BUDDHISTS SAY ‘WHAT ABOUT US?’

Don Pathan
The Nation

Narathiwat

Published on Nov 22, 2004 

Sipping tea and speaking in a low voice at a small coffee shop at the downtown fresh market in this southern capital, Weeraphong accused the government of being too soft on the Muslims in this Malay-majority region and talked about how the authorities needed to teach them a good lesson.

Weeraphong, who asked that his last name not be used, said governments had been too lenient on the Muslims here. The current government’s policy to bring the ethnic Malays on a par with the rest of the country in the areas of education and employment, particularly in the civil service, was an outright discrimination against people like him, a Thai Buddhist, he said.

“It’s never enough for them. You give them one thing but they will always want more,” whispered the primary school teacher.

Less than two blocks down the street from this shop is a Chinese-owned restaurant where the entire front was blown to shreds the night before. The fertiliser bomb sent 16 people to the emergency room and kicked off a growing fear that more attacks on “soft targets” are on the way. 

Early the next morning in front of what’s left of this restaurant, as two men put up banners accusing Senator Chirmsak Pinthong and other rights campaigners of being cowards for only speaking up for the Muslims but not the “innocent victims”, a local Thai-Chinese businessman screamed at the top of his lungs when a TV reporter stuck a camera in his face.

“It has been eleven months and what is Thaksin doing?” fumed the beefy Thai-Chinese, who sported a golden amulet on his chest to show that he was a proud Buddhist.

“He [Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra] keeps talking about all kinds of strategies but innocent people continue to die every day. This is the only government I know that gives money to family members of criminals,” he shouted.

Residents of this street of Chinese shophouses clapped, while Muslim onlookers stood expressionless.

The so-called “criminals” the man was talking about were the 85 Muslim demonstrators who died at the Tak Bai protest or were in custody immediately thereafter, an incident that has been described by many as an attempt to teach the Muslims a lesson. Thaksin later announced that the family of each victim would receive Bt700,000.

Autopsies showed that six of them died from gunshot wounds and the rest apparently from suffocation while being transported in military trucks stacked one on top of the other to an Army camp in Pattani. The trip usually takes an hour and a half but, for whatever reason, most of the transport vehicles arrived four hours or more after leaving Tak Bai.

Thaksin said he regretted the loss of life but would not apologise for the deaths. Instead, the premier, who appeared to be more concerned with his political rating than getting to the bottom of the tragic incident, played up his nationalistic card, accusing the demonstrators of being Muslim separatists.

In a speech that was supposed to be a tell-all, it was 10 minutes before the word “regret” came out of Thaksin’s mouth. It was the closest to an apology that anybody was going to get. The rest of his speech was about how he was not going to allow an inch of the country be taken away by any separatist group.

Violence in this Muslim-majority region is nothing new. But unlike in earlier decades when clashes were largely between security forces and armed separatist groups in remote hills of the three southernmost provinces, the violence now appears to have divided the region more than ever.

Locals said that even at the height of the armed separatist movement two decades ago, local Buddhists – most of whom are ethnic Chinese – and Muslims co-existed peacefully. 

Back then there was no real resentment and it didn’t really matter that Buddhists were richer or better connected economically and politically, they said. 

“We grew up together like brothers and sisters,” said a Narathiwat native who entered the monkhood 10 years ago and currently resides at a temple in Joh I Rong district, one of the most violence-prone spots in the region.

It’s a different story nowadays, however.

The monk blasted Thaksin for not having the political will to bridge the psychological divide between the two communities. “He thinks money can cure everything,” he said.

Hama Mayunu, a leading member of the Narathiwat chapter of the Local Community Development Association, said that as the violence began affecting innocent civilians, voices of reason had also begun to disappear.

He said there was a growing perception that all Muslims were in the same boat and were collaborating to drive out the Buddhists from the Malay-majority region. 

“A Chinese opened the biggest shop in my neighbourhood and none of us feel threatened or that he is taking advantage of us,” said Hama, who also operates a community radio service that broadcast in the local Malay dialect.

“If the Muslims wanted to chase the Buddhists out they would have done it a long time ago. In fact, we elected a Thai-Chinese as our mayor,” Hama said.

Since the beginning of the year, Thailand has witnessed an increasing number of civilians being killed, including Buddhist monks, four of whom were hacked to death. The scope of victims has expanded from armed troops to non-security personnel, as well as innocent Buddhist villagers.

Among the Muslims, talk of disappearances and extrajudicial killings echoed in just about every community but few were willing to say anything openly to outsiders for fear that they could be next for speaking out or just making an observation.

Security officers blamed the ongoing spate of violence against the security forces on a new generation of home-grown insurgents who took matters into their own hands, partly in response to abuses by the authorities and partly due to inspiration from abroad, namely the global jihad phenomenon.

“But the killings of innocent civilians, women and children – there is nothing there in Islam to justify it,” said Hama.

For the local Buddhists, there is no distinction between an attack against state officials and an attack against innocent civilians. Many believe the local Muslims are colluding against them.

Sitting under a shed watching Marines making sandbags and nervous-looking young Muslims stroll through the checkpoint, Penporn Suranatakul, the village chief of Ban Thung Kha in Yi-ngo district, accused the Muslims of collaborating with insurgents to drive out the Buddhists to buy cheap land.

“These teenagers drive up in their motorbikes and point out which house they are going to take if and when we move out,” said Penporn, as she tried hard to hold back her tears.

“And now these academics and human rights people in Bangkok are saying the troops have to be punished. What about their wives and children? Who is going to look after them?” asked Penporn, adding that she supported harsh measures regardless of the outcome.

Thaksin said the attacks were tearing the fabric of the country apart and added that the violence against civilians was designed to provoke harsh responses from the security forces.

But judging from the way the authorities dealt with the unarmed protesters at Tak Bai police station, “harsh response” is an understatement.

While the Muslims killed by security forces over the past year, including the protesters who died in the Tak Bai incident, were buried as Muslim martyrs, there is nothing here to suggest that the local Muslims here are supportive of the insurgency.

No one here wants to think their sons had died in vain, regardless of whether they were part of the 106 machete-wielding youths shot dead by security forces on April 28 or among the unarmed demonstrators who died following the Tak Bai protest on October 25.

But on the other hand, government’s harsh measures and questionable tactics appear to be creating more martyrs as both Muslims and officials agree that violence will breed more violence. 

“It is believed that for every martyr, a thousand more will replace him,” Hama said.

Meanwhile, Weeraphong said he constantly watched his rear-view mirrors while riding his motorcycle, wondering if he would be the next victim in this spate of violence that has claimed more than 450 lives since the beginning of the year.

“It’s terrible to be living in fear,” Weeraphong said. 

But moving out of this region is out of the question, he said – at least for the time being.

Confessions of an Islamic assassin

Don Pathan
The Nation

Pattani 

Sitting on a bed in a hospital where he was recovering from bullet wounds, 31-year-old Islamic teacher Abdullah Akoh spoke passionately about the need to right wrongs. 

Facing a possible life sentence for killing an on-duty soldier, Abdullah spoke vividly about the hatred he felt for the state under which he was born.

He said that government officials were responsible for rapes, abductions, assassinations and brutality. He added that in this atmosphere his resentment had grown continuously over the years.

Beyond these wrongs, Abdullah cited several others that he wanted to make right. 

But for now despite his grievances Abdullah is traveling around the country at the request of the Army to address fellow Islamic teachers, or uztas, and government officials about the need for the people of the Muslim-majority South and the state to reconcile. His message is that violence should not be the means to achieve this end.

The Army is banking on the notion that men like Abdullah can help with the reconciliation process and heal the historical wounds that so trouble the people of the South.

Sitting on his hospital bed, to which he is normally handcuffed, Abdullah talked about the resentment he felt towards the state, saying that his ill feelings had gotten the better of him.

About five years ago, an ustad by the name of Ismail Rayalong asked him to join a movement whose mission was to one day liberate the Malay-Muslim region from the ìinfidelsî.

Abdullah said that Ismail, also known as Ustad Soh, was charismatic and persuasive.

"We played football together and shared desserts and became friends very quickly," Abdullah said. 

"Three weeks later he asked me to join his organisation. I agreed," Abdullah said.

According to Abdullah, Ustad Soh claimed to have supernatural powers. He told Abdullah that after a man had reached a certain state of reverence, he could make himself disappear at will or become impervious to bullets and knives. Abdullah decided to give his new friend the benefit of the doubt and to pursue the courses he was advocating. For more than four years, Ustad Soh moved from village to village, singling out young men of good standing in their communities and, after planting the seeds of trust, recruiting them into an outfit that Abdullah called Talekat Hikmahtullah Abandan (Direction from God Towards Invincibility).

Abdullah said that there were four other men in his cell, all from the same village. The team kept to themselves and were not permitted to know who was in the other cells. During military training, which included low crawls and simulated assaults using branches in place of guns and knives, Ustad Soh would make sure that each participating cell came from villages that were as far apart as possible in order to avoid further contact.

April 28, 2004, was just around the corner. The date was to mark Hikmahtullah's first strike against the state that its members so despised. But for Abdullah, the price of this assault was too high. He said he was not willing to walk into certain death no matter how committed he was to the group cause.

"I asked Ustad Soh for guns, but he said we would only use knives," Abdullah said.

"He said that what he had been teaching us would be enough to keep us out of harmís way and that we would be able to take a knife wound or a gunshot [without being hurt]," he added.

By the end of the day, 106 Muslim insurgents lay dead. Most, if not all, had been armed with nothing more than a knife when they attacked 11 police outposts across the region.

But if the aim of the raid was to instill a sense of fear within the country's security apparatus and political leaders, the group went beyond its expectations. 

Abdullah said he was shocked and saddened by the deaths of his comrades and blamed Ustad Soh for their deaths.

In spite of his falling out with his mentor, Abdullah said he was still committed to the idea of seeing Pattani liberated.

Three weeks after the bloody incident, Ustad Soh came around again, claiming to have a new set of instructions from his higher-ups. This time guns and bombs could be used, Abdullah said. In July, Ustad Soh showed up with a 9mm handgun.

"Something has to be done in this area. There has to be an incident, make some noise," Abdullah quoted Ustad Soh as saying.

The nature of the attack would be similar to many previous hits; a security officer was to be shot with a handgun at close range by a gunman riding on the back of a motorbike. Abdullah said he spent a week monitoring the soldier at a nearby outpost, observing how the soldiers moved to and from the nearby markets.

On July 22, Abdullah was prepared to take a life. The target would be a young Thai soldier. To him it was just a target he had been observing for the past week or so. The act was for a noble cause, the liberation of Pattani from the infidels, Abdullah told himself. Abdullah said he drove up to the young soldier that he had been monitoring and pumped three or four shots into him -- he doesnít remember the exact number -- at pointblank range. But he wasn't about to get away with this attack so easily. A soldier in the vicinity grabbed his rifle and shot Abdullah as he was speeding away on the back of his motorbike.

"I donít know how many rounds hit me but I was in tremendous pain," Abdullah said.

The two sides entered into a fierce gunfight that lasted several minutes. Abdullah was able to catch a quick breath of air when the soldier had emptied his magazine. It was also at this moment that his driver decided to flee, leaving him lying on the roadside in a pool of blood, where he was taken into the custody of security forces. 

Five weeks later after the shooting, Abdullah broke his silence and began to speak to a military counselor.

"There are many people out there who continue to think and feel the way I used to. There are people who would be willing to take up arms against the state if they were approached," said Abdullah.

"Today we see a bomb go off here, police officer gets shot there. It's not going to end any time soon. There are many insurgents still out there," he added.

It's not known what kind of leniency the court will show for his assistance to the Army. Whatever the outcome, a young wife and a newborn child await him at home.

Don Pathan
The Nation, Pattani 

Battle is on for hearts and minds in the South

Govt walking a fine line between security and sensitivity

Don Pathan
The Nation

Last August a team of police officers headed by then Pattani police chief Colonel Manit Rattanawin marched confidently into Ban Banna village to arrest a suspect believed to have been behind a spate of killings of security officials in Thailand's deep South over the previous year.

A team of journalists was permitted to come along to videotape and photograph what Manit thought would be a simple surrender by a suspected Muslim separatist.

The photo-op that developed turned out to be rather different than the one the journalists had expected. Instead of surrendering, Mahama Mae-roh, a former Army rifleman, grabbed his assault rifle and ran into a nearby house. He positioned himself, took aim, and fired, killing Manit, another senior police officer, and a sergeant.

Ten minutes later a team of reinforcements arrived and within half an hour Mahama was killed.

Intelligence sources said the information on Mahama's whereabouts had come from his associate, Manase Jeh-da, also known as Nasae Saning, who was nabbed in Malaysia's Terengganu State and quietly handed over to Thai officials just days before the shooting in Ban Banna. Manase, on Thailand's wanted list for years, had a Bt200,000 bounty on his head.

On the same day Manase, having mysteriously escaped custody, was shot dead by police in Pattani's Nong Chik district, some 28 kilometers from Ban Banna.

In the following days, subsequent sweeps through the region netted two more associates of the dead Muslim separatists.

This display of swift and deadly justice did little to comfort the local Muslim community, who still remember the heavy-handed tactics of previous decades when Thai security forces used questionable means to take down local Muslim separatist groups such as Barisan Revolusi Nasional and the Pattani United Liberation Organisation.

National media reported the harsh words of Manase's wife and other family members, who claimed Manase was the victim of extra-judicial killing. They pointed to the bruises on his wrists and other parts of his body, saying he had been beaten before he was shot dead in what they believed was an evening of the score.

Authorities described both Mahama and Manase as operation chiefs of the Pattani Islamic Mujahideen Movement, known in the Bahasa Malaysia language as Gerakan Mujahideen Islam Pattani (GMIP).

GMIP has been on the radar screen of security agencies in the deep South since the mid-1990s but authorities generally dismissed them as bandits involved in extortion and killings.

But last Sunday, when a group of about 60 armed men stormed an Army base in Narathiwat, killing four soldiers on guard duty and making off with some 300 weapons, Thailand's political leaders realized they could no longer deny the GMIP's ideological influence.

The GMIP has been singled out as the main group behind the attack, which came as a slap in the face to the country's political and military elite, who had repeatedly dismissed any suggestion that a Muslim insurgency might be brewing in the South.

The attack made a mockery of the "ordinary bandit" label that political leaders had placed on those behind the violence in the region.

Many officials here dismissed outright the age-old "dirty business" theory that attackers steal weapons only so they can sell them to Malaysian or Indonesian insurgents to make money. It would have been far less risky for the GMIP to go to the Cambodian border, like the Burmese rebel groups do, to buy their weapons, local officials said.

What impressed many military commanders and observers of the South was the tactical competence of the assault.

Traps were set up on the roads to prevent troops from going after the attackers and both relay poles for wireless telephone communications in the area were taken out.

Security officials on the ground have said for years, albeit quietly, that the GMIP is more than just a bunch of "ordinary bandits", or "jone kra-jok" in Thai.

Security officers admitted that the GMIP is as well known for its criminal ambitions as for its religious convictions, but said the group has conveniently found a new "political context" in the global Jihadi movement, which arose in the early 1990s in the aftermath of the war against the Russians in Afghanistan.

Though GMIP leader Nasori Saesaeng – also known as Ae Wae Keleh after his home village of Keleh in Bachoh district of Narathiwat – may not have fought against the Russians troops, he did gain a wealth of experience when he went there in the early 1990s to take part in the civil war.

Which Afghan factions or warlords he fought under remains unclear but sources believe that his experiences in the war-torn country inspired him to return to southern Thailand to carry out insurgencies.

It has been reported that while in Afghanistan, Nasori befriended Nik Adli Nik Aziz, the son of the spiritual leader of Parti Islam se-Malaysia, a Malaysian opposition party with a stronghold in the northern part of the country bordering Thailand.

Thai intelligence sources said Nik Adli, who has been detained since late 2001 under Malaysia's draconian Internal Security Act, maintained close relations with Nasori after the two returned to their respective countries from Afghanistan. The two men helped set up an organization on their respective sides of the border – the underground Kumpulan Mujahideen Malaysia as well as the GMIP.

Since the attack against the Army battalion last Sunday, the government has submitted a list of names, most of them suspected GMIP members, to Malaysia requesting their arrest.

It is not certain to what extent the Malaysian authorities will stick their necks out for Thailand, said one Army intelligence source, saying Kuala Lumpur wants to be extremely certain of the consequences of its actions before it moves.

Nevertheless, in Thailand, the admission by political leaders of the existence of a home-grown separatist group has brought some relief to officials because it permits them to speak more openly about the problem and deal with it accordingly.

However, they insist that the heavy-handed tactics of the previous decade are a thing of the past. The catchphrase, for the time being, is how to "win the hearts and minds of the local Muslim community".

"In the old days they used to go after family members of the separatists to put a squeeze on them," said one local politician who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Today, military and police officers on the ground have been told to be extremely careful when dealing with suspects who are community or religious leaders. This may explain why those who have been brought in by the authorities are merely being "detained" and not formally charged with any crime.

Regardless, many officials acknowledge that there is a lot of hard work ahead of them. Corruption and interagency rivalries, along with the inability of state agencies to deal with the cultural and economic gap between the South and the rest of the country, have obstructed the process of healing between the predominantly Muslim region and the central government.

One senior security official said today's insurgents have split into small cells, many of which have penetrated local communities. This makes it extremely difficult for authorities to take the organizations down, he said.

Moreover, resentment and hard feelings between the local population and government officials have again resurfaced following the declaration of martial law in the three southernmost provinces of Yala, Narathiwat, and Pattani, and the imposition of curfews has drawn a strong reaction from the communities here.

Heavy-handed methods may be a thing of the past, but winning the hearts and minds of the local Muslim population, it seems, remains as difficult as ever. 

Shan State Army kicks the habit but gets little respect

Don Pathan

Special to The Nation

Myanmar's notorious narco-army is reinventing itself in the name of peace, but the govt isn't listening

Back when Shan drug baron Khun Sa reigned over the notorious Golden Triangle, there was nothing pretentious about the narcotics business in this lawless region where opium warlords play for keeps.Opium, they said, was as good as gold. Some of the local residents were even using it in place of the official currency.Today, groups like the Shan State Army (SSA), which once fought alongside Khun Sa for Shan independence, are working hard to reinvent themselves as drug-free armed ethnic outfits with their own counter-narcotic policies.The opportunity to assert their anti-drugs campaigns came after the Myanmar government decided to push for a series of political reforms and renegotiate a ceasefire deal with the armed ethnic armies, including the SSA.Opium eradication and crop substitution became common ground on which the two sides could work together to strengthen confidence and trust.

But that process has been far from easy. The government has other priorities during this transition period and cooperating with Shan rebels is not high on the list.The SSA feels it has been shunned, but the ill-feeling is not enough to turn back the clock to when the two sides were at each other’s throats on the battlefield.Opium has always been a part of Myanmar’s longstanding insurgencies.For the numerous armed ethnic armies fighting the Burmese military for autonomy or independence during Khun Sa’s time, opium was main the source of income.

Residents in Thailand’s northern border provinces, as well as the ethnic Shan and other anti-Burmese junta forces, didn’t mind if men like Khun Sa were producing and trafficking opium and heroin if it was in a good cause.In January 1996, following a relentless assault from combined forces of the Burmese and troops from the United Wa State Army (UWSA) – dubbed the world’s largest armed drug-trafficking outfit – Khun Sa decided to surrender in exchange for amnesty.Certain factions in Khun Sa’s Mong Tai Army (MTA), like the one led by warlord Maha Ja, joined peace talks in exchange for limited self rule.

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Others, like Colonel Yawd Serk, relocated his troops near the Thai border to set up the Shan State Army-South and continue the fight against the government.Yawd Serk’s decision not to join the Burmese junta served the Thai military quite well. Burma and Thailand at the time were engaged in a quiet proxy war fought via ethnic armies.This explains why rebel forces fighting the Burmese junta were not considered a threat to Thailand. On the other hand, those with a ceasefire agreement with Rangoon, were considered a threat by Bangkok.Khun Sa’s MTA was slightly different because the outfit was not under “Myanmar’s legal fold” but was not exactly a Thai lackey either.And so when his MTA fell apart, Yawd Serk’s SSA had to turn to Thailand to ensure that his security and economic lifeline remained intact.As part of their effort to shake off the ghost of Khun Sa, the SSA pushed through an anti-narcotics campaign with drug-burning ceremonies to attract the attention of foreign and local media.

The UWSA, the world’s largest producer of heroin, was not exactly public-relations savvy, but nevertheless tried to convince the world that it, too, wanted to kick the habit.In late 2004 the Wa leadership said they were planning to announce an end to opium cultivation in exchange for formal recognition from the Burmese government and the world community.

But in January 2005, a New York court indicted eight Wa leaders, some of whom, like the notorious Wei brothers and the Bao brothers, had already been convicted on heroin trafficking charges in the US.Chinese security officials had hush-hush working relations with the Wa and were hoping that an “opium-free” UWSA would make their dealings with the Wa leaders easier. 

Nevertheless, ties between the UWSA and the Chinese authorities are as strong as ever.Wa officials often joke about how disappointed Burmese officials are when they visit the UWSA base, Panghsang, and find “it feels like a Chinese town”. From the cellphone signal to the currency and language, the Wa-controlled area in Burma’s Shan State is very much an extension of China.The UWSA wanted a better relationship with Thailand. Much of Khun Sa’s territory along the Thai border was occupied by Wa troops who began to build towns and small cities and pack them with villagers the UWSA had forcibly relocated from the Chinese border.

Many of these villagers died along the way, according to a report by Chiang Mai-based Shan Herald Agency for News (SHAN), but the end result was the strengthening of UWSA regiments along the Thai border.It has not been a comfortable stay for the UWSA troops. Gunfights occasionally break out between the Wa and Thai troops. Just about every border crossing leading to the Wa stronghold has been shut.As for the SSA, the changing nature of its relationship with the Myanmar government has given it another chance to show the world it is serious about kicking the habit. But going “cold turkey” has been a rough ride.

The SSA’s political wing, the Restoration Council of the Shan State (RCSS), in October 2012 entered into a joint pilot project to eradicate drugs with the UN and the Thein Sein government. This past week, the group issued a statement accusing the Myanmar government of dragging its feet over the project.“The experience of the RCSS in attempting to carry out the joint drug eradication project indicates that the agreement is only on paper and the government has no intention of cooperating on drug eradication,” said the RCSS, adding that the “government’s failure to adhere to its agreement is affecting trust-building in the peace process”.

The very fact that the SSA is urging the government to get moving on the project shows how things have changed in the region.The SSA may want to turn Shan State into a drug-free area, but the reality on the ground shows it faces a long and tough road. According to a recently released annual United Nations report, opium production in Myanmar has risen 26 per cent since 2012. 

This year marked the seventh consecutive year poppy cultivation has increased in the country. Some 870 tonnes of opium was produced this year, the largest amount since 2002.Until there is a meaningful political and economic alternative for the area, opium production, it seems, will continue to form a large part of the locals’ livelihood.Don Pathan is a freelance consultant and an independent security analyst based in Thailand.

https://www.nationthailand.com/opinion/30223306