Govt walking a fine line between security and sensitivity
Don Pathan
The Nation
Last August a team of police officers headed by then Pattani police chief Colonel Manit Rattanawin marched confidently into Ban Banna village to arrest a suspect believed to have been behind a spate of killings of security officials in Thailand's deep South over the previous year.
A team of journalists was permitted to come along to videotape and photograph what Manit thought would be a simple surrender by a suspected Muslim separatist.
The photo-op that developed turned out to be rather different than the one the journalists had expected. Instead of surrendering, Mahama Mae-roh, a former Army rifleman, grabbed his assault rifle and ran into a nearby house. He positioned himself, took aim, and fired, killing Manit, another senior police officer, and a sergeant.
Ten minutes later a team of reinforcements arrived and within half an hour Mahama was killed.
Intelligence sources said the information on Mahama's whereabouts had come from his associate, Manase Jeh-da, also known as Nasae Saning, who was nabbed in Malaysia's Terengganu State and quietly handed over to Thai officials just days before the shooting in Ban Banna. Manase, on Thailand's wanted list for years, had a Bt200,000 bounty on his head.
On the same day Manase, having mysteriously escaped custody, was shot dead by police in Pattani's Nong Chik district, some 28 kilometers from Ban Banna.
In the following days, subsequent sweeps through the region netted two more associates of the dead Muslim separatists.
This display of swift and deadly justice did little to comfort the local Muslim community, who still remember the heavy-handed tactics of previous decades when Thai security forces used questionable means to take down local Muslim separatist groups such as Barisan Revolusi Nasional and the Pattani United Liberation Organisation.
National media reported the harsh words of Manase's wife and other family members, who claimed Manase was the victim of extra-judicial killing. They pointed to the bruises on his wrists and other parts of his body, saying he had been beaten before he was shot dead in what they believed was an evening of the score.
Authorities described both Mahama and Manase as operation chiefs of the Pattani Islamic Mujahideen Movement, known in the Bahasa Malaysia language as Gerakan Mujahideen Islam Pattani (GMIP).
GMIP has been on the radar screen of security agencies in the deep South since the mid-1990s but authorities generally dismissed them as bandits involved in extortion and killings.
But last Sunday, when a group of about 60 armed men stormed an Army base in Narathiwat, killing four soldiers on guard duty and making off with some 300 weapons, Thailand's political leaders realized they could no longer deny the GMIP's ideological influence.
The GMIP has been singled out as the main group behind the attack, which came as a slap in the face to the country's political and military elite, who had repeatedly dismissed any suggestion that a Muslim insurgency might be brewing in the South.
The attack made a mockery of the "ordinary bandit" label that political leaders had placed on those behind the violence in the region.
Many officials here dismissed outright the age-old "dirty business" theory that attackers steal weapons only so they can sell them to Malaysian or Indonesian insurgents to make money. It would have been far less risky for the GMIP to go to the Cambodian border, like the Burmese rebel groups do, to buy their weapons, local officials said.
What impressed many military commanders and observers of the South was the tactical competence of the assault.
Traps were set up on the roads to prevent troops from going after the attackers and both relay poles for wireless telephone communications in the area were taken out.
Security officials on the ground have said for years, albeit quietly, that the GMIP is more than just a bunch of "ordinary bandits", or "jone kra-jok" in Thai.
Security officers admitted that the GMIP is as well known for its criminal ambitions as for its religious convictions, but said the group has conveniently found a new "political context" in the global Jihadi movement, which arose in the early 1990s in the aftermath of the war against the Russians in Afghanistan.
Though GMIP leader Nasori Saesaeng – also known as Ae Wae Keleh after his home village of Keleh in Bachoh district of Narathiwat – may not have fought against the Russians troops, he did gain a wealth of experience when he went there in the early 1990s to take part in the civil war.
Which Afghan factions or warlords he fought under remains unclear but sources believe that his experiences in the war-torn country inspired him to return to southern Thailand to carry out insurgencies.
It has been reported that while in Afghanistan, Nasori befriended Nik Adli Nik Aziz, the son of the spiritual leader of Parti Islam se-Malaysia, a Malaysian opposition party with a stronghold in the northern part of the country bordering Thailand.
Thai intelligence sources said Nik Adli, who has been detained since late 2001 under Malaysia's draconian Internal Security Act, maintained close relations with Nasori after the two returned to their respective countries from Afghanistan. The two men helped set up an organization on their respective sides of the border – the underground Kumpulan Mujahideen Malaysia as well as the GMIP.
Since the attack against the Army battalion last Sunday, the government has submitted a list of names, most of them suspected GMIP members, to Malaysia requesting their arrest.
It is not certain to what extent the Malaysian authorities will stick their necks out for Thailand, said one Army intelligence source, saying Kuala Lumpur wants to be extremely certain of the consequences of its actions before it moves.
Nevertheless, in Thailand, the admission by political leaders of the existence of a home-grown separatist group has brought some relief to officials because it permits them to speak more openly about the problem and deal with it accordingly.
However, they insist that the heavy-handed tactics of the previous decade are a thing of the past. The catchphrase, for the time being, is how to "win the hearts and minds of the local Muslim community".
"In the old days they used to go after family members of the separatists to put a squeeze on them," said one local politician who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Today, military and police officers on the ground have been told to be extremely careful when dealing with suspects who are community or religious leaders. This may explain why those who have been brought in by the authorities are merely being "detained" and not formally charged with any crime.
Regardless, many officials acknowledge that there is a lot of hard work ahead of them. Corruption and interagency rivalries, along with the inability of state agencies to deal with the cultural and economic gap between the South and the rest of the country, have obstructed the process of healing between the predominantly Muslim region and the central government.
One senior security official said today's insurgents have split into small cells, many of which have penetrated local communities. This makes it extremely difficult for authorities to take the organizations down, he said.
Moreover, resentment and hard feelings between the local population and government officials have again resurfaced following the declaration of martial law in the three southernmost provinces of Yala, Narathiwat, and Pattani, and the imposition of curfews has drawn a strong reaction from the communities here.
Heavy-handed methods may be a thing of the past, but winning the hearts and minds of the local Muslim population, it seems, remains as difficult as ever.
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