Malaysian role vexes Thai
conflict By Jason Johnson
PATTANI - When Malay Muslim insurgents
recently staked Malaysian flags along roads,
pedestrian bridges and on electricity poles across
Thailand's predominantly Muslim southernmost
provinces, the symbolic acts of rebellion
highlighted Malaysia's often overlooked
cross-border role in the deadly conflict.
Although Thai officials have consistently
characterized the situation as homegrown, that
interpretation is stretched by the fact that many
Malay Muslim Thai nationals share an ethnic and
religious affinity with Malaysia's ethnic
majority. Malaysia has long served as a source of
sanctuary for ethnic Malay separatists who launch
attacks in Thailand and flee to safety across the
border.
There have been widespread
allegations that northern Malaysia, particularly
Kelantan state, has been used for insurgent training
and planning. Many
insurgent fighters and others tied to the
separatist rebellion are known to have drawn on
the strategic advice of an older generation of
Malay Muslim separatists who reside in Malaysia.
The flag hoisting incidents served as a
stark reminder that Malaysia will need to play a
significant complementary role if the
unprecedented levels of violence that have
engulfed the historically restive ethnic minority
region since early 2004 are to be subdued.
August 31, the day insurgents raised
Malaysian flags across the southern Thai provinces
of Pattani, Narathiwat, Yala and parts of
Songkhla, symbolically marked both the anniversary
of Malaysia's independence from colonial rule and
the founding of Bersatu, a separatist umbrella
group established in 1989.
Sources with
knowledge of the clandestine insurgent movement
told Asia Times Online that orders for the
highly-coordinated incidents were given by
separatist leaders based in Malaysia.
Some
Malay Muslim sources tied the events to Thailand's
colonization of the region, a former Malay
sultanate. They believed that precisely 103
incidents were staged, equal to the number of
years that the former region known as Patani has
been under formal Thai rule. (The Anglo-Siamese
Treaty of 1909 demarcated borders between Siam,
present-day Thailand, and Malaysia, ending
traditional tributary relations.)
The
close coordination and wide geographical spread of
the events have once again raised questions about
the insurgency's structure, which has often been
portrayed as highly fragmented and competitive
among various groups and factions. While the
separatist movement is known to be comprised of
many groups, including factions from old rebel
groups like the Patani United Liberation
Organization (PULO) and Barisan Revolusi National
(BRN), a loosely structured secretive senior
council coordinates with all of them, according to
one informed source.
Delicate
diplomacy Thai officials said soon after
the incidents that insurgents were trying to spark
a conflict between Thailand and Malaysia. Other
sources with access to the movement, however,
suggested that the incidents underscored a
longstanding desire among many in the shadowy
separatist movement for Malaysia to play an
intermediary role in a negotiated peace process
with the Thai government.
Malaysia's
state-influenced media was initially silent on the
incidents. Later, on September 2, Malaysian media
quoted officials who said only that they did not
know why Malaysian flags were raised on Thai
territory. Senior Thai government officials,
meanwhile, insisted that that they maintain
cordial ties with Malaysian Prime Minister Najib
Razak's administration.
On September 8,
Najib met with the Thai prime minister, Yingluck
Shinawatra, at the Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation (APEC) meeting held in Russia. Najib
assured Yingluck that Malaysia would cooperate
fully in solving problems related to the
insurgency and said that he was satisfied with
Thailand's policies towards the restive region.
Despite these diplomatic niceties, the two
countries have a conflicted history over
Thailand's predominantly Malay Muslim southernmost
provinces. In the 1960s and 1970s, for instance,
Malaysia was complicit in providing assistance to
separatist groups fighting against Thai rule.
By the 1990s, Malaysia began to withdraw
its support for separatist groups after Thailand
played an instrumental role in the eradication of
the Communist Party of Malaysia (CPM) in 1989. In
1998, Malaysia handed over key leaders from PULO
to Thai authorities, contributing to that period's
relative regional calm.
When the
separatist insurgency began to resurface in 2001,
Thai authorities hoped for cooperation with their
Malaysian counterparts to track down separatist
figures based in Malaysia, end the use of dual
nationality to tighten border security, and clamp
down on smuggled goods, particularly oil and
narcotics.
A bilateral border agreement
signed in 2000 that focused on combating
criminality and promoting cooperation in areas of
socio-economic development initially signaled a
new era of bilateral cooperation, but Malaysian
assistance dwindled as the insurgency intensified.
As a result, Thai frustration with
Malaysia has lingered over the course of this
nearly decade-long phase of the conflict. On
August 23, General Akanit Muansawad, director of
Thailand's Neighboring Countries Border
Coordinating Center, expressed his displeasure
over Malaysia's lack of assistance in a local
television interview.
Akanit, a long time
key figure in unofficial talks with separatist
figures based abroad, clearly emphasized that
Malaysian authorities knew that separatists used
their territory as sanctuary from Thai forces and
had not taken any concrete measures to stop the
practice.
Sources with access to
insurgents said that Akanit's interview added fuel
to insurgents' fire to stage the August 31
incidents, which included five bombings that
wounded six security officials. Asia Times Online
was not able to independently confirm the claim.
While Akanit's views are widely shared
privately among Thai security officers based in
the South, making such statements publicly went
against the grain of recent Thai diplomacy with
Malaysia. Since the ousting of Yingluck
Shinawatra's older brother, former prime minister
Thaksin Shinawatra, in a 2006 military coup, Thai
officials have avoided publicly criticizing
Malaysia's alleged role in sustaining the
insurgency.
Troubled ties Under
Thaksin, bilateral relations deteriorated
significantly. Malaysia became incensed with his
government's heavy-handed security approach to the
insurgency, particularly the human rights
atrocities perpetuated by Thai security forces at
Kru Se mosque and Tak Bai in 2004. Thaksin
aggravated relations further when he repeatedly
criticized Malaysia's position, including its
treatment of Malay Muslims who crossed the border
into Malaysia from Thai conflict areas as
refugees.
When the coup-maker appointed
government assumed power, prime minister General
Surayud Chulanont, a former army commander, worked
to smooth bilateral ties. Surayud even gave his
public support for a peaceful solution to the
situation, viewed in retrospect by some as tacit
support for behind-the-scenes Malaysian efforts to
mediate the conflict that had recently took place.
In late 2005 and early 2006, Malaysia's
former premier Mahathir Mohammed facilitated a
series of secret talks between top Thai security
officials and separatist figures in Malaysia. That
initiative ultimately failed because it lacked top
level support from both Thai officials and
separatist figures with prominent roles in the
insurgency. Some familiar with the talks suggest
that Thailand's reluctance stemmed in part from a
belief that Malaysia is not a neutral broker and
thus can not be trusted to mediate the conflict.
While Thai officials wish Malaysia would
launch more initiatives to gather and share
intelligence and crack down on separatists on
their side of the border, many Malaysian
politicians are believed to strongly feel that the
Thai government should be more open to addressing
identity-based and other grievances among ethnic
Malay Muslims in its southernmost provinces.
In July, several ethnic Malay Malaysian
politicians expressed those sympathies during a
visit to southern Thailand. Politicians from
several political parties, including the ruling
United Malays National Organization (UMNO), the
Pan Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), and the
People's Justice Party (PKR), visited Pattani
province and met with powerful local elites,
including some widely-believed sympathizers of the
insurgency.
In early September, Mahathir
spoke at an international conference in Thailand's
southern city of Hat Yai where he said that
Malaysia had not and would never intervene in the
conflict. He also said that Malaysia could provide
more intelligence, information and advice to
resolve the situation peacefully.
However,
Malaysia is unlikely to fully comply with Thai
demands on intelligence matters, particularly in
an election season where the ruling UMNO party
faces potential dwindling support in northern
swing regions where sympathies for Thailand's
Malay Muslims run deep.
Limited
dialogue Independent analysts and others
monitoring the conflict believe that as long as
Bangkok refuses to seriously engage in a formal
peace process with the separatist movement,
Malaysia will remain aloof towards helping to
resolve the conflict.
Thai authorities
have been consistently nudged by international
mediation outfits and others to intensify dialogue
with the shadowy separatist movement, to which
their typical response has been "talk with whom?",
according to people familiar with the situation.
To Thai security officials, separatists
are bent on achieving independence and thus any
negotiations would be a non-starter. Others
familiar with the situation recognize the zero-sum
orientations of many separatists but firmly
believe that the separatist leadership could be
cajoled to emerge from the shadows if Thai
authorities showed sincerity towards entering a
formal peace process.
The current Puea
Thai-led government is believed to be keen to
start a peace process that would eventually result
in substantial concessions for the ethnic minority
region, including special regional governance
arrangements with elected representatives.
Thaksin, who has lived in self-exile since
fleeing Thailand on criminal corruption charges in
2008, is known to have held meetings earlier this
year with an older generation of separatists in
Malaysia. The influential former Thai leader,
however, was unable to meet with figures known to
play prominent roles in the current insurgency,
according to sources with knowledge of the
meetings.
During those meetings, one
source said that the Malaysia-based separatists
recommended that the Thai government release
insurgent prisoners held on security-related
charges, lift the controversial Emergency Decree,
abolish its blacklist handbook of suspected
insurgents, and reduce the number of security
forces in the region. The same source said that
the Thai government was unwilling to comply with
those calls.
In apparent response to that
failed overture, insurgents carried out bombings
in Yala town and a shopping complex in the Thai
south's largest city Hat Yai on March 31. Fifteen
people were killed and hundreds more injured in
the apparently coordinated car bomb attacks.
With that violence fresh in mind, Police
Colonel Tawee Sodsong, secretary-general of the
Southern Border Provinces Administrative Center
(SBPAC), traveled to Malaysia prior to the start
of this year's Ramadan period to meet with
Malaysian Special Branch police officials.
A source familiar with the meeting said
Tawee requested Malaysian authorities to contact
separatist leaders to persuade insurgents on the
ground to ease attacks during the Muslim holy
month, which spanned July 20 to August 19 this
year. The insurgents responded by intensifying
attacks, leading to one of the deadliest Ramadan
periods in Thailand since the insurgency
dramatically escalated in January 2004.
Political ammunition The surge
in violence has given political ammunition to the
Yingluck government's opponents, including
accusations that her ruling party has not honored
its election campaign pledge to bring peace to the
region. Certain analysts, however, believe that
the Peua Thai party-led government is constrained
by the royalist establishment, especially by the
powerful army's top brass.
Akanit, a known
close ally to army chief General Prayuth
Chan-ocha, a staunch monarchist and known Thaksin
adversary, has stated that the government can not
negotiate with insurgents because it would violate
provisions in the country's 2008 constitution.
The head of the army's south region,
Fourth Army Region Commander Lieutenant General
Udomchai Thamsarorach, reiterated that position in
a TV interview released following the highly
publicized defections of 93 alleged insurgents in
Narathiwat on September 11.
Many
commentators have already discredited the
unprecedented number of defections, claiming the
surrenders were a publicity stunt staged by the
army to demonstrate it is making progress in
containing an insurgency few if any analysts
believe it can control. Sources claimed that some
of those who turned themselves in had previously
taken refuge in Malaysia.
Others here have
speculated that the defection announcement was a
last ditch effort by Udomchai to keep his position
as army commander in the region. There has been
widespread speculation that Udomchai, who has
acquired a reputation of building strong ties to
religious leaders relative to past regional
commanders, may be replaced in next month's annual
military reshuffle.
Though the recent
surrenders may ostensibly indicate progress for
the army, some army insiders told Asia Times
Online that attempts to reach hard-line separatist
leaders would still likely fail. That includes
reported army efforts to reach Sapaeing Basor and
Masae Useng, alleged key figures in the separatist
movement, the sources said.
Both are
claimed to be living in Malaysia and past efforts
by senior Thai officials, including the SBPAC's
Tawee, to contact with them have failed, according
to other sources. But if relative peace is ever to
be restored to the troubled ethnic minority
region, Thailand will need to find a way of not
only negotiating with top-level separatists but
also with its southern neighbor.
Jason Johnson is an independent
researcher and consultant covering southernmost
Thailand. He is currently based in Pattani
province, southern Thailand, and may be reached
at jrj.johnson@gmail.com
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