Commentary by Don Pathan
BenarNews
Yala, Thailand
Authorities in Thailand’s Deep South undertook a rare move by charging two troops with murder in the killings of three unarmed woodcutters, and conceding that soldiers mistook the civilians for insurgents hiding out atop a mountain in Narathiwat province.
It’s not very often that the Thai army admits to committing mistakes with deadly consequences in its counter-insurgency operations in the far south. But in the wake of the Dec. 16 killings, the military came out with a different kind of message.
When extrajudicial killings took place in the past under questionable circumstances, authorities would opt to buy more time and tell the public the case was under investigation.
Past practices also showed that militants from the National Revolutionary Front (BRN), the main southern separatist rebel group National Revolutionary Front (BRN), would retaliate – and often ferociously – when they deemed that “ground rules” in the conflict had been violated.
The BRN would go beyond the usual roadside bombings often followed by a brief gunfight with government forces, by carrying out coordinated and organized attacks as a form of retaliation.
Like in all insurgencies, violence is a form of communicative action.
In the context of Thailand’s Deep South, the communication over the past 15 years has been between militant separatists under the leadership of BRN and the Thai security forces, made up of police, soldiers and paramilitaries.
As the BRN sees it, armed civilians including village chiefs and defense volunteers – all of whom fall under the Ministry of Interior’s chain of command – are legitimate targets when they cross a red line by becoming part of the government’s security apparatus, and/or spying for the state.
The killings of 15 mostly armed village officials in Yala province during a twin attack by suspected insurgents on two security posts in early November was a case in point.
But Dec. 16 incident on a mountain top in Narathiwat that resulted in the deaths of three young men begged the question: why has the BRN so far not retaliated this time around?
“The mood on the ground calls for retaliation but it appears that the BRN is showing restraint. The Thai army, on the other hand, is reciprocating the BRN’s restraint by taking a moral high ground on this incident,” said Asmadee Bueheng, the communications director from The Patani, a political action group that closely monitors the conflict and advocates for the right to self-determination for local Malay Muslims.
Artef Sohko, a prominent political activist in the region who chairs The Patani, said: “The villagers have made some progress with the authorities, and the BRN may not want to carry out retaliation for fear that it could jeopardize whatever agreement the state agencies and the relatives have achieved.”
At first, the initial report from the military unit to the regional commander, Lt. Gen. Pornsak Poolsawat, said the soldiers came across a group of loggers in a restricted area and instructed them to identify themselves and be subjected to a search.
Around the same time, three to four gunshots were heard in the immediate area and the woodcutters ran.
Some of the woodcutters who fled the scene but survived the shooting are keeping quiet and not talking to reporters. It was not clear if they had reached a deal with the authorities, or they worried for their own safety or did not want to complicate the matter while the two sides negotiate a settlement.
Asmadee said authorities could have clung to their narrative because they were no witnesses, except for loggers who fled the scene and lived.
But they didn’t.
Instead, Thai Army Chief Gen. Apirat Kongsompong expressed regrets over the deaths of the three young men and vowed to take legal and disciplinary actions. He suggested that the security forces needed to improve their understanding of the rules of engagement.
Moreover, Lt. Gen. Pornsak no longer lends credence to the initial report about a possible gunfight at the scene of the deadly shootings on the mountain.
Observers said the army chief was trying to win the hearts and minds of the local people who had overwhelmingly voted for the opposition parties at the last General Election, in March 2019. Compared with other regions, Thailand’s Malay-speaking South had the highest voter turnout.
In some ways, faith in Thailand’s parliamentary politics was somewhat restored. But the fact that a majority of locals voted for the opposition who had campaigned on an anti-military platform means the current administration is resting on shaky ground.
Expressing regret and vowing to take legal action against soldiers who allegedly took part in killing the loggers will not be a game-changer for the conflict in the far south. But, nevertheless, it is the correct path to take if Thailand is to succeed in winning hearts and minds of the local Malays.
Don Pathan is a Thailand-based security analyst. The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and not of BenarNews.
https://www.benarnews.org/english/commentaries/far-south-view/Pathan-civilians-killed-12302019162612.html
https://www.benarnews.org/thai/commentary/TH-pathan-deepsouth-12302019143415.html (Thai)
DON PATHAN Senior Program Officer for Regional Security Cooperation at The Asia Foundation
Monday 30 December 2019
Tuesday 3 December 2019
Thai Negotiator Looks to Involve All Rebel Groups in Southern Peace Talks
Commentary by Don Pathan
BenarNews
Bangkok
Thailand’s new chief negotiator in peace talks with Deep South rebels expressed his determination to end the long-running separatist conflict in the border region as he introduced himself and his team to the international community last week.
Wanlop Rugsanaoh did not name Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), the Patani Malay insurgent group that controls virtually all of the combatants on the rebel side. But his team intended to talk to all the armed separatist groups, especially those that could influence the situation in the field, the retired army general and former National Security Council chief said during a press conference Friday in Bangkok.
Engaging in a peace process with the southern rebels was part of a national agenda, Wanlop told reporters. The tone of his remarks contrasted with recent comments by the Thai army chief, Gen. Apirat Kongsompong, and other government officials on how Bangkok should handle the conflict in the far south.
The negotiator spoke about the importance of human dignity, compromise and respecting differences as he outlined his approach to the new job, while Apirat had talked tough by suggesting that the southern rebels must be crushed by any necessary means.
The current wave of insurgency-related violence in Thailand’s southernmost border provinces, whose population is mainly Muslim and Malay-speaking, erupted in early 2004 and has claimed more than 7,000 lives.
Peace initiatives have since come and gone but nothing seems to work because the most important separatist group of all, the BRN, has refused to join the talks.
“We can first learn from the past roles and lessons on why the talks failed. The best way is to meet the right man so that we fix the trouble correctly,” said Thanakorn Buaras, head of the National Intelligence Agency, one of four panelists who appeared at Friday’s press conference at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand.
That said, peace initiatives in the Deep South over the past 15 years have been a trial-and-error process.
From the Langkawi Process to the Berlin initiative, the Thai government and the Patani Malay rebels have come face to face in various cities in Southeast Asia and Europe.
Many of these discussions have been kept off the public’s radar screen. And to play it safe, people involved with these peace initiatives often bill them as “pre-talks.”
Peace initiatives gone by
One reason that none of the peace initiatives have gained traction is that the Thai side is not willing to make any concessions.
Of course, there was a launch of talks in February 2013 by the government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, when Bangkok gave Kuala Lumpur a mandate to “facilitate” the efforts.
The Yingluck initiative generated a great deal of excitement. It marked the first time a Thai government had stated publicly that it would talk to the rebels and resolve the conflict through political means.
But it didn’t take long to realize that Yingluck’s initiative was something between a hoax and a big leap of faith. First of all, the entire inception process was carried out without the knowledge of the Thai military or the participation of the BRN. In short, it was doomed to fail from the start.
A coup toppled Yingluck in May 2014, after which a military government reluctantly resumed the talks. Gen. Aksara Kerdpol, retired army chief of staff, was appointed as the chief Thai negotiator and Malaysia resumed its role as official facilitator.
Kuala Lumpur helped put together an umbrella organization made up of longstanding separatist movements, some of which surfaced during the previous wave of insurgency in the 1960s but went under in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
As with Yingluck’s initiative, MARA Patani lacked the participation of BRN leaders who controlled the group’s fighters. The BRN didn’t see it as a credible process.
In late 2018, Aksara was replaced by Gen. Udomchai Thamsarorat, another retired general who spent much of his professional career in the Fourth Army Area, the command that oversees the Deep South.
One of his first orders of business was to drop Aksara’s Safety Zone pilot project. He knew MARA Patani could not deliver on its ceasefire component, because they didn’t control the insurgents, and BRN, the group that did, was not about to support something that would enhance the legitimacy of another group without getting anything in return.
Udomchai, from the start, reached out to as many people as he could, including members of the international community, to seek advice on how to advance the talks.
Udomchai’s decision to request help from a foreign NGO to reach out to the BRN’s ruling council irked some officials in the Malaysian facilitation secretariat because they had not been consulted and, therefore, this was seen as a violation of protocol.
The Thai government likes to point out that the number of violent incidents in the Deep South has dropped dramatically, compared to a peak in 2007.
But the BRN has demonstrated that they can crank up the violence in the Deep South at any time. This was the case with the killings of two Buddhist monks and five public school employees in January this year. More recently, twin attacks in early November killed 15 people, mostly village defense volunteers and police, in Lam Phaya, a sub-district of Yala province.
The ground rule in Thailand’s far south is that the local officials are to be left alone if they do not cross the line to become part of the government’s security apparatus. It was not clear what line, if any, the 15 victims in Lam Phaya had crossed.
Don Pathan is a Thailand-based security analyst. The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and not of BenarNews.
https://www.benarnews.org/english/commentaries/far-south-view/Don-Pathan-peace-talks-12032019095130.html?fbclid=IwAR2oIcg_n8bgY97gCLdiXxwDF38Zc400OMCVUuT6_tgc3xNQId4UJwYnxik
BenarNews
Bangkok
Thailand’s new chief negotiator in peace talks with Deep South rebels expressed his determination to end the long-running separatist conflict in the border region as he introduced himself and his team to the international community last week.
Wanlop Rugsanaoh did not name Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), the Patani Malay insurgent group that controls virtually all of the combatants on the rebel side. But his team intended to talk to all the armed separatist groups, especially those that could influence the situation in the field, the retired army general and former National Security Council chief said during a press conference Friday in Bangkok.
 |
| Left to Right: HRW's Sunai Phasuk, Gen. Wanlop Rugsanaoh, Gen. Chinawat Mandate, and Don Pathan |
Engaging in a peace process with the southern rebels was part of a national agenda, Wanlop told reporters. The tone of his remarks contrasted with recent comments by the Thai army chief, Gen. Apirat Kongsompong, and other government officials on how Bangkok should handle the conflict in the far south.
The negotiator spoke about the importance of human dignity, compromise and respecting differences as he outlined his approach to the new job, while Apirat had talked tough by suggesting that the southern rebels must be crushed by any necessary means.
The current wave of insurgency-related violence in Thailand’s southernmost border provinces, whose population is mainly Muslim and Malay-speaking, erupted in early 2004 and has claimed more than 7,000 lives.
Peace initiatives have since come and gone but nothing seems to work because the most important separatist group of all, the BRN, has refused to join the talks.
“We can first learn from the past roles and lessons on why the talks failed. The best way is to meet the right man so that we fix the trouble correctly,” said Thanakorn Buaras, head of the National Intelligence Agency, one of four panelists who appeared at Friday’s press conference at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand.
That said, peace initiatives in the Deep South over the past 15 years have been a trial-and-error process.
From the Langkawi Process to the Berlin initiative, the Thai government and the Patani Malay rebels have come face to face in various cities in Southeast Asia and Europe.
Many of these discussions have been kept off the public’s radar screen. And to play it safe, people involved with these peace initiatives often bill them as “pre-talks.”
Peace initiatives gone by
One reason that none of the peace initiatives have gained traction is that the Thai side is not willing to make any concessions.
Of course, there was a launch of talks in February 2013 by the government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, when Bangkok gave Kuala Lumpur a mandate to “facilitate” the efforts.
The Yingluck initiative generated a great deal of excitement. It marked the first time a Thai government had stated publicly that it would talk to the rebels and resolve the conflict through political means.
But it didn’t take long to realize that Yingluck’s initiative was something between a hoax and a big leap of faith. First of all, the entire inception process was carried out without the knowledge of the Thai military or the participation of the BRN. In short, it was doomed to fail from the start.
A coup toppled Yingluck in May 2014, after which a military government reluctantly resumed the talks. Gen. Aksara Kerdpol, retired army chief of staff, was appointed as the chief Thai negotiator and Malaysia resumed its role as official facilitator.
Kuala Lumpur helped put together an umbrella organization made up of longstanding separatist movements, some of which surfaced during the previous wave of insurgency in the 1960s but went under in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
 |
| The Patani's Hakim Pongtikor and Gen. Wanlop at the FCCT. |
In late 2018, Aksara was replaced by Gen. Udomchai Thamsarorat, another retired general who spent much of his professional career in the Fourth Army Area, the command that oversees the Deep South.
One of his first orders of business was to drop Aksara’s Safety Zone pilot project. He knew MARA Patani could not deliver on its ceasefire component, because they didn’t control the insurgents, and BRN, the group that did, was not about to support something that would enhance the legitimacy of another group without getting anything in return.
Udomchai, from the start, reached out to as many people as he could, including members of the international community, to seek advice on how to advance the talks.
Udomchai’s decision to request help from a foreign NGO to reach out to the BRN’s ruling council irked some officials in the Malaysian facilitation secretariat because they had not been consulted and, therefore, this was seen as a violation of protocol.
The Thai government likes to point out that the number of violent incidents in the Deep South has dropped dramatically, compared to a peak in 2007.
But the BRN has demonstrated that they can crank up the violence in the Deep South at any time. This was the case with the killings of two Buddhist monks and five public school employees in January this year. More recently, twin attacks in early November killed 15 people, mostly village defense volunteers and police, in Lam Phaya, a sub-district of Yala province.
The ground rule in Thailand’s far south is that the local officials are to be left alone if they do not cross the line to become part of the government’s security apparatus. It was not clear what line, if any, the 15 victims in Lam Phaya had crossed.
Don Pathan is a Thailand-based security analyst. The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and not of BenarNews.
https://www.benarnews.org/english/commentaries/far-south-view/Don-Pathan-peace-talks-12032019095130.html?fbclid=IwAR2oIcg_n8bgY97gCLdiXxwDF38Zc400OMCVUuT6_tgc3xNQId4UJwYnxik
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)