Girl, 7, among three shot dead in Narathiwat

[H1w4yR1da]

No justice no peace! Remember Tak Bai, Kru Se, Sobayoi, and Somchai Neejaphalit.

So let's kill a seven year-old girl?

No justice...no peace. If there had been any justice for the massacres and other criminal acts of the thai state against the people of the south, this girl, and thousands of other people, might be alive today.

The Muslim terrorists of the south deserve exactly what they get.

[simple1]

it is way past time for the army to shoot these mongrels, they know who they are but simply let them keep doing it. Take a squad down there and start eliminating them, no trial just remove them so this doesnt keep happening when these animals decide to kill innocent unarmed people and children to get their jollies and show everyone how "mucho" they are.

Thailand needs someone who'll really get to grips with this insurgency, there's too much pussyfooting around with too few troops on the ground. The PM should maybe take a leaf from her brothers book on "how to deal with drug dealers" and amend it to "how to deal with terrorists"!

So you support extraducial killing of 'suspects', this did not acheive a sucessfull outcome during Thaksins 'war on drugs', nor does it in the deep South. Thai security have 50k plus on the ground in the deep South, the specialist units in the Rangers and Marines are trained for counter insurgency by the US and others. However similar to insurgency/militant conflicts around the world takes many years to acheive an end point & usually finally resolved by political means, not force.

Actually, the War on Drugs was broadly considered successful, as repugnant as the tactics may have been. In fact, a Suan Dusit poll of 10,000 people at the time showed a 90% approval rating for the initiative in the general population. Most Thais I've spoken to have said that the drug problem has seriously worsened since Thaksin's time... even sis hasn't done much on this front. And while the coup makers investigated and criticized Thaksin for the policy, they eventually said they did not have enough evidence to mount a prosecution. Interesting, no?

Btw, I mostly agree with your post re dealing with insurgencies, though I think things are more complex. We know that the Tamil Tigers were defeated militarily as were most of the insurgencies in Europe following World War II. The British response to the Malayan Emergency is considered a model of what to do--aggressive military action combined with hearts and minds efforts--and even during that 'war' there were abuses and atrocities on both sides. Not sure what the thai govt has been doing in terms of both assertive military action and hearts-and-minds....

Sent from my iPad using Thaivisa Connect Thailand

The Thai illegal drugs industry is controlled by Thai 'people of influence' both within Thai government agencies and without. I recall only one at a high level was impacted by Thaksin's 'War on Drugs'. To demonstrate this is not just my imagination, as an example, do a search on the discovery of billions of cold tablets illegally imported into Thailand (used in the manufacture of YaBa) & not one of those responsible within Thai government agencies has to date been brought before the Courts. I suggest your Thai friends may like to reconsider as those murdered were, at best, only street level dealers who were soon replaced. I am sure there are some good people within Thai security and enforcement, but they do seem to be somewhat overwhelmed.

Yep, the Malaya Emergency is a great example of sucessful COIN tactics and strategy. Regards the success of use of military force in the majority of insurgencies in modern history, this is disproven in the Rand Corp analysis below. In case you don't know, Rand are one of the most highly regarded organisations in the world for conflict and related policy analysis:

http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR200/RR291z1/RAND_RR291z1.sum.pdf

Edited January 29, 2014 by simple1

[Docno]

Thailand needs someone who'll really get to grips with this insurgency, there's too much pussyfooting around with too few troops on the ground. The PM should maybe take a leaf from her brothers book on "how to deal with drug dealers" and amend it to "how to deal with terrorists"!

So you support extraducial killing of 'suspects', this did not acheive a sucessfull outcome during Thaksins 'war on drugs', nor does it in the deep South. Thai security have 50k plus on the ground in the deep South, the specialist units in the Rangers and Marines are trained for counter insurgency by the US and others. However similar to insurgency/militant conflicts around the world takes many years to acheive an end point & usually finally resolved by political means, not force.

Actually, the War on Drugs was broadly considered successful, as repugnant as the tactics may have been. In fact, a Suan Dusit poll of 10,000 people at the time showed a 90% approval rating for the initiative in the general population. Most Thais I've spoken to have said that the drug problem has seriously worsened since Thaksin's time... even sis hasn't done much on this front. And while the coup makers investigated and criticized Thaksin for the policy, they eventually said they did not have enough evidence to mount a prosecution. Interesting, no?

Btw, I mostly agree with your post re dealing with insurgencies, though I think things are more complex. We know that the Tamil Tigers were defeated militarily as were most of the insurgencies in Europe following World War II. The British response to the Malayan Emergency is considered a model of what to do--aggressive military action combined with hearts and minds efforts--and even during that 'war' there were abuses and atrocities on both sides. Not sure what the thai govt has been doing in terms of both assertive military action and hearts-and-minds....

Sent from my iPad using Thaivisa Connect Thailand

The Thai illegal drugs industry is controlled by Thai 'people of influence' both within Thai government agencies and without. I recall only one at a high level was impacted by Thaksin's 'War on Drugs'. To demonstrate this is not just my imagination, as an example, do a search on the discovery of billions of cold tablets illegally imported into Thailand (used in the manufacture of YaBa) & not one of those responsible within Thai government agencies has to date been brought before the Courts. I suggest your Thai friends may like to reconsider as those murdered were, at best, only street level dealers who were soon replaced. I am sure there are some good people within Thai security and enforcement, but they do seem to be somewhat overwhelmed.

Yep, the Malaya Emergency is a great example of sucessful COIN tactics and strategy. Regards the success of use of military force in the majority of insurgencies in modern history, this is disproven in the Rand Corp analysis below. In case you don't know, Rand are one of the most highly regarded organisations in the world for conflict and related policy analysis:

http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR200/RR291z1/RAND_RR291z1.sum.pdf

You make good points. With respect to my Thai friends' opinions, they are based on their perception that during Thaksin's time, people started feeling safer and they saw fewer 'drugged out' people in the community (something that, along with media reporting, has a major impact on perceptions). Apparently their perceptions were shared by the majority of the population back then, given the poll results I mentioned. And I've read that street prices for drugs went up substantially during that period, which is another possible indicator of significantly reduced supply. So yes, you may very well be correct that there were people 'high up' involved in the drug importation/distribution and that none of them were prosecuted, but the point is that there seems to have been less drugs getting into the community at the time, which is what I'm talking about.

Thanks for the Rand report.... looking forward to reading it. I'm not disputing your point, only saying that there are many good examples of insurgencies being defeated by mostly military means (esp immediately post WWII), but probably not the majority of cases. (Of course, it depends on context and definitions as well ... insurgencies are more likely to emerge where the state is not especially effective militarily, is not well organised, is corrupt, etc etc., which make military victory less likely ... and when can an insurgency be said to be over? Is the Chechen insurgency over? We thought the Sunni insurgency in Iraq was over. Etc).