SOUTHERN THAILAND’S FORGOTTEN CONFLICT

This is taken from The Soufan Center here.

Bottom Line Up Front: 

Last week 15 people were killed and five others wounded in an insurgent attack on a checkpoint in southern Thailand, home to a long-simmering low-intensity conflict.

The ethnic Malay Muslim insurgency against the Buddhist Thai majority in the southernmost reaches of the country is among the least reported on conflicts in the world, with over 7,000 dead since 2004.

Muslim insurgents in southern Thailand have largely remained focused on parochial issues and have not forged links with transnational terrorist groups like al-Qaeda or the so-called Islamic State.

Thai security forces have deployed in sizable numbers, approximately 60,000 troops in the southern provinces alone, which has transformed the region into a heavily militarized occupation zone.

Last week 15 people were killed and others wounded in an insurgent attack on a checkpoint in southern Thailand, home to a long-simmering low-intensity conflict in the country’s historically violence-plagued Yala province. 

The attack occurred at a security checkpoint manned by a mixture of volunteer self-defense militias and police officers. In the midst of the operation, insurgents managed to capture weapons and munitions. 

Following the attack, the insurgents, who were armed with assault rifles and other light arms, fled to a rubber plantation located nearby. In response to the ambush, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha met with senior security officials to discuss the Thai military’s force posture in the region.

The ethnic Malay Muslim insurgency against the Buddhist Thai majority in the southernmost reaches of the country, along the border with Malaysia, is among the least reported on and analyzed conflicts in the world. 

Ethnic and religious violence in the southern Thai provinces of Yala, Pattani, and Narathiwat dates back to the late 1950s, with the current iteration of violence a phenomenon since 2004, during which time period as many as 7,000 deaths have been attributed to the conflict. 

Violence peaked in 2007, and 2019 has seen an ebb in insurgent activity; the past two months have witnessed historic lows in terms of insurgency-related deaths. The Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), or National Revolutionary Front, was likely seeking revenge for the death of an insurgent, who died while in Thai army custody in August.

Locals complain that the government in Bangkok acts with a heavy hand in enforcing language and other laws foreign to the ethnic Malay culture, which is distinct from areas in central and northern Thailand. Malays constitute 80 percent of the region’s 2 million people. 

The genesis of the insurgency has been traced back to several prominent madrassas and mosques. While peace talks commenced in 2013, they were abruptly ended by the military. Since May 2014 the government has stated its willingness to continue negotiations, but has benefitted from a decline in the violence and not had to make any concessions. 

There are growing concerns that the lack of a framework for peace negotiations and a total dismissal of the insurgents’ grievances by the Thai government could signal a return to more consistent violence in the region. This violence could include ambushes, the assassination of government officials and civilians, and the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), but also well-planned spectacular attacks designed to grab the attention of the media and government. 

In previous years, there have been beheadings and bodies burned by the insurgents, consistent with some of the most extreme tactics used by Islamist extremists throughout the world.

Unlike other countries in the region such as the Philippines and Indonesia, Muslim insurgents in southern Thailand have largely remained focused on parochial issues and have not forged links with transnational terrorist groups like al-Qaeda or the Islamic State. 

Thailand’s Muslim insurgency is not Salafist in nature, but rather Shafi’i, a conservative school of Sunni Islam more common throughout parts of south and southeast Asia. The geography of the provinces combined with inconsistent Thai security forces, which have been accused of violating human rights and other draconian measures, has allowed the insurgency to fester. 

The insurgency itself is far from a monolith and remains divided by a bevy of objectives, ranging from independence to more decentralized forms of autonomy. 

Thai security forces have deployed in sizable numbers, approximately 60,000 troops, paramilitary rangers, police, other security forces, and armed volunteers in the southern provinces alone, which has transformed the region into a heavily militarized occupation zone. 

While insurgents have attacked outside of the deep south, the majority of their attacks remain in the south, and primarily focus on security forces. 

My comments :  

A long time ago I wrote a newspaper column in The Sun newspaper. The Chief Editor of The Sun at that time was Dato Rejal Arbee.   My column was called Human Rites.

The colum ran for  about  six years - from the time when Brader Anwar Ibrahim was still the Finance Minister / Deputy Prime Minister.  

I recall one day (at that time I was an Assistant General Manager at Arab Malaysian Merchant Bank - a very short stint) Brader Anwar Ibrahim asked one of his cronies - who is my close relative - to invite me to attend some gathering at his (Brader Anwar's) house. This must have been quite before Brader Anwar was kicked out on Sept 2, 1998. 

Even then in 1997/98 my writing was very critical of Brader Anwar. It was during the really volatile and dangerous Asian Financial crisis and I strongly criticised Brader Anwar's really stupid monetary policies (he did not know monetary policy from a hole in the ground.)

Anyway obviously I was invited to attend Brader Anwar's house because he and his buddies wanted to check me out - his strong critic.  Of course I did not attend.  I said no thank you.

• And at that time (1997) I had absolutely no idea that he liked to unlock the back door !! 
• All of us came to know of that much, much  later, after Ummi Hafilda's letter.  

Fast forward six years to 2004 - I also recall that 2004 was the last year I wrote my column in The Sun. 

I recall this vividly because my very, very last column in The Sun was about both the Moro situation in Mindanao and the Malay separatist situation in Southern Thailand.  

(Abdullah Badawi had come into power in 2003 and his crony was going around getting rid of all the pro Mahathir writers. So I was chopped from both The Sun and from the Berita Minggu where I wrote another Sunday column in Malay - for FOUR long years.) 

Anyway at that time the violence in southern Thailand had not broken out in full force yet. In my very last column in The Sun I had predicted (or indicated) that the situation in southern Thailand was very risky.   And then just weeks after I wrote that column, the violence broke out in southern Thailand. 

I did make a suggestion - which holds until today (15 years later and still there is no solution. My Chinese Quranic brother used to say that 15 years is actually one generation. So a generation of time has gone by in southern Thailand with no solution.)  

My suggestion  is that Malaysia must invest money across the border in southern Thailand and in Mindanao to improve the economic well being of the Thai Malays and the Moro people. 

DO NOT BRING them here for education (in the UIA) etc or give them business licenses here etc.  Instead help them set up schools, vocational institutes, colleges and universities for them there in southern Thailand and Mindanao.  

DO NOT teach them religion.  

Religion is the problem. 

Religion is not the solution.

Teach them useful Islamic knowledge like engineering, fisheries, hotel and tourism management, technical skills like motor mechanics, plumbing, carpentry, metal working, computers, mobile phone technology etc. 

And invest money in their areas. Work with both the Thai and the Filipino government.

Here is the real problem. 

The problem has evolved. 

It is getting more difficult.

The problem (for them) is that 

1. Bangkok and Manila are both about 1,000 km away from these southern trouble spots. They are too far away for Bangkok and Manila to worry too much about them,

2. Both Thailand and the Philippines are (well at that time Thailand was) democracies. The Philippines has a population of 105 million people of which the Moros are about THREE million only (3%). The Catholics are 97%. 

Thailand has a population of 70 million of which the Malays are about TWO million (3%). The Buddhists are 97%.

So when it comes to voting in the elections to determine the future of the country, at 3% of the population the troublesome Moros and the Malays are just tiny pimples on the buffalo's butt.  

Ballot box wise they are not relevant. They do not even make a dent. They are not part of anyone's politics. 

Now if they were NOT so troublesome (from the majority's point of view) the Moros and the Thai Malays can be king makers. Minorities can enjoy that position, especially if their vote is united (like the Chinese in Malaysia). 

But the brothers in Mindanao and in southern Thailand have chosen guns and bombs instead of being part and parcel of the society.  Now making things worse is the advent of satanism aka religious extremism which is really confusing their thinking. Their religious indoctrination is Stage 4 satanic cancer. 

In short, the governments of Thailand and the Philippines will NOT be solving the separatist problems in both their southern regions. It is just not worth their time. 

So why should we in Malaysia care? Well the bad news for us is the cancer can spread and infect us. Because we have equally dumb people on our side of the borders.

We should help them. It will be money well spent.  We must help them NOT to fight and break away from their country but to coexist and prosper in their own country. Guide the Moros to become good Filipinos and the Malays to become good Thais.  This can be done. 15 years is a generation of time.