Bomb exposes fatal flaw in far South security plan

Transfer of defence responsibilities is pushing local residents further into the line of fire

Don Pathan
Special to The Nation
Ban Khok Khilek, Pattani

Security forces inspect the scene of a bomb attack on a village defence post that killed four volunteers in Ban Khok Khilek, Pattani province, on November 12.

The stacks of tyres and cement barricade at this temporary outpost were meant to protect the half-dozen village defence volunteers, known locally as Chor Ror Bor, from attacks by intruders.

But when a powerful home-made bomb exploded from within, killing four of the volunteers, injuring five others and ripping apart the makeshift structure, the impact was felt through the entire region.

For outsider observers, the details are all-too familiar: Malay Muslim insurgents killed Buddhist militiamen with an explosive hidden inside their makeshift outpost.

But for officials and observers on the front line of this conflict, the November 12 incident was far from a routine attack by insurgents bent on carving out a separate homeland for the Malay Muslims.

It was directed at a group of village defence volunteers who are normally left alone because they pose little or no threat to the insurgents.

Chor Ror Bor receive shotguns and weapons training at the order of the Interior Ministry. Members don't patrol beyond their village limits and only join up in the evening for guard duty. Each unit receives a small budget, enough to buy a monthly supply of coffee and other drinks to make the nights a little more bearable.

So when they were targeted in November 12's deadly attack, eyebrows were raised.

Hovering over these village defence volunteer outposts is the controversial Village Protection Force, also known as the Or Ror Bor, a network of exclusively Buddhist militiamen that stretches across the Malay-speaking region of the three southernmost provinces and four districts in Songkhla province.

While the Chor Ror Bor is a village-based outfit, the Or Ror Bor has a much higher degree of mobility and commands a bird's-eye view of the situation in this historically contested region.

But Cha-ont Bualern 52, a local Or Ror Bor militiaman, was speechless, unable to make sense of the attack on the Chor Ror Bor outpost at Ban Khok Khilek.

"What happened here was unprecedented," Cha-ont said, as fellow Buddhist villagers stood silently observing what was left of the security outpost.

Unlike the Chor Ror Bor, members of the region-wide Or Ror Bor have been declared targets by insurgents.

Thai military officials have quietly expressed concern over the kind of flexibility that the Or Ror Bor enjoy, and the group's tendency to take matters into their own hands.

Local observers - both Muslim and Buddhist - have been cautious about drawing conclusions from the November 12 attack, though there's general agreement it was meant as a "strong message" from insurgents that local militia would pay a price for going beyond their traditional, non-threatening role.

In other words, it was a direct attack on the Army's so-called Thung Yang Daeng Model, a half-baked strategy to outsource security responsibilities to local villagers via the Chor Ror Bor, village chiefs and Defence Volunteers, all of whom fall under the Interior Ministry's line of command.

Authorities believe insurgents had planted the bomb while the outpost was deserted. Nevertheless, it was a daring raid considering the prominence and visibility of the fortification.

The community in and around Ban Khok Khilek is a mix of Muslims and Buddhists, with the latter in the slight majority. The outpost was manned in the evening by a group of local Buddhist volunteers. A separate, all-Muslim Chor Ror Bor unit is based just a kilometre away.

The two groups continue to mingle with one another, but local Muslims say the November 12 incident has driven a psychological wedge between the two sides because the attack had singled out one ethnic group.

The bombing wasn't the first time the Tung Yang Daeng Model has come under the spotlight. Shortly after midnight on July 31, a group of about 20 insurgents armed with machine guns opened fire on a Defence Volunteers' camp in Yala's Yaha district, injuring 18 men, all of whom were local Malay Muslims.

Local observers and sources in the separatist movement said the insurgents had shown restraint in the Yaha attack, with the militants deliberately stopping short of killing the Defence Volunteers because they merely wanted to send the Thai government, as well as local residents, a stern warning of what they could do to counter the Thung Yang Daeng initiative.

Sources in the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), the longstanding separatist movement that controls the vast majority of insurgent militia, say the routine work of locally elected officials and village defence volunteers had never posed a threat to insurgency activities.

But any government move to arm them and push them into the front line would make them targets, BRN sources say.

One component of the strategy governing the Thung Yang Daeng Model is to slowly phase out regular Army patrols and replace them with Paramilitary Rangers, preferably hired locally so they know the terrain.

One village chief in Narathiwat reports that two young Malay Muslim men from his community have joined the Paramilitary Rangers. Their local knowledge is helping reconnaissance patrols search for insurgents' training sites and makeshift camps.

But the task is not easy: the insurgents are mobile and have sympathetic local villagers to serve as their eyes and ears.

The two Rangers are making decent money - about Bt15,000 a month - but they are afraid to visit their parents because they know the insurgents now consider them fair game. Meanwhile relations between the Rangers' parents and their community have become somewhat awkward, said the chief. "They walk past one another but won't say anything or look at each other's faces," he said.

Nevertheless, Malay Muslim villagers in the far South think the Thung Yang Daeng Model will backfire because they doubt that many in this region are willing to put their lives on the line for the state.

The fact that most local residents share the insurgents' mistrust of the state does not help the situation.

Security officials are aware of this sentiment, said the village chief.

"They [the military] are taking it slow. They are asking us to go on joint patrols with them but they are only asking us to man certain positions at certain times," he said.

Local Army officials say they are fully aware that public mistrust of the state and its security officials poses a tremendous challenge for the Thung Yang Daeng Model.

But that's life in the far South, say locals and government officials, where the reality on the ground continues to be a world apart from policy coming out of Bangkok.

Don Pathan is an independent security consultant based in Yala, and a founding member of the Patani Forum (www.pataniforum.com)