Thai Deep South: An Elusive Leader, an Enduring Narrative

Don Pathan
BenarNews

Yala, Thailand

For weeks, Thai security and intelligence agencies debated how the death of Sapae-ing Baso would affect the separatist movement he was accused of leading in Thailand’s Muslim-majority Deep South.

One answer: very little. Violence in the restive region has resumed now that the rainy season has ended.

“BRN is a revolutionary organization that is run by a group of elders, not by one individual.  Of course, there is a sense of loss because of what Sapae-ing meant to his people,” said an operative from the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), a long-standing Patani Malay separatist group.



Sapae-ing, a former head master of Thammawittaya Foundation School in Yala province, died at age 86 of complications from diabetes in Malaysia on Jan. 10.

BRN cadres say Sapae-ing’s passing will have no impact on their campaign of violence, which, for the time being, aims to make the region as ungovernable as possible.

A hero of the Patani narrative

Armed insurgency in the region known among locals as Patani flared up in the early 1960s – 50 years after then-Siam and British Malaya drew their common border – in response to a government assimilation policy, which, local Malay Muslims thought, came at the expense of their cultural-religious identity.

That wave of violence subsided in the early 1990s as backers in the Middle East and North Africa repositioned themselves for a post-Cold War world.

But a narrative painting the Thai state as invaders in the historical homeland of the Malays never went away. That narrative also made heroes out of men like Sapae-ing, a high school educator who promoted local Malay identity to resist a state-constructed identity and narrative.

Separatist violence returned in late 2001 but was not officially recognized until Jan. 4, 2004, when scores of combatants raided an army battalion and made off with more than 400 rifles. The then-government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra could no longer deny the return of Malay separatist movement in the historically contested region.

Thailand’s counter-insurgency approach has never moved beyond carrot-and-stick proposals, including a blanket amnesty and a small plot of land for former combatants. Government policy has centered on development aimed at winning hearts and minds of the local Malay Muslims, who account for more than 80 percent of the 2 million residents in the area.

Nor has a military approach ended the problem. Soldiers in the Deep South are sitting ducks, as troops can’t distinguish between ordinary citizens and combatants. Today, the insurgents are in towns, cities, villages and municipalities across the region.

As long as the Patani narrative remains intact, separatism as an ideology will never go away, exiled separatist leaders say.

As for Sapae-ing, the fact that a significant number of students from his school took up arms against the Thai state made him an easy target for then-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

Thaksin needed to put a face on the conflict, and Sapae-ing became that face. Thaksin stated in one of his weekly radio addresses that the fugitive cleric, who fled southern Thailand in December 2004, was poised to be the leader of a liberated Patani.

The arrest warrant that forced Sapae-ing to flee was signed by then-Police Col. Thawee Sodsong, a man who would later become a key person the government’s peace initiatives for the far South for Thaksin and his sister, Yingluck.

Thai officials who examined the warrants said evidence against Sapae-ing was extremely flimsy and that he would have beaten the charges easily had he decided to fight it in court.

In the two years immediately after Sapae-ing fled southern Thailand, nine teachers from his school were shot dead, one-by-one, all at close range, presumably by members of a government or pro-government death squad.

Intervention from high-ups in Bangkok put an end to the killing of Sapae-ing’s teachers, according to a senior government source. But what successive administrations failed to grasp was the resilience of the cultural-historical narrative that Sapae-ing represented.

Successive governments tried to lure him to the table with the promise of leniency. It didn’t work. He was not about to sell his soul to the Thais, one associate said.

And since Thailand was not even willing to talk about the historical grievances and root cause of the conflict that claimed nearly 7,000 lives since January 2004, Sapae-ing didn’t see any point in talking to Thai officials.

Yoda-like

Artef Sohko, a youth leader from the far South, described Sapae-ing, his late principal, as a strict, polite and simple man who led by example.

The principal would go around pick up trash around the school like an ordinary janitor. After school, he would go around town to check to see if any of his students were getting into trouble.

Young people saw in him a role-model of the man they wanted to grow up to be. Parents admired his moral authority with students. Clerics in the region admired his leadership.

Foreign observers who closely monitor the conflict jokingly compared Sapae-ing to Yoda, the wise and powerful Jedi master from Star Wars. Some separatist combatants speculated that Sapae-ing was blessed with the power to go invisible and thus evade arrest.

After more than a decade of living secretly in exile and up until his death, the mystique around Sapae-ing never seemed to fade.

Upon learning of his death, Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha expressed his sorrow to Sapae-ing’s family, while Thawee, the man who sent him and many other suspects on the run, also dropped by his family home to pay respects.

Today, weeks after his death, observers are asking who, if anyone, can replace him. One thing is clear: the end to the current wave of insurgency is nowhere in sight.

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

EDITORIAL: An exercise in futility?

Without involving the BRN in peace talks on the South, the government might be wasting its time

The Nation

In the ongoing peace dialogue between representatives of the Thai government and the MARA Patani, an umbrella organisation of longstanding Patani Malay separatist organisations – all except the one that controls insurgents on the ground – it is clear that what the two sides are seeking, and what they are being offered are two different things.

The two sides desperately want a designated safety zone. They have been talking about it for almost two years now so the two sides can implement a ceasefire. They will talk about it again on Tuesday in Malaysia.

The problem here is not difficult to understand. Neither side (Thai or MARA Patani groups) controls the insurgents on the ground. It is the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) that has control over the insurgents, the one long-standing group that has refused to join the peace initiative.

The BRN refuses to join the talks because, according to reports, they do not believe the Thai side is committed to any meaningful peace settlement for Malays in the Patani region. Successive Thai governments only wanted to use money to buy out these so-called rebel leaders and if that didn’t work, the state has the troops ready to kill them.

But such an attitude has not produced the desired outcome. About 7,000 people – mostly Malay Muslims – have died from insurgency-related violence since January 2004 and Bangkok continues to turn a blind eye to the historical root cause of the conflict and the injustice that provided legitimacy to rebel groups to take up arms.

The BRN will not come to the negotiating table until its political wing is recognised and properly trained by members of international organisations – more or less in the same manner as fel?low rebels from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the Philippines and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) from Indonesia.

Thailand refuses to entertain the idea of permitting members of the international community to get directly involved in the peace process – at least not publicly, anyway – for fear that it would “internationalise” the conflict.

By using the term “internationalised”, Bangkok is saying in other words it does not want to debate the legitimacy of Thailand controlling the Malays’ historic homeland. No government wants such a headache. But this headache is necessary if we are to move the peace process forward.

The concept of a safe zone is a euphemism for “ceasefire”, and has been on the agenda ever since MARA Patani and the government of this current junta decided to talk to one another. The Thai side wanted to be certain that they are at least talking the people who have some control of combatants on the ground.

In May 2016, it was leaked to the press by Thai negotiators that Narathiwat’s Joh Ai Rong district would be designated a safety zone. It didn’t take BRN com?batants long to launch a massive operation in that district to discredit the so-called “breakthrough ” claimed by the Thai and MARA Patani sides.

The writing was already on the wall because from the very first meeting with the so-called Dialogue Panel (negotia?tors) and the Policy Panel for the far South, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha had stated that his government would not recognise MARA Patani.

Members of the Policy Panel, which include the Foreign Ministry, Internal Security Operations Command, Defence Ministry, head of the Dialogue Panel, National Security Council, argued that recognition would lead to institutionalisation and the outcome of that would be internationalisation.

The government, besides not being willing to recognise MARA Patani, who they referred to as “Party B”, would not even entertain the idea of granting legal immunity to their negotiators, much less the BRN who really control the insurgents.

The junta in Bangkok thinks it can have the cake and eat it too. The BRN combatants on the ground, on the other hand, are telling Bangkok – not so fast.

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Beacon for peace in far South is extinguished

The condolences from Premier Prayut Chan-o-cha over Sapae-ing Basor’s death carry tragic echoes of missed opportunities

Don Pathan
YALA, Thailand

Just a decade ago, in 2006, when Interior Ministry Permanent Secretary Grisada Boonrach was assigned vice governor of Yala, he would stop by and check on security officers manning the checkpoints in and around his restive province.

One late afternoon he came across a young man, a Muslim, who appeared to be slightly intoxicated.

“Are you Malayu [ethnic Malay]?” Grisada asked, to which the young man replied, “yes” without hesitation.

“Then why are you drunk?” barked Grisada.

The young man snapped back, asking the then-vice governor, “Who are you, Sapae-ing Basor?”

Grisada would learn soon learn more about the moral authority of one of Thailand’s most-wanted men, who at one time had a Bt10 million police bounty on his head.

Sapae-ing was perceived by many as the spiritual leader of Muslims in this Malay-speaking region. He was accused by the Thai police of being the leader of the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), a longstanding separatist movement that surfaced in the early 1960s and today commands well over 90 per cent of insurgents operating in the South.

About 2,500 local residents and students gather at the Thamvithya Mulnithi School on Monday, Jan 16, 2017, to bid farewell to former principal Sapae-ing Basor, the spiritual leader for the Malay Muslims in the region accused by the Thai police of being a separatist leader. Photo by: IBROHEM MASOH

Sapae-ing fled his Yala home in December 2004 to escape arrest. Then-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, in one of his weekly radio address, claimed Sapae-ing was poised to become overall leader of a liberated Patani.

Thaksin accused this Thamvithya School principal of leading an army bent on carving out a separate homeland for the Malay Muslims in the southernmost provinces, a region historically known as Patani.

The arrest warrant for Sapae-ing was signed off by Thaksin’s point-man for the far South, Police Colonel Thawee Sodsong, on December 14, 2004. A decade later, Thawee would become the key figure in a peace initiative launched by the Yingluck government on February 28, 2013, during which another concerted effort was made to reach out to Sapae-ing for help.

Last week, upon learning news about Sapae-ing’s death, Thawee showed up in Pattani’s Yarang district to personally express condolences to the late principal’s family.

Senior government officials who examined the warrant said the evidence against Sapae-ing was extremely flimsy and suspected it was motivated by Thaksin and his cronies’ agenda. They saw him as an easy target to get at the movement because students from his school had joined the insurgent movement.

It would be some time before the government in Bangkok realised that they weren’t just fighting young men with guns. They were up against an entirely different cultural and historical narrative that was breeding a new wave of separatist militants bent on forging a separate homeland.

Thai security planners eventually learned about Sapae-ing’s integrity, together with his strong religious credentials, and sought his help to end the conflict. Through him, they saw an opportunity to communicate with the Malays of Patani. But Bangkok was never clear as to what message it wanted to send or what kind of compromises it was willing to make with the Malays.

It took the Thais some time to realise that they weren’t fighting against “sparrow bandits” – young men who had embraced distorted Islam and history – as Thaksin and many Thai officials would describe them. They were actually battling a competing history and a narrative that Sapae-ing exemplified.

Attempts to get this spiritual leader to the negotiating table were fruitless because, according to people who knew him, Sapae-ing didn’t see the conflict as being about him but about the people of Patani. Furthermore, he sensed the Thais were unwilling to make any concessions to his people and had failed to understand the root causes and grievances of the people in this region.

It was said he could have cut a deal for himself but he chose not to do so. Too much was riding on his shoulder and he wasn’t about to sell out, said exiled separatist leaders.

Artef Sohko, a youth activist and graduate of Thamvithya, said there was no leader in the Patani region who could match the level of respect and admiration that Sapae-ing commanded.

“There was nothing beneath him. He practices what he preaches. That kind of moral authority is hard to find nowadays,” said Artef, recalling how Sapae-ing would often tour the school grounds picking up trash to set a good example for students.

The historical Patani sultanate, once known for its ports and commerce and business dealings with Western merchants, has been subsumed into four provinces of Thailand. Most Thais do not care to learn about this region’s glorious past, preferring to swallow a state-constructed narrative that encompasses the Malays but fails to recognise their difference.

But the mystique continues to shape the cultural and historical narrative for the people of this region and the end result is a series of separatist movements.

Sapae-ing was very much a part of that narrative – an example of how the state fails to people who embrace a different narrative and cultural identity with respect and understanding.

Those who knew Sapae-ing said he was the most selfless person they ever encountered. They said he always placed the needs and dignity of his community before his own, and that’s why he refused to deal with the Thais during his years in exile.

His students loved him dearly. Many even considered a whooping from him a blessing that helped set them on the right path in life. Parents adored his strict discipline as a protection against their young ones being led astray by rapid social change which is compromising the longstanding traditional values of this conservative community.

According teachers at Thamvithya School, Sapae-ing liked to patrol beer joints and hangouts after school to see if any of his students were there. Any that he caught could be sure of swift and painful justice.

Even after he disappeared from public sight, locals continued to talk about him. The mystique surrounding this righteous man of religion never seemed to fade. Some of those who observed his role in the regional conflict referred to Sapae-ing as “Yoda”, the wise and powerful Jedi master from George Lucas’ “Star Wars”.

Some young militants even believed he was blessed with the power of invisibility or omniscience. They spoke as if he had never left them. As far as many of them were concerned, he never did; he was always in their hearts and minds.

But after he was demonised and dismissed by Thaksin and his ilk as a power-hungry individual eager to be ruler of a liberated Patani, it was hard for any political or security official to take a softer or more subtle line. Pressure to end the conflict was too high and the Thai leaders couldn’t afford to look weak.

But when news about Sapae-ing’s death reached Bangkok, Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha promptly expressed condolences to his family. A gesture of goodwill is never too late, it seems.

“It could be that he [Prayut] wanted to make the Thais, the state and the government look less guilty because they were the ones who forced him to go out [into exile],” said Nualnoi Thammasathein, a veteran documentary producer and former London-based BBC reporter, who has done much work on the far-South conflict.

“They [the Thai government] look vulnerable, not sensible. I doubt that he [Prayut] did it for the family, but rather for himself and his government – maybe even to lift himself a little bit higher in the eyes of the Malays,” she added.

Prayut even instructed the Army to help his family transport Sapae-ing’s body back to Yala from Malaysia’s Terengganu state. Similar treatment was extended to the family of Romli Uttarasin, considered a founding father of the BRN, when he died in Malaysia in February 2010.

Thai security officials, on the other hand, said resolving the conflicts in this region will be harder without Sapae-ing, who could have played a crucial role in implementing any deal between the Thai state and the Malays of Patani.

Sources in the BRN said Sapae-ing would be greatly missed but their fight against the Thai security forces would continue until they achieved their aims. Independence remains one of those aims, but sources add that they were willing to negotiate with the Thais if the conditions are right. This means foreign governments observing the talk to ensure international best practice governs negotiations.

Bangkok will likely give the BRN the cold shoulder, demanding that the group join up with the separatist umbrella organisation MARA Patani for the ongoing peace initiative with the Thai government.

The Nation

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

Thailand's Muslims mourn death of spiritual leader

https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/Policy-Politics/Thailand-s-Muslims-mourn-death-of-spiritual-leader

DON PATHAN, Contributing writer
Nikkei Asian Review

Sapae-ing Basor escort then PM Chuan Leekapi through school ground
during a visit in early 1990s. Between them is Haji Harun Sulong, the rector
of the school and Sapae-ing's father-in-lasw. (Courtesy of the Basor family).

YALA, Thailand -- Muslims in Thailand's southernmost provinces are bidding farewell to a prominent spiritual leader accused by Thai police of leading a separatist movement intent on carving out a homeland for ethnic Malays in the region.

Wartani News, a local media outlet, quoted family members of Sapae-ing Basor as saying he had passed away on Jan. 10 while living in exile in Malaysia. He died of a lung infection after being treated for diabetes and heart disease. He was 81.

About 2,500 people congregated on Monday morning at Thamvithya Mulnithi, a high school in southern Yala province where Sapae-ing served as principal until he fled the country in December 2004. Sapae-ing had been charged with treason by police over his alleged involvement in a series of attacks on police and military facilities in the region.

EDITORIAL: Bangkok persists with hit-and-miss policies in far South

The Nation

Without sincere effort to find a political solution, peace is nowhere in sight
The Thai government is trying to pursue a development policy in the far South, ostensibly as a tool to discredit the insurgents who continue to make the area ungovernable with their attacks.
Development for the sake of development is not a bad idea especially for a region that has not received its fair share of government allocations. From infrastructure to education, the Muslim-majority far South has long been neglected by the state.
The fact that there is an ongoing separatist insurgency makes it even harder to develop the area in the same manner as other regions in the country.
But if development projects are undertaken to satisfy security needs, the military and policy planners should not be surprised if they fail to achieve the desired outcome.
Successive governments have paid lip service to the need for a political approach, as opposed to military, in resolving this long-standing conflict in the Malay-speaking South. It is a self-evident fact that a political solution is the only way to go. But our leaders get caught up in their desire to get even, to punish separatists, their sympathisers and supporters
simply because they refuse to go along with our policy of assimilation.
Authorities have often talked about justice but not a single security officer in these past 13 years, since the current wave of insurgency began, has been punished for any crime – even in the most obvious cases that called for criminal charges. It is intriguing that local and international human rights organisations have documented so many violations but none of them has been dealt with seriously by the government.
Of late, the catchword is “safety zone” – an area or a district that is free from violence. The idea is being cooked up by Thai negotiators and the MARA Patani, an umbrella organisation of long-standing separatist groups who are yet to convince the government in Bangkok that they have sufficient control on the ground to make any difference. Within this designated “safety zone”, development projects are to be carried out.
It sounds good and rosy but the initiative ignores one major obstacle. MARA Patani is not in a position to guarantee that the insurgents will not carry out attacks, because they have virtually no control over the militants on the ground and the one group that does – the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) – is not a part of the dialogue process.
When confronted with this inconvenient point, Thai policymakers more or less reveal the strategy behind their thinking. First of all, the people at the negotiating table are aware that MARA Patani doesn’t have control over the armed militants and that is the reason why the government refuses to take them seriously, like giving in to their demands such as for formal recognition.
Bangkok even refuses to call them by name and instead refers to the umbrella organisation as “Party B”.
The idea here is to keep talking to them to give the general public and the world the impression that Bangkok is engaging in efforts for a peaceful solution and it’s really up to the BRN to come to the table. The thinking in Bangkok is that the group risks losing the support of villagers and the insurgents by sitting out the peace talks. In this respect, MARA Patani is just a pawn.
Needless to say, such an official approach is shallow and unnecessarily puts lives at stake. Violence on the ground continues unabated with no end in sight.
Nearly 7,000 people have been killed and there is no indication that support for the insurgents is declining. It’s time for Bangkok to think differently and creatively.

Information war far from fair in Thailand's south

Coverage of insurgency in Thailand’s Malay-speaking provinces shows fight far from fair when only one side has microphone

By Don Pathan/Anodolu Agency

The author is an associate with Asia Conflict and Security Consulting, Ltd and is based in Yala, one of Thailand's three southernmost provinces hit by the current wave of insurgency

YALA, Thailand

For some weeks, the deputy police commissioner of Thailand, Police Gen. Srivara Ransibrahmanakul, has been making some pretty serious allegations about terrorist attacks in and around Bangkok.

Last week, Ransibrahmanakul announced the arrest of three Malay Muslims from the country’s far South who he said were planning to carry out violent attacks at six locations popular among tourists in and around the capital.

Although all those arrested are from a region where a 13-year separatist insurgency has so far claimed nearly 6,700 lives, mostly local Muslims, the deputy police commissioner insisted that they were not linked to the insurgency.

According to security sources, the three have been in detention of the military -- which has been ruling to country since a 2014 coup -- since October.

They were rounded up after the first was arrested during a blind sweep that saw police take in more than 100 Thai Malay youth and students residing in Bangkok and its vicinity, and then information garnered from the arrest was used to arrest two more people in the south.

On learning of the arrests -- and that some detainees said they were beaten in custody -- the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), a long-standing separatist organization that controls the vast majority of the combatants on the ground, set off a bomb at a food stall in downtown Pattani -- one of the three provinces affected by the insurgency.

The Oct. 24 explosion killed one person and injured 18 other people.

It is still not clear as to why deputy commissioner Ransibrahmanakul decided to announce the arrest of the trio. He has provided little information other than to say that they were out “to create disturbances”.

Ransibrahmanakul has given no explanation as to what organizations the three suspects hailed from, much less their motive, ideology or the methodology behind the planned attacks.

With the trio still in custody -- and little evidence or accusation being presented to back up the arrest -- there is also little to back up any case for their defense.

In the absence of an identifiable spokesman for the separatist militants, the narrative about what conflict and insurgency aim to achieve in the southernmost border provinces is pretty much left to the Thai side to construct.

Since the violence began, just about every incident in the far South has been attributed to the militants, even if the killing was personal in nature. With compensation offered to those aggrieved by insurgency, there has long been a financial motive to tie even the most obvious criminal acts to the insurgents.

Monetary compensation is a tool all too often used by security officials when they abuse their power.

In August 2014, an army-trained paramilitary ranger unit shot dead a 14-year-old Malay Muslim boy riding his motorbike in Narathiwat provinces’s Sri Sakorn district, claiming self defense. After the local community acted with uproar, an extensive police investigation concluded that the handgun was planted on the boy to fabricate evidence.

The army compensated the victim’s family with 500,000 baht ($15,400), but no disciplinary action was taken against the ranger.

Similarly, in October 2014, the military was forced to apologize to a Malay Muslim family in Narathiwat’s Bacho district after a Royal Thai Marine opened fire on their pickup truck traveling on a backroad, killing a ten-year-old girl and wounding the parents.

They were transporting coconuts to a nearby fresh market. The troops said they thought they were transporting insurgents. The local Marine commander issued an apology and compensation was paid but the amount was not made public.

With one side holding a microphone, while there is a genuine absence of an identifiable spokesman for the BRN and the organic, decentralized structure of the insurgent cells, it makes it extremely difficult for researchers and journalists to verify whether specific operations or attacks charged to the militancy are indeed genuine.

Even the identity of the membership of the Dewan Pimpinan Parti (DPP), the BRN’s ruling council, is extremely secretive. The Thai government claims to have a list of DPP members, but BRN cadres -- even those who have left the group and have been working with the government since -- say no one knows for sure.

With the BRN operating an extremely clandestine network, the use of combatants as moles does not necessary mean one can obtain information about cells, or even working knowledge of the unit one step up in the movement’s chain of command.

As one BRN operative noted to Anadolu Agency this week, the cells behind each attack operate on a need-to-know basis. This means combatants not involved in an operation, even if the attack is being carried out in their respective area, will be kept out of the loop to ensure that as little information as possible is leaked.

When asked to verify whether separatist militants had carried out the shooting death of a pregnant lady in Panare district in Pattani on Nov. 26 -- which the government has claimed was insurgency-related -- the BRN source took two days to check the line of command and returned to insist that the killing was not carried out by the BRN.

He did not, however, rule out a personal dispute as a motive.

The source was just as dismissive when asked about the planned six bombs in and around Bangkok that deputy police commissioner Ransibrahmanakul recently alleged were in preparation.

Sources in the official security community said many of the country’s top brass were scratching their heads about Ransibrahmanakul’s claim, speculating if his statement was part of a counter-intelligence effort aimed at discrediting the BRN, even though he did say the suspects were not part of the Malay separatist movement.

After all, alleging that six tourist sites in and around Bangkok were faced with attacks is too serious a matter just to toss out without backing up the claim, they said.

The statement is not the first Ransibrahmanakul has made in recent months to leave analysts with puzzled looks on their faces.

One week prior to the announcement of the attacks, he claimed that Thai Malay Muslim groups from the Malay-speaking South were providing financial help to Daesh.

He then retracted his statement the following day.

Security officials have suggested to Anadolu Agency that the claim was simply an effort aimed to rattle insurgents in the far South or the anti-junta camp.

Although Ransibrahmanakul insisted that the three suspects weren’t part of the insurgency in the far South, the fact that they came from the region makes it extremely difficult for observers to think otherwise.

Few officials have dared to question Ransibrahmanakul given his close personal connection to the country’s security tsar, Defense Minister Prawit Wongsuwan. Government officials have often described Ransibrahmanakul as the minister’s “darling little brother”.

Sources in the international community in Thailand have said they are not convinced by Ransibrahmanakul’s claim of the planned attacks on tourist sites, but that does not necessarily mean that the BRN and other groups have never attacked areas outside the far South.

It is extremely rare but does happen from time to time, usually in reaction to some specific development. These include a December 2013 incident where a twin bomb was placed on the back of a stolen pickup truck behind a police station in the southern tourist enclave of Phuket, but the switch was purposefully set to “off”.

A BRN source has told Anadolu Agency that the idea was simply to show the Thai side what the movement was capable of.

The highly publicized August 2016 attacks in the seven upper provinces of the south were also attributed to the BRN by some Thai security officials, although an official explanation is yet to be made.

A BRN source said the August attacks were not meant to inflict casualties, and the movement has since concluded that they were counter productive because the country's ruling junta set the discourse in the aftermath of the attacks around Thailand’s tourism industry.

The BRN's intention was to discredit the military for a recently passed referendum on a draft constitution that has more or less cemented the army’s place in the country’s politics for the next two decades.

EDITORIAL: CONCERN about car bombs in Bangkok

By The Nation

The detention of Patani Malay youth amid fears of an attack in the capital reflect a knee-jerk response

Mainstream media has had reports for some weeks now the possibility of car bombs in Bangkok but the latest stories singling out Sathon district as a likely target have jolted a lot of people.

Authorities confirmed the make of the two vehicles that they said were stolen from the conflict-ridden deep South over a year ago. At least one car – a black Honda Accord – was seen entering Bangkok about a month ago, prompting security officials here to go on high alert about a possible car bombing, reportedly slated for between October 25-30.

Why is Sathon a potential target? According to security officials, it is an area with a great number of foreign interests. And the dates coincided with the Tak Bai massacre, an incident dating back to October 25, 2004 when 85 Patani Malay Muslim males died at the hand of Thai security officials – 78 suffocating to death and 7 shot dead at the protest site in Narathiwat.

Thousands of unarmed protesters had gathered in front of Tak Bai Police Station, calling for the release of a group of village defence volunteers who were accused by the local police of handing over government-issued shotguns to insurgents. The village volunteers denied the accusations but were detained without charges, prompting the protest that ended in a tragedy and continues to haunt the country to this day.

But why would Malay Muslim insurgents from the far South want to attack Western interests in Bangkok (assuming that it was southern insurgents who stole the two vehicles and didn’t bother to change the car colour or plates)? The officials pointed to terror attacks in the Upper South in August – arson and bomb attacks in seven provinces, saying that areas popular among Western tourists have already been targeted.

But the August attacks were small bombs, not something aimed at mass killings. Moreover, didn’t the government say the August attacks in the seven provinces were not related to the Patani Malay insurgency in the three southernmost provinces?

Nothing has been ruled out, these officials say, and the government is still trying to come up with a convincing narrative to explain to the public and the world about what happened in August.
Nevertheless, after authorities saw what they believed was a stolen Honda Accord entering Bangkok, the city police were unleashed to round up over 100 Patani Malay youth in and around the capital. Most said they were treated disrespectfully while a few said they were beaten up.

Sensing a need to control the damage because of the Bangkok police’s handling of the matter, the Southern Border Provinces Administrative Centre rented vans to take family members of the detained students to Bangkok to visit their sons.

Sadly, this is how the Thai security apparatus operates and it is not very assuring when shallow, half-baked analysis on security matters continue to guide their operating procedure.

The big and blind sweep didn’t implicate any students but managed to capture five non-students in the process. Authorities believe they were linked to the ongoing insurgency. The sweeping police operation has only widened the historic mistrust between the state and the Malays of Patani.
Most Thais probably don’t care if a hundred or so Patani Malay students from the far South get slapped around. Most probably don’t cherish our historic and cultural narrative.

If anything, the harassment of the Patani Malay youth has resulted in a spike in bloody violence, including the attacks on night food stalls in the city of Pattani and the simultaneous attacks in Narathiwat and Songkhla.

We are about to enter the 14th year of this wave of insurgency and sadly, our security apparatus has yet to understand the simple fact that whatever they do will have consequences. But the vast majority of the country’s people don’t want to question their culture of impunity.