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2 No settlement in sight for southern
Thailand By Jason Johnson
PATTANI - Thailand's security forces have
clearly been unable to gain an upper hand in the
country's restive southern provinces after eight
years of counter-insurgency operations ranging
from suppressive security measures to initiatives
to win hearts and minds.
Massive car
bombings in Thailand's southern cities of Yala and
Hat Yai on March 31 underscored long-held
perceptions in civil society and the international
community that the government needs to negotiate a
settlement with the shadowy Malay Muslim insurgent
movement operating across the provinces of
Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat.
While
journalists and security analysts have emphasized growing
insurgent strength, will
and capacity to escalate the unrest, statistics
show the insurgency remains locked in a military
stalemate. The number of deaths, injuries and
violent incidents continues to fluctuate month to
month but has shown no clear indications of an
upward or downward trend.
There were 56
and 28 deaths resulting from violent incidents in
the region respectively in March and April,
according to data provided by the Deep South
Watch, a Pattani-based think-tank that monitors
violence in the region. Both figures fall within
the general statistical range of deaths in the
region since mid-2007. But the longer the
situation remains in a military stalemate, the
more calls for a negotiated settlement will gain
in credibility.
Disunity and
weakness Prime Minister Yingluck
Shinawatra's Puea Thai party-led government has
seemingly given more credence to those calls than
previous Thai governments.
The Puea Thai
party's de facto leader and Yingluck's elder
brother, 2006 coup-ousted former premier Thaksin
Shinawatra, is known to have worked from behind
the scenes to engage separatist figures, including
during a personal visit to Malaysia in February.
Thaksin, who has lived in self-exile since fleeing
Thailand on criminal corruption charges in 2008,
publicly stated in a recent visit to Cambodia that
the conflict should end at the negotiation table.
His trusted point man based in the far
south, Tawee Sodsong, secretary general of the
government's Southern Border Provinces
Administrative Center (SBPAC), has stepped up
talks with separatist figures, touted the
importance of decentralizing political reforms,
and won high praise from local Muslim leaders for
his efforts to appease widespread social
grievances.
Despite Thaksin's and Puea
Thai's efforts, there has been widespread
speculation that the March 31 car bombings which
targeted a Hat Yai shopping complex and killed 15
civilians reflected objections among insurgent
hardliners to any peace talks with a
Thaksin-aligned government.
Thaksin was
prime minister when regional violence surged in
January 2004, and many analysts and academics have
traced the escalation to the former premier's
initial heavy-handed approach to the conflict.
Yet Thaksin's role in aggravating regional
unrest may have little bearing on future
negotiations. Far more significant, according to
sources knowledgeable about the situation, is the
government's limited ability to kick-start a
negotiation process. At this stage, they say,
Yingluck, Thaksin and Tawee lack the political
clout to push forward a peace deal.
Thai
army chief General Prayuth Chan-ocha, a loyalist
to the country's influential monarchy and known
Thaksin adversary, has denounced Puea Thai's push
for "Pattani Mahanakorn", a proposed model of
decentralized democratic regional governance
crafted by civil society groups that some have
suggested could be introduced as a bill to the
country's parliament.
Prayuth has also
criticized Thaksin and Tawee for not talking with
all separatist figures believed to have authority
over insurgents in the region. The shadowy
insurgency is believed to be fragmented into
several groups and Thaksin is believed to have
been in contact with only certain group
representatives.
Since secretive and
informal peace talks began under the
coup-appointed government of General Surayud
Chulanont in 2006, the Barisan Revolusi Nasional
Coordinate (BRN-C), the group playing the largest
role in the violence but believed to be highly
factionalized, has largely refused to engage in
talks.
Military figures emphasize that
BRN-C's refusal stems from hardline aspirations
for full-blown independence rather than more
autonomy. Yet other sources with knowledge of the
talks say that as long as Yingluck's government is
unable to demonstrate it is sincere about
negotiations and at the same time guarantee it has
civilian authority over the powerful military, the
movement will never come forward coherently to the
negotiation table.
That authority is in
doubt, despite Prayuth's insistence that the army
operates on Yingluck's civilian orders. While her
government may be too weak to draw separatist
figures with authority over insurgents to the
table, Thaksin's apparent position is precisely
what civil society and the international community
have long hoped for: a government that intends to
end the protracted conflict through negotiations
and by introducing some form of special democratic
regional governance for the minority region.
Stalemates and settlements Even
if a unified commitment towards a negotiated
settlement takes hold in Bangkok, comparative
literature on the termination of internal
conflicts indicates that it is highly questionable
that any such settlement would stick.
Since the end of the Cold War, there has
been a steady rise in internal conflicts ending
through settlements rather than battlefield
victories. At the same time, academic experts have
found that conflicts ending through negotiated
settlements tend to be more violent and more
enduring than those terminated through decisive
military actions.
The Human Security
Brief, a research center that tracks global trends
in armed conflicts, notes that internal conflicts
ended by negotiated settlements tend to last three
times longer than those decided by military might.
War termination expert Monica Duffy Toft,
an associate professor of public policy at Harvard
University's Kennedy School of Government,
meanwhile, has found that negotiated settlements
are two times more likely to break down and return
to hostilities than decisive military victories.
Toft and other academics note that in victory the
outcome effectively eliminates one side or, more
frequently, damages it to an extent where it must
abandon its political goals.
These
insights and the general trend towards settlements
may help to explain the contrasts between the
current insurgency in southern Thailand and the
comparatively weaker one waged during the late
1960s through the 1980s. With extensive support
from the United States, Thailand's military had a
decisive edge over the earlier generation of Malay
Muslim separatists.
Once state security
forces marginalized separatist groups through
suppressive measures, the government offered
limited amnesties and political concessions in the
1980s. The government also applied sound security
reforms that further destabilized separatist
networks. A period of relative stability followed,
but the grievances that initially fueled Malay
Muslim separatist resistance were only marginally
addressed.
In contrast to the context of
the earlier insurgency, now there is dramatically
more international pressure on the Thai government
to appease Malay Muslim grievances through some
kind of settlement, offer substantial political
reforms, and uphold human rights.
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