Part of an ongoing article series on the impact of the Middle East conflict on Southeast Asia.
Don Pathan
stratsea
(www.stratsea.com)
Introduction
Israel’s war on Gaza has sparked concern of a rise in insurgent activities in Thailand’s southern provinces.
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| Protesters at Pattani Central Mosque with Palestinian flag. |
Approximately two million people inhabit the Pattani region, with about 85% identifying as Malay, or Melayu, rather than Thai. These Malays vehemently reject Thailand’s policy of assimilation, which calls upon the Malays to adopt a Thai identity. For Muslims in this region, Islam and Malay identity are inextricably linked – changing one aspect inevitably impacts the other.
On the state level, Thailand’s relationship with Israel has never been the central defining factor in the interaction between the state and its Malay minority. However, when issues arise – whether related to the ongoing war or other events in the Middle East – the stance of Thai Muslims is unmistakably clear, as will be explored below.
Like other ASEAN Member States, Thailand also calls for an end to hostilities in Gaza and urges all sides to respect humanitarian norms and principles. However, Thailand would not take a strong political stance on the conflict. This is despite some Thai falling victims to this ongoing conflict.
Prior to Hamas’ 7 October attack that killed more than 1,200 people, including 39 Thai nationals, there were nearly 30,000 Thais in Israeli farms just kilometers from the Gaza border. These individuals went to work there under a government-to-government arrangement. Of the 240 taken hostage by Hamas, 32 were Thai nationals, some of whom have died.
Thailand has issued statements regarding developments on the warfront. However, its rather mild response could be explained by the fact that its bilateral ties with Israel are nowhere near as robust as its relationship with other Western governments. Besides, Israel has never featured prominently on any Thai political party’s agenda.
This, however, does not mean that Thailand’s security apparatus is not concerned about the possible spillover effect that Israel’s war has on its southern provinces.
Demonstrations and Parades in Southern Thailand
Not long after the onset of the war in Gaza, Thai military officials began visiting villages in these provinces, urging local chiefs and elders to keep the communities subdued. The last thing they needed was to witness unruly Malay demonstrators jeopardizing Thailand’s long-standing relations with Israel.
It did not take long for news of the officials’ activities to reach the youth activists in the region’s cities. Feeling compelled to respond to this perceived interference, these activists organized a march from the Pattani City Hall to the provincial central mosque in December 2023.
Palestinian flags flew high as local Muslims seized the opportunity to defy the state security apparatus, the very forces leading the government’s counterinsurgency strategy, which has yet to secure the loyalty of the local Malays.
The December 2023 march in downtown Pattani set off a small spark in Thailand’s Malay-speaking south. Palestinian flags, along with symbols and narratives of the Malays’ past and narratives, became a common sight in just about social and cultural activities, particularly among the youth.
This is the region that has been wracked with separatist problems and witnessed more than 7,500 deaths from insurgency-related violence since January 2004. Thus, the emergence of symbols and narratives that glorify the Malayness would rightfully raise anxiety on the part of the authorities.
The problem did not stop there. In May 2024, teachers at an Islamic preschool (locally known as tadeka)in Narathiwat pushed the line by dressing the children in military fatigues and led them in a march with toy guns, carrying Hamas and Palestinian flags to display solidarity with the people in Gaza.
Within days, the Ministry of Culture instructed the provincial governor to issue a public statement warning all tadeka in the region – about 1,660 altogether – that such demonstrations could lead to a halt in the government’s financial support for their school.
Unsurprisingly, the directive was met with discontent from the local Muslims, who have long felt alienated in this predominantly Buddhist kingdom, which embraced a separate set of narratives, heroes and myths from the Malays in the far south.
The tit-for-tat between the two sides seems to be a never-ending episode, however. Later still, in early September 2024, a paramilitary unit in Narathiwat broke up a village parade organized by a group of young people to remove Palestinian flags and portraits of Patani’s Malay historical figures and religious leaders. The unit’s reasoning was that these items have nothing to do with local culture.
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| Seizing Palestinian flag in a Narathiwat parade. |
As expected, social media and political activists responded ferociously. Narathiwat lawmaker Kamonsak Leewamoh even went on the parliament floor to demand a public apology from the local military unit for the alleged interference and called on the Royal Thai Army to investigate the incident.
The Dichotomy
Despite these concerning developments, we need to remember that the challenges facing the Muslims in Thailand bear little connection to the outside world, as the tensions are rooted in local dynamics. However, simply because the Malays’ response has been relatively muted, this does not mean they are apolitical.
Before we continue with this point, a dichotomy must be made. In this article, the “Malays of Patani” refer to traditionalist Muslims in the southernmost border provinces (the Patani region). Outside that, Muslims are referred to as “Thai Muslims.”
While Thai Muslims have to contend against anti-Islam sentiment and find themselves in a constant struggle to show the rest of the country that they are very much part of Thailand nationhood, the Malays of Patani, on the other hand, reject the Thai state-constructed narrative and constantly look for ways to assert their historical-cultural identity. For the latter, Malay identity and Islam are inseparable.
Thai Muslims, both Sunnis and Shiites, are patriotic and extremely loyal to the state. This explains their resentment towards the Malays of Patani for challenging Thailand’s nationhood and embracing separatism.
Despite their patriotism, Thai Muslims’ loyalty to the state is constantly questioned. They do what they can to avoid confrontation with the Thais, particularly the Buddhist nationalists who believe that Thainess is synonymous to being a Buddhist of the Theravada school.
Compared to heavy protests elsewhere in the world – the kind that is seen on US colleges – responses from the Malays of Patani and the Thai Muslims to the war in Gaza seem rather tame. As local writer and political activist Asmadee Bueheng explained, the lack of response must be understood in a proper context.
The vast majority of the Malays in the border provinces are traditionalist Muslims who embrace local culture and turn to the village ulema (religious scholars) for answers to personal and theological, sometimes political, questions. Conversely, they see the reformists as a bunch of globalized religious movements that compete among themselves to establish a modern identity at the expense of local culture. Groups like Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafi, Wahhabi and Tablighi Jamaat are all considered reformists by the Malays of Patani.
Moreover, said Asmadee, local Malays have never been comfortable with “political Islam” as a concept. But being traditionalists does not mean they are not political. Their resistance to Thailand’s policy of assimilation has translated into an armed struggle for independence that keeps resurfacing generation after generation ever since the region was conquered by Siam in the late 18th century.
However, not all reformists embraced political Islam: many Salafists, for example, take a “purist” or “quietist” approach and withdraw themselves completely from political affairs, while so-called “jihadists” take up violent actions to advance their political agenda in the name of religion.
The traditionalists among the Malays of Patani see the war in Gaza as very much a byproduct of political Islam. On the other hand, the reformist Muslims are calling for a more active response to the war in Gaza but fall short of calling on the government to make stern and concrete measures. They are concerned that their loyalty to the state would be questioned.
In spite of these differences, however, there is no open hostility between the two groups, as both keep to themselves.
The absence of major outbursts against Israel’s genocidal tendency in Gaza does not mean that the Malays of Patani or the Thai Muslims have shut themselves out of the affairs of the Islamic world or that they are indifferent to the suffering of fellow Muslims elsewhere.
Both groups have consistently engaged Muslim communities abroad on various platforms and on occasions. Many of these families continue to send their children to universities and madrasa in the Middle East and South Asia, where they are exposed to other schools of thought and competing ideas.
In the 1980s, for example, more than 1,000 Pattani Malays combatants joined fighters from Aceh and Mindanao in training camps in the Middle East and North Africa.
This is where they come to know fellow “revolutionaries” from other parts of the world, including Palestinian leftists who made a huge contribution to the development of the Palestinian national movement back in the day but no longer feature in today’s conversations.
In fact, Patani itself, prior to its defeat by Siam in 1786, was a flourishing commercial center where East Asian traders met and carried out business with their counterparts from Europe. This is the historical precedence of the region’s openness and willingness to engage others from the outside world.
Explaining the Authorities’ Anxiety
Two decades ago, when the current wave of Patani Malay separatists resurfaced to pick up what the previous generation had left off a decade earlier, several so-called security experts were quick to label the southern Thai conflict a new front in the global war on terrorism.
Such a label was convenient. After all, various factors at the time made it easier to do so. These include the political climate, the prevailing mood and narrative, the emergence of a new set of vocabulary, and a booming industry under the banner of a global war on terrorism that came to life following 9/11.
However, in the case of Southeast Asia, it did not take long to see that lumping ethno-nationalist struggles in the same basket as radical jihadist groups such as al-Qaeda or Jama’ah Islamiyah has no merit.
Separatist movements such as Barisan Revolusi Nasional (National Revolutionary Front – BRN), Gerakan Aceh Merdeka (Free Aceh Movement – GAM) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) would eventually come to the negotiating tables with the government that they had been fighting. Today, the GAM and the MILF have signed a peace agreement with their respective governments. The BRN, on the other hand, is still negotiating with the Thai government.
Unlike radical jihadists, these Southeast Asian separatist groups never established the kind of global network because the banner of their struggle has always been centered on liberating their homeland from outside forces.
Conclusion
While the end to the southern Thai conflict is still nowhere in sight, there is nothing to suggest that the political context of the conflict in Patani will evolve from an ethno-nationalist to violent jihadist where the banner of the struggle becomes a religion. Nevertheless, local and foreign counterterrorism officials are on a constant lookout for any possible incursions of radicalism, the kind that Southeast Asia had witnessed in the early 2000s when violent extremist groups had penetrated the Mindanao region of the Philippines and in the various pockets of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore.
The thinking among these officials is that one cannot afford to be complacent. Hence the anxiety of the Thai officials following the eruption of Israel’s war on Gaza, despite the rather mild response by the Malays of Patani so far.
Author: Don Pathan is a security analyst focusing on conflict in Myanmar/Burma and insurgency in Thailand's far south.