Geneva. But, said a Western source
familiar with the situation, a year after the
coup, "the government has not yet started to
effectively implement the softer policy ... No one
[among Thai security forces] has been arrested or
detained in connection with Tak Bai or Kru Sae.
Those involved have been promoted. People continue
to disappear. So in other words, the policy exists
in a rhetorical rather than real sense."
Lack of understanding At the
heart of the problem is an apparent lack of official
understanding of the southern
insurgents' long list of complaints and
grievances. Prior to being annexed by the Thai
state in 1902, the three southern provinces, and
some districts in neighboring Songkhla province,
were ruled by a local sultan. Patani, as it was
called before being carved up into different Thai
provinces, had a separate identity, of which
religion was only one of many aspects.
Significantly, there is no insurgency in the
fourth southern province, Satun, which also has a
Muslim majority.
Before coming under Thai
sovereignty via the Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909,
Satun was part of the Malay sultanate of Kedah,
which remained under British rule and now is part
of independent Malaysia. Although currently 80%
Muslim, Satun never had the same national identity
and has been more successfully integrated into
Thailand. Today, Thai is spoken in Satun, not the
Malay dialects prominent in the other three
southern provinces.
The movement in the
south began, as HRW points out in its most recent
report, "When Thai officials sought to control the
curriculum of Islamic boarding schools
(ponoh) through the Education Act of 1921.
This put Thai authorities and their policy of
compulsory assimilation in direct confrontation
with teachers (tok guru) of village-based
ponoh, who have for many years taken the
role of defenders of the faith and upholders of
ethnic-Malay Muslim identity." Unrest against the
Thai state and its forced-assimilation policies in
the late 1940s and 1950s led to the formation of
insurgent armies in the 1960s.
Many
commentators have attempted to include Thailand's
Muslim southern insurgency to a broader global
insurgency with links to such international groups
as al-Qaeda. Current spokesmen for the southern
movement, including Kasturi Mahkota, strongly
dismiss such notions, including any links to
radical regional Islamic groups such as the mainly
Indonesia-based Jemaah Islamiya: "They have never
contacted us," he said, and dismissed as
"baseless" suggestions that Arabs from the Middle
East and other foreigners are involved in the
southern conflict.
He instead emphasized
that there are really no differences between his
PULO group and the Barisan Revolusi Nasional
Patani-Melayu-Koordinasi, or the Patani Malay
National Revolutionary Front-Coordinate, which are
the main groups active on the ground in the south.
"We cooperate at all levels, especially matters
concerning the Patani national agenda," said
Mahkota.
The main divide appears to be
between older, more moderate leaders, many of whom
live in exile, like Kasturi, who resides in
Sweden, and younger, more militant cadres who have
been bitterly influenced by recent abuses suffered
at the hands of Thai authorities. Often referred
to as Pajuang Kemerdekaan Patani, or Patani
Freedom Fighters, they can, to quote an interview
with a Muslim villager in the HRW report, be seen
patrolling villages in broad daylight "armed with
AK-47s ... Many village chiefs have been put in
power with their consent and served as their
puppets ... If you do not belong to them or listen
to their orders, you will be dead."
So
even if the tentative talks in Geneva achieve
positive results, would the older leaders be able
to control the younger generation in implementing
an autonomy-granting ceasefire? On that score,
Mahkota is optimistic: "As the saying goes, 'age
brings wisdom'. Young people in the south respect
the older generation." Yet it's still unclear
whether that is indeed the case.
None of
Thailand's new or old political parties vying for
election in national polls scheduled for late
December have yet to propose a solution to the
southern problem as one of their electoral
priorities. Whether the next elected government
will have the political tack or will required to
sustain the fragile peace process, which in the
end could achieve unpopular results among the
broader population, is also still unclear. But for
the country's sake, a solution must be found to an
escalating conflict that so far has produced no
winners, no losers, but only victims.
Bertil Lintner is a former
correspondent with the Far Eastern Economic
Review. He is currently a writer with Asia-Pacific
Media Services.
(Copyright 2007 Asia
Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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