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EXCLUSIVE Thai peace talks come to
light By Anthony Davis
BANGKOK - After six years of secret
contacts disrupted by political turmoil and mutual
distrust, high-level peace talks aimed at
addressing the roots of Thailand's bitter
Malay-Muslim insurgency are moving into a more
open and substantive phase.
Senior
negotiators from both the Thai government and
separatist sides of the conflict expressed
optimism in recent interviews that key issues
should now be tabled, while conceding that the
secrecy and denial that have shrouded the talks to
date have outlived their usefulness.
"Keeping things secret was killing the
process," said a senior
Thai official closely involved
in ongoing talks between a government delegation
and an alliance of two insurgent factions
recognized by Bangkok as playing a central role in
the conflict: the Patani-Malay National
Revolutionary Front or Barisan Revolusi Nasional
Patani-Melayu (BRN), the shadowy faction that has
been the main organizational driver behind the
violence that escalated sharply in 2004, and the
more moderate Patani United Liberation
Organization (PULO), which has re-emerged as the
internationally active political wing of the
movement.
"It was concluded there was a
need to gradually acknowledge to outsiders at
least in broad terms that there is a peace
process," said the official in the Thai
government's first detailed briefing to the media
on the initiative. "The Pattani movement wanted a
signal that the government was really serious
about peace talks."
A member of the
government's delegation added: "There comes a
point when you can't do substantive things if the
process is not public. And this is something I
have passed on to the top level of government."
Notwithstanding the new openness,
independent analysts concur that the coming months
will likely tax the skills and resolve of both
negotiation teams. Against a backdrop of sustained
violence, they will need to maneuver between
negotiating measures aimed at giving real
administrative, linguistic and symbolic shape to
the conflict-ridden southern provinces'
distinctive Pattani-Malay identity on the one
hand, while on the other allaying the ingrained
skepticism of both sides' hardliners.
Bangkok's interest in establishing
communication with the armed opposition in the
predominantly Muslim provinces of Pattani,
Narathiwat and Yala and parts of neighboring
Songkhla was first triggered by the disastrous Tak
Bai incident, according to one official involved
in the process.
On October 25, 2004,
security forces shot dead seven Muslim protesters
in Narathiwat and were responsible for the deaths
in custody of a further 78 who suffocated while
being transported in trucks for interrogation in
Pattani. A propaganda windfall for the rebels, the
incident added fuel to an already escalating
conflict but prompted then-prime minister Thaksin
Shinawatra to explore the possibility of opening
contacts with a still ill-understood insurgency.
Brokered by an international
non-governmental organization acceptable to both
sides, the process of contact and dialogue
gathered slow momentum between 2005 and 2007 with
a series of secret meetings in various countries
outside of Thailand.
Deep-seated mistrust
in the Pattani movement over the government's
motives in agreeing to secret contact - a mindset
honed by experience of perceived military
intelligence-gathering ploys in the 1980s and
1990s - all but precluded early progress.
"The first three years of this process
were about confidence-building, but initially it
was difficult as they didn't trust us," noted the
senior Thai official who has played a key role
throughout.
A framework for the process
was established in 2007 and appeared to promise
real movement when in December that year
then-prime minister General Surayud Chulanont met
in Bahrain with senior representatives of both BRN
and PULO - the first time a Thai head of
government had sat with Pattani separatist
leaders. Political turmoil in Bangkok and
disinterest by Samak Sundaravej, General Surayud's
successor as prime minister, resulted in a loss of
momentum throughout 2008. In 2009, the process was
revived and reformatted by the administration of
Abhisit Vejjajiva in the context of a National
Security Council (NSC) policy on the south that
was first endorsed by the coup government's
cabinet in October 2006.
The NSC policy
allows for "promot[ing] dialogue with individuals
or groups of people who hold different opinions or
ideological views from the State regarding how to
resolve the conflict" in the border provinces.
Currently, a six-man government dialogue
committee is headed by a senior academic with
longstanding experience in the region, ranking
officials from the NSC, and significantly, since
earlier this year, a general from the Royal Thai
Army nominated by army commander General Prayuth
Chan-ocha.
Official sources noted that
this team answered to a steering committee headed
by the prime minister, in his capacity as NSC
chairman, and also includes Prayuth and permanent
secretaries from the ministries of Justice and
Foreign Affairs.
On the insurgent side, a
seven-man team under an umbrella organization
called the Patani Malay Liberation Movement (PMLM)
is headed by Kastori Mahkota, PULO's Sweden-based
vice president and foreign affairs chief, and
flanked by other senior leaders from both PULO and
BRN.
Importantly, it also includes
representatives from armed elements operating
inside the three main violence-prone provinces.
While the actual identities and residential
details of these Thailand-based cadres remain
unknown to the government, their credentials as
real actors on the ground have been validated by
the Thai security services, noted one source.
Sporadic trust To date, the
talks have been sporadic and arguably lacking in
real substance. But as one directly involved
source noted, the series of meetings has been
crucial in building a level of trust and channel
of communication between key figures in Bangkok's
governmental and military establishment and senior
figures in the insurgency.
The process has
also been productive conceptually, sources say.
"The talks have helped the Thais to have a debate
about the future that has moved the goal posts in
terms of what might be acceptable for an eventual
settlement," said the source involved in the
talks. "They have also encouraged the Pattani
movement to consider options beyond all-or-nothing
demands for independence and helped them shape
their ideas."
More recently, two factors
converged to lend the process new impetus. The
first was an initial stab at a substantive
confidence-building measure (CBM) in the form of a
controversial month-long suspension of hostilities
by insurgent forces in three districts of
Narathiwat province in June-July of last year.
Agreed to by both sides with the
government selecting the specific districts - Cho
Airong, Ra-ngae and Yi-ngor - the move was aimed
at demonstrating both insurgent good faith and,
importantly, a convincing degree of command and
control by those talking to the government over
fighting forces on the ground. As a
result, the PMLM undertook to suspend "organized
attacks", meaning broadly bomb and small-arms fire
attacks on security forces by groups of
insurgents. The agreement specifically did not
cover targeted killings of individuals, which were
acknowledged as difficult to control in any
decentralized insurgency, and which in any case in
Thailand's violence-prone southernmost provinces
are not all the work of insurgents.
At the
time, Abhisit and other informed officials were
reluctant to publicly confirm or deny that the
exercise had taken place, let alone lend it full
endorsement. Local officials were entirely unaware
of the ceasefire and, in the aftermath, mostly
dismissive of reports it had taken place.
Their skepticism was understandable enough
given that "organized attacks" in any district in
the border provinces are relatively few in the
space of a single month and the difference between
none and one can easily be viewed as "business as
usual", particularly against a backdrop of
continued sporadic assassinations.
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