fighting with ghosts askew

8/7/2019 Fighting with Ghosts Askew

1/32

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.


2/32

220 The Royal Golden Jubile International Seminar Series LXX

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.


3/32

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.


4/32


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]


5/32

Marc Askew 223

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.


6/32


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]


7/32

Marc Askew 225

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.


8/32


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.


9/32

Marc Askew 227

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.


10/32


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.


11/32

Marc Askew 229

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.


12/32


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.


13/32

Marc Askew 231

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.


14/32


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.


15/32

Marc Askew 233

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.


16/32


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.


17/32

Marc Askew 235

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


18/32


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.


19/32

Marc Askew 237

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.


20/32


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.


21/32

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.


22/32


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.


23/32

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].


24/32


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.


25/32

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


26/32


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]


27/32

Marc Askew 245

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.


28/32


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.


29/32

Marc Askew 247

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.


30/32


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.


31/32

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.


32/32


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

fighting with ghosts askew

Documents