Thai Dilemma Over Muslim Anger

[cojones]

From Asia Times

3 November 2004

Thai dilemma over Muslim anger

By B Raman

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:

[email protected].

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