A goodwill gesture brutally batted aside by insurgents

A history of mistrust has come back to haunt the latest peace efforts in the South

Don Pathan
Special to The Nation

The recent release of a senior Patani United Liberation Organisation (Pulo) member from prison was seen as a goodwill gesture by the Bangkok government, but the group that controls the vast majority of the insurgents in the deep South has demonstrated its campaign of violence in the region will continue unabated.

Last week a bomb attack in Pattani province's Sai Buri district killed a monk and a soldier and left eight people injured.

Members of the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) separatist umbrella organisation said they welcomed the release of Ma-ae Sa-a, better known to his peers as Sama-ae Thanam, or Ismail Gadaffi. But the move will have no effect on the ongoing peace talks with the separatists, or their struggle for a separate homeland for the Malay Muslims in the so-called Patani region.

Sama-ae was arrested by Malaysian authorities in 1998 and secretly handed over to the Thai police. Others captured in the same operation were Haji Abdul Rahman Bazo (aka Haji Beudo Betong), Abdul Rahman Haji Yala, and Haji Da'oud Thanam.

Bazo was released in November 2013 after he turned 70. Government sources said the release of Bazo and Sama-ae, as well as the pending release of Da'oud, was in line with Justice Ministry regulations on early parole for good conduct. But in this case the releases also had a political dimension, observers said.

Efforts to get these Pulo leaders released are nothing new. In the aftermath of the day-long stand-off between Thai security forces and Patani Malay insurgents at the Kru Se Mosque on April 28, 2004, exiled separatist leaders quietly suggested to the Thai side that the men should be released so they could serve as go-betweens with the new generation of insurgents, who had gone on the offensive a few months earlier following an arms heist in January.

The April 28, 2004 operation saw well over 100 young men, armed with little more than machetes and knives, charge into a hailstorm of machinegun bullets.

Thai officials and exiled leaders from longstanding separatist groups were shaken by the incident and its ramifications: if so many militants were willing to charge to almost certain death, what were the possibilities?

The old guard, once released from prison, might not be able to convince the new generation of fighters to lay down their arms. But it was suggested that they could broker an understanding, such as over rules of engagement, between the two sides.

But nobody on the Thai side was willing to act on these suggestions.

A closer look at the militant network behind the Kru Se incident, which was under the directive of charismatic religious teacher Ismail Yaralong (aka Ustaz Soh), revealed that the militants were influenced by what some called "folk Islam".

Those who took part in the simultaneous attack on 10 police outposts and one station in Pattani, Songkhla and Yala on April 28, 2004, said they had imbibed holy water, inscribed their machetes with "bismillah" - in the name of God - and gone into trance before launching their operation at the break of dawn.

Copies of a motivational pamphlet "Bir Jihad di Patani" (The Struggle of Patani) were found on some of the insurgents. Though it contained no theology, zealous Thai officials took it upon themselves to call it the "new Koran".

Though Ustaz Soh's network was short-lived for obvious reasons -machetes proved no match for Thai machineguns - their operation inspired great respect among locals. Not only did it instill real fear in the Thai security apparatus, but many locals said they were moved by the fact that these young men gave up their lives for the cause. During the stand-off, one militant used loudspeakers to call on local Muslims to rise up against the "Siamese invaders". General Pallop Pinmanee, the highest ranking military officer in Pattani at the time, ordered an all-out assault on the mosque for fear that the locals would actually rise up against state officials.

The idea of releasing the Pulo leaders has surfaced several times over the years, but no Bangkok government has acted on it for fear of political repercussions.

In fact, both Malaysian and Thai officials failed to see the consequences of arresting the Pulo leaders until then-prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra decided she wanted to talk peace.

Sama-ae said recently he never thought he would be arrested by the Thai authorities as he had been involved in facilitating secret talks between the two sides.

Sources in the BRN said they didn't want to end up like the Thanam brothers and added that they would never endorse any peace negotiation until properly prepared and that Bangkok would not deceive them the way they did these Pulo leaders.

The extradition of the prisoners reminded leaders of longstanding Patani Malay separatist groups that Kuala Lumpur will always place bilateral ties with Thailand over the wellbeing of their people.

The 1998 arrests of the Pulo leaders violated an unwritten agreement between Thailand and Malaysia that no such action would be taken as long as former combatants and operatives did not make trouble for their host country.

Members of the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) have received Thai citizenship, while the Patani Malay exiled leaders were granted Malaysian citizenship or permitted to relocate to a third country.

The armed struggle of the CPM and the Patani Malays surfaced in the mid-1960s but went under in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The former was a communist insurgency and the latter ethno-nationalist in nature.

But Thai authorities didn't make the distinction between the two and were busy applauding themselves for a job well done. As for the current wave of separatist militants, the 1990s proved to be the lull before the storm - a period when a new generation of combatants were being groomed to take up where their predecessors had left off.

This time around, instead of relying on help from Muslim countries in the Middle East and North Africa, they would become self-sufficient. And as long as the Patani Malay narrative remained alive, the moral and logistical support of local residents was more or less guaranteed.

Today, in spite of the rhetoric concerning peace and the peace process, insurgency violence in Thailand's Malay-speaking South continues unabated and with no end in sight.

Don Pathan is a freelance consultant and security analyst based in Yala, Thailand. He is also the founding member of the Patani Forum (www.pataniforum.com).

EDITORIAL: Southern youth activists taking to the streets

The Nation

Their involvement in anti-coup protest in Bangkok is actually good for country

An interesting development over the past few months that has been overlooked by the public is the participation of ethnic Malay Muslim students from Thailand's southernmost provinces in the protest against the current government.

A significant number of students and youth leaders have been coming to Bangkok and elsewhere to take part in the various demonstrations and speaking engagements to voice their disapproval against the military regime.

Some were briefly detained alongside other youth activists and students for their peaceful demonstration. 

This development should be welcomed simply because these Malay youths and students from the deep South are teaming up with the rest of the country's student movement and embracing the "Thai narrative", as opposed to the one that focuses exclusively on Pattani.

And while they are calling for the same thing that many of us want to see - democracy, accountability, rule of law, transparency - the fact that they are becoming part of the Thai narrative demonstrates that these Malay Muslim youths also feel that they have a stake and a sense of shared destiny with the rest of the people in this country.

The government, especially the security apparatus, views these Malay Muslim youth activists as spreading their wings beyond the three southernmost provinces that have been hit by an 11-year insurgency that has claimed more than 6,000 lives, with no end in sight - but they predict more trouble, because they see things through a security lens. Problems arise when the lens gets damaged and the authorities become cross-eyed and don't realise it. 

The Malay Muslim youths and student activists have over the years earned a great deal of respect and trust from the local population, especially at the grassroots level where abuses by the authorities often occur. 

These youths step in and speak out against alleged injustices and abuses. Their activism can be traced back eight years, when many of them occupied the Pattani Central Mosque to protest about the alleged rape against a Muslim woman in Yala province, not to mention the alleged torture and extra-judicial/targeted killings carried out by government officials. 

But in recent months, they have been joining the Thai student protests in Bangkok and other parts of the country. 

Unfortunately, security officials and intelligence officials see this development as a security challenge against the regime.

If anything, Thai society and government officials, especially those working on the conflict in the deep South, should actually welcome such a development.

This is not to suggest that these Malay Muslim students should be receiving red carpet treatment while in Bangkok.

Up until now, these students and youth activists have been a bunch of uncompromising separatists bent on carving out a separate homeland for the Malay. Many are still being harassed. And the authorities can get away with it because they have the Emergency Law to shield them from just about anything in terms of legal repercussions. Sadly, a culture of impunity exists in this historically contested region. 

And while the Malay Muslim students and youths are promoting the concept of the "right to self-determination", it is still a far cry from separatism or armed insurgency taken up by the thousands of Malay Muslim militants on the ground.

When the red shirts and the yellow shirts were going at it on the streets of Bangkok and elsewhere, these Malay Muslim youths stayed put. Today, they see a common ground with the Thai student activists from other parts of the country.

In his weekly remarks on Friday, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha tried to sound reconciliatory; he said the 14 detained students were pure and innocent and urged them to channel their activities in a constructive manner. 

While such a statement suggested that he was extending an olive branch to the student movement, he, nevertheless, could not get away from his old self and suggested that some hidden hands have been guiding these students. 

Hasn't it occurred to Prayuth and other security officials that these youth activists have a mind of their own and that they may see things differently from the country's military, whose mandate is still questionable?

If the head honcho can't differentiate between good intention and good policy, there isn't much hope for the folks down the line, is there?

But it does not need to be that way. They just need to broaden their minds, open their hearts and not see every criticism as an attempt to overthrow them.

But the good news is that these guys are here today and gone tomorrow. These youth activists are demanding to know when tomorrow will be and that tomorrow doesn't mean forever.