A new round of negotiations in Thailand’s far South

Don Pathan
Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia
September 2020

On 20 January 2020, Thai negotiators and members of the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), the separatist movement that controls virtually all of the combatants in Thailand’s Muslim-majority, Malay-speaking south, joined in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to announce that they have started the much-awaited peace talks. According to Thai and BRN officials, this latest peace initiative was the first that the secretive BRN’s ruling council, known as the Dewan Pimpinan Parti (DPP), had actually given their negotiators the full blessing to come to the table. It was presumed that the two sides are there to seek a political solution to this intractable conflict that resurfaced in Thailand’s Malay-speaking South in late 2001 but was not officially acknowledged until 4 January 2004, when scores of armed militants raided an army battalion in Narathiwat province and made off with more than 350 pieces of military weapons. The previous wave surfaced in the early 1960s in response to Thailand’s policy of assimilation that came at the expense of the Patani Malays’ ethno-religious identity. Armed insurrection died down in the late 1980s but the narrative – one that says Patani is a Malay historical homeland and that the Thai troops and government agencies are foreign occupying forces – never went away.

But 20 January 2020, was not the first time that Thailand has publicly announced that they are coming to the table with the BRN to settle the conflict through negotiation. The then government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra had launched a similar initiative on 28 February 2013, also in Kuala Lumpur. The announcement caught all the key stakeholders off guard. They include the BRN and the Thai military. BRN did eventually send representatives to the table — the former foreign affair chief Muhammed Adam Nur and a member from its youth wing Abdulkarim Khalid. But their job was to derail the process, which they succeeded in doing so by the last quarter of 2013, by which time Yingluck was running for her political life from the so-called Shut Down Bangkok street protest that paved the way for the May 2014 military coup that ousted her from power. In spite of being something between a hoax and a big leap of faith, Yingluck’s initiative generated a great deal of excitement and great expectation from the local residents in the far South. After all, it was the first time that a Thai government had publicly committed itself to resolving the conflict politically. Unfortunately, peace for this historically contested region was not the main motivation. Yingluck and the then Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak were more interested in raking the political benefits of a peace initiative.

In the aftermath of the May 2014 coup, there was some serious debate over whether to continue with what Yingluck had started. The National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), Thailand’s top brass behind the coup, had no part in the talks or its inception. But the junta decided to continue with the talks but on condition that the talks would be inclusive. In other words, all the Patani Malay separatist groups – BRN, all Patani United Liberation Organisation (PULO) factions, Gerakan Mujahidine Islam Patani (GMIP) and Barisan Islam Pembebasan Pattani (BIPP) – would have to come together and negotiate their differences with the Thai State. Prayuth Government and Thailand’s top brass were irritated by the very idea of “lowering themselves” to talk to Patani Malay rebels, thus, the demand of inclusivity. They wanted to get it done and over with, and once-and-for-all was their attitude. In December 2014, seven months after the coup, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha went to Kuala Lumpur to introduce the newly appointed chief negotiator, Gen. Aksara Kherdphol. He was to work hand-in-hand with Malaysia’s former spy chief, Dato Sri Ahmad Zamzamin bin Hashim, the designated Facilitator for the peace process.

In line with Thailand’s request of inclusivity, with the help of Malaysia’s Facilitator, MARA Patani became the umbrella organization under which all the Patani Malay long standing separatist movements would come under. The problem with this arrangement is that the BRN, the one group that control the combatants on the ground, refused to join. Nevertheless, the process stubbornly limped along, hoping that the initiative could generate enough traction to attract the BRN’s participation. And so for three years, Thai negotiators, MARA Patani and Malaysian Facilitator worked on the so-called Safety Zone, a pilot project that would turn a provincial district in the far South into a cease-fire area with development projects to serve as a model that peace and development can be achieved with the absence of violence. But in reality, it was much ado about nothing because the one group that controlled the combatants on the ground wasn’t part of the process.

In October 2018, the government of Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha replaced Gen. Aksara with Gen. Udomchai Thamsarorat, a man with many years of experience on the battlefield in the far South. Udomchai moved quickly to distance himself from the Safety Zone Project knowing that it would fail without the participation of the BRN. Udomchai’s appointment came two months after the newly elected government of Dr. Mahathir Mohammed had replaced Dato Zamzamin with retired police chief Tan Sri Abdul Rahim Noor as the Facilitator. Udomchai thought he could count on the new Malaysian facilitator to pressure the DPP to the table. But that backfired when militants on the ground retaliated with a spike in violence in January 2019 with the murder of two Buddhist monks in Narathiwat. The same month also saw insurgents gunning down four civil defense volunteers (local hired security details employed by the Ministry of Interior). A retired public school teacher was also shot dead and hung; his vehicle was stolen and used as a car bomb later that day.

Local political activists such as The Patani and The Federation of Patani Students and Youth (PerMAS) stepped up their campaign on the ground, calling on BRN combatants to respect international humanitarian law and norms, reminding the insurgents that, as non-state actor with limited conventional military capability, BRN’s ultimate goal is political in nature. Insurgents responded positively to the idea of taking the moral high ground in their fight against the Thai State and backed off from the soft target. About six months later, Thailand and Malaysia applied more pressure on the BRN leadership to come to the table. This time around, BRN responded with a series of small bombs through out Bangkok, humiliating the Thai government who was hosting of ASEAN foreign ministers who were in the capital for a series of bilateral and multilateral meetings with their Dialogue Partners, including the United States, Japan and China.

Again, Malaysian facilitator and Thai negotiators backed off. At this point in time Bangkok is convinced that Rahim Noor and his team of Facilitators were not able to get the BRN leaders to the Thai side. And so the Thai negotiators began to reach out to a foreign INGO who had worked with BRN in the past knowing that Malaysia would object to the very idea of bringing in an outsider into the process. BRN’s leaders, surprisingly, permitted their Foreign Affairs Committee, led by Anas Abdulrahman (also known as Hipni Mareh), to meet with the Thais. The two sides met in Indonesia and then in early November 2019, in Berlin, Germany, where a seven-page TOR drafted by the foreign INGO, was presented to the Thai and BRN negotiators. Needless to say Kuala Lumpur was not pleased with being kept in the dark the whole time. As for the foreign NGO who organized the meetings in Indonesia and Germany, it was an opportunity to get back into the game after they had been told to stay out after Bangkok gave the mandate to facilitate the talks to Kuala Lumpur in 2013.

Thailand’s effort to mend the fence with Malaysia came in form of a public announcement, an event to launch a breakthrough in which Malaysia is to be credited for its hard work. This so-called breakthrough was launched on 20 January 2020, in Kuala Lumpur. It was full of praises for the Malaysian government. But deep down inside, all parties knew that the direct talks with the Thais in Indonesia and Berlin, and 20 January  launch in Kuala Lumpur as a big leap of faith. This secretive movement that had been antagonising the Thai security forces for the past 17 years is drifting towards an uncharted territory. The military wing and the combatants on the ground were extremely uncomfortable with the ideas, partly because they weren’t consulted from the start and partly because they just outright disagree with the idea of setting the stage for a formal peace process when their demands were not being addressed. Moreover, the combatants on the ground were told by their commanders that their struggle to liberate this Malay homeland known as Patani was wajib, a moral obligation. Is it still a wajib? No one seems to know.

In its latest report on the conflict dated 25 January 2020, “Southern Thailand’s Peace Dialogue: Giving Substance to Form,” the International Crisis Group (ICG) said for the peace process to succeed, BRN needs to articulate the kind of future it envisions for the region and the Thai government should rethink its policy of not permitting international observers into the process. Both Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur should accede to impartial third-party mediation. In short, said ICG, the process needs a reboot.

The problem with foreign facilitators and mediators – many have come and gone over the past 17 years – is that they see Malaysia as their competitor instead of a stakeholder in the conflict. Malaysia is much more than just a “facilitator” or “mediator” but a stakeholder with real security, diplomatic and political concerns. In fact, none of the peace initiatives for Thailand’s far South since 2004 involved the use of honest broker. Still, many are asking why the BRN’s ruling council had permit its Foreign Affairs Committee to come to the table with the Thais without consultation with the militants on the ground and other division leaders. Some members said these secretive leaders took comfort in knowing that these negotiators were put on a very short leash and that they could be recalled any moment.

Senior Thai security officials believe the political wing knew that the powerful military wing would be dead against the idea of starting a formal peace process with the Thais and therefore, had to go to Indonesia and Germany without their consultation. Unlike other revolutionary or independent movements, BRN’s so-called political wing is still very weak and inexperienced. Thai policymakers never invested time into thinking about the consequences of rushing the BRN negotiators to the table. Like the BRN, the Thai side didn’t consulted among themselves, much less work together to formulate a strategy for a possible peace process. In fact, the actions and activities of the Thai Army on the ground suggested that they could careless about the development on the political side of the equation.

Long range reconnaissance patrol, mop up operation against BRN cells on the ground were being carried out as far back as January 2020, even when BRN was making positive gesture, like acceding to the Deed of Commitment with Geneva Call, an international NGO that work with armed non-state actors across the globe to promote rules of engagement and humanitarian principles. BRN also announced in early 3 April 2020, that it would end all hostilities as part of their humanitarian effort to help contain Corvid-19. BRN also urged the public to comply with the directives from the public health officials. On April 30, Thai security forces killed three BRN combatants in Pattani. Fearing that the cells on the ground would retaliate, BRN quickly reiterated its earlier position and instructed its combatants and the general public that the unilateral ceasefire must stay the course. Three days later, on May 3, 2020, in Sao Buri district of Pattani province, two Paramilitary Rangers were shot dead at close range by gunmen on a motorbike coming from behind and commence fire.

All fingers pointed to the BRN but the movement’s leadership kept quiet. To say that they had given the green light to take out the two Rangers in realisation for the shooting death of the three combatants would amount to an end of the ceasefire, an initiative by the political wing to show the powerful military side that they can generate legitimacy and praises for the movement. To say that the gunmen were BRN combatants who acted without order from the commander is to say that the movement doesn’t have adequate command-and-control on the ground. And not to say anything at this juncture, after surfacing publicly to jointly announce with the Thais negotiators, would also harm their credibility and integrity.

Don Pathan is a Thailand-based security analyst

https://kyotoreview.org/

https://kyotoreview.org/issue-28/a-new-round-of-negotiations-in-thailands-far-south-th/

Thai rebels pay a price for coming above ground

Thai military rebuffs BRN's unilateral ceasefire with violence, killing off a Covid-19 chance for peace in restive southern region

By DON PATHAN
Asia Times

YALA – After 17 years of fighting that has claimed over 7,000 lives, laying down arms was never going to be easy for Thailand’s Barisan Revolusi National (BRN), the long-standing separatist movement that controls virtually all of the southern conflict’s on-the-ground combatants.

De-escalation efforts have been hounded by the Thai Army’s relentless assaults, with rotating top brass soldiers consistently bent on “teaching them a lesson,” according to a Thai military source who spoke on condition of anonymity.

But after years of hiding in the shadows as one of the world’s few nameless, faceless insurgencies, BRN is starting to come above ground, reaching out to the international community and raising its public profile through initiatives that are winning it sympathy and in spots even praise.

Whether those moves represent a path to peace is in question. Thailand’s top brass was reportedly not amused following BRN’s signing in January of a “Deed of Commitment” with Geneva Call, an international nongovernmental organization (NGO) that promotes rules of war with non-state actors worldwide.

BRN vowed via the commitment to step up its protection of children in conflict, in line with humanitarian principles and international norms. Rights groups have previously criticized certain of the insurgent group’s attacks that have killed and injured civilians.

In a bigger step onto the international stage, BRN heeded United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ call for a pause in armed conflicts worldwide in a global humanitarian effort to curb the spread of Covid-19. The announcement represented the first de facto unilateral ceasefire since the conflict erupted in January 2004.

These initiatives have won BRN certain international kudos and jolted many in Thailand’s top brass, with some hardliners reportedly blaming the Peace Dialogue Panel, comprised of representatives from various agencies and ministries that make up the government’s negotiation team, for not doing enough to contain the BRN.

The secretive talks have born certain fruit, though they are now at risk of collapse after recent violent incidents on both sides. According to government sources, certain generals plan to lobby the government, led by former coup-maker army commander Prayut Chan-ocha, to stack the government’s panel with even more stonewalling soldiers.

The current army chief, General Apirat Kongsompong, has reportedly never liked the idea of talking to the BRN as he feels it gives the group unwarranted legitimacy.

The military has long categorized the violence in Thailand’s Malay-speaking southern region, encompassing the provinces of Yala, Narathiwat, Pattani and parts of Songkhla, as “disturbances” rather than “insurgency.”

By framing the conflict as an issue of law and order, with rebels often referred to as law-breaking “bandits”, Thailand’s top brass have persistently rebuffed any “internationalization” of the conflict, including calls for outside group mediation that has helped to resolve other global armed conflicts.

While the top brass may reject the BRN’s latest move to engage the international community, soldiers at the operation level hold different views. Many Thai security forces would like to see the BRN extend their ceasefire beyond the pandemic, which is currently winding down as the country returns to normalcy after a lockdown.

The end of the pandemic and emergency rule could see the return of anti-military and anti-government protests which were gaining momentum but then lost steam due to the viral outbreak. A BRN ceasefire would give the military more space and troops to contend with any significant new street actions in the capital, Bangkok.

To be sure, BRN’s decision to sign the Geneva Call agreement and declare a unilateral ceasefire was not just for public consumption. Rather, it was an effort by BRN’s political wing to show the group’s elders and their own rank and file that their negotiators can boost the movement’s international standing.

BRN’s powerful military wing was against the idea of entering into direct talks with state officials until certain conditions were met. Those demands included the release of all insurgent detainees now held in Thai prisons and a formal endorsement from Parliament that the talks are on the government’s national agenda.

The insurgent group’s negotiators are still years away from becoming a solid and serious political wing, critics say. But in the end, BRN’s military wing and its secretive ruling council decided to allow negotiators to meet with Thai government counterparts in a series of secret talks, though they are known to be on very short leashes.

The last meeting in these talks was held in Berlin, Germany, in November 2019, during which a term of reference (ToR) was produced as a blueprint for future talks. The unsigned document identified Thailand and BRN as the only two parties that can decide who will be the facilitator and mediator for the talks.

The document did not refer to Malaysia, which was apparently kept in the dark about the talks until news of the Berlin meeting was leaked to the media. Malaysia, which shares a border with the conflict area and in the past has allowed insurgents to take cross-border refuge, has served as host to previous talks.

To avoid piquing Malaysia, which holds a key to any resolution of the conflict, the two sides cobbled together a January gathering in Kuala Lumpur between BRN negotiators and Thai representatives. It was followed by a press conference that praised Malaysia’s facilitation.

At the same time, the Thai military has demonstrated that BRN’s new quest for international recognition and legitimacy will come at a price. In February, security forces launched long-range reconnaissance patrols to uproot and smash BRN cells in the foothills of a Narathiwat province mountain that killed five militants.

Insurgents responded to relentless pounding in Ta Se, delivered by armed helicopters, fan boats, and full-force foot patrols, with a reciprocal car bomb detonated in front of the multi-agency Southern Border Provinces Administrative Center (SBPAC) on March 18. At least 25 were injured in the timed explosion.

Two weeks after the SBPAC car bomb, reportedly after lengthy consultations with on-the-ground local activists, BRN declared a unilateral ceasefire on April 3 and called on local residents to work with public health officials to curb the spread of Covid-19.

A map of Thailand’s southernmost border provinces. Image: Wikimedia
The move came after a cluster of infections was discovered among Malay Muslims who had returned from a religious pilgrimage in Malaysia, which has been harder hit by the pandemic than neighboring Thailand.

But Thai military hardliners breached the cessation of hostilities on April 29 when a small team of BRN operatives tried to slip past a security unit in Nong Chik district in Pattani province.

A well-placed source in the movement said the cell retreated in line with the instruction to avoid gunfights. Another attempt was made the next evening, but the rebels found themselves trapped in a fierce gunfight with security forces that culminated in the death of three combatants.

BRN later released a statement that “strongly condemns the actions of the RTG (Royal Thai Government) that failed to respect the hardships faced by the people of Patani during the Covid-19 outbreak. It shows that the RTG does not care about the humanitarian needs of the people of Patani.”

Observers on both sides of the political divide said the BRN statement was also directed at their supporters, urging them to stay the conciliatory course charted by the unilateral ceasefire. The Thai Army was indifferent to the BRN’s statement, casting the violence as usual to a breakdown in law and order.

Three days later, on May 3, gunmen on a motorbike drove up to two Paramilitary Rangers in Pattani’s Sai Buri district and started firing at close range, killing both on the spot. BRN leaders were silent on the lethal assault and it’s still not clear they signed off on what appeared to be a retaliatory operation.

Local media and the government officials were quick to point out that the two Rangers were returning to their base from a Covid-19 activity held at a village in the district. Rangers are often called upon to provide security to public health and provincial officials.

If the BRN admitted to giving the lethal order, then one could assume that its pledge to end hostilities during the pandemic has come to a fatal close.

Local community leaders who often act as go-betweens for BRN rebels and Thai security agencies acknowledge that BRN’s attempt to seize the conflict’s moral high ground through more international engagement will be hard to maintain with perceived as persistent Thai military provocations.

Some are now suggesting that BRN’s return to the underground until the negotiating environment is more conducive to a settlement. In the past, BRN took cold, if not isolated, comfort in never being obliged to confirm or deny its role in violent incidents. But with its recent outreach and engagement, it will be hard to return fully to the shadows.

Don Pathan is a Thailand-based security analyst. The views expressed here are his own.

Tablighi Jamaat and COVID-19: Nations Face Delicate Balancing Act

Commentary by Don Pathan
BenarNews

Yala, Thailand

Returnees, mostly migrant workers, are being processed by Thai Immigration
officials  crossing the border from Malaysia into Thailand on April 19, 2020, at
the Sungai Kolok checkpoint. (Photo by: The Patani)

Countries in South and Southeast Asia find themselves in a dilemma as they respond to the threat from COVID-19, as bad as things already are.

They have to walk a fine line between enforcing public health measures to curb the pandemic while not offending religious sensibilities, such as in the case of a conservative Muslim network whose name has made headlines across the region in recent weeks.

Getting Islamic religious authorities to go along with a government’s public health initiative generally wasn’t a problem. But a misjudgment by Tablighi Jamaat, a conservative Islamic reformist movement, has proven to be detrimental.

Many followers of the India-based missionary group tested positive for the coronavirus disease after attending massive religious revivalist gatherings in Malaysia, India, and Pakistan, despite warnings from medical personnel and fellow Muslims to observe social distancing as a way to protect people from the coronavirus. Other followers who traveled to Sulawesi Island in Indonesia to attend another gathering, which eventually was canceled, also caught the virus.

Tablighi members have said their fate lies in God’s hands. Meanwhile, authorities in his home country suspect the group’s Indian emir, Maulana Muhammad Saad Kandhlawi, of not doing enough to curb the recent mass gathering at his mosque in New Delhi.

Nearly a third of the 4,400 confirmed cases of the virus in India, as of April 6, was linked to the gathering at the movement’s headquarters in the Nizamuddin section of the Indian capital, officials said.

The Delhi Police Crime Branch is probing Maulana Saad and others for violating government orders on gathering restrictions, India Today reported on April 15.

In Malaysia in late February and early March, about 16,000 people from across South and Southeast Asia converged in Kuala Lumpur to attend another Tablighi gathering.

Within weeks of the Malaysian event, it became obvious that the gathering was a breeding ground for COVID-19. As of the end of last week, Malaysian authorities had linked more than 1,946 cases to that event.

This cluster has expanded to five generations of cases from which 26,021 samples were taken. From Brunei alone, out of the 50 Tablighi Jamaat members who attended the event in Kuala Lumpur, 45 tested positive for the virus, according to one report.

Thai followers of Tablighi

In Thailand, about 340 Thai Tablighi Jamaat followers who had attended the Malaysian event or had traveled to Indonesia for the gathering that was canceled tested positive for COVID-19 after returning home.

This cluster included 170 residents of the Thai Deep South. Most of the infected ones did not display any symptoms upon their return. But one by one, they showed up in hospitals during the weeks that followed.

On March 17, only four cases had been detected in Thailand’s southern border region, but that number jumped to more than 280 by mid-April.

Thai officials operating in the Muslim-majority and Malay-speaking far South face a bigger challenge in containing the virus because the border region is home to a separatist insurgency that has claimed more than 7,000 during the past 16 years.

But Barisan Revolusi Nasional (the National Revolutionary Front or BRN), the rebel group that controls virtually all of the combatants on the insurgent side, has cooperated and heeded the advice of local youth activists, like The Patani and PerMAS, as well as other local civil society organizations, by declaring a cessation to hostilities until the pandemic is brought under control.

The Patani's Artef Sohko talks to Thai Army officer at the Sungai Kolok border
crossing as they wait for  the returnees, mostly migrant workers, from Malaysia,
on April 19, 2020. (Credite: The Patani Photo)

The first wave of armed insurgency in this Malay-speaking region erupted in the early 1960s – 50 years after Thailand – then Siam – drew the border with British Malaya. Violence from the insurgency arose in response to Thailand’s policy of assimilation, which the Malays of Patani feel comes at the expense of their ethno-religious identity.

The vast majority of the more than 2 million residents of this historically contested region identify themselves as Malay – as opposed to Thai – and share the same mistrust of state agencies as the BRN separatists.

Tablighi Jamaat members in the Deep South constitute a small fraction, numbering in the tens of thousands. While they see themselves as Malays, they do not embrace the cultural and historical narrative of the Malays of Patani, at least not to the point of taking up arms against the state.

Thai Tablighis Don’t Back Insurgency

Tablighi Jamaat is a movement that prides itself on being apolitical.

Its work mainly consists of reviving the faith of “weaker” Muslims to ensure their passage to paradise. Until then, Muslims should practice their religion as it was practiced during the life of Prophet Muhammad. This means sleeping on a straw mat rather than a soft bed and brushing one’s teeth with a twig rather than a toothbrush.

However, certain aspects of the interpretation of Islam embraced by Tablighi Jamaat continue to pose problems for Muslims who otherwise might want to join the movement. These include the veneration for the movement’s founder and his family, the ritualization of certain select scriptures, and the 40-day preaching tour that all members are obliged to undertake annually regardless of the depth of one’s religious intellect.

In his book “Holy Ignorance: When Religion and Culture Part Ways,” Olivier Roy, a professor at Sciences Po in Paris, placed Tablighi Jamaat in the reformist camp, or “born again” believers who rebuild their identities through their rediscovery of religion. Along the way, these reformists, like the Wahabi and Salafi, break away from their cultural roots.

Roy pointed out that this shift did not exclusively apply to Muslims. In Christianity, such a shift is also taking place – from Catholicism and classic Protestant denominations, such as Methodism and Anglicanism, towards a more fundamentalist and charismatic form of religiosities, such as evangelicalism and Pentecostalism.

Reformists tend to reject culture, philosophy, and even theology to favor a literal reading of sacred texts and an immediate understanding of truth through individual faith. And as these reformists strive for “religious purity” along the way, space in-between of accommodation disappears, Roy said.

The Thai state may have a good working relationship with Tablighi Jamaat, especially in the conflict-affected far South where the group’s members don’t support the separatist insurgency.

But translating public health messages to people at the grassroots level, on the other hand, is still a challenge. As a Buddhist state, Thailand tries to be extra careful in issuing public directives that pertain exclusively to Muslims, such as cleansing rituals for loved ones who have died, as well as refraining from mass prayer at community mosques.

A perceived interference could very well push the Tablighi Jamaat members in Thailand toward the Emir in India whose stance is nothing less than a challenge to the governments around the region that are desperately trying to fight this pandemic and keep their societies and nations intact.

Don Pathan is a senior program officer at The Asia Foundation – Thailand. The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and not of BenarNews.

https://www.benarnews.org/english/commentaries/far-south-view/balancing-act-04202020160832.html

Southern Thai Rebels Score Points with COVID-19 Ceasefire

Commentary by Don Pathan
BenarNews

Yala, Thailand

BRN rebels in Thailand’s Deep South are known for being a shadowy bunch, but lately, the insurgents have emerged from the darkness and are trying hard to show the world that they can be responsible non-state actors.

The April 3 declaration by Barisan Revolusi Nasional (the National Revolutionary Front or BRN) that for now, it was ceasing all hostilities against the Thai military on humanitarian grounds because of the coronavirus pandemic was unprecedented in the history of the separatist insurgency, and the latest example of such an effort.

Left to Right: HRW's Sunai Phasuk, Gen. Wanlop Rugsanaoh,
Gen. Chinawat Mandate, and Don Pathan at the FCCT in Nov. 2019.

In January, BRN, the longstanding separatist movement that controls virtually all of the insurgents in the Deep South, signed the Deed of Commitment with Geneva Call, an international NGO based in Switzerland. It works with armed groups worldwide to encourage them to abide by the Geneva Convention, which regulates the conduct of armed conflict.

A month later, BRN issued a statement via YouTube, in which it urged residents of this historically contested region to heed the advice of medical personnel working to contain the spread of COVID-19.

The group’s new call for a ceasefire was in line with an appeal made by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres for warring parties in conflicts around the globe to observe ceasefires in order to help contain the deadly virus.

Military offensive

Meanwhile, until just days ago, Thai security forces were carrying out search-and-destroy operations in Ta Se, a sub-district of Yala province, to flush out militant cells in this vast wetland the Muslim-majority far south. Thai troops wrongly thought the operation would be easy.

A game-changer came when photographs of one of the militants killed in a gunfight, and who was severely mutilated, surfaced; the same day also saw a powerful twin bombing outside the Southern Border Provinces Administrative Center (SBPAC) in Yala – a stern warning by the insurgents to the Thai side to back down.

Sources within the BRN movement claimed they had not been aggressive. Ever since the coronavirus penetrated this border region, BRN operatives said they were on the receiving end, starting with the killing of five insurgents in a gunfight at their makeshift camp on the foothills of a mountain in Narathiwat province on Feb. 23. The fight then shifted to the wetlands of Ta Se in the weeks that followed.

There were concerns that the army’s offensive would jeopardize a peace process launched on Jan. 20 in Malaysia between the BRN and Thai negotiators. But even without the fighting in the field, the talks were already on shaky ground.

Before the formal announcement in Kuala Lumpur in January that the talks were starting, BRN’s political wing had met separately with Thai government negotiators in Indonesia and Germany, with the help of another foreign NGO.

BRN’s blunder

BRN’s negotiators went to the table without inputs from the militants in the field, thinking that the terms of reference (TOR) were the only thing on their plate. But Bangkok has never agreed to such terms with any of the Patani Malay groups because Thailand always has been non-committal.

The Thai negotiators and the BRN’s political wing were supposed to dwell on the seven-page draft TOR for some time. But it didn’t take long for their secret meetings in Indonesia and Germany to be exposed.

As expected, the designated facilitator of peace talks, Malaysia, was furious for being left in the dark. As a gesture of reconciliation, Bangkok decided to credit Kuala Lumpur and praise Malaysian officials for all the wonderful work that made the Jan. 20 event between the Thai government and BRN negotiators possible. So far, Kuala Lumpur has hosted two meetings between the Thai negotiators and the BRN’s political wing.

For the BRN militants, the problem wasn’t the talks or keeping the Malaysian officials out of the loop; the problem was that the political-wing people had started the talks without addressing key questions within the movement. To correct the sloppy mistake of coming to the negotiating table prematurely, BRN’s secretariat told its members to mend fences with the militants fighting in the field.

Even with that, BRN people still can’t get the new narrative right. Is the BRN willing to settle for something less than the right to self-determination, or are the talks a stepping stone toward some sort of autonomy to be followed by independence? These are some of the unanswered questions from the combatants.

And as the political and military wings of the BRN tried to patch things up, the coronavirus struck the Deep South. The number of infections went up considerably after hundreds of Tablighi Jamaat members returned from Malaysia and Indonesia, where they had traveled for religious revivals in early and mid-March, respectively.

Silence on the Thai side

Now, the Thai government has not yet said anything publicly about the BRN’s ceasefire declaration.

Perhaps this is out of fear that any positive statement, like welcoming the insurgent group’s humanitarian gesture, would upset the top leaders in the government and in the armed forces, especially Gen. Apirat Kongsompong, the powerful army chief. Many have said that he opposes the current southern peace initiative because he believes the country has made too many concessions.

Meanwhile, in the Deep South, Lt. Gen. Pornsak Poolsawat, the region’s top army commander, refuses to see the violence through political lenses. As far as he’s concerned, he is upholding the law of the land.

Three months ago, Apirat led a delegation to Indonesia, where he succeeded in persuading his counterpart to agree to curb any of BRN’s activities in the world’s largest Muslim-majority country.

He also got the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), a separatist movement that secured a peace agreement with Jakarta in 2005, to agree to act as a monitor of the Thai-BRN talks. Thai negotiators and the designated facilitator in Kuala Lumpur were left in the dark and wondering what was Apirat’s real intention.

For many of the generals among Thailand’s top military brass, treating the Patani Malay separatist movements as their equals is a bitter pill, which they refuse to swallow.

For the time being, the army has retreated from the wetlands of Ta Se, but unannounced visits and searches of residents’ homes in the name of national security continue unabated.

BRN may have won some points by heeding the U.N. secretary-general’s call to silence their guns during a global pandemic, but the rebels are still up against a mighty army, whose anger only deepens every time its enemies become that much more legitimate in the eyes of the world.

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/brownie-points-04072020145240.html

Thailand, BRN Rebels Open New Chapter in Southern Peace Process

Commentary by Don Pathan
BenarNews

Bangkok

The Thai government, after nearly 15 years of trying, has finally succeeded in getting the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) southern rebel group to the negotiations table.

Thai negotiators and members of the foreign affairs committee of BRN, the long-standing Patani Malay armed separatist movement that controls virtually all of the insurgents in the field, met in Kuala Lumpur last month to officially announce the start of direct peace talks.

Unlike past peace initiatives in Thailand’s Deep South, this meeting was mandated by BRN’s Dewan Pimpinan Parti (DPP), the movement’s secretive ruling council of elders who function more like spiritual leaders than military commanders.

Anas Abdulrahman (also known as Hipni Mareh), a former teacher at the Thammawitaya Mulinithi School in Yala province, led the BRN delegates at the Kuala Lumpur meeting. That was the same school where the late Sapae-ing Baso – the man whom Thai officials believed to be the insurgent group’s spiritual leader – served as principal before he fled in 2004 to escape arrest.

Hipni was arrested then along with seven other religious teachers. All were granted bail in 2007 as part of the then-military-government’s efforts to win hearts and minds. Hipni jumped bail, slipped across the border into Malaysia, and only made his first general public appearance at a press conference that followed the meeting in Kuala Lumpur in late January.

But in spite of DPP’s endorsement, a meaningful peace process is still a long way away.

BRN’s chain of command is fluid and its command-and-control untested. The movement’s mystique – its talk of independence and equating that to a moral duty – has helped keep hope alive to a certain extent.

The loyalty of its fighters lies mainly with their respective field commanders, not the movement. Such an arrangement is a recipe for a breakup if there are disagreements over major changes in policy or strategy.

Critical phase

Indeed, the next few weeks will be crucial as BRN leaders try to create an understanding with their field commanders about the latest decision, arguably the most important one since the decades-old insurgency in Thailand’s far south reignited 16 years ago.

Artef Sohko, the chairman of The Patani, a local political action group promoting the right to self-determination for the mainly Muslim and Malay-speaking southern border region, said BRN should have come up with a new narrative before taking part at last month’s meeting.

For more than a decade, the BRN has equated the notion of independence for the Patani people to a moral obligation.

“It doesn’t look like this is still the case now. And how would they explain [that] to the combatants on the ground?” Artef said.

At the press conference that marked the close of the first official meeting, Hipni painted a rosy picture of how the two sides – Thailand and the BRN – had always committed to peace and that they had been conducting a series of back-channel talks over the years while the official track of negotiations came to a standstill.

But the recent past tells a very different story.

Hipni conveniently overlooked the series of major violent incidents, including some deadly ones that BRN operatives had carried out to derail the various peace efforts and counter Thailand’s effort to get the group’s hardline leaders to the table. This was as recent as the Aug. 2, 2019, bombings that rocked Bangkok as Thailand hosted a meeting foreign ministers from ASEAN states and other countries.

According to sources on both sides of the political divide, the bombings were a stern warning to Thais and Malaysian facilitators to stop harassing the DPP to come to the table.

A similar message was conveyed in January 2019 when militants in Narathiwat province killed two Buddhist monks at a temple and four custodians of a public school, as well as a retired teacher in nearby Songkhla province.

Shinawatra peace initiative

BRN has never taken the idea of face-to-face talks with the Thais lightly.

Such a harsh stance was demonstrated as far back as March 30, 2012, when three car bombs exploded at the same time on a street in Yala province.

Tripple car bomb in the heart of Yala on March 31, 2012, a deadly warning to the Yingluck Government. 

A bomb also went off in the basement parking lot at a shopping mall in Hat Yai, a commercial hub of the Deep South that sits just north of the conflict-affected areas. Altogether, 13 died and about 200 were wounded on that dreadful day.

The incident came two weeks after 16 exiled Patani separatist leaders met with deposed and fugitive former Thai leader Thaksin Shinawatra, the brother of then-Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra.

BRN felt insulted by Thaksin’s excuses; he had blamed his heavy-handed counter-insurgency strategy as prime minister on the Thai army, accusing it of feeding him distorted information. He urged all sides to let bygones be bygones and move on with a peace process.

Besides the deadly message from the BRN – not to mention that there was no buy-in from the Thai army – Yingluck pushed through her brother’s initiative by launching a peace process in February 2013, with Malaysia designated as the official facilitator.

Representatives from the rebel side included self-proclaimed BRN members, like Hassan Bin Toyib, who the Thai security apparatus wrongly assumed was a BRN insider who had come to the table with the DPP’s full blessing.

BRN’s ruling council did send a couple of people to the talks. They included Adam Muhammed Nur, its then foreign affairs chief, and Abdul Karim Khalid, a leading member of the youth wing. The two were there to derail the process.

The Thai army didn’t care if Yingluck’s peace initiative succeeded or failed; after all, it wasn’t part of the talks’ inception and planning. Neither was the BRN, for that matter.

The following year, in May 2014, the army ousted Yingluck’s government in a bloodless coup. The generals then thought long and hard about what to do with her peace initiative. Not wanting to be seen as a bunch of non-peace loving military brass, the junta set up a multi-agency Peace Dialogue Panel with the National Security Council being the engine.

The military government’s peace initiative was to be “inclusive,” which was something different from Yingluck’s dealings with the BRN – at least in name.

But the new approach proved counterproductive. It provided BRN with an excuse to reject Bangkok’s peace process on the grounds that none of the participants, particularly those sitting on MARA Patani, an umbrella group representing various rebel factions in the talks, had much influence over militants in the field.

For the time being, the status quo is likely to continue between the two sides. The BRN combatants will carry on with their campaign of violence.

Bangkok, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to be prepared to make any meaningful concessions, even though discussions among policy people are touching on important issues, such as making more room for the Patani Malay people’s cultural space and historical narrative.

Don Pathan is a Thailand-based security analyst. The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and not of BenarNews.