Two more hammer blows to a HALF-COCKED peace process

BANGKOK’S RELUCTANCE TO GRANT LEGITIMACY TO ITS DIALOGUE PARTNERS IN THE FAR SOUTH HAS CLOSED OFF THE POSSIBILITY OF PROGRESS IN TALKS

Don Pathan
Special to The Nation

Confused signals from Bangkok have brought two setbacks for the deep South peace process that would never have happened if policymakers had taken a more progressive attitude towards the Malay-speaking region from the start.

The first setback was the dismissal of Lt-General Nakrob Boonbuakarn, the secretary-general of the so-called Dialogue Panel of Thai negotiators in ongoing talks with MARA Patani, an umbrella group of Patani Malay separatist organisations.

Nakrob was accused by his Bangkok overseers of stepping beyond his mandate, which was never clearly defined in the first place. Junta leaders are said to be concerned about their legacy in the far South, and don’t want to be seen as the ones who “gave away” the historically contested region.
The second setback was the government’s pressuring of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to refrain from mentioning MARA Patani in resolutions adopted at its recent summit in Turkey. Thailand succeeded in this quest, though some of the 57 OIC membernations insisted on referring to the ongoing peace dialogue.

In its summit communiqué the OIC urged Bangkok to “grant the group of representatives of the Muslim community in the South the required recognition and called upon the government to provide guarantee of safety in travelling to and from Thailand to members of the dialogue team and protection from detention and prosecution during their engagement in the peace process”.
Bangkok has always been concerned at MARA Patani receiving international recognition beyond that granted by appointing the Dialogue Panel to talk with the separatists.

Thailand’s policy is somewhat contradictory here, mixing a willingness to acknowledge and sit down for talks with MARA Patani with irritation every time the group seeks dialogue with others.
However, it is only natural that a nonstate actor such as MARA Patani would seek ways to enhance its legitimacy internationally and with the people of Patani, the historically contested region encompassing the southernmost provinces of Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat and the four Malay-speaking districts of Songhla.

In December last year, OIC secretarygeneral Iyad Ameen Madani met with members of MARA Patani in Malaysia prior to coming to Thailand.

Bangkok expressed its disapproval of the meeting and blamed Kuala Lumpur for arranging it. But MARA Patani members were quick to point out it was their own initiative.

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha stopped the OIC chief in his tracks during their meeting in Bangkok, informing him that his concern was welcome but not his intervention.
The conflict in the far South has drifted on and off OIC’s radar screen for decades. In 2010, then OIC secretarygeneral Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu secretly met with leaders of longstanding Patani separatist organisations in Saudi Arabia.

He urged them to forge a political front – the United Patani People Council (UPPC) – while the OIC vowed to help facilitate a dialogue process with the Thai government.

Once the front was formed, a regional assembly called the Patani People Congress (PCC) was to be next in the pipeline. The purpose of the PCC was to provide the needed legitimacy for the UPPC.
But the government of Abhisit Vejjajiva refused to go along with the plan, halting the OIC initiative.
Patani was mentioned again in the 2012 OIC foreign ministers meeting, where the 57-member organisation expressed concern at “meagre progress” made on the 2007 joint statement between the two sides. The OIC also expressed dismay at the “continued application of the emergency law in most southern areas and the limited progress in introducing [the local Malayu] language … as a language of instruction in the schools of the South”.

The OIC also criticised the “continued extensive military presence of armed forces throughout the southern border provinces and its negative impacts on the population’s normal life”, as well as “the mounting reliance on undisciplined paramilitary militias accused of committing illegal acts, [with their] consequences of increasing ethnic and religious polarisation”.

The 2007 joint statement, inked with the government of Surayud Chulanont, has become the OIC’s reference point for measuring Thailand’s commitment to peace in the far South. The statement was somewhat bold, making references to the disappearance of Somchai Neelaphaijit, the Krue Se standoff and the Tak Bai massacre, plus more general issues of human rights violations and the culture of impunity among Thai security forces.

But Bangkok’s bold bid for peace didn’t last beyond the tenure of Surayud’s military administration. No government since then has had the courage to make peace with the Malays of Patani, not even that of Yingluck Shinawatra, whose clumsily put-together dialogue constituted something between a hoax and a huge leap of faith.

For fear of being perceived as antipeace, the current ruling junta decided to resurrect that so-called peace process. That decision helps explain their footdragging now and their unwillingness to make concessions necessary to progress.

Lt-General Nakrob, who was part of the Yingluck initiative and stayed aboard after the May 2014 coup, was forced to operate in a confusing environment.
Nakrob was caught between MARA Patani separatists desperate to shore up their own legitimacy and international standing, and a junta in Bangkok whose unwillingness to make concessions extends to refusing to call their dialogue partners by name.

Nakrob was set an impossibly broad task – as secretary- general for the Dialogue Panel, spokesman for the initiative, and head of the technical team mapping out the terms of reference for the talks.
He backed the involvement of the separatist umbrella group even before it became MARA Patani. Back then the separatists were engaged as “Plan B” for the original Yingluck peace process that had Hasan Taib at the negotiating table.

And when Hasan threw in the towel, Plan B became Party B.

Nakrob was working in an environment where progress was held hostage by stakeholders unwilling to make concessions.

Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), the longstanding separatist group that controls the vast majority of separatist combatants, says it will not come to the table until properly prepared and ready.
BRN also says Bangkok is only interested cutting the number of violent incidents for domestic consumption, not in addressing the root cause of the conflict.
The government refuses to address the roots of historical grievances in the South since that would mean having to make concessions.

For independent observers of the conflict, signals coming from the junta seem confusing: Nakrob and the Dialogue Panel are mandated to meet MARA Patani but are not permitted to utter the name “MARA Patani” because the generals don’t want to lend the separatists legitimacy.

Meanwhile government sources report that the top brass in Bangkok has yet to be convinced that MARA Patani has command and control over the militants in the deep South.

BRN says it is not prepared to come to the table and adds that the OIC is just one more international organisation out there looking to gain entry to the peace process in their historical homeland.
The question is, whether Bangkok is willing to entertain the idea of allowing foreign entities to get involved with peace initiatives in the southernmost provinces.

DON PATHAN is an independent security consultant based in Thailand. He is also the founding member of the Patani Forum (www.pataniforum.com).

The moment a peace process was exposed as futile?

Don Pathan
Special to The Nation

Separatists at the table have just denied involvement in violence - further evidence they have no control over the combatants

MARA Patani is stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea.

The umbrella organisation of six longstanding Patani Malay separatist movements is facing its moment of truth.

Are they or are they not involved in the recent spike in separatist violence in the far South, particularly the operation in which a Narathiwat hospital was used as a staging post for an attack on the Paramilitary Ranger unit next door?

Answering yes could have legal ramifications that complicate ongoing peace negotiations with the Thai government. It would also suggest a violation of international humanitarian norms amid efforts by the umbrella organisation to gain legitimacy from the international community.

The Malaysian government is facilitating the latest peace talks and has posted its former spy chief to oversee a poorly thought-out initiative that's being driven by its Special Branch.

If, on the other hand, MARA Patani were to deny involvement in the violence, their status as partners in the talks would automatically be rendered irrelevant. Why, after all, should Bangkok be speaking to people who are not involved with the insurgency's combatants?

After a barrage of criticism from local and international human rights organisations and the Bangkok government over the invasion of the hospital, MARA Patani decided to play it safe and deny any involvement.That prompted Thai security officers to ponder out loud the merits of dealing with an organisation that appeared to have no command and control over the militants.

Bangkok's longstanding practice in dealing with the Patani Malay separatists has always been to use either the envelope (bribe money) or the bullet.

But unlike the previous wave of insurgency that surfaced in the mid-1960s and subsided in the late 1980s, this time around the men with command-and-control are not interested in talking, leaving the negotiations to figures whose influence waned decades ago.

The half-baked peace initiative was launched under Yingluck Shinawatra's government in February 2013. A so-called Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) leader, Hasan Taib, was hastily placed at the centre of the negotiations without anyone questioning what role or influence, if any, he had in the militant separatist leadership.

The Thai and Malaysian security officials involved knew that Yingluck's initiative was doomed from the start because they didn't have the right people.

As a backup, the so-called Track 1.5 quietly came into being as the official Track 1 with Hasan Taib at the helm died a natural death.

That death was hastened by the concerted efforts of a Thai military that was not part of the inception or planning of the peace initiative cooked up by Yingluck and her fugitive brother Thaksin.

But then came the May 2014 coup and with it the question of what to do with this hot potato. Junta chief General Prayut Chan-o-cha had seven months to think about it - the time between the coup and his December 2014 visit to Kuala Lumpur.

During the visit, Prayut announced that Malaysia would continue to facilitate the peace dialogue though conditions would be added. The separatists would have to develop a common platform and then demonstrate they had command-and-control over the militants.

One thing the junta had going for them was that the overall number of insurgent attacks had dropped dramatically.

For those invested in the peace dialogue, the drop in violence was proof of the talks' traction. But separatist sources and other close observers insisted that the lull meant nothing, pointing out that as long as the insurgents still existed, the state hadn't won.

Now, with the return of almost daily violence to this historically contested region, notions of a link between the peace talks and the insurgency have been shattered.

Separatist sources said a car bomb planted just two days before a Pattani seminar on the peace talks was a stern warning to participants that the conflict is far from over. Foreign participants were forced to cancel their trip to the event.

And then came the operation in Cho Ai Rong, Narathiwat, which signalled a moment of truth for many stakeholders. The hospital raid was a slap in the face for the peace initiative's much-vaunted "safety zone", where Bangkok was relying on MARA Patani to enforce a ceasefire. Cho Ai Rong was supposed to be among the five districts designated for the zone.

Separatist sources say last Friday's gun and grenade attack on a teashop full of Malay Muslim residents in Yala's Raman district was carried out either by a rogue unit or a pro-government death squad in retaliation for the spike. One villager was killed and four others suffered bullet wounds.

Meanwhile, the unprecedented nature of the Cho Ai Rong operation has shaken the Thai military to its foundations, demonstrating a capability and daring to undermine the entire security apparatus at will.

In the final analysis, however, Cho Ai Rong was not a military operation. It was a public relations exercise performed in front of hospital CCTV cameras and aimed at sapping Thai military will and morale. Needless to say, it succeeded in doing that - and much more besides.

Don Pathan is a founding member of the Patani Forum (www.pataniforum.com) and a Thailand-based security consultant.