No Tuning Out Thailand's Muslim Insurgency

[Jai Dee]

No tuning out Thailand's Muslim insurgency

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2006

PHUKET, Thailand

It was the sort of media coverage most world leaders can only dream about. For five days and nights last month, television viewers across Thailand were treated to live, round-the-clock cable coverage of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's week-long visit with villagers in the impoverished northern countryside.

Thaksin said the program was a chance to showcase his model for eradicating poverty. But the stage- managed broadcast was less about reducing poverty and more about boosting the autocratic prime minister's popularity.

Moreover, Thaksin's one-man reality show exposed his own disconnect from the political and economic realities facing this nation of 65 million. On screen, the billionaire media tycoon-turned-politician handed out wads of his own cash to destitute farmers. In reality, his family's recent $1.9 billion tax-free sale of telecom stock has sparked public outrage and growing calls for his impeachment.

The starkest contrast, however, was the televised tranquility of Buddhist life in the north compared to Thailand's Muslim south, where a stubborn insurgency has killed more than more than 1,200 people. Now in its third year, the southern insurgency is one story line the prime minister, a one-time police officer, can't seem to control.

But Thaksin may now have the chance to write a new script Next month, Thailand's National Reconciliation Commission will propose its long-awaited peace plan for the south, forcing Thaksin to face realities he has long ignored.

First, Thaksin should admit that the daily assassinations, arson attacks and bombings that have engulfed the three southernmost provinces of Patani, Narathiwat and Yala are not, as he has claimed, the lone acts of "psychos, bandits, criminals and drug addicts."

Rather, the violence is the latest flare-up in a century-long struggle by the three Muslim-majority Malay provinces, which were annexed in 1902 by Thailand (then Siam) and which have resisted the Buddhist "Bangkok Empire" ever since.

Bangkok's attempts to forcibly assimilate the Malay Muslims, with their distinct culture, language and religion, only sparked the rise of armed separatists. Not until the 1990s did the insurgency largely subside thanks to a series of reforms that gave southern Muslims a greater voice in local affairs.

Second, Thaksin should acknowledge that his heavy-handed reaction to separatist attacks has helped resurrect the insurgency.

Declaring the separatist movement dead in 2002, he dismantled the local bodies that had combated military and police abuses and given Muslims a forum to air their grievances. His no-holds-barred "war on drugs" the following year left more than 2,200 people dead, many of them Malay Muslims.

When militants raided an army depot in January 2004, Thaksin declared martial law across the south. The deaths of 80 protesters while in army custody later that year turned the scene of the tragedy, Tak Bai, into a Muslim rallying cry.

After another round of separatist attacks last summer, Thaksin declared a state of emergency in the south, including giving soldiers and police immunity from prosecution. Predictably, a new wave of violence has followed, with Malay Muslims alleging arbitrary arrests and extra-judicial killings.

Third, Thaksin should recognize his bad cop-bad cop strategy as the catastrophe it is. Insurgent attacks, soared from just 50 in 2001 to more than 1,000 by 2004, according to the International Crisis Group.

Most troubling, Thailand's chaotic south risks becoming a haven for Islamic jihadists. Recent attacks in Thailand - beheadings and bigger bombs, including car bombs - highlight the deadly potential of an alliance between locals and more sophisticated foreign fighters.

Finally, Thaksin should seize the reconciliation commission's report as a chance to become the statesman Thailand needs. Until now, Thaksin has played the part of Vladimir Putin, whose iron-fisted response to Chechnyan separatists radicalized the population and brought the bloodshed to the Kremlin's doorstep.

For a better role model, Thaksin should look to Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who is credited with ending the decades-old rebellion in the tsunami-ravaged province of Aceh. Recognizing that no military solution was possible, Yudhoyono has reduced the heavy military presence in the province and will allow Aceh greater autonomy and more control of it natural resources. In exchange, rebels have given up their demand for independence and disbanded their military wing.

The choice is Thaksin's. He can continue to be Putin and risk spreading the southern violence to Bangkok and beyond. Or he can recast himself as a Yudhoyono and make the compromises necessary to bring peace to a troubled region.

Source: - International Herald Tribune

(Stanley A. Weiss is founder and chairman of Business Executives for National Security, a nonpartisan organization based in Washington. )