COMMENTARY Thailand: Tapping the Mr
Bigs of jihadi terrorism By David
Fullbrook
BANGKOK - Primitive, suicidal attacks
by mobs on police and troops in Thailand's troubled
southern borderlands show little connection with the
spectacular, relatively sophisticated strikes by jihadi
al-Qaeda or Jemaah Islamiya (JI). Murky politics and
dirty business are behind this year's troubles. But a
turning point could be nigh, if the security forces do
not switch tactics fast.
In these strange times
in which medieval militants jab away at high-tech
digital Goliaths, bombings or assassinations are quickly
chalked up to al-Qaeda or JI, despite the stark absence
of solid evidence. Connections between Thailand's Muslim
raiders and the Mr Bigs of international terrorism are
already being made after Wednesday, the bloodiest day of
violence yet in the country's south, which left more
than 100 people dead.
Yet rampaging mobs
wielding machetes have not been part of the jihadis'
style to date. Their attacks involve months of careful
preparation by intelligent, well-trained and motivated
operatives employing powerful bombs to massacre
civilians, sowing fear, making their enemies appear
impotent and raising their status among the downtrodden
Arab masses. When they come up against security forces,
they generally lose, so they are careful to avoid such
engagements.
They do not wear uniforms either,
suggesting that JI T-shirts worn by some of the rabble
slaughtered on Wednesday were nothing more than a
disingenuous attempt, perhaps by separatists or
mischief-making powerbrokers, to mislead authorities
into drawing a JI connection, leading to tactics that
will further alienate the country's minority Muslims. If
nothing else, the massacre casts the Thai government in
a bad light locally and internationally, distracting
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra from plans to woo
voters with economic good fortune.
Only a
handful of the assailants shouldered assault rifles,
despite January's heist of 380 M16s from an armory in
the south, which sparked the recent spate of uprisings
(see Wave of violence shakes Thailand,
January 7). That curious affair remains unresolved. In
addition to the arms theft, four senior non-commissioned
officers were murdered during that raid. Placing such
experienced men on sentry duty would be a waste and an
insult. They were almost certainly conducting an audit,
perhaps investigating an earlier rumored weapons theft
by rogue officers, rumors dismissed by General Chaisit
Shinawatra, the army commander and Thaksin's cousin.
There have been no reports of the thieves
blowing their way into the armory, strongly suggesting
they knew when the door would be open. Armories are
usually sturdy buildings that don't require sentries,
who themselves are usually humble privates.
Since the heist in January, three months have
passed, long enough in the dense jungles of Thailand to
train 120 young men to be reasonably proficient
soldiers, certainly capable of overrunning a small
forewarned army or police posts. Instead, there are 107
young men and boys lying dead alongside their impotent
machetes.
Muslim separatists hankering to
resurrect long-gone Pattani regency, to which the five
predominantly Muslim provinces in Thailand's south -
Yala, Songkhla, Pattani, Narathiwat and Satun - once
belonged, and which was annexed in 1902 by Siam, as
Thailand was then known, would be foolhardy indeed to
waste their foot soldiers. The present raiders'
amateurishness and the new vehicles they rode upon point
to the hand of local influence-peddlers, whether
politicians, crime lords or shady businessmen, seeking
to win concessions from the big guys in Bangkok through
backroom deals that exploit the ignorance and
disaffection common to young men around the world taking
adulthood's first, faltering steps.
Such
scheming is not without precedent in the twilight world
of Thai politics and business in the decades since World
War II, whether it be in border trade, construction,
narcotics, human trafficking or weapons smuggling.
Illegal commerce accounts for a substantial slice of the
Thai economy, 20 percent or more, reckon some academics.
The assassination of police, soldiers, teachers,
monks and officials over the past three months is an
attempt to cripple civil administration, making
Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala provinces no-go areas.
These are the bread-and-butter tactics used today by
communist guerrillas worldwide from the Viet Cong in
Vietnam to Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia
(Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC), and
are well suited to diehards dreaming of an independent
Pattani state.
Thus, a handful of groups with
quite different agendas and motives are at work, feeding
off each other's actions and fueling a spiral of
violence. Each is capable of putting together the few
bombs triggered by mobile phones. A decade ago such
devices were ingenious, but these days, mobile-phone
technicians are two-a-penny. For one to fiddle with a
phone's circuits so that a call triggers a detonator
rather than a ringtone is not rocket science.
Embarrassed by January's arms theft, the Thai
army has been itching for an opportunity to prove its
mettle. Wednesday's storming of a mosque held by
cornered Muslim raiders provided that point. General
Panlop Pinmanee, overseeing that operation, has been
removed, reportedly for disobeying orders not to attack,
much to the defense minister's chagrin.
Police
and troops firing on thugs armed by-and-large with
machetes is an extreme overreaction. However, because it
seems none were armed with riot guns, which fire
non-lethal plastic bullets, the first weapon of choice
in civil-security operations, they were left with little
choice: either retreat, surrendering the state's
authority, or shoot and be damned.
Thailand
needs to give its police and troops the resources to
change tactics quickly. Commanders need to study
intensively the lessons painfully learned by the British
army in Northern Ireland, which have since been put to
good use in the Balkans and southern Iraq. To conclude
that Thailand's security forces are not up to such
subtleties would be a mistake.
Inadequate
budgets are a problem. Thailand's best-equipped and
best-trained troops spend much of their time on
exhausting peacekeeping duties, earning a well-regarded
reputation in East Timor, Afghanistan, and now Iraq. It
may be time to pull them out - they are needed at home.
If not, the response seen on Wednesday is likely
to be repeated. That blood-soaked day will stand as the
day when alienation of the peaceful Muslim minority
really began, leading to passive if not active support
for separatists and identification with the myth of
Muslim repression painted by the jihadis. Such an
environment will provide the fertile ground al-Qaeda and
JI seek, ground that still does not yet exist in
Thailand's deep south.
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