Since January 2004, Islamic separatists have been at war in southern Thailand, a conflict that has resulted in more than 1,000 deaths with no end in sight. Consequently, Thailand seems to be teetering on the edge of becoming yet another front in the Global War on Terrorism.
Thailand's insurgents maintain a high operational tempo. In 2004, for example, assassinations averaged more than one a day, with an average of 6.3 bombings and16.6 arson attacks a month, and a total of six raids for the year.1 There were no classic ambushes. In 2005, the frequency of insurgent attacks increased with almost two assassinations a day, 18.8 bombings a month, 12.8 arson attacks a month, and a total of 43 raids and 45 ambushes for the year. These figures not only indicate the conflict has gained momentum, but they also demonstrate that the insurgents have dramatically increased their military capabilities.
The insurgents strike government and civilian targets, the latter being mostly Thai Buddhists. They also murder fellow Muslims who cooperate with authorities and do not join their cause. Consequently, this makes them takfiri Muslims, in violation of mainstream Islamic tradition and in league with Salafists, who follow the philosophy of al Qaeda.
Most assassins shoot their victims at close range with pistols, but on occasion they decapitate people and leave the heads in public areas, such as on well-traveled roads. In June 2005, eight beheadings were reported. In one scenario in Yala province, separatists placed logs across a road, forcing a husband on a motorbike to stop, with his wife and dog in a sidecar. When they did, the separatists emerged from hiding and shot and hacked them to death, including the dog.2
Insurgents have bombed hotels, market stalls, restaurants, police stations, and military convoys escorting teachers to school. They make improvised explosive devices (IED)s out of dynamite, TNT, ammonium nitrate, C-4, and Powergel, a plastic-bonded emulsion explosive that miners use for rock cutting. Most IEDs are between 5 and 10 kilograms, but insurgents blew up a 100-kilogram car bomb on 17 February 2005 during a wedding at the Marina Hotel in Narathiwat province. Centered in an open-air bar area, the blast killed six and injured 44.3
History
From 1390 to 1909, the present area of conflict was an independent Islamic state called Patani (spelled with a double "t" when it stopped being an independent state). Before that, it was a Hindu Buddhist empire. Most of Patani"s inhabitants were and still are Muslims and ethnic Malays who speak Yawi, a dialect of Malay. Unlike the rest of Thailand, the south's minority is Thai and Buddhist.
Thailand fought several wars with Patani to maintain it as a tributary state and to keep it from falling under control of Thailand's main enemy to the west, Burma. It took full control of the area in 1909, and some historians say the locals never accepted Thai rule and have resisted ever since.4 But the many rebel groups that formed never coordinated with each other, and radical Islam was never their motivation. Separatism was. Islam would come later.
Thai nationalist policies through the years have reportedly exacerbated the ill feelings many southerners have for Bangkok. Proud and charismatic leaders such as Prime Minister Phibun Songkhram, who seized power by way of a military coup in the late 1930s, passed laws to force the south to change its overall way of life. Daniel J. Pojar Jr's excellent 2005 thesis from the Naval Postgraduate School summed up the government's actions:5
of Prime Minister Phibun Songkhram that began in 1938. Gaining power
as the result of another military coup, Phibun immediately launched a
campaign to eliminate the Malay-Muslim cultural identity for the sake of
nationalism. This campaign assaulted the Malay-Muslim identity on all fronts,
including the arenas of education, language, dress, and religious practices.
General Prem Tinsulanonda, who became prime minister in March 1980, instituted policies that restored order in part by addressing Muslim grievances and giving them a stake in local government with the Southern Border Provinces Administrative Centre, or SBPAC. The SBPAC also addressed government corruption, which had added fuel to separatist criticisms and caused mistrust of police and administrative officials. Prem further initiated a counterinsurgency program run by Task Force-43, which provided security for the south through the CPM program, short for civilian-police-military. The program combined assets to produce intelligence and plan and execute military operations against separatists, which were effective. As a result, rebel actions largely subsided for nearly two decades.6
Then in April 2001, separatists attacked several police and civilian targets, including a hotel and the Hat Yai train station in Songkhla. Occasional violence continued at a low level into the fall of 2003, but on 4 January 2004, the bottom dropped out. More than 30 insurgents executed a textbook raid on the Rajanakarin army base in Narathiwat, looting it of more than 300 assault rifles, scores of pistols, four M60 machine guns, and ammunition. The attackers killed several soldiers, slitting the throats of four, and told Muslim troops to leave the army and abandon Thailand.7 Then a seemingly endless series of assassinations and bombings indicated that, suddenly, Bangkok had a real guerrilla war on its hands.
Scholars, security experts, journalists, and politicians have offered a plethora of reasons for the uprising. Some have suggested that 9/11 inspired a global radical Islamic uprising, and that it finally erupted in Thailand's Muslim south. Others say Thailand's alliance with Washington and its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq triggered it. And some think Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's sacking of SBPAC and Task Force-43 in 2002 took pressure off the hard-line insurgents, allowing them to return to their preferred vocation-insurgency.8
Because of a severely divided domestic constituency brought about in part by his unconventional and aggressive style of leadership and after two months of violent demonstrations against him, Thaksin stepped down in early April and handed over power temporarily to Deputy Prime Minister and Police General Chitchai Wannasathit (also known as Vanasastidya). Chitchai will serve until the Thai parliament chooses a new prime minister. Now, nearly two years into the war, the exact causes of the insurgency, no matter who is the serving prime minister, remain elusive.
Organization and Goals
Elusive also is the exact organization of the insurgent movement. Its leaders have not formally presented Bangkok with a list of demands, nor have they made apparent exactly who they are.
Investigations presently indicate that the revolt consists of several long-standing rebel groups united by the Barisan Bersatu untuk Kemerdekaan Pattani (United Front for the Independence of Pattani), or Bersatu for short. The most active organizations under Bersatu appear to be PULO (Pattani United Liberation Organization), GMIP (Gerakan Mujahideen Islam Pattani, or Islamic Warrior Movement of Pattani), and BRN (Barasi Revolusi Nasional, or National Village Revolution).
The translations are literal. Under the BRN is a select group of male youths called Pemuda who Islamic religious teachers hand pick from private schools, indoctrinate, and then train in guerrilla and terror tactics. Yet another subgroup at work in the south is the RKK (Runda Kumpulan Kecil), discovered in 2005. Authorities are still investigating the group but think its personnel have trained in militant camps in Indonesia.9
Teachers at privately funded Islamic schools seem to comprise much of the separatists' mid-level and senior leadership, and young, impressionable students appear to make up a large portion of the rank and file. Thai authorities estimated in 2004 that the separatists had between 3,000 to 5,000 combatants and as many as 70,000 sympathizers that could facilitate auxiliary functions.10
Despite the fact that Thailand's insurgents have not published a manifesto, in early 2005 PULO stated clear demands and promulgated telling propaganda on its Web site that the government managed to shut down before year's end. But the organization had developed yet another site by 2006, which indicates that PULO might be the separatists' mouthpiece.
At any rate, PULO says it wants to liberate Yala, Narathiwat, Pattani, Songkhla, and Satun provinces from Thailand and establish Pattani Raya, a pre-1909-like Malay Islamic nation state. It seeks UN or other international assistance in mediating an East Timor-type settlement to achieve its goals.11
The insurgents have religious goals, as well, made apparent by their prolific propaganda and their religious ideological guidebook, Fight for the Liberation of Pattani, published in 2002. Authorities found the 34-page booklet on dead insurgents in April 2004. Written in Arabic and Yawi, it urges all Muslims to rise up against Thailand and all non-Muslims to restore the former glory of Islam to the south.
It asserts that Thailand invaded, pillaged, and destroyed the old independent Patani, and that Bangkok is out to destroy Islam. It further says that fighting for Patani is a directive from God, and imams will rule the south by Islamic law.12 The Thai press offered multiple quotes that summed up the booklet's call to arms, such as, "If any Muslim betrays Islamic principles, even though he is a father or friend, you should kill him. They are enemies of those who have true faith in religion."13
Political Opposition
Human-rights activists, Thaksin's opponents, and insurgent sympathizers in the radical Islamic camp largely disregard the insurgents' radical Islamic policy and instead lambaste the government for several controversial events. One was the Krue Se Mosque incident, and the other was the Tak Bai protest.
On 28 April 2004, insurgents armed mostly with machetes and a few firearms raided 15 different police and military outposts, screaming, "We are ready to die for God for our beliefs!"-an apparent bid to spur a regional uprising and to secure weapons. At the same time, another group of insurgents attacked police at Krue Se Mosque, the most revered Islamic site in the south, and took it over. Using the mosque's loudspeakers, they urged the local citizenry to revolt against Bangkok and fight to the death. They killed as many as five police and military personnel.
But all the raids failed, and the insurgents inside the mosque refused to negotiate with security forces and shot at them. A crowd of civilians had gathered while shooting was taking place, a shift that commanders believed compromised positive control of the situation. As a result, the Thai military cleared Krue Se, killing all inside.14 In total, Thai forces killed more than 100 insurgents. Human-rights activists and Thaksin's opponents condemned the action as a barbaric human rights violation, decrying the use of firearms against people armed only with edged weapons. They moreover assert that the military should have negotiated further with those inside the mosque. Relatives of the dead see them as martyrs.15
Tak Bai, however, was indeed a clear-cut mistake by the government. On 25 October 2004, as many as a thousand male protestors gathered outside the town of Tak Bai's police station demanding release of prisoners accused of secessionist violence. The crowd was highly organized and refused to disburse after police demonstrated the accused were not at that particular location.
After leaders told the crowd to remain, the protesters became unruly. The military detained more than 100 in cattle cars, whereupon more than 70 died of suffocation. The resulting deaths caused a tide of human-rights criticism against security forces and the government, a condemnation from which they have not yet recovered.16
Government Counterinsurgency Efforts
At present, Thailand has a three-tiered chain of command supervising more than 40,000 army and police forces fighting the separatists. At the top of the chain is the Bangkok-based Committee on Southern Provinces Peace-Building Policy (CSPPP). Under that is the Southern Provinces Administrative Committee (SPAC), also in Bangkok. At the operational level in the south is the Southern Border Provinces Peace-Building Command (SBPPC).
have been wreaking havoc in southern Thailand, near the
border with Malaysia.
The formation of these alphabet-soup organizations was not cut and dried, however, and it reflects the government's struggle to get its arms around the problem. First came the SBPPC on 24 March 2004, at present commanded by Lieutenant General Select Ongkorn Thongprason. He also commands the 4th Army, the Thai military component traditionally responsible for security in the south. Ongkorn is a special-forces soldier with experience operating on the sometimes-turbulent Thai/Burmese border.17
The command's mission is to quell the violence in the south by military, social, and political means. It oversees all army and police units in contested areas. As it fights, it simultaneously applies social and political measures to take away some of the root causes of the movement. With its motto, "Understand, Access, Develop," it places much stock in local assistance projects and public forums designed to gain the trust of disaffected southerners. It also has personnel, joint intelligence, operational, and logistics functions, not unlike a U.S. combat command.18
On 31 May 2005, the government established the CSPPP to streamline security operations and the chain of command. Its primary task is to formulate counterinsurgency strategy and policy.19
The most recent addition to the chain of command was the SPAC, formed in October 2005. The CSPPP established it as a military command group to coordinate with the SBPPC and carry out Bangkok's new counterinsurgency policies and to play a military advisory role. Its ten members include the armed forces chief of staff, and the commanders in chief of the navy, and the air force, the police commissioner general, and personnel from the Ministry of the Interior.20 General Sonthi Boonyaratglin is commander in chief of the committee and of the Royal Thai Army as well. He is a Vietnam War veteran, former head of Thailand's special-warfare command, and the first Muslim to lead the army.21
In addition to the military chain of command, the government formed the National Reconciliation Commission, or NRC, on 28 March 2005. It consists of 43 members made up of legislators, intellectuals, non-government organizations, government personnel, and former senior military officers. Former Prime Minister Anand Panyarachun heads it. The commission's job is to collect and analyze information on the causes of the conflict, focusing on key cultural, political, and economic friction points. It then makes suggestions to Bangkok on how to solve them and reports many of its findings to the public, increasing national awareness of the insurgency. Recently, the commission urged the government to curtail its military approach to the south and instead focus on aid projects and information operations.22
Despite all the chain-of-command restructuring, the SBPPC has been active from day one. It has been engaged in rural aid projects, information operations, intelligence collection and analysis, raids on arms caches, arrests of suspected insurgents, physical security, and civilian-police-military operations. For example, in May 2005, authorities raided a school in Pattani and found bomb-making materials, surveillance records of government personnel, a video of an al Qaeda training session, and a makeshift firing range.23
The program is also in full swing in such places as Narathiwat, the most active rebel province. In an interview with the Thai press in November 2005, Wanich Sriwangkeow, the headman of Ban Na Own said, "In our village, we are the main armed force while regular troops serve as back-up."
In late October, his village and others like it escaped raids by insurgents that stormed other locations to steal weapons issued to civilian defense units. Wanich says the rebels left his company-sized Buddhist-Muslim unit alone because it is well trained and highly motivated. A former soldier, he has experience fighting Malaysian communists in the 1980s.24
At the same time, Wanich sometimes has to keep his Buddhist and Muslim troops separate, because the former do not always trust the latter. They fear some Muslims have links to the insurgents, which is indeed a possibility. Similarly, many Muslim villagers do not trust the military or police and think they are behind much of the violence in the south.25 Many link some of the disappearances to security forces, including the abduction of Somchai Neelaphaijit, a lawyer who claimed to have uncovered the torture of separatist suspects in the south and then disappeared on 12 March 2004.26
Insurgent propaganda complicates Muslim-government cooperation. One leaflet distributed throughout common reading areas said, "Stop getting close to soldiers and police, being a tool of infidels and cooperating with them. Otherwise, you could be unsafe."27 Because insurgents kill civilians at will, their messages do have an impact.
A New Counterinsurgency Campaign
In 2006, the CSPPP has ratcheted up operations. It believes the civilian-police-military program can be effective for defensive but not for offensive operations at present readiness levels. And in light of the scores of bombings, raids, and assassinations through fall 2005-including two raids on Buddhist temples where insurgents murdered a monk and two boys-the government needs more aggressive tactics.
As Defense Minister Thammarak Isarangura Na Ayutthaya told the Thai press, "We are waging a war in the south. Until now, the state has been at a disadvantage. We have to start retaliating now. While we continue community outreach activities, we cannot just [sit] still amidst the attacks."28 The Southern Provinces Administrative Committee spent late fall 2005 designing a new counterinsurgency campaign plan for the south that will go into effect in 2006.
- First, to bring strategic order to the fight, the government has categorized government-friendly villages as green, at-risk villages as yellow, and hostile villages as red. The color-code system will help decide when, where, and to what degree the government will apply rural aid, public works, and/or force application operations. Bangkok had success with this strategy in fighting domestic communist insurgents during the Cold War.29
- Second, the government is in the process of reorganizing the existing chain of command by merging the 4th Army and the SBPPC to consolidate activities at the operational level.30
- Third, the military has begun more aggressive counterinsurgency operations and deployed more special-forces personnel to the battle space.
Through 2004 and 2005, the military mostly provided security and quick-reaction forces to respond to ambushes, assassinations, and raids. Now, they have begun to exploit intelligence from prisoners of war to make arrests of suspected insurgents and uncover arms caches. Later in 2006, the military is likely to begin using intelligence for more aggressive counterinsurgency operations, such as laying counter ambushes and like activities to "out-guerrilla the guerrilla."31
Conclusion
While Thailand's small war has remained local, it does have regional and international implications. Security experts have linked Thailand's insurgents to post-Soviet-era Afghan terror-training camps and to conservative Islamic movements in Southwest Asia, the same circles in which al Qaeda runs. In addition, they appear to have sanctuary across the border in northern Malaysia, with groups linked to Jemaah Islamiyah, a regional terror group coordinated with al Qaeda and the perpetrator of Bali bombings in 2002 and 2005 and attacks on the Jakarta Marriott and the Australian Embassy.
In May 2003, Cambodian authorities arrested two Thai citizens from Yala in Phnom Penh who, with an Arab man, tried to facilitate terrorist operations in the area for al Qaeda through the conservative Islamic Umm al Qura school.32 In August that year, Thai authorities captured Riduan Isamuddin, aka Hambali, Jemaah Islamiyah's operational head, in Ayutthaya. He had traveled with his wife through southern Thailand, where he had safe houses and auxiliary support. Consequently, investigators also linked him to the Phnom Penh cell in Cambodia, shut down just months before.33
And finally, two 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, traveled to Thailand for several days after a planning session Hambali sponsored in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in January 2000. After Thailand, they traveled to the United States to prepare for their final mission.34 While none of these incidents links Thailand's insurgents to al Qaeda or Jemaah Islamiyah, they do put them in close operational proximity, and they underscore the propensity of regional and international terrorists to use Southeast Asia for sanctuary.
In short, those who write off Thailand's insurgency as a little local war do so at their peril. A multitude of circumstantial evidence demonstrates catastrophic potential. The Taliban in Afghanistan were little and local, but they supported al Qaeda, and in doing so supported the attacks on 9/11. While this is indeed Thailand's fight, it would behoove the United States to support its erstwhile ally-now officially a major non-NATO ally-and watch the movement carefully. Vigilance in Thailand could save the lives not only of Thai citizens, but of U.S. citizens as well.
Mr. Moore is the author of Spies for Nimitz (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2004), and has written extensively, including articles for Jane's and Naval History magazine.
1. Gleaned from various accounts from The Nation, the Associated Press (AP), British
Broadcasting Corporation News, Agence France-Press (AFP), Virtual Information Center for U.S. Commander in Chief, Pacific, "Special Press Summary: Unrest in Southern Thailand," found on the Internet at http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/thailand2.htm. back to article.
2. The Nation, "More beheadings in the South," 24 June 2005. back to article.
3. AFP, "Thailand rattled after unprecedented car bomb in restive south," 18 February 2005.
back to article.
4. Daniel J. Pojar, Jr., "Lessons Not Learned: The Rekindling of Thailand's Pattani Problem," Naval Postgraduate School Monterey, California, Thesis, March 2005, 7-14. For additional historical material, see International Crisis Group, "Southern Thailand: Insurgency, Not Jihad," Asia Report N° 98, 18 May 2005, 7-8. back to article.
5. Pojar, "Lessons Not Learned," 17. back to article.
6. International Crisis Group, "Southern Thailand," 11, and Pojar, "Lessons Not Learned," 14-21. back to article.
7. Gleaned from various reports from the BBC News and The Nation in January 2004. back to article.
8. International Crisis Group, "Southern Thailand," 11. back to article.
9. Bangkok Post, "Army finds shot sergeant's head," 4 January 2006. back to article.
10. AP, "Militants Planning Large-scale Attacks in Bangkok," 17 December 2004, and The Nation, "Army Sets its Sites on 5,000 'Militants'," 30 April 2004, and The Nation, "Suicide-Bomb Warning Issued," 3 May 2004, and Bangkok Post, 4,000 Teenagers Blacklisted, 11 October 2005. back to article.
11. See www.pulo.org, translated for the author by a native Thai speaker, 21 January 2005.
back to article.
12. The Nation, "Militant's Guidebook from M'sia," 3 June 2004; The Nation, "Muslim Call to Counter Radicalism," 30 May 2004; The Nation, "Muslim Call to Counter Radicalism," 30 May 2004; The Nation, "Gov Accepts that Extremism is Entrenched in the South," 2 June 2004; and The Nation, "Book Found on Dead Militants a Call to Arms," 5 June 2004. back to article.
13. The Nation, "Militants' Guide Book from M'sia;" The Nation, "Gov Accepts that Extremism is Entrenched in the South," 2 June 2004. back to article.
14. The Nation, "Southern Carnage: Kingdom Shaken," 29 April 2004. back to article.
15. The Nation, The New Face of Militancy in the South, 19 May 2004. back to article.
16. The Nation, "78 Perished in Custody," 27 October 2004, and International Crisis Group, "Southern Thailand," 27-31. back to article.
17. Bangkok Post, "4th Army change part of shake-up," 8 December 05. back to article.
18. Origin of the Southern Border Provinces Peace-Building Command, http://www.southpeace.go.th/eng/Origin_of_SBPPC.htm, and Vision, mission, http://www.southpeace.go.th/eng/vision.html, and Thai News Agency (TNA), "New Security Chief for the South to be Announced Soon," 27 May 2005. back to article.
19. Management Policy for Peace-Building in the Southernmost Provinces, 6 March 2005, http://thailand.prd.go.th/the_inside_view.php?id=755. back to article.
20. TNA, "Peace is the Objective of New Southern Provinces Administrative Committee," 6 October 2005. back to article.
21. Reuters, "New Thai Army Chief Promises Soft Line on Insurgency," 9 September 2005; and Gerald Walker, "Thailand: Mollifying the Muslim, Pacification by PR," Sobaka, 9 September 2005. back to article.
22. The National Reconciliation Commission to Help Ease Southern Problems, 1 April 2005, http://thailand.prd.go.th/the_inside_view.php?id=663; Bangkok Post, "Anand Recognise Cultural Diversity," 30 August 2005; and Bangkok Post, "NRC Asks Government to Exercise Restraint," 6 September 2005. back to article.
23. The Nation, "Raids Lead to Valuable Haul," 20 May 2005; and Bangkok Post, "Students Say Weapons Training Held at School," 20 May 2005. back to article.
24. Bangkok Post, "Distrust 'Needs Urgent Solution'," 13 March 2005; and The Nation, "50 Muslims 'disappear'," 15 March 2005. back to article.
25. Bangkok Post, "Distrust 'Needs Urgent Solution,'" 13 March 2005, and The Nation, "50 Muslims 'Disappear'," 15 March 2005. back to article.
26. BBC, "Missing Thai lawyer 'harassed'," 9 August 2005. back to article.
27. The Nation, "Tools of Infidels Get Written Warning," 1 September 2004. back to article.
28. TNA, "Retaliation Planned Against Southern Violence Perpetrators," 26 October 2005. back to article.
29. The Nation, "Village is a red zone," 22 September 2005. back to article.
30. TNA, Gov Ops, "New army chief to merge southern commands," 1 October 2005. back to article.
31. TNA, "Military Authorities Expect Far South to Improve Under Revised Tactics," 13 October 2005; and TNA, "PM Vows Maxim Penalties Against Pattani Monks Teenagers Killers," 17 October 2005. back to article.
32. Time, "Milestones," 30 January 2005, Wayne Turnbull, "A Tangled Web of Southeast Asian Islamic Terrorism:The Jemaah Islamiyah Terrorist Network," 31 July 2003, see link; and The Nation, "JI Suspects' Spouses Seek Freedom for Detained Duo," 16 July 2005. back to article.
33. Newsean, "Thai Government Slow to Realise Terrorism in the South," 2004. back to article.
34. Paul Thompson, "Alhazmi and Almihdhar: The 9/11 Hijackers Who Should Have Been Caught," Center for Cooperative Research, http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/essay.jsp?article=essaykhalidandnawaf. back to article.