Special to The Nation
Yala, Thailand
The killing of two Buddhist monks on Visakha Bucha day four years ago shed light on the nature of the conflict in this historically contested region
Just before dawn four years ago on Visakha Bucha Day, one of the most important days on the Buddhist calendar, two young men were hiding inside the tree-line keeping a look out for an oncoming Army patrol.
Approaching the point where the bomb was buried was a patrol of four soldiers riding pillion on two motorbikes. Behind them was a pickup truck with two soldiers on the back. Behind the truck were four soldiers on two motorbikes.
The young man had a split second to decide, and he went for the pickup. When it was all over, two monks inside the cab of the pickup lay dead. They were from nearby Suan Kaew Temple in Yala's Yaha district. The two soldiers on the back of the pickup were severely wounded. The vehicle they were travelling in was destroyed.Thai national media went haywire for days, concluding that the Malay Muslim separatists in the southernmost provinces were out to drive a bigger wedge between Buddhists and Muslims. That the incident took place on an important day for Buddhists just reinforced that claim.
Separatist sources from the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), on the other hand, maintained that the two brothers behind the attack did not know there were monks inside the truck. They saw a legitimate target and went with it.
Soldiers from the targeted unit, who were using the temple as a base camp, reiterated the same point - there was no line of vision, so the person who detonated the bomb could not have seen the monks.
Given the fact that monks hadn't been attacked for years, government officials didn't know what to make of the Yaha incident. But over time it became clear that this was a one-off incident.
Nevertheless, the damage had been done and now it was time for payback. Within a week or so, word got out that authorities were looking for two young brothers from a nearby village in the district.
No one was sure how the authorities were able to identify the two suspects so quickly. It could have been through informants - the dozens of so-called "Bt4,500 local security guards" who take their orders from the local Army unit. Or it could have been the moles that the authorities had put in place.
But less than two weeks after the incident, one of the suspects was shot dead in front of his wife's house. The other decided to leave Yaha for Narathiwat, where he would lay low for the next four years.
A BRN source would neither confirm nor deny that the two brothers were behind the Yaha attack. But he did say they were members of local cell and that the surviving brother, Saudi Setopa, had been relocated to Narathiwat shortly after the incident.
But Saudi's name would come up again in another major case. This time it was the massive July 2014 car bomb in Betong, a border town few thought would ever come under this theatre of violence given its remoteness and the logistics nightmare of carrying out such an operation here and getting away with it.
Though the BRN seldom publicises strategy specifics - at least nothing that could incriminate its members - the source maintained that Saudi was not involved in the Betong car bomb.
But from the perspective of the Thai security agencies, justice caught up with Saudi on January 30 this year, when 50 police officers surrounded him at a house in Kabang district, just east of Yaha.
Investigation by a BRN operative suggested that Saudi was spotted in Yaha district, most likely by an informant. He made a dash for nearby Kabang district but was foiled by the security grid that was already in place.
He took refuge in a nearby house and positioned himself for a two-hour gunfight. One officer was hit in the leg. Saudi refused to surrender and was eventually killed in the lopsided shoot-out.
It wasn't clear why Saudi had returned to his village earlier this year or surfaced in Yaha district on January 30.
Sitting on the patio in front of his one-storey home, Saudi's father didn't seem to be in the mood for a lengthy discussion about his son's life. He had buried Saudi's body the night before.
Hanging in the living room was a picture of Saudi with fellow soldiers after graduating from Army basic training in 1999. It wasn't clear if the father was trying to suggest that his son, at least at one point in his life, was patriotic, or whether it was merely the only picture he had left of Saudi.
Nevertheless, Saudi's case and chase did shed light on the nature of the conflict in this historically contested region, where more than 6,000 people, mostly Malay Muslims, have died in insurgency-related violence since January 2004.
From the network of separatist militants that stretches across the Malay-speaking provinces, to the police informants - not to mention the locally hired security details that the Thai soldiers don't trust to look after the Buddhist temples - there is an endless struggle for survival in every corner of this restive region.
Government soldiers in Yaha don't believe that their "Bt4,500 security details" will put their lives on the line for the unit that commands them. Instead, there is widespread acknowledgement that these village-based security guards often share the separatists' sentiment and historical mistrust of the Thai state.
The incident also revealed how eager the Thai media and wider society are to jump to assumptions about the conflict without looking at the finer details and circumstances surrounding the attacks.
The world will never know why Saudi decided to fight to his death. But for the Thai security forces, it was mission accomplished, even though his death did little to advance either peace or "victory" for the state.
Don Pathan is an independent consultant based in Yala, Thailand. He is also the founding member of Patani Forum (www.pataniforum.com)
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