The
internal-security situation in southern Thailand, which
has seen a recrudescence of long-dormant Muslim anger
against the government since the beginning of this year,
has again taken a turn for the worse with the death of
six Muslims, allegedly due to firing by the security
forces outside a police station in Narathiwat province
on October 25, and the subsequent death, allegedly due
to suffocation and renal failure, of another 78 Muslims
who were among those arrested during a large
demonstration by about 3,000 Muslim protesters outside
the station, which led to the use of tear gas and firing
by the security forces to disperse them.
The
shots fired by the security forces and the consequent
death of six Muslims, though tragic, are understandable
taking into account the kind of provocative
demonstration that the security forces faced. What is
not understandable and needs to be strongly condemned,
as it has been by many leading personalities and large
sections of the media in Thailand itself, is the
shocking treatment the detainees faced after they had
been arrested.
While only the inquiry ordered by
the government will be able to establish the facts of
the case, available evidence already suggests that the
security forces cannot escape a major share of the blame
for failing to protect those in their custody and for
transporting them under apparently inhumane conditions,
packed like sardines in trucks that were too small for
transporting such large numbers of people. The fact that
while being transported the detainees, many of them
injured, allegedly had their hands tied behind their
backs and were made to lie one upon the other inside the
trucks made the humanitarian disaster inevitable.
What has further angered not only local Muslims
but also many living in other countries in Southeast
Asia was Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's seeming
insensitivity not only to the steadily deteriorating
situation in southern Thailand since fighting began in
January, but also to the humanitarian tragedy of October
25 and thereafter.
Right or wrong, there is a
perception not only among the Muslims of Thailand and
the region, but also among many non-Muslim intellectuals
and human-rights activists, that Thaksin's background as
a policeman before he entered the world of business and
then of politics has been getting in the way of a
greater finesse in dealing with the situation and a
willingness to hold the security forces in general and
the police in particular accountable for their actions.
Consequently, overreaction against Muslim anger,
resulting in excesses and human-rights violations, and a
growing perception among Muslims that the administration
in general and the security forces in particular are
anti-Muslim are adding to the complexities of an already
complex situation.
The anger of minorities in
any country - whether religious, sectarian, ethnic or
ideological - passes through the following stages:
communal, that is, against a community perceived as an
adversary; anti-police/security forces, due to their
overreaction and due to perceptions, right or wrong,
that they are biased against the minorities;
anti-government, due to perceptions that it is
insensitive and over-protective of the security forces;
and finally anti-national, due to perceptions that the
minorities cannot get justice as part of the existing
nation.
Such an evolution has been taking place
in southern Thailand. The failure of the government to
analyze the situation lucidly and follow an appropriate
strategy to tackle it has played into the hands of
jihadi terrorist organizations/elements of external
inspiration/instigation. Thailand now faces the danger
of a situation similar to that prevalent in the southern
Philippines. The fact that Thailand had faced a similar
Muslim insurgent movement in its southern provinces in
the past and dealt with it successfully should not lead
to a feeling of complacency that it will ultimately be
able to deal successfully with the present situation
without threatening its national integrity, economic
stability and national security.
Pernicious
ideas of the pan-Islamic kind emanating from
organizations such as Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda and his
International Islamic Front (IIF) were not there in the
1980s, despite the then-raging jihad against Soviet
troops in Afghanistan. Today, such pernicious ideas have
been creeping across the South and Southeast Asian
regions from their spawning grounds in Pakistan and
Bangladesh. They make the tasks the security forces now
must undertake much more difficult than they were in the
past.
The southern situation There are
five characteristic features of the situation in
southern Thailand as it has evolved since January.
First, the use of agitprop
(agitation/propaganda) methods by Muslim clerics,
similar to those used by communists in the past, to
force confrontational situations with the security
forces and provoke them to overreact, thereby leading to
human-rights violations and alienation of the man in the
street against the security forces and, ultimately,
against the government. Such agitprop methods were put
to action in Thailand during the incident outside a
mosque in April, and again in the incident on October
25.
In
recent weeks, there have been a growing number of
worrisome incidents of alleged thefts of firearms issued
to Muslim members of the village defense forces in
southern Thailand. A legitimate suspicion by the police
and other security forces that these were probably not
genuine thefts, but instances of Muslim members
voluntarily handing over their weapons issued by the
police to jihadi terrorists and then covering them up as
thefts led to rigorous enquiries by the police. It was
the arrest of several Muslim members who had reported
such thefts that appears to have led to the
demonstration outside the police station on October 25.
Available reports from reliable sources indicate that
this was not a spontaneous outburst of public anger, but
a carefully instigated and orchestrated one.
Second, targeted killings of individuals such
as government officials and their relatives by
two-member jihadi terrorist squads who use motorcycles
to carry out their attacks and get away. The modus
operandi used by these terrorist squads closely
resembles that used by the Sunni extremist group
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ) and Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami
(HUJI) in Pakistan. This modus operandi is taught in the
madrassas controlled by the LEJ and the HUJI in
Pakistan and in those controlled by the HUJI in
Bangladesh. Many Thai Muslims have been trained in these
madrassas in Pakistan, and the job of training
future recruits from southern Thailand has since been
taken over by HUJI in Bangladesh.
Reliable
reports from Bangladesh speak of a HUJI-run OBL (Osama
bin Laden) Trail, similar to the Ho Chi Minh Trail of
the Vietnam War days, operating between Bangladesh and
Thailand for bringing in small numbers of Thai Muslims,
with the help of their Myanmar co-religionists, training
them in the HUJI-controlled madrassas of
Bangladesh and escorting them back. It is stated that
the OBL Trail is now being used only for the movement of
men and not material. There is also a flow of funds from
the HUJI of Bangladesh, which is a member of the IIF, to
the Muslims of southern Thailand. According to some
estimates, about 250-plus individuals - public servants
and non-governmental personalities - have been the
victims of targeted killings since January. These
continue uninterrupted, without the police being able to
establish the identities of the terrorists involved or
their organizations.
Third, frustrated efforts of the
Thai police to establish the identities of the
individuals and organizations involved in acts of
violence/terrorism by those who project their
investigation and detention of suspected Muslims for
interrogation as anti-Islam. After the raids and looting
of firearms by the terrorists in January, police
attempts to detain and question Ismaae Yusof Rayalong,
the headmaster of the Tohyeeming Islamic boarding school
in Yala's Muang district, and teachers Muhamad Hayeewea
Sohor and Santi Sama-ae, of the Suwannakorn school in
Bor Thong in Pattani's Nong Chik district, were
projected by the jihadis as evidence of the anti-Muslim
attitude of the police. In the face of such orchestrated
attempts to denigrate their professionalism and to
project the local police force as anti-Muslim, police
officers are unfortunately tending to overreact to even
the slightest provocation from Muslim mobs.
Fourth, a skillfully planned and executed
psychological-warfare (psywar) campaign by the
perpetrators of violence and the Muslim clerics
supporting them to project serious incidents of violence
or terrorism, which might shock the international
community, as incidents stage-managed by the local
security agencies in order to have the Muslims
discredited as terrorists.
One finds here a
close resemblance between the psywar tactics used by the
perpetrators of violence in southern Thailand and those
used elsewhere in the world by the members of the IIF.
Pakistani jihadi terrorist organizations, which are
members of the IIF, often project serious incidents of
terrorism by their followers in India's Jammu &
Kashmir as stage-managed by the Indian intelligence and
security agencies in order to discredit the Muslims.
Until Osama bin Laden admitted to al-Qaeda's
responsibility for the September 11, 2001, terrorist
strikes in the United States, the IIF was projecting
them as having been carried out by Mossad, Israel's
external-intelligence agency.
One saw the use of
such psywar tactics by some clerics and others after the
violent incidents of January and April in Thailand's
southern provinces. After the incidents of January, one
Abdullah Ahamad, a religious teacher in Pattani, accused
the police of selling the firearms issued to them to
smugglers and blaming the Muslims for allegedly looting
them. He alleged: "The arms were stolen not by Muslim
mujahideen or by separatists, but with the help of the
soldiers in the camps, and the schools were burnt by
pro-government elements."
In an interview to the Agence-France
Presse news agency after the January incidents, Yapa
Barahaeng, a retired teacher, alleged: "Muslim groups
haven't done this. It seems the government itself or the
police or military have done it." There have been
numerous instances of such false propaganda by Muslim
activists to create a divide between the security forces
and the local Muslim population. We in India are all too
familiar with such psywar tactics used by the Pakistani
members of the IIF and should, therefore, be able to
understand the dilemma faced by the Thai security
agencies in the face of externally instigated psywar
attempts to have them demonized in the eyes of the
Muslim population.
Fifth, attempts at an Arabization of the
local Muslim culture and religious practices through
madrassas funded by Saudi money flowing largely
from the Al-Haramain Islamic foundation office in
Bangladesh, Arabic-language classes and dissemination of
copies of the Holy Koran in the Arabic language and
exhortations to the local Muslims to study the Holy
Koran in the Arabic language only and give up the use of
the Thai language for this purpose.
Counter-terrorism strategy needed The
resulting situation, which is extremely delicate, calls
for deft and professional handling not only by the
security forces but also by the political leadership,
but there is unfortunately little evidence of such
handling. What is needed in southern Thailand is a
carefully worked-out counter-terrorism strategy, which
should, inter alia, include the following components:
The use of the police as the weapon of first resort
against terrorism and of the army only as the weapon of
last resort.
Improvement in the training of the police for
counter-terrorism roles, with emphasis on the need to
act with restraint so that instances of overreaction are
avoided and on the need for better interactions with the
Muslim community in order to improve police-community
relations.
The drafting of a code of conduct with the civilian
population while dealing with terrorism, the teaching of
this code in the training institutions of the police and
other security forces, and its vigorous enforcement.
Revamping of the local intelligence apparatus,
particularly the intelligence collection and analysis
capabilities of the local police.
The setting up of counter-terrorism centers similar
to our multi-disciplinary center to analyze all
terrorism-related intelligence and initiate follow-up
action.The center should have under one roof carefully
selected officers from all government departments and
agencies concerned with the problem of terrorism.
The setting up of joint operational councils in each
province affected by terrorism consisting of
representatives from the concerned departments and
agencies to supervise all counter-terrorism operations.
The setting up of joint psywar centers to counter
the psywar propaganda of the extremists and terrorists,
disseminate the correct information to the people and to
encourage the local civil society to counter the
activities of the extremists.
The setting up of a human-rights commission in the
south with representatives from among the local members
of the Muslim and non-Muslim communities, from the
government as well as from outside the government and
headed by a respected retired judge with powers to
enquire on its own into all instances of human-rights
violations and to recommend follow-up action against
those found responsible.
The need for an
effective psywar is already engaging the attention of
the government, as could be seen from an interview with
General Sirichai Tunyasiri, the newly appointed director
of the Southern Border Provinces Peacekeeping Command
(SBPPC), carried by the Bangkok Post on October 10. He
said: "While the daily killing spree by militants on
motorcycles must be stopped, a campaign by psywar teams
will be launched to win back the trust and support of
the local Muslims. Aware of the religious sensitivity
and deeply entrenched distrust among local Muslims
towards authorities, I will also consult Muslim
community leaders and will allow them to participate in
decision-making on projects which would affect their
livelihood."
It is reported that the government
is also contemplating a program to encourage the Muslims
to continue to study the Holy Koran in the Thai language
and to discourage the use of the Arabic language for
this purpose.
The police seem to be still having
difficulty in establishing the identity of the
organization or organizations responsible for the
violence and acts of terrorism. Though Hambali, the
projected operational chief of the Jemaah Islamiah (JI)
militant group, was arrested in Ayutthaya last year,
there is so far no evidence of its involvement in the
acts of terrorism in southern Thailand. After the latest
outbreak, the needle of suspicion points to the Pattani
United Liberation Organization (PULO), which has
threatened to launch reprisal attacks in Bangkok, Krabi
and Phuket.
There have already been three
explosions in the south by unidentified persons - one
last Thursday in Sungei Kolok that killed two persons
and injured another 20 and two on Friday in Yala
province that injured 20 people, 12 of them policemen
investigating the first explosion.
While
indigenous Muslim elements have been largely responsible
so far for the acts of violence and terrorism, funding,
training, motivation and instigation have come from
outside - mainly from the pro-bin Laden HUJI of
Bangladesh and its counterpart in Pakistan and from
unidentified elements in Malaysia. Ethnically, the
Muslims of southern Thailand are of the same stock as
the Malays and the possibility of a JI link through the
Malays is very much there. The Thai authorities suspect
the role of a Malay religious teacher by the name of
Pohsu Isma-al, who is reportedly the author of a book
called Ber Jihad Di Pattani (Fighting for Pattani
State) in instigating violence in the south. He holds
dual Malaysian-Thai nationality. He was reported this
year to have been detained by the Malaysian authorities
at the request of Bangkok, but it is not known whether
they handed him over to the Thai police for
interrogation.
While the HUJI of Pakistan and
Bangladesh have been providing training facilities and
funds to the Muslim terrorists of southern Thailand,
there is so far no evidence of any supply of arms and
ammunition and explosives. Bangkok has a large number of
Bangladeshi Muslims, but one does not know whether there
is any significant Bangladeshi community in the south.
On page 150 of its report, the 9-11 Commission,
which inquired into the September 11 terrorist strikes
in the US, says: "Late 1998 to early 1999, planning for
the 9/11 operation began in earnest. Yet while the 9/11
project occupied the bulk of KSM's [Khalid Sheikh
Mohammad] attention, he continued to consider other
possibilities for terrorist attacks. For example, he
sent al-Qaeda operative Issa al Britani to Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia, to learn about the jihad in Southeast Asia
from Hambali. Thereafter, KSM claims, at bin Laden's
direction in early 2001, he sent Britani to the US to
case potential economic and Jewish targets in New York
City ... KSM's proposals around the same time for
attacks in Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia and the
Maldives were never executed, although Hambali's JI
operatives did some casing of possible targets."
The report did not give any details of Issa al
Britani, who apparently knew both KSM and bin Laden and
enjoyed their confidence to such an extent that he was
entrusted with some of the preparatory work relating to
future operations not only in the US but also in
Southeast Asia. In the beginning of August, British
intelligence rounded up 12 suspects, reportedly on a
tip-off received from the Pakistani intelligence on the
basis of their interrogation of Muhammad Naeem Noor
Khan, a young Pakistani computer expert, who has been
projected as the communications expert of al-Qaeda and
who was arrested in Lahore on July 12, and Ahmed Khalfan
Ghailani , a Tanzanian national, who was wanted by the
US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), for
prosecution in the case relating to the explosions
outside the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August
1998 and who was arrested at Gujrat in Pakistani Punjab
on July 25.
Of these suspects, eight have since
been charged before the Old Bailey Criminal Court in
London. One of them is stated to be a convert to Islam,
from a Hindu family that had migrated to the United
Kingdom from Kenya in 1973, and the other seven are
reported to be of Pakistani origin. The Hindu convert to
Islam is Dhiran Barot, 32, also known as Bilal, aka Abu
Musa al-Hindi, aka Abu Eissa al-Hindi, who has
reportedly been established by British intelligence as
none other than the Al Britani referred to in the 9-11
Commission's report. It may also be recalled that two of
al-Qaeda terrorists involved in the September 11
terrorist strikes were reported to have visited Bangkok
to study how the Thai immigration procedure at the
airport works. Thus al-Qaeda, the HUJI, the HUJI in
Bangladesh and other components of the IIF have had a
long history of interest in Thailand, at least since
2000, and this interest speaks of the likelihood of
their having sleeper cells there, which have not yet
been detected by the Thai authorities.
B
Raman is a former additional secretary, Cabinet
Secretariat of India, New Delhi, and currently director
at the Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai, and
distinguished fellow and convenor at the Observer
Research Foundation (ORF), Chennai Chapter. E-mail:corde@vsnl.com.
