Chinese.’’

The timing of the attack comes at a critical juncture for the government led by Prime Minister Gen. Surayud Chulanont. Last week, Bangkok declared its intention to push ahead with reconciliation plans in the predominantly Malay-Muslim southern regions during talks with the visiting Malaysian prime minister. Kuala Lumpur welcomed the Surayud administration’s gesture, adding that it would help set up peace talks involving the secretive Malay-Muslim militants.

Little wonder why Sunday’s violence is being viewed as another rejection by the Malay-Muslim militants towards any push for negotiations. ‘’The message they are sending is very consistent. That this is a liberation war that has to be won by force,’’ says Sunai Phasuk, Thai researcher for the global rights lobby Human Rights Watch (HRW). ‘’They do not want negotiations, reconciliation, nor co-existence with the other communities in the area.’’

‘’The weekend’s intensification of the violence also means that the militants are not interested in a political dialogue and that there is no commitment to stop attacking civilians, even their own people,’’ he added in an interview. ‘’They have a very black-and-white perspective of the situation. There is no room for anything else.’’

Surayud was given a harsh reminder of the adversary he was up against in early November, after he visited the southern provinces to apologise to the Malay-Muslim civilians in the area for the abuse and excesses they had been subjected to at the hands of the previous Thai government. He had outlined his intentions for peace soon after he was appointed by the military junta that captured power during the Sep. 19 coup.

By the first week of December, nearly 1,000 schools in the provinces had to be closed following militant attacks, which included torching of 12 schools and the killing of five teachers. Attacks on Buddhist monks and villagers intensified in November, forcing some to flee their homes. The year ended with the insurgency gaining ground with more violent strikes, resulting in the death toll reaching 2,000 since the attack on military camps in the area in January 2004.

‘’There has been a spike in violence since November,’’ Francesca Lawe-Davies, South-east Asia analyst for the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, told IPS. ‘’There is no distinction between combatants and non-combatants being attacked. The government is having a difficult time to protect people.’’

Yet at the same time, local human rights groups are also drawing attention to violations by security forces since the coup that have triggered revenge attacks by the militants. The torture of Muhamud Arming Usoh, a 42-year-old worker in a rubber plantation, is a case in point, says the Working Group on Justice and Peace (Thailand).

He was arrested by soldiers in late October and held in custody without charges for seven days, during which time he was ‘’tortured,’’ it states. The physical abuse he faced included his ears, neck, chest and genitals being burnt with cigarettes, the group adds.

During the previous government under prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted from power in last year’s coup, 78 Malay-Muslim boys and men died in military custody due to suffocation. They were among the 1,000 locals who had been arrested by the troops for demonstrating outside a police station in the southern town of Tak Bai in October 2004.

The current cycle of violence has been distinct from the separatist clashes that have bloodied southern Thailand since the 1960s, when Malay-Muslim rebel groups emerged to battle the Thai state. Then, the fighting was largely concentrated in the forests and the hilly terrain of the south, now the setting for the militancy are urban centres.

‘’There is a new style of fighting that the government has to get used to,’’ Dr. Arefen Thaipratan, who works at the main hospital in Yala, told IPS. ‘’Sometimes it looks like they are copying the fighting going on in Iraq.’’

The ethnic tensions in the south go back to 1902. That year, Siam, as Thailand was then known, annexed the provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat, which had been part of the Muslim kingdom of Pattani.

Since then, the Malay-Muslims have complained about economic and cultural discrimination in Bangkok’s policies, favouring the majority Thai-Buddhists. The province of Narathiwat is among the poorest in Thailand, with nearly a third of the people living below the poverty line.