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).