Junta’s three-year peace effort in South fizzles to embarrassing end

Don Pathan
Special to The Nation

Peace talks with separatist insurgents have hit a snag after longstanding tensions between Thai negotiators and MARA Patani, an umbrella organisation of separatist movements in the Muslim-majority South, came to the boil.

The first sign of trouble came in the middle of last year when Bangkok refused to ink an agreement on a pilot Safety Zone, a high-profile initiative before it was ditched by the new chief negotiator, General Udomchai Thamsarorat.

Udomchai saw the Safety Zone project and its ceasefire as unrealistic because MARA Patani has little or no control over the insurgent combatants.

 With faith in the umbrella group draining, the Thai side decided to seek direct contact with Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), the longstanding separatist movement that controls virtually all of the rebel combatants.

BRN is not currently part of the Malaysia-facilitated talks and Kuala Lumpur has had no success in convincing the movement’s leadership to endorse the peace initiative.

The latest hiccup came during a February 2 visit to Kuala Lumpur by Udomchai and his team, for a meeting with technical officials from MARA Patani. Udomchai said he went along just to meet Abdul Rahim Noor, the designated Malaysian facilitator for the talks.

But out of nowhere, Malaysia insisted the meeting constituted high-level talks, which would require Udomchai and Rahim Noor’s participation.

Udomchai refused but suggested compromise: an informal meeting with Shukri Hari, a senior MARA Patani negotiator.

The following day, Shukri appeared in a YouTube video calling on the Thai government to replace Udomchai with someone “more credible”. The group also said they would not talk to the Thais until a new government was formed in Bangkok.

Why all the drama over protocol? According to Artef Sohko, chair of The Patani, a local political action group dedicated to promoting self-determination for the people of Patani, the tension stems from a feeling among Malaysia and MARA Patani that Udomchai may be moving away from them to establish a separate back-channel with BRN.

“MARA Patani is concerned that they will become irrelevant. The drama in Kuala Lumpur and Shukri’s statement on YouTube afterward stemmed from that fear,” Artef said.

For some in the international community, Udomchai’s appointment  was a breath of fresh air for the peace push. After all, he broke with tradition to seek their views – although foreign mediation is still out of the question.

For mediation, he instead turned to local political activists and civil society organisations in the hope they might help bridge the divide or perhaps even mediate the talks. However, local activists with access to BRN leaders are not rushing to take up the offer.

Udomchai may have the mandate from Bangkok but no one is convinced he can deliver on agreements made at the negotiation table. There are too many “players” in power and none of them appears to be singing from the same hymn sheet. 

Continuity is another concern; each change of Thai government has brought a new negotiating team. And with a general election scheduled for March 24, no one is certain how the new administration will treat the far South.

Moreover, the junta has little to show in terms of a legacy in the far South. The Safety Zone that peace negotiators had been working on over the past three years has proved a leap of faith too far.

Delivering a new initiative at this point in time appears unrealistic given the impending general election. But Bangkok is still hoping it can open a channel of communication with the BRN, with or without MARA Patani’s participation.

The move is a U-turn on the path pursued by Udomchai’s predecessor as chief negotiator, General Aksara Kherdpol. Aksara depicted himself as having the upper hand and the moral high ground because of the mandate handed to him. He forgot that the BRN couldn’t care less about the current talks, meaning the brutality continued.

Yet Bangkok’s bid to establish communications with the BRN leadership hit trouble from the start.

Udomchai was supposed to meet BRN leaders Abdulloh Waemanor and Deng Awaeji on November 24 for talks arranged by Malaysia. But the two BRN men refused to show up and have been in hiding ever since.

Thai sources say Malaysian authorities have pinpointed the location of the pair, who unlike other Patani separatist leaders have no travel documents and thus are dependant on being granted asylum.

Malaysian facilitators decided that it was best to leave Abdulloh and Deng at their “safehouse” until Kuala Lumpur decided on its next move.

Frustrated with having virtually nothing to show for its near three-year peace effort with MARA Patani, Bangkok decided to lower its sights. It declared talks with BRN did not have to be at the leadership level as long as they had the blessing of separatist movement’s ruling council, the Dewan Pimpinan Parti.

But with BRN leaders keeping their heads down as they await Malaysia’s next move in this big “game of chicken” between them and Kuala Lumpur, meeting Udomchai is the last thing on their minds.

Don Pathan is a Thailand-based development and security consultant and a founding member of the Patani Forum (www.pataniforum.com), a civil society organisation dedicated to critical discussion of the conflict in Thailand’s far South.

Thai Authorities Struggle to Understand a Conflict They Have Been Fighting for Decades

A string of deadly standoffs with Malay rebels strains an already shaky peace process.

Monday, September 13, 2021 / BY: Don Pathan

In May 2021, Thai security forces were in a three-hour standoff with two Malay-Muslim separatist insurgents in a small remote village in the southernmost border province of Yala. As they stood their ground, the two combatants made video calls to family and friends to bid farewell. Someone began recording one of the calls on another cellphone. Soon, footage of the two men, who were killed in the operation, was circulating on social media. 

The video and outpouring of support jolted security officials whose stated goal is to win the hearts and minds of the local Malay Muslim population. The officials wanted to know if the two insurgents had deliberately pursued their own deaths as a publicity stunt and if the making of video calls would be the start of a new strategy in the conflict.

Days later, a similar situation arose in the Bacho district of Narathiwat province. Outnumbered and outgunned, four insurgents tried to fight their way out of a standoff with security forces. One escaped, one was killed and two were arrested. Then, in late June 2021, security forces surprised two insurgents in a pre-dawn raid on a seaside resort in Pattani province. Again, authorities attempted to convince the insurgents to surrender, using a village imam speaking through a loudspeaker, and again, the combatants opted to fight to the death.

 

Bullet holes pock a house in Krong Pinang, a village in southern Thailand’s Yala province, where two insurgents spent the last hours of their lives before being killed during a standoff with government forces three days earlier. (Photo by Don Pathan, May 7, 2021)

The Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), the separatist movement to which these insurgents belonged, resurfaced in mid-2001 after a decade of relative quiet in a historically contested region of southern Thailand where most of the two million residents identify as Malay and reject the government’s policy of assimilation. Although the BRN is negotiating peace with the Thai government and its powerful military wing is exploring “nonmilitary means” to advance its cause, this streak of deadly standoffs has strained an already tenuous peace process. While the BRN called a unilateral cease-fire in April 2020 in response to the health emergency caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, a relentless Thai military operation eventually forced the combatants to once again take up arms.

A Homegrown Insurgency

Many in the Malay-Muslim community in southern Thailand have long considered self-determination to be a sacred value. Unlike the previous generation of Malay nationalists and guerillas, thousands of whom trained in the Middle East and North Africa during the 1980s, the current generation of insurgents is homegrown. Today’s fighters are quite pious — they observe religious practices, including fasting and praying five times a day. In death, they are buried as shahid, or martyrs, in line with Islamic tradition. But BRN leaders refute comparisons to extremists associated with the Islamic State group (ISIS), al-Qaida or Jemaah Islamiyah (JI).

BRN leaders also refute suggestions that their combatants planned attacks with the express intent to die. While these combatants are unwilling to be captured alive, death has never been the central part of their plan. Rather, their decisions to fight to the death are driven by their fear of abuse and exploitation at the hands of Thai security forces if captured alive. Thai officials often parade combatants who have surrendered before the media, branding them as having been “misled” by the rebels. Observers and relatives of the dead insurgents say the thought of being humiliated by state personnel helps make the choice of fighting to the death that much easier.

From the look of it, the Thai government will go to great lengths to deny the BRN legitimacy — be it through a relentless assault that forced the combatants to break their unilateral cease-fire to denying them their human dignity by forcing the surrendered to recant publicly or turn on their former comrades. What the government does not see, say residents in this region, is that such actions are counterproductive. “They may have killed two insurgents but their handling of the aftermath inadvertently strengthens the BRN’s popularity and recruitment,” said one resident in Krong Pinang district, the scene of the May gunfight, on the condition of anonymity.

Jihad in the Making?

Although the BRN maintains that the conflict is an ethno-nationalist struggle, there is always a concern that the insurgency will tap into the global jihadist movement in which religion becomes the banner of struggle. So far, transnational jihadist groups like JI, al-Qaida, and ISIS have not made inroads in southern Thailand. Nevertheless, the incursion of radicalism in the Mindanao region of the Philippines and the emergence of JI cells in various pockets of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore in the early 2000s are all cause for concern that outside radical ideas could penetrate Thailand as well.

The JI operatives behind the 2002 Bali bombings visited southern Thailand at the height of the movement to seek out potential partners in the region. While these JI cells — most of them were in Indonesia, some in Malaysia and at least one in Singapore, but none in Thailand — have largely been crushed, the global war on terrorism is still far from over. Although transnational jihadism has yet to take root in southern Thailand, fear that it could is not irrational, and a longstanding conflict such as the one involving the BRN creates opportunities for foreign and local jihadists to flourish.

The Prospects for Peace Are Bleak for Now

The conflict in southern Thailand is unlikely to be resolved militarily or via peaceful negotiations in the near future. The fluidity of the BRN’s chain of command makes it difficult for Thai security forces to penetrate and defeat the movement. Cells are organized somewhat independently, and decisions to attack are largely made at the cell level unless the operation requires coordination. These factors help explain why southern Thailand has continued to smolder despite 18 years of constant military presence and operations. Additionally, for much of the past two decades, Thailand has been embroiled in a political crisis that has hampered conflict resolution in the far south.

Although the BRN’s leadership finally agreed to come to the table in January 2020, the pace of peace talks has been slow. The BRN lacks cohesion — the movement’s military wing has expressed concerns about direct negotiations with the Thai government. This has put additional strain on the BRN negotiators to demonstrate that something good can come out of the process. Likewise, successive Thai governments and the military have never been united on a policy for the far south. Government negotiators are caught between the politics of the government of the day and the powerful military that launched two coups in 2006 and 2014. Furthermore, the Thai army has historically opposed negotiations with the separatists as they do not acknowledge the Malays’ grievances, and the government has opposed too much external involvement out of concern that mediation or foreign assistance to the BRN could enhance the rebels’ legitimacy.

Recommendations for How to Get to Peace

A growing number of policymakers suggest that it is time for Thailand to abandon its zero-sum mentality and permit outside help to build the capacity of negotiators on both sides of the conflict. The BRN is eager to work with international organizations and foreign governments as that would help enhance its legitimacy. Such engagement would also provide it opportunities to learn more about international norms, the Geneva Conventions and humanitarian law. However, there remains a question as to who could fill this role and to what extent the Thai government and army would accept outside involvement.

Malaysia is currently “facilitating” the peace talks, but Kuala Lumpur is more of a stakeholder in this conflict as the country shares a common and porous border with Thailand. Kuala Lumpur may respect Thailand’s territorial integrity but there is a great deal of sympathy for the Patani Malays from the Malaysian citizens. As the designated “facilitator,” Malaysia has to tread carefully, as an unexpected incident has the potential to sour bilateral relations. For example, BRN rebels attacked Thai troops, killing one, in early August 2021 in Tak Bai district on the banks of the Kolok River, which marks the official border between Thailand and Malaysia. The rebels were seen in CCTV footage crossing over from the Malaysian side of the river to carry out the attack.

The United States should be concerned about the potential for radicalism to arise in southern Thailand. Thailand’s position as a treaty ally of the United States and a major non-NATO ally makes it, and the Western hotels and embassies within it, a legitimate target in the eyes of global terrorists. The fact that there are many international organizations and countries in Southeast Asia with experience in countering violent extremism may provide an effective starting point for more international actors to offer assistance. 

Don Pathan is a Thailand-based security analyst.

https://www.usip.org/publications/2021/09/thai-authorities-struggle-understand-conflict-they-have-been-fighting-decades 

Thailand: Could One of Asia’s Deadliest Conflicts Be Coming to an End?

After decades of conflict, the government and southern rebels take tentative steps toward peace.

Tuesday, September 7, 2021 / By: Don Pathan

Thailand’s southernmost region is home to one of Asia’s longest-running armed conflicts. A separatist movement that emerged in the 1960s sought to carve out the Muslim-majority region as an independent state. Levels of violence have oscillated over the course of the conflict, with the most recent insurgency arising in the early 2000s. Despite decades of protracted armed conflict, there is recent cause for optimism.

A growing number of officials are talking about the need to move beyond conflict management to conflicttransformation in order to focus on the root causes of the insurgency. Moreover, government and rebel peace negotiators as well as the Malaysian facilitators of the negotiations are exploring ways to move beyond confidence-building measures and take up more concrete, substantive issues.

The Roots of the Conflict

The conflict is deeply rooted in historical tensions and mistrust. This Malay-speaking region, known as Patani, came under Siam’s control in 1785, following its defeat. Since the beginning of the 20th century, Buddhist-majority Thailand (then Siam) has aggressively pursued a policy of assimilation, which Malays reject as an infringement on their cultural and religious identity. Many in this community hold that the region belongs to the Malay people and that the community has a moral obligation to liberate it from invading Siamese/Thai forces.

As international support for the insurgency, particularly from Arab countries, waned in the post-Cold War era, violence in the region fell. In the late 1980s to early 1990s, combatants put down their weapons and returned to their villages, while the movement’s leadership remained abroad, taking up asylum and citizenship in foreign countries. Thai policymakers wrongly assumed that the absence of violence meant peace had been attained. But the Malay cultural-historical narrative of liberation continued to persist in the region.

A new generation of fighters surfaced in mid-2001 with regular attacks on Thai security outposts. The insurgency shifted into high gear in January 2004 after dozens of combatants raided an army base and made off with more than 350 weapons. The incident prompted official acknowledgement from Bangkok of renewed insurgency in the region as Thai officials could no longer deny the political underpinning of the attacks. The government responded by sealing the border, placing several districts under curfew and deploying a large number of soldiers to the region. Since then, more than 7,000 people have died from insurgency-related violence.

Thailand’s Response to the Insurgency

Thailand’s counterinsurgency operation has involved a two-pronged approach of development and security. Both have failed to win hearts and minds as neither addresses the root causes of the insurgency. The conflict is essentially about rejecting Thailand’s policy of assimilation and the Patani Malays’ quest for independence. Militants on the ground continue to enjoy support from the Malay Muslim residents, particularly those living in remote villages. Over the years, successive Thai governments have quietly approached neighboring countries and international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) to mediate the conflict. None successfully generated meaningful traction, as talks were mainly held with exiled former armed separatist leaders who no longer controlled the combatants on the ground.

As for the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), the armed group that controls virtually all of the combatants on the ground today, independence continues to be a sacred value and nonnegotiable goal. For years, the atmosphere was not conducive to peace, as neither side was willing to make concessions. As a country that has never been colonized, Thailand never seriously considered ceding territory over which it claims sovereignty. But in January 2020, nearly two decades after the arms heist that kicked off the current wave of the insurgency, the BRN and the Thai government decided to come to the table for talks facilitated by Malaysia. The two sides held two face-to-face meetings, focusing on technical issues, and exploring confidence-building measures. Then COVID-19 hit the region in March 2020 forcing the discussion online.

Rebels’ Leap of Faith

The peace initiative that was launched in January 2020 rests on a shaky foundation. The BRN’s powerful military wing is not convinced that the atmosphere is conducive for a formal negotiation. Moreover, it is also concerned that the movement will abandon its moral obligation to liberate the region. In late 2019, talk of a split in the BRN was rampant until a group of young political activists from The Patani, a political action group seeking self-determination in the region, convinced the BRN military wing to reconsider. Although critical of this latest peace initiative, the president of The Patani, Artef Sohko, feared that division of the movement would cause violence to escalate and risk greater harm to civilians. Artef urged the BRN’s leaders, and particularly the military wing, to take the moral high ground and explore new ideas to advance their cause, particularly through nonmilitary means. These suggestions led to two major announcements.

On February 19, 2020, representatives of the political and military councils of the BRN signed the “Deed of Commitment for the Protection of Children from the Effects of Armed Conflict” with Geneva Call, an INGO that works with armed groups around the world on rules of engagement and other humanitarian issues. In March 2020, the region became a hot spot of the COVID-19 pandemic when hundreds of people became infected after a group of Muslim missionaries returned from Malaysia and Indonesia with the disease. In response to a request from United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres for a global cease-fire during the pandemic, the BRN in April 2020 announced a unilateral cease-fire to allow medical personnel and aid workers full access to the area to carry out humanitarian efforts to combat the pandemic.

While the BRN received some quiet praise from the international community for its overtures, the Thai army was not amused. Rather, the Thai army responded with serious force, sending out helicopters, drones and long-range reconnaissance patrols. It was a stern reminder to the BRN that nothing comes easily in this historically contested region. Moreover, the peace initiatives lacked the support of the then army chief Gen. Apirat Kongsompong who viewed the insurgents as nothing more than criminals.

Prospects for Peace

Though history suggests one should not bet on peace, there are reasons for optimism. Apirat retired last October, ushering in new leadership that appears to be more amenable to the peace negotiations. Additionally, the BRN’s military wing is exploring “nonmilitary means” to advance its cause. That does not mean the peace process is secure. The BRN’s military wing has yet to be convinced that there is much to be gained from the peace process, but it is willing to give the negotiators time to prove them wrong.

Though the COVID-19 pandemic had the potential to derail peace efforts, negotiators from both parties were able to maintain momentum by adapting to an online forum. The platform has proven to be somewhat awkward for the BRN negotiators who would rather discuss sensitive issues, like the cease-fire during the recent Ramadan holy month, in a face-to-face setting. Artef warned that one should not expect too much from the BRN negotiators as they do not have significant influence over the combatants. They risk making themselves irrelevant if they do anything that antagonizes the military wing, he said.

BRN and Thai negotiators are currently at a crossroads, trying to transition from confidence-building measures to a forum in which more substantial issues can be discussed. The pandemic response presents an opportunity for cooperation, as both sides recognize the need to encourage residents, particularly the Malays, to sign up for vaccinations. Separately, a growing number of senior Thai government officials in and around the policy arena are starting to talk about the need to embrace conflict transformation, a peacebuilding theory that goes beyond conflict resolution and conflict management to focus on the underlying conditions that give rise to conflict in the first place.

Whether the current or future governments in Thailand will have the political will to explicitly identify the social structures and dynamics causing the conflict and be courageous enough to reshape them remains to be seen. But the fact that the two opposing sides are finally talking to one another, even on a shaky foundation, suggests that there is hope for peacebuilding initiatives in this restive region after all.

Don Pathan is a Thailand-based security analyst.

https://www.usip.org/publications/2021/09/thailand-could-one-asias-deadliest-conflicts-be-coming-end 

Annual Threat Assessment from S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) 2001

Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses (CTTA) – Volume 13 Issue 01

A PUBLICATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL CENTRE FOR POLITICAL VIOLENCE AND TERRORISM RESEARCH (ICPVTR)

Kumar Ramakrishna, Unaesah Rahmah, Jasminder Singh S/O Bilveer Singh, Mahfuh Bin Haji Halimi, Nur Aziemah Azman, Kyler Ong, Don Pathan, Amin Saikal, Shanthie Mariet D’Souza

04 January 2021

Full Report: https://www.rsis.edu.sg/rsis-publication/icpvtr/counter-terrorist-trends-and-analyses-ctta-volume-13-issue-01/#.YKcp930zY1t 

(Page 40-45 for Southern Thailand conflict/insurgency)

THAILAND

Don Pathan

While a tentative but rare ceasefire announced at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic had briefly raised hopes for an enduring peace in Thailand’s insurgency- stricken deep south, Malay-Muslim militants and Thai security forces continued to engage in limited conflict for much of 2020. The Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN’s) signing of a “Deed of Commitment” with Geneva Call in March, in which it committed to protecting children in conflict in line with international human rights norms, was widely viewed as an attempt to raise the movement’s international profile. Yet, it has so far failed to put the country on a path to peace. The appointment of a new Army commander in October, following an annual military shuffle, could give the stalled peace process a new impetus. However, it remains unclear how the anti-regime protests, that have bedevilled the Thai capital Bangkok, could impact the government’s security response and, in turn, peace prospects for the slow-burn Southern Thailand conflict. 

Full Report: https://www.rsis.edu.sg/rsis-publication/icpvtr/counter-terrorist-trends-and-analyses-ctta-volume-13-issue-01/#.YKcp930zY1t 

Video of Insurgents’ Final Hours Strikes Chord in Thai Deep South

Don Pathan
BenarNews
Krong Pinang, Yala, Thailand

Time was running out for the two separatist fighters – and they knew it.

Bullet holes riddled the corrugated metal wall of the house where they hunkered down during their final hours.

In this photo taken on May 7, 2021, bullet holes pock a house in Krong Pinang, a village in southern Thailand’s Yala province, where two insurgents spent the last hours of their lives before being killed during a standoff with government forces three days earlier. (Don Pathan/BenarNews)

Dozens of Thai government security personnel had surrounded it after the men inside shot dead 27-year-old Nopparit Sukson, a member of the Thai paramilitary forces. His body lay meters away on a forested slope at the edge of Krong Pinang, a village in Yala, a province in Thailand’s troubled Deep South.

An imam had been called in to persuade the combatants to surrender; a third man had already done so. Soon after, he a military press release would quote him as saying that his two former compatriots had been involved with drugs.

The two men holed up in the house had decided not to surrender. Instead, they began making video calls.

Speaking casually, they asked friends and family members how their day went, as if this were a regular conversation instead of a farewell call, according to people who spoke to the pair, who were killed in a gunfight with Thai security forces on May 4.

Ilyas Wo’ka, 32, and Ridwan Cheksoh, 31, also asked for forgiveness, or ma-af, an important concept in Islam and a common request among friends and family, especially during the month of Ramadan, when Muslims fast from dawn to dusk.

They told people whom they telephoned not to worry about authorities tracing the call, because they would make sure to destroy their phones and SIM cards.

But someone began recording one of the calls on another cellphone.  Soon, footage of the two men was circulating on social media – albeit with no accompanying sound.

Different versions proliferated, with stirring music added in, along with captions like “the martyr’s last smile” and alleged final messages exhorting the “people of Patani” to keep fighting “the colonizers from Siam.”

In the footage, the men – one holding an AK-47 – appear remarkably calm, smiling and laughing, providing a rare glimpse of fugitive combatants that, to some viewers, was humanizing.

“It’s not easy for people who choose to take up arms, to walk down this path, taking into account the hardship, life on the run, and perhaps imprisonment or death,” reflected Nualnoi Thammasathien, a journalist in Pattani, another province in the Deep South, after viewing the footage.

After a three-hour standoff, the men were shot dead as they tried to make a run for it by dashing up the hill toward deeper woods.

The local community deemed them martyrs and buried them as such.

Hundreds of thousands of baht were donated to the families of the two men within the first three days after their funeral, village elders and relatives said.

Student activists and residents stop by Ilyas' home to provide moral support, May 7, 2021 (Don Pathan)

Well-wishers, averaging nearly 1,000 a day, strolled through the dead men’s homes. The house where the two positioned themselves during the standoff, and the sites where they were gunned down, also drew visitors.

“The display of moral support to combatants killed by security forces is nothing new,” said Sukriffee Lateh, president of PerMAS (The Federation of Patani Students and Youth). “It’s just that this video call that went public generated so much sympathy and support from the local residents.”

Local people were no longer afraid to show their feelings, said Sukriffee, who led a group of about 15 college students to visit the gravesites and the families of the two deceased men.

Local residents sit at Ilyas Wo’ka’s gravesite, May 7, 2021. [Don Pathan/BenarNews]

The video and open outpouring of support jolted security officials, who wanted to know if the two insurgents were deliberately pursuing their own deaths as a publicity stunt, and if this would be the start of something new in the conflict.

Meanwhile, local people were outraged when ISOC-4, the military’s regional command, linked the two slain insurgents to the brutal killing on April 28 of three members of a Buddhist family in the Sai Buri district of Pattani province. An ISOC-4 press release gave no evidence; neither man was listed in an arrest warrant related to the incident, the local people said.

Sources wouldn’t say plainly how long the men had been members of the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), the highly secretive armed insurgent group and the largest among rebel organizations in the border region.

Both had been on the run for about two years, but would often slip back home to visit family.

Ilyas did drugs as a teenager and spent time in prison in his early 20s, but came out wanting to learn more about his people and the predicament of this region, friends and family said. He had a wife and three children – aged eight, five and three.

Ridwan taught tadeka, weekly classes where young children learn about Islam and the Malay identity. He was single, and tried to call his father to say goodbye. A young cousin who picked up the phone became hysterical when she realized his situation.

The footage of their final moments seemed to strike a chord in Thailand’s Malay-speaking far south, in a way that the official BRN spokesman – who issues a YouTube video statement once or twice a year – was unable to achieve in almost two decades.

“The message to the Melayu people was clear: keep on fighting for independence,” said Asmadee Bueheng, an executive member of The Patani, a local political action group advocating the right to self-determination for the people of this region.

“This is a challenge for the current crop of political activists who would like to see a political settlement with the Thai state through non-military means,” Asmadee added.

The next round of peace talks between the government and the BRN, had been tentatively slated for late May.

But on May 4, the day of the standoff at Krong Pinang, Malaysian facilitator Abdul Rahim Noor stated that the two sides could not agree on whether the next meeting should be held in person or virtually, and therefore it would be postponed.

Meanwhile, an informal video dispatch from the front lines gave unexpected resonance to what otherwise would have been just another killing in the low-grade separatist conflict that grinds on year after year.
___________________

Don Pathan is a Thailand-based security analyst. The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and not of BenarNews.

https://www.benarnews.org/english/commentaries/far-south-view/insurgents-thailand-deep-south-05142021140045.html

https://www.benarnews.org/thai/commentary/th-far-south-view-05142021220330.html (Thai)

https://web.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=107089054874560&id=106911808225618&_rdc=1&_rdr 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twiuHXR-6GI

Deep South Peace Talks Could Resume in May

Commentary by Don Pathan
Bangkok

The first full-fledged peace talks in more than a year between Thailand and southern Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) rebels could take place as early as mid-May, according to sources from both sides – but a Ramadan ceasefire is not in the cards.

After technical-level talks in February between Bangkok’s Peace Dialogue Panel and BRN representatives, Thai negotiators suggested that both sides observe a ceasefire during the fasting month, which begins this week.

IED attack against Thai security forces in Rangae District, Narathiwat, May 2007. 
Phto by CHAIWAT PUMPUANG

But BRN’s delegates said negotiators prefer to talk about any truce when the two full delegations meet again face to face, a government source said.

Thai and BRN negotiators publicly launched their talks in Kuala Lumpur in January 2020, and met once more in early March of that year before the coronavirus pandemic disrupted the negotiations. The two sides planned to resume talks in Malaysia’s Kedah state in November but had to call off the meeting because of a spike in COVID-19 cases then in the country.

Successive Thai governments have spent years trying to convince the leaders of the BRN, the armed separatist movement behind much of the violence in the Malay-speaking southern border region, to come to the negotiating table.

Eight years ago, for a brief moment, there was optimism all-around as the government of then-Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra launched a formal peace process. BRN sent a couple of representatives but their intension was to derail the process, which they succeeded in doing.

In January 2020, Thai negotiators got what they wanted all along – to come face to face with real BRN representatives, who brought with them a mandate from the Dewan Pimpinan Parti (DPP), the rebel group’s secretive ruling council of elders and its highest decision-making body.

On the surface, it seemed that the Thai side had made a breakthrough. But nothing is as it seems in Thailand’s far south.

Strains within BRN

Even today, the mandate BRN negotiators received from the ruling council rests on shaky ground, as the military wing has yet to rule out breaking away from the organization.

It has continued to question the logic and merit of coming to the negotiating table – after belatedly learning that preliminary peace talks had started in late 2019.

The talks began as a series of secret meetings in Indonesia and Germany between the two sides, from September to November 2019. The Malaysian facilitator and BRN’s military wing were kept in the dark about these meetings, which were facilitated by a European NGO.

BenarNews broke the story about the Berlin Initiative in mid-November 2019. Malaysia was upset and so was BRN’s military wing – to the point that they considered leaving the movement.

To patch things up with Malaysia, the Thai Peace Dialogue Panel and BRN negotiators came together in Kuala Lumpur on Jan. 20, 2020, to launch the current peace initiative, which was billed as a new beginning.

But fighters in the field became even more agitated when the so-called political wing told them that a series of secret meetings with the Thais were part of BRN’s diplomacy.

For the past 18 years, the current generation of fighters had been told that “liberating” Patani was a moral obligation.

More than 7,000 have died in violence since 2004, a majority of them Malays. Some were killed in gunfights with government security forces; others by insurgents who suspected them of spying for Thai security agencies.

Innocent bystanders have been caught up in the violence. Some were deliberately targeted as one side tried to rip into the hearts and soul of the other side. Activists on the ground – groups like The Patani and PerMAS – tried to bring some degree of civility to the conflict by promoting international norms and rules of engagement.

Among activists, talk of BRN splitting up is troublesome because of fear that the conflict could become more violent as a result, with the possibility of greater harm to civilians.

‘Non-military means’

In January 2020, the BRN signed a Deed of Commitment for the Protection of Children from the Effects of Armed Conflict with Geneva Call, an international NGO that works with armed non-state actors to promote rules of war.

Three months later, the BRN implemented a unilateral ceasefire to allow medical personnel and government officials a free hand to work in containing the COVID-19 outbreak in the far south.

Quiet praise from various quarters and members of the international community for these moves led BRN’s military wing to rethink its approach toward the armed struggle. In November 2020, the wing expressed interest in learning more about “non-military means” to advance their cause.

It is not clear how the Thai side will respond to this move. Many Thai government agencies, especially the army’s top brass, do not like the idea of BRN getting any sort of legitimacy and recognition, internationally or locally.

As for the peace process, the way ahead is not at all clear. Thailand is concerned that the BRN is not serious, and is using the platform of peace talks to buy time and gain international recognition.

BRN militants say they could make the same argument: Thai negotiators have a mandate to talk, but not to make any concessions. Discussions with the rebels under any government have never moved beyond the confidence-building stage.

The challenge for Thai negotiators is how to keep the talks going, to move beyond mere “shop talk,” without upsetting political and military leaders who never liked the idea of talking to the enemies in the first place.

As for the BRN’s elders and the small band of negotiators, justifying a return to the table – that is to say, convincing the military wing that something good will come out of all this – is getting harder by the day.

But as long as the rebels’ military wing is interested in exploring “non-military means” to advance their cause, then there’s hope that the peace process can last in its current shape and form.

Don Pathan is a Thailand-based security analyst. The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and not of BenarNews.

https://www.benarnews.org/english/commentaries/far-south-view/talks-possible-04122021135026.html

(Thai translation) https://www.benarnews.org/thai/commentary/th-deepsouth-commentary-04122021185537.html

A new round of negotiations in Thailand’s far South

Don Pathan
Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia
September 2020

On 20 January 2020, Thai negotiators and members of the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), the separatist movement that controls virtually all of the combatants in Thailand’s Muslim-majority, Malay-speaking south, joined in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to announce that they have started the much-awaited peace talks. According to Thai and BRN officials, this latest peace initiative was the first that the secretive BRN’s ruling council, known as the Dewan Pimpinan Parti (DPP), had actually given their negotiators the full blessing to come to the table. It was presumed that the two sides are there to seek a political solution to this intractable conflict that resurfaced in Thailand’s Malay-speaking South in late 2001 but was not officially acknowledged until 4 January 2004, when scores of armed militants raided an army battalion in Narathiwat province and made off with more than 350 pieces of military weapons. The previous wave surfaced in the early 1960s in response to Thailand’s policy of assimilation that came at the expense of the Patani Malays’ ethno-religious identity. Armed insurrection died down in the late 1980s but the narrative – one that says Patani is a Malay historical homeland and that the Thai troops and government agencies are foreign occupying forces – never went away.

But 20 January 2020, was not the first time that Thailand has publicly announced that they are coming to the table with the BRN to settle the conflict through negotiation. The then government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra had launched a similar initiative on 28 February 2013, also in Kuala Lumpur. The announcement caught all the key stakeholders off guard. They include the BRN and the Thai military. BRN did eventually send representatives to the table — the former foreign affair chief Muhammed Adam Nur and a member from its youth wing Abdulkarim Khalid. But their job was to derail the process, which they succeeded in doing so by the last quarter of 2013, by which time Yingluck was running for her political life from the so-called Shut Down Bangkok street protest that paved the way for the May 2014 military coup that ousted her from power. In spite of being something between a hoax and a big leap of faith, Yingluck’s initiative generated a great deal of excitement and great expectation from the local residents in the far South. After all, it was the first time that a Thai government had publicly committed itself to resolving the conflict politically. Unfortunately, peace for this historically contested region was not the main motivation. Yingluck and the then Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak were more interested in raking the political benefits of a peace initiative.

In the aftermath of the May 2014 coup, there was some serious debate over whether to continue with what Yingluck had started. The National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), Thailand’s top brass behind the coup, had no part in the talks or its inception. But the junta decided to continue with the talks but on condition that the talks would be inclusive. In other words, all the Patani Malay separatist groups – BRN, all Patani United Liberation Organisation (PULO) factions, Gerakan Mujahidine Islam Patani (GMIP) and Barisan Islam Pembebasan Pattani (BIPP) – would have to come together and negotiate their differences with the Thai State. Prayuth Government and Thailand’s top brass were irritated by the very idea of “lowering themselves” to talk to Patani Malay rebels, thus, the demand of inclusivity. They wanted to get it done and over with, and once-and-for-all was their attitude. In December 2014, seven months after the coup, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha went to Kuala Lumpur to introduce the newly appointed chief negotiator, Gen. Aksara Kherdphol. He was to work hand-in-hand with Malaysia’s former spy chief, Dato Sri Ahmad Zamzamin bin Hashim, the designated Facilitator for the peace process.

In line with Thailand’s request of inclusivity, with the help of Malaysia’s Facilitator, MARA Patani became the umbrella organization under which all the Patani Malay long standing separatist movements would come under. The problem with this arrangement is that the BRN, the one group that control the combatants on the ground, refused to join. Nevertheless, the process stubbornly limped along, hoping that the initiative could generate enough traction to attract the BRN’s participation. And so for three years, Thai negotiators, MARA Patani and Malaysian Facilitator worked on the so-called Safety Zone, a pilot project that would turn a provincial district in the far South into a cease-fire area with development projects to serve as a model that peace and development can be achieved with the absence of violence. But in reality, it was much ado about nothing because the one group that controlled the combatants on the ground wasn’t part of the process.

In October 2018, the government of Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha replaced Gen. Aksara with Gen. Udomchai Thamsarorat, a man with many years of experience on the battlefield in the far South. Udomchai moved quickly to distance himself from the Safety Zone Project knowing that it would fail without the participation of the BRN. Udomchai’s appointment came two months after the newly elected government of Dr. Mahathir Mohammed had replaced Dato Zamzamin with retired police chief Tan Sri Abdul Rahim Noor as the Facilitator. Udomchai thought he could count on the new Malaysian facilitator to pressure the DPP to the table. But that backfired when militants on the ground retaliated with a spike in violence in January 2019 with the murder of two Buddhist monks in Narathiwat. The same month also saw insurgents gunning down four civil defense volunteers (local hired security details employed by the Ministry of Interior). A retired public school teacher was also shot dead and hung; his vehicle was stolen and used as a car bomb later that day.

Local political activists such as The Patani and The Federation of Patani Students and Youth (PerMAS) stepped up their campaign on the ground, calling on BRN combatants to respect international humanitarian law and norms, reminding the insurgents that, as non-state actor with limited conventional military capability, BRN’s ultimate goal is political in nature. Insurgents responded positively to the idea of taking the moral high ground in their fight against the Thai State and backed off from the soft target. About six months later, Thailand and Malaysia applied more pressure on the BRN leadership to come to the table. This time around, BRN responded with a series of small bombs through out Bangkok, humiliating the Thai government who was hosting of ASEAN foreign ministers who were in the capital for a series of bilateral and multilateral meetings with their Dialogue Partners, including the United States, Japan and China.

Again, Malaysian facilitator and Thai negotiators backed off. At this point in time Bangkok is convinced that Rahim Noor and his team of Facilitators were not able to get the BRN leaders to the Thai side. And so the Thai negotiators began to reach out to a foreign INGO who had worked with BRN in the past knowing that Malaysia would object to the very idea of bringing in an outsider into the process. BRN’s leaders, surprisingly, permitted their Foreign Affairs Committee, led by Anas Abdulrahman (also known as Hipni Mareh), to meet with the Thais. The two sides met in Indonesia and then in early November 2019, in Berlin, Germany, where a seven-page TOR drafted by the foreign INGO, was presented to the Thai and BRN negotiators. Needless to say Kuala Lumpur was not pleased with being kept in the dark the whole time. As for the foreign NGO who organized the meetings in Indonesia and Germany, it was an opportunity to get back into the game after they had been told to stay out after Bangkok gave the mandate to facilitate the talks to Kuala Lumpur in 2013.

Thailand’s effort to mend the fence with Malaysia came in form of a public announcement, an event to launch a breakthrough in which Malaysia is to be credited for its hard work. This so-called breakthrough was launched on 20 January 2020, in Kuala Lumpur. It was full of praises for the Malaysian government. But deep down inside, all parties knew that the direct talks with the Thais in Indonesia and Berlin, and 20 January  launch in Kuala Lumpur as a big leap of faith. This secretive movement that had been antagonising the Thai security forces for the past 17 years is drifting towards an uncharted territory. The military wing and the combatants on the ground were extremely uncomfortable with the ideas, partly because they weren’t consulted from the start and partly because they just outright disagree with the idea of setting the stage for a formal peace process when their demands were not being addressed. Moreover, the combatants on the ground were told by their commanders that their struggle to liberate this Malay homeland known as Patani was wajib, a moral obligation. Is it still a wajib? No one seems to know.

In its latest report on the conflict dated 25 January 2020, “Southern Thailand’s Peace Dialogue: Giving Substance to Form,” the International Crisis Group (ICG) said for the peace process to succeed, BRN needs to articulate the kind of future it envisions for the region and the Thai government should rethink its policy of not permitting international observers into the process. Both Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur should accede to impartial third-party mediation. In short, said ICG, the process needs a reboot.

The problem with foreign facilitators and mediators – many have come and gone over the past 17 years – is that they see Malaysia as their competitor instead of a stakeholder in the conflict. Malaysia is much more than just a “facilitator” or “mediator” but a stakeholder with real security, diplomatic and political concerns. In fact, none of the peace initiatives for Thailand’s far South since 2004 involved the use of honest broker. Still, many are asking why the BRN’s ruling council had permit its Foreign Affairs Committee to come to the table with the Thais without consultation with the militants on the ground and other division leaders. Some members said these secretive leaders took comfort in knowing that these negotiators were put on a very short leash and that they could be recalled any moment.

Senior Thai security officials believe the political wing knew that the powerful military wing would be dead against the idea of starting a formal peace process with the Thais and therefore, had to go to Indonesia and Germany without their consultation. Unlike other revolutionary or independent movements, BRN’s so-called political wing is still very weak and inexperienced. Thai policymakers never invested time into thinking about the consequences of rushing the BRN negotiators to the table. Like the BRN, the Thai side didn’t consulted among themselves, much less work together to formulate a strategy for a possible peace process. In fact, the actions and activities of the Thai Army on the ground suggested that they could careless about the development on the political side of the equation.

Long range reconnaissance patrol, mop up operation against BRN cells on the ground were being carried out as far back as January 2020, even when BRN was making positive gesture, like acceding to the Deed of Commitment with Geneva Call, an international NGO that work with armed non-state actors across the globe to promote rules of engagement and humanitarian principles. BRN also announced in early 3 April 2020, that it would end all hostilities as part of their humanitarian effort to help contain Corvid-19. BRN also urged the public to comply with the directives from the public health officials. On April 30, Thai security forces killed three BRN combatants in Pattani. Fearing that the cells on the ground would retaliate, BRN quickly reiterated its earlier position and instructed its combatants and the general public that the unilateral ceasefire must stay the course. Three days later, on May 3, 2020, in Sao Buri district of Pattani province, two Paramilitary Rangers were shot dead at close range by gunmen on a motorbike coming from behind and commence fire.

All fingers pointed to the BRN but the movement’s leadership kept quiet. To say that they had given the green light to take out the two Rangers in realisation for the shooting death of the three combatants would amount to an end of the ceasefire, an initiative by the political wing to show the powerful military side that they can generate legitimacy and praises for the movement. To say that the gunmen were BRN combatants who acted without order from the commander is to say that the movement doesn’t have adequate command-and-control on the ground. And not to say anything at this juncture, after surfacing publicly to jointly announce with the Thais negotiators, would also harm their credibility and integrity.

Don Pathan is a Thailand-based security analyst

https://kyotoreview.org/

https://kyotoreview.org/issue-28/a-new-round-of-negotiations-in-thailands-far-south-th/