Govt and civic organisations have been quick to condemn separatists over the killing of a family in Narathiwat – but there’s more here than meets the eye
Don Pathan
Special to The Nation
The killing of a family of four Thai Buddhists, including an eight-year-old boy, as they made their way to school along a back road in Narathiwat’s Rueso district earlier this month has generated condemnation from all quarters.
Police gathered scores of rounds from M16 and AK47 machineguns and a 9mm handgun at the scene of the attack, which saw the pickup truck carrying the four victims veer off the road and into trees.
Police have not ruled out a personal dispute as the motive. But given the method of attack, all fingers are pointing to the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), the erstwhile separatist movement that controls virtually all the insurgents in the far South.
Unlike other rebel groups around the world, the BRN does not have an identifiable political wing or spokesman to confirm or deny such allegations. But their refusal to surface is mainly due to the fact that the Thai government is not willing to engage them in a frank manner and on an equal footing.
Information about the identity and thinking of the BRN leadership is scarce but operatives say that, as a policy, their combatants are not supposed to attack innocent civilians. However, mistakes have been made and “collateral damage” is sometimes unavoidable, they add.
Rules of engagement
Efforts have been made to get both state forces and separatists to respect rules of engagement outlined in the Geneva Convention. But for the time being, combatants on both sides decide for themselves what constitute legitimate targets, as well as how their operations are carried out.
Like any militant separatist movement, the BRN identifies “legitimate targets” – which include informants who provide information about their activities to state security forces.
The suspected collaborator, though, is supposed to receive at least one warning before militants step in.
In like fashion, members of pro-government death squads or rogue officers target local residents suspected of being close to separatists. Officially, the government does not have a policy on such “target killing”.
In the eyes of state forces and their militant supporters, a cleric like the late Abdulateh Todir from Yala’s Tambon Patae was considered fair game because of his alleged closeness to a local militant cell. He was gunned down in November 2012 in Yala’s Yaha district. But the insurgents didn’t think he was a “fair” target and responded with a series of vicious bombings and ambushes over the next six weeks.
The deliberate targeting of innocent civilians, such as a group of villagers in a crowded teashop, on the other hand, is understood to be part of the tit-for-tat hostilities between the separatists and state security forces.
One high profile example of deliberate targeting of civilians was the February 2014 killings of three Malay Muslim boys, aged 3, 5 and 9, in Narathiwat’s Bacho district by at least two Army Rangers who, at a press conference announcing their capture, insisted they had acted alone and not on the orders of their superiors.
The Rangers’ surrender was said to be part of a concession deal by the government to get the insurgents to end revenge killings that included the murder of three Buddhist women shot at point-blank range and their bodies set on fire. But when the two suspects appeared in court, they retracted their confession and were immediately released on grounds of insufficient evidence.
Tragic mistake
In the early years of this phase of insurgency, which erupted in January 2004, soft targets such as public schools, monks and teachers were attacked – although not very often. A significant number of local residents deemed sympathetic or too close to the insurgents have been killed as well, including Muslim community leaders and Islamic religious teachers.
While it was pretty clear that the boys in Bacho were deliberately targeted, the same cannot be said for the killing of the family in Rueso two weeks ago. The incident prompted all sorts of condemnation and criticism from Thai officials and rights organisations. Unfortunately, most of it lacked perspective.
Despite the long history of tit-for-tat conflict between state forces and the insurgents, unofficial rules of engagement do exist. The agreement is not in writing, but there is nevertheless an understanding between the two sides that there are red lines you do not cross. Failing to respect them will invite bloody, sometimes overwhelming retaliation.
Meanwhile Malay Muslim locals point out that Islam permits Muslims to take up arms against unjust rulers but forbids the militants from decapitating, castrating or otherwise mutilating dead government soldiers.
Such acts are not in line with Islamic principles, local religious leaders argue. Insurgents have responded by ending their practice of defiling dead government soldiers.
Another example of how combatants have heeded locals’ calls for greater “civility” in the conflict concerns the arson attacks on public schools, which propagate Thailand’s state-construct identity and narrative.
In 2007, a total of 164 schools in the far South came under arson attack. That number dropped to 14 the following year after criticism from local residents and clerics. The Thai government was of course quick to credit their security measures for the drop, deliberately ignoring the wider perspective.
Meanwhile the government dismisses any suggestion that its military sanctions the use of death squads, though locals say it’s hard to think otherwise when they witness armed hooded men jump off a pickup truck and mow down a teashop full of Muslim villagers with machineguns.
More than 6,800 people, mostly Malay Muslims, have died in insurgency-related violence in the Malay-speaking southernmost provinces since January 2004.
For public consumption, Thai authorities blame practically every violent incident on the separatists. But they have not succeeded in influencing the narrative that drives the insurgents and legitimises the armed struggle in the eyes of many ordinary residents.
And the more the authorities blur the line between what constitutes collateral damage and intentional killings, the wider the trust gap between the authorities and the local Malay Muslim population.
Separatist sources say they are disturbed that civil society organisations and community leaders are often quick to take the government’s line before looking at the facts available.
A BRN operative points out that mistakes have been made by the insurgents, but mistakes are not the same as intention. The BRN says collateral damage has been part of its internal debate for a very long time. But too often, militants in the field feel they cannot retreat for fear of retaliation or hot pursuit.
Another built-in protection measure is the requirement that the hitman or hitmen must not come from the local militant cell, to reduce the possibility of facial recognition. With these kinds of restraints, tragic mistakes are bound to occur, BRN members say.
Don Pathan is a security consultant and member of the Patani Forum (www.pataniforum.com), a civil society organisation based in Thailand’s conflict affected far South. The group is dedicated to critical discussion on the nature of the conflict in the historically contested region.
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/news/opinion/30309478#.WMyBkH0z7lg.facebook
DON PATHAN - Thailand-based security analyst/development consultant (Photo: Anjaman Pass, Afghanistan, with two Northern Alliance fighters, October 2001)
Showing posts with label Rules of engagement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rules of engagement. Show all posts
Sunday, 19 March 2017
Tuesday, 7 April 2015
EDITORIAL: Take away the licence to kill
TRIGGER-HAPPY SECURITY OFFICIALS IN THE SOUTH NEED TO REASSESS PROCEDURES THAT FUEL THE ANGER ON WHICH INSURGENCY FEEDS
Thai security forces are in hot water again over their actions in the deep South. This time the controversy is over the shooting to death of four young men in Pattani’s Yarang district.
According to the official version, a group of paramilitary rangers were tracking suspected insurgents who had gathered in Pattani’s Tung Yang Daeng District to plan attacks against government security agencies. The scene of the gathering was a construction site at a village in the district.
The rangers’ actions in storming the gathering and shooting dead four young men has drawn fierce criticism from the rector of Fatoni University, where two of the victims had been studying.
Dr Ismail Lutfi Japakiya has every right to voice his concern, especially now that his students are at the centre of the debate.
Dr Lutfi is proud of his university’s reputation as “cleaner than clean” and not involved in the region’s ongoing separatist conflict.
Academics and researchers who work in this contested region see the insurgency as part of a nationalist movement.
Meanwhile, Lutfi’s brand of Islam places religion above all else, which is why those very same academics and researchers do not talk about his institution in the light of separatism.
Thai authorities, of course, disagree with his claim that none of the students at Fatoni University has embraced separatism as an ideology or has joined the separatist militants.
They claim that just because the university as an institution does not embrace or promote Patani Malay separatism, that doesn’t mean its students – including the two shot dead in Tung Yang Daeng – hadn’t embraced the ideology.
Lutfi and his university staff have in the past been helpful to the state, often making themselves available to receive foreign dignitaries and reporters invited to the South by the government. To show its appreciation, the Yingluck Shinawatra administration added
another academic building to the Fatoni campus.
That appreciation must now be extended by ensuring justice for the two dead students and their families.
The problem of trigger-happy Thai security officials is nothing new in the deep South, but this latest incident adds weight to arguments that their approach and tactics are in urgent need of an overhaul.
In January 2012, soldiers attached to a ranger unit in Pattani’s Nong Chik district, who were reportedly “itching for a fight” after their base had been attacked by militants, gunned down a group of Muslim funeral-goers who happened to be passing, killing four and injuring five.
Expectations that the military would reassess their rules of engagement in response to that debacle came to nothing.
The decade-old emergency decree, coupled with a culture of impunity for security officials, has helped foster a “shoot-to-kill” attitude among security officials. They know that the law – which many locals have dubbed a licence to kill – will protect them. Public indifference in the rest of Thailand towards the plight of Malay Muslims in the southernmost provinces also ensures that whatever controversial measures the government takes in the region will be met with little or no criticism elsewhere.
Dr Lutfi has maintained a good working relationship with the Thai state and, thus, the authorities owe it to him to conduct their investigation into the Tung Yang Daeng shootings honestly and accurately.
If the two students were part of the insurgency, the burden is on the state to convince the public of that fact. Meanwhile, Thai security officials’ standard operating procedures in the South must be closely scrutinised and reassessed.
We should not lose sight of the fact that more than 6,000 people – most of them Malay Muslim residents – have been killed in insurgency-related violence in the three southernmost provinces.
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/news/opinion/today_editorial/30257529
Thai security forces are in hot water again over their actions in the deep South. This time the controversy is over the shooting to death of four young men in Pattani’s Yarang district.
According to the official version, a group of paramilitary rangers were tracking suspected insurgents who had gathered in Pattani’s Tung Yang Daeng District to plan attacks against government security agencies. The scene of the gathering was a construction site at a village in the district.
The rangers’ actions in storming the gathering and shooting dead four young men has drawn fierce criticism from the rector of Fatoni University, where two of the victims had been studying.
Dr Ismail Lutfi Japakiya has every right to voice his concern, especially now that his students are at the centre of the debate.
Dr Lutfi is proud of his university’s reputation as “cleaner than clean” and not involved in the region’s ongoing separatist conflict.
Academics and researchers who work in this contested region see the insurgency as part of a nationalist movement.
Meanwhile, Lutfi’s brand of Islam places religion above all else, which is why those very same academics and researchers do not talk about his institution in the light of separatism.
Thai authorities, of course, disagree with his claim that none of the students at Fatoni University has embraced separatism as an ideology or has joined the separatist militants.
They claim that just because the university as an institution does not embrace or promote Patani Malay separatism, that doesn’t mean its students – including the two shot dead in Tung Yang Daeng – hadn’t embraced the ideology.
Lutfi and his university staff have in the past been helpful to the state, often making themselves available to receive foreign dignitaries and reporters invited to the South by the government. To show its appreciation, the Yingluck Shinawatra administration added
another academic building to the Fatoni campus.
That appreciation must now be extended by ensuring justice for the two dead students and their families.
The problem of trigger-happy Thai security officials is nothing new in the deep South, but this latest incident adds weight to arguments that their approach and tactics are in urgent need of an overhaul.
In January 2012, soldiers attached to a ranger unit in Pattani’s Nong Chik district, who were reportedly “itching for a fight” after their base had been attacked by militants, gunned down a group of Muslim funeral-goers who happened to be passing, killing four and injuring five.
Expectations that the military would reassess their rules of engagement in response to that debacle came to nothing.
The decade-old emergency decree, coupled with a culture of impunity for security officials, has helped foster a “shoot-to-kill” attitude among security officials. They know that the law – which many locals have dubbed a licence to kill – will protect them. Public indifference in the rest of Thailand towards the plight of Malay Muslims in the southernmost provinces also ensures that whatever controversial measures the government takes in the region will be met with little or no criticism elsewhere.
Dr Lutfi has maintained a good working relationship with the Thai state and, thus, the authorities owe it to him to conduct their investigation into the Tung Yang Daeng shootings honestly and accurately.
If the two students were part of the insurgency, the burden is on the state to convince the public of that fact. Meanwhile, Thai security officials’ standard operating procedures in the South must be closely scrutinised and reassessed.
We should not lose sight of the fact that more than 6,000 people – most of them Malay Muslim residents – have been killed in insurgency-related violence in the three southernmost provinces.
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/news/opinion/today_editorial/30257529
Saturday, 15 December 2012
Revenge killings perpetuate violent cycle in the deep South
Don Pathan
The Nation
In mid-2005, less than two years after the current insurgency exploded in the Muslim-majority three southernmost provinces, Thai security officials began to reconnect with exiled separatist leaders. They were hoping that these ageing leaders from various long-standing separatist groups could talk sense into the new generation of militants, locally known as juwae, or "fighter", in the Patani Malay dialect.
One issue the exiled leaders always put on the table whenever they meet the Thai side is the target killings of religious leaders by pro-government death squads. Naturally, the government side points to the collateral damage, as well as target killings of innocent people.
Insurgents insist that spies are fair game. Nevertheless, there have been incidents in which innocent civilians were targeted as part of the tit-for-tat between the two sides. An eye for an eye, so they say.
The problem for observers is that, unlike conflicts in other parts of the world, the insurgents in Thailand's deep South do not surface to make claims. This is also very different from the previous generation of Patani Malay separatists, who began to dwindle in the late 1980s.
Today, the theatre of violence is not just in remote areas but in towns and cities, and no one really knows who's behind the attacks, such as Tuesday's drive-by shooting on a teashop in Narathiwat's Rangae district that killed four and injured four.
For the past nine years, one thing has been clear: the juwae, as part of their coordinated campaign, have continuously turned up the heat, inflicting greater psychological damage with their attacks.
Remember how irritated the authorities were at the very first car bomb near a hotel in Sungai Kolok in October 2009? Today, bombs are hidden on motorbikes, in pickup trucks, cars and under the tarmac, waiting for security personnel to pass by.
Often, these attacks are not as discreet. An attack in Pattani's Mayo district last July, when insurgents in three pickup trucks drove up to soldiers on two motorbikes and began firing at close range, was carried out in front of security cameras. It jolted the entire nation and forced the government into a knee-jerk reaction.
While some attacks are easier to predict, such as an ambush of police or soldiers followed by a brief gunfight, roadside car bombs are not.
As in other sub-national conflicts, security officials are pretty much sitting ducks. But insurgents' choices of targets and tactics, on the other hand, change often. In 2007, more than 100 schools came under arson attack. The following year, less than ten.
According to the website of the Regional Education Office No 12 (www.coad3.org/web/), an entity of the Education Ministry that oversees the southernmost provinces, nine teachers were killed in 2004. But from 2005-2007, 65 teachers were killed. The figure dropped by half from 2008-2011, with an average of ten teachers killed each year. And this year, only two teachers had been killed as of October 3.
All that changed on November 14 when gunmen, believed to be part of a pro-government death squad, killed an imam in Yala's Yaha district. Abdullateh Todir, 49, was a member of the Islamic Committee of Yala, as well as chairman of the Imam Association of Yaha. He is a resident of Tambon Patae, an extremely volatile area in this highly contested region of Thailand.
An exiled leader in the BRN-Coordinate accused the government side of killing the imam. The cleric's relatives and friends agreed. There was an attempt on Abdullateh's life about a year ago but a bullet missed him and took his daughter's life instead. Days later, a team of three Special Forces soldiers were providing security for the imam. The team leader, a lieutenant wearing a sarong and traditional Malay shirt, and accompanied by two armed soldiers in fatigues, rode pillion with Abdullateh up and down the Yaha-Bannang Sata backroads. "We're friends," said the smiling lieutenant, pointing to the imam, as he looked at this correspondent, who visited the cleric the day after the failed attempt on his life.
Abdullateh's neighbourhood, Tambon Patae, is one of the reddest areas classified by authorities as a "red zone." Thai official sources said the Special Forces and civilians may have wanted Abdullateh alive because they saw him as a potential go-between for the authorities wanting to set up a line of communication with the insurgents. But others may have found him guilty by association, said the BRN source.
The killing of Abdullateh set off a wave of retaliation including a motorbike bombing of a Paramilitary Ranger unit in downtown Yala, the bombing of a train bogey carrying security personnel in Narathiwat, arson attacks on a school in Pattani, and attacks against three teachers, two of whom were killed.
As part of the damage control, Thawee Sodsong, head of the Southern Border Provinces Administration Centre (SBPAC), ordered an investigation into the killing of Abullateh.
But that hasn't changed much on the ground. On Tuesday in Narathiwat's Rangae district, a three-man death squad dressed in black jumped out of a pickup truck and fired on a teashop full of local Malay-Muslim villagers. Four, including an 11-month-old baby, were killed and another four were wounded.
Later in the day, in Tambon Panan in Pattani's Mayo district, five gunmen charged into a schoolyard and shot to death the director and a teacher. As in all other incidents, police said the attackers were insurgents.
Frustrations run high, indeed, especially among agencies that are against the use of death squads to even the score. Many believe target killings have created a reverse effect, such as encouraging people to take up arms to avenge the death of their imam or friends or relatives.
Others, like the SBPAC, believe in establishing dialogue with the separatists. The problem is that their dealings with the old guard have not delivered the desired outcome.
"The government fails to end vigilantism allegedly carried out by rogue security units in revenge for insurgent attacks on Buddhist Thai officials and civilians," said Sunai Phasuk, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch.
"Insurgents may claim that abuses by the security forces justify their attacks, but the government should not allow its troops to adopt the same logic. Any attempt to cover up the misconduct of security forces will further escalate a cycle of reprisal violence. And clearly, this is not an environment to build communal trust, necessary for a peace dialogue," Sunai said.
Judging from the violence that has been unleashed over the past four weeks, it may be a long time before the situation returns to normal, whatever normal means.
The Nation
In mid-2005, less than two years after the current insurgency exploded in the Muslim-majority three southernmost provinces, Thai security officials began to reconnect with exiled separatist leaders. They were hoping that these ageing leaders from various long-standing separatist groups could talk sense into the new generation of militants, locally known as juwae, or "fighter", in the Patani Malay dialect.
One issue the exiled leaders always put on the table whenever they meet the Thai side is the target killings of religious leaders by pro-government death squads. Naturally, the government side points to the collateral damage, as well as target killings of innocent people.
Insurgents insist that spies are fair game. Nevertheless, there have been incidents in which innocent civilians were targeted as part of the tit-for-tat between the two sides. An eye for an eye, so they say.
The problem for observers is that, unlike conflicts in other parts of the world, the insurgents in Thailand's deep South do not surface to make claims. This is also very different from the previous generation of Patani Malay separatists, who began to dwindle in the late 1980s.
Today, the theatre of violence is not just in remote areas but in towns and cities, and no one really knows who's behind the attacks, such as Tuesday's drive-by shooting on a teashop in Narathiwat's Rangae district that killed four and injured four.
For the past nine years, one thing has been clear: the juwae, as part of their coordinated campaign, have continuously turned up the heat, inflicting greater psychological damage with their attacks.
Remember how irritated the authorities were at the very first car bomb near a hotel in Sungai Kolok in October 2009? Today, bombs are hidden on motorbikes, in pickup trucks, cars and under the tarmac, waiting for security personnel to pass by.
Often, these attacks are not as discreet. An attack in Pattani's Mayo district last July, when insurgents in three pickup trucks drove up to soldiers on two motorbikes and began firing at close range, was carried out in front of security cameras. It jolted the entire nation and forced the government into a knee-jerk reaction.
While some attacks are easier to predict, such as an ambush of police or soldiers followed by a brief gunfight, roadside car bombs are not.
As in other sub-national conflicts, security officials are pretty much sitting ducks. But insurgents' choices of targets and tactics, on the other hand, change often. In 2007, more than 100 schools came under arson attack. The following year, less than ten.
According to the website of the Regional Education Office No 12 (www.coad3.org/web/), an entity of the Education Ministry that oversees the southernmost provinces, nine teachers were killed in 2004. But from 2005-2007, 65 teachers were killed. The figure dropped by half from 2008-2011, with an average of ten teachers killed each year. And this year, only two teachers had been killed as of October 3.
All that changed on November 14 when gunmen, believed to be part of a pro-government death squad, killed an imam in Yala's Yaha district. Abdullateh Todir, 49, was a member of the Islamic Committee of Yala, as well as chairman of the Imam Association of Yaha. He is a resident of Tambon Patae, an extremely volatile area in this highly contested region of Thailand.
An exiled leader in the BRN-Coordinate accused the government side of killing the imam. The cleric's relatives and friends agreed. There was an attempt on Abdullateh's life about a year ago but a bullet missed him and took his daughter's life instead. Days later, a team of three Special Forces soldiers were providing security for the imam. The team leader, a lieutenant wearing a sarong and traditional Malay shirt, and accompanied by two armed soldiers in fatigues, rode pillion with Abdullateh up and down the Yaha-Bannang Sata backroads. "We're friends," said the smiling lieutenant, pointing to the imam, as he looked at this correspondent, who visited the cleric the day after the failed attempt on his life.
Abdullateh's neighbourhood, Tambon Patae, is one of the reddest areas classified by authorities as a "red zone." Thai official sources said the Special Forces and civilians may have wanted Abdullateh alive because they saw him as a potential go-between for the authorities wanting to set up a line of communication with the insurgents. But others may have found him guilty by association, said the BRN source.
The killing of Abdullateh set off a wave of retaliation including a motorbike bombing of a Paramilitary Ranger unit in downtown Yala, the bombing of a train bogey carrying security personnel in Narathiwat, arson attacks on a school in Pattani, and attacks against three teachers, two of whom were killed.
As part of the damage control, Thawee Sodsong, head of the Southern Border Provinces Administration Centre (SBPAC), ordered an investigation into the killing of Abullateh.
But that hasn't changed much on the ground. On Tuesday in Narathiwat's Rangae district, a three-man death squad dressed in black jumped out of a pickup truck and fired on a teashop full of local Malay-Muslim villagers. Four, including an 11-month-old baby, were killed and another four were wounded.
Later in the day, in Tambon Panan in Pattani's Mayo district, five gunmen charged into a schoolyard and shot to death the director and a teacher. As in all other incidents, police said the attackers were insurgents.
Frustrations run high, indeed, especially among agencies that are against the use of death squads to even the score. Many believe target killings have created a reverse effect, such as encouraging people to take up arms to avenge the death of their imam or friends or relatives.
Others, like the SBPAC, believe in establishing dialogue with the separatists. The problem is that their dealings with the old guard have not delivered the desired outcome.
"The government fails to end vigilantism allegedly carried out by rogue security units in revenge for insurgent attacks on Buddhist Thai officials and civilians," said Sunai Phasuk, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch.
"Insurgents may claim that abuses by the security forces justify their attacks, but the government should not allow its troops to adopt the same logic. Any attempt to cover up the misconduct of security forces will further escalate a cycle of reprisal violence. And clearly, this is not an environment to build communal trust, necessary for a peace dialogue," Sunai said.
Judging from the violence that has been unleashed over the past four weeks, it may be a long time before the situation returns to normal, whatever normal means.
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