Don Pathan
The Nation
Insurgents behind the violence in the South have used their attacks to gain attention from international organisations in a bid to draw them into the problem, Army Commander in Chief General Prayuth Chan-ocha recently proclaimed to the media.
Prayuth's statement came a day after insurgents launched an attack on a security outpost in Pattani's Sai Buri district, drawing a reinforcement unit into a trap where a roadside bomb and gunfire wounded six soldiers.
The conflict in the Malay-speaking South is Thailand's internal affair and the authorities are making their best effort to deal with the problem, Prayuth said.
Unfortunately, their best is not good enough, and insurgents continue to hit wherever they like.
Billions have been spent to win them over and yet, local Malay Muslims, who account for more than 80 per cent of the local population, continue to turn a blind eye to the activities of the insurgents, as a way of providing tactical support. In some remote communities, armed insurgents walk around freely, strolling in and out of village teashops as if they are the actual law and order. Residents may not agree with the brutality but they certainly share the same sentiment as the militants on the ground.
Prayuth said the presence of international organisations would complicate the problem. But no one really understands what Prayuth's assumption is based upon. After all, if the insurgents wanted to attract international attention, they would not confine the violence to the Muslim-majority South.
It's only a few hours drive from the deep South to a number of high-profile tourist attractions in the upper South. Moreover, an overnight train ride can get them into Bangkok. The materials the insurgents have been using to make explosives can be easily purchased from local hardware stores.
The problem with Prayuth and other conservative Thai bureaucrats is that they do not want to debate the legitimacy of the Thai state in the Malay historical homeland. If they did, they would see that the Malays embrace a different cultural and historical narrative from the rest of the country.
One way out of this confrontation, argues Professor Thanet Aphornsuvan in an East-West Centre publication, "Rebellion in Southern Thailand: Contending Histories", is to acknowledge the differences.
"Without a basic understanding and appreciation of each other's cultures and ethno-religious identities, it will be difficult to have positive political will on both sides to seriously tackle the problems," Thanet said. "Hitherto, Bangkok sees the problem in the South as a separatist threat, while the Malay-Muslims see it as one of cultural and ethnic survival," he added. For a lasting peace to endure, said Thanet, "the Malay-Muslims must be allowed a significant role in bringing peace and prosperity back to the region".
But Bangkok has a tendency to think it knows best. Worse, Prayuth is basically saying things have to be done the Army's way or no way. That's why he immediately came out against the idea of autonomy for the region when it was floated by Yingluck Shinawatra during the last edlection campaign.
Incidentally no Pheu Thai candidate, all campaigning on the autonomy ticket, got a single seat in the region.
As expected, Yingluck and Pheu Thai went back on their word. Being indifferent to the Malays' feelings cost them nothing in political terms because they know the general public is indifferent to the Malays' predicament.
Perhaps autonomy is not the answer. Perhaps it is more about justice and equality, as the Patani Forum's executive director Ekkarin Tuansiri, a speaker at a recent event at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand, pointed out.
The European Union's ambassador to Thailand, David Lipman, in his key keynote speech at the FCCT event, suggested granting the Malays greater cultural space, such as strengthening bilingual education so that the mother tongue is used alongside the official Thai.
Lipman has a point. In 2007, the then military-appointed government of Surayud Chulanont launched a pilot project in which several elementary schools in the region were permitted to teach the local Malay language and Islamic studies. During that year, insurgents torched more than 100 public schools. The following year, less than ten schools came under arson attack.
The key to the success, said the then vice governor of Yala, Grisada Boonrach, was making sure that religious teachers and clerics at the local level have a say in the curriculum. "It's about ownership," said Grisada, currently the governor of Songkhla.
And yet, no one in the security forces or policy-makers cares to seriously look into that particular development. If they had done, they would have lost face because many conservatives had all along played down the idea of Malay being used as a "working language" alongside Thai.
With regard to foreign influence, it is sad that Prayuth did not have the gumption to admit that, during the Surayud administration, the government sought help from the international community, neighbouring countries and foreign mediators to help resolve the conflict. Whether these initiatives produced any meaningful outcome is another matter. But having access to information about these initiatives is not below Prayuth's pay grade. It seems he can't come to terms with a reality he does not like.
Today a number of government agencies - the Army, Police, Southern Border Provinces Administration Centre (SBPAC), National Security Council (NSC) - foreign governments, retired and active politicians, local and foreign think tanks, as well as local and international NGOs with mediation experience, are exploring the idea of a peace process. Many are running around looking for separatist leaders to talk to. The fact that there are so many of so-called peace-brokers suggests that there is no single ownership of the process. Some of these peace-brokers have tried to get a buy-in from the local community and religious leaders.
But without a meaningful and identifiable process mandated by the state, the government and "mediators" can forget about getting support from the ground to endorse their noble and ambitious activities.
Along with his public apology for atrocities committed against the people of Patani, Surayud called on various Thai government agencies to work with the international community to seek non-military means to end this conflict once and for all. Most of these tracks fizzled out in the following administrations of (the late) Samak Sundaravej and Somchai Wongsawat. But during the Abhisit administration, a number of "peace processes" surfaced, hoping to get a mandate for mediation.
According to one Cabinet member of the Abhisit government, the NSC issued a statement of intent to explain its ongoing dialogue with one of the long-standing separatist groups through one foreign mediator. The Cabinet did not endorse it, and Abhisit would only acknowledge it informally because, according to the source, the then prime minister needed deniability.
That doesn't mean that Abhisit wasn't aware that various Thai security and intelligence agencies, as well as the international community, were talking to various separatist groups. The PM just couldn't be seen to sanction these initiatives because it was too sensitive politically, the source said.
But the NSC-backed process could very well come to an end now that one of Pheu Thai's favourite bureaucrats is heading SBPAC. Sources in the government say that Thawee Sodsong wants to negotiate with the separatist leaders and end this conflict. His problem is that there are so many people out there who claim to be leader of this or that group.
Even if Thawee is barking up the right tree, exiled leaders from long-standing separatist groups say it still won't be easy. Besides the territorial nature of these mediators and so-called peace processes, the separatist leaders are disunited and many are competing among themselves. Worse, they don't seem to have adequate command and control over the militants on the ground.
And for any peace process to have any meaning, the leaders would have to demonstrate to the insurgents that they can come up with deliverables.
The insurgents on the ground are not in a hurry to enter into any peace process or dialogue or whatever the involved parties want to call it. As far as the militants are concerned, they can attack just about any place, any time. The recent ambush in Sai Buri was testimony to that.
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