Ten years on from Krue Se, but no closer to truth

[webfact]

Ten years on from Krue Se, but no closer to truth
Don Pathan
Special to The Nation
Yala


Security officials investigate the site of an attack in Pattani

YALA: -- Thai security forces blamed 'drug-crazed Islamists' for the mosque stand-off that ended in slaughter; now they say family feuds are behind the latest wave of violence in the deep South

Ten years ago yesterday, more than 100 young men armed with little more than knives and machetes charged against 10 police outposts and one police station.

Believing they were protected by a mystical power that made them invincible, the men were charging towards almost-certain death.

These so-called insurgents were met with a hail of machinegun fire. Rules of engagement permitted state security officials to shoot to kill.

After attacking an outpost, one group of 32 retreated to the nearby historic Krue Se Mosque, where they took up a defensive position with the few weapons they had. They then commandeered the mosque's loudspeaker and called on Malay Muslims of the region to rise up against the invading Siamese forces and liberate their historic homeland.

In Songkhla's Saba Yoi district, 19 young men, part of the same network of "mystical-leaning" insurgents, were lined up and shot dead by the authorities at point-blank range, execution style. The 19 came from different schools but all played for a local football team.

Fearing that local residents would turn against the authorities, General Pallop Pinmanee, the highest-ranking officer at the Krue Se Mosque stand-off, called for an all-out bombardment before nightfall.

For security officials, the fact that well over 100 young men were willing to charge against machineguns was nothing less than disturbing. It was generally concluded that the incident was not a suicide mission but a suicidal one. After all, the insurgents had some form of weapons and they thought they were invincible.

The militants were dismissed by government officials as a bunch of drug-crazed youths who had embraced a defective strain of Islam and a distorted version of history. It was a line the Thai government continued to use for other insurgency-related incidents.

However, after the government declared in February last year that it was entering into peace talks with longstanding separatist groups, the official explanation for what's fuelling insurgency violence - drugs, militant Islam and false history - had to make way for a new one.

The new official line, which is just as unconvincing, blamed much of the killing on local family feuds - Muslims killing Muslims to settle old scores.

One recent case that comes to mind was the killing of three brothers, aged three, five and nine, in Narathiwat's Bacho district on February 3 this year by at least two Muslim men, both Paramilitary Rangers, who authorities said had acted on their own. The boys' parents were wounded but survived the incident.

According to various sources, there was a third assailant, a Buddhist security official, but his identity was kept secret as it would have contradicted the official line that the killings were part of a feud between local Muslims.

But authorities knew that their official version of events would carry little weight with the insurgents, who would be looking for retaliation over the death of the boys. Suspects had to be produced to contain the situation. But it took the authorities four weeks to present the suspects. For the insurgents, it was too little and too late.

Unsurprisingly, the killing of the three brothers sparked a spate of violence in the following days. Three Buddhist women were shot dead, their bodies set alight. A Buddhist monk and four lay people were also gunned down by suspected insurgents.

A hand-written left at the site of one attack read: "To the Commander of the Thai Army. This is not the last victim. [This killing is] for the three brothers."

And then came the shooting death of an elderly couple on February 23 in Yala's Bannang Sata district. The 15 or so assailants, some of whom were local Defence Volunteers, set fire to the couple's home, a pick-up truck, a car and a motorcycle.

Again, authorities trotted out the same line: That the incident was personal in nature and that the superiors of the Defence Volunteers involved had nothing to do with the attack.

Sources on the insurgents' side said there was some truth to the family-feud claim, but they dismissed outright the notion that all the attackers' superiors were clueless about events on February 23 in Bannang Sata, especially when the tit-for-tat killings had been going on for months.

Leaflets supposedly passed out by an insurgent cell identified Defence Volunteer Abdulhakim Darasae as the lead suspect for the February 23 attack.

On March 5, a Buddhist gardener was murdered in the district, presumably as part of insurgents' effort to discredit the security apparatus.

Things were pretty quiet for a few days, until on March 27 when gunmen snuck into the house of Marosidi Kachaladi, 42, in Bannang Sata, and shot him dead while he was sleeping. One local resident suspected that Marosidi was targeted because he was closely associated with the local security forces.

Then on April 2, a village chief and two female deputies were killed in an ambush. One of the deputies was beheaded.

Insurgents struck again on April 6 and 7 and this time they took the fight to the heart of Yala, unleashing four simultaneous explosions, including a car bomb that started a fire that gutted nearly an entire block of shophouses. One man, a Muslim, was killed in the explosion. The following morning, a warehouse just a few metres away from the main army camp was razed to the ground by an arson attack.

Ten days later, on April 17, the plague of violence in Bannang Sata continued when suspected insurgent Mukta Ali-mama was gunned down along with his six-year-old son. Grisly photos of the son's body were spread via the social media, prompting condemnation from local civil-society organisations from both ends of the political spectrum.

Two days later, on April 19, the parents of Abdulhakim, the Defence Volunteer allegedly behind the February 23 attack on the elderly couple, were gunned down along with their two-year-old niece.

Army Chief General Prayuth Chan-ocha ordered the recently appointed commander of the Fourth Army Area, Lt-General Walit Rojanapakdi, to visit Bannang Sata district, which he did on April 21. The visit was little more than a public relations exercise given the fact that the Army, or any Thai state agency, is not seen as an honest broker by many in the deep South. After all, local Malay Muslims and separatist militants don't believe that the "rogue" members of the Army's Paramilitary Rangers and the Ministry of Interior's Defence Volunteers acted without consent from higher-ups.

There has been talk of bringing the feuding clans in Bannang Sata to the table to negotiate a peaceful settlement. Some suspect that the suggestion could be an attempt to whitewash the authorities, as they are likely to pin everything on Abdulhakim in the same manner that the two Paramilitary Rangers "confessed" to the killings of the three boys in Bacho.

Face-to-face talks between the feuding clans may bring a much-needed pause in the ongoing tit-for-tat killings. But insurgent sources say it won't change the nature of the conflict between them and the state.

Don Pathan is a freelance consultant based in Yala. He is also a member of the Patani Forum (www.pataniforum.com).


-- The Nation 2014-04-29

[vadimbz]

Thai govt can (apparently could) do some things right. Maximum force and zero tolerance is the only way to deal with violent muslims. Egyptian junta understands it too (http://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/28/world/africa/egypt-politics/), so do Burmese.
Hopefully in time more nations/governments will join the club.

Edited April 29, 2014 by vadimbz

[rametindallas]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pallop_Pinmanee

Please read to the end.

Edited April 29, 2014 by rametindallas

[mrtoad]

There is no desire by the Thai government to really investigate this and other HR abuses.

[simple1]

Thai govt can (apparently could) do some things right. Maximum force and zero tolerance is the only way to deal with violent muslims. Egyptian junta understands it too (http://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/28/world/africa/egypt-politics/), so do Burmese.

Hopefully in time more nations/governments will join the club.

Your POV is not supported by military professionals who are responsible for COIN strategy & tactics, nor the history of polical resolutions over the past 40 years or so.

To support extreme Buddhist nationalists and organisations such as Group 969 in Burma is short sighted.

The current regeime in Eygpt is in fact justifying it's mass killings and death sentences for hundreds in a single trial as being based upon interpretations of Islam (in the same manner as extremists) & highly likely to generate further Islamic extremism and violence in the coming years, not a reduction.

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/politics/7723/egypt_s__secular__gov_uses_religion_as_tool_of_repression/

[vadimbz]

COIN strategy & tactics

You mean US COIN strategy in Iraq, Afganistan, etc.? Hasn't it like failed big time?

history of polical resolutions over the past 40 years or so

Turkey. Their Muslim control system worked wonders for 3 or 4 generations, and failed only because of misdirected pressure from EU. Implications are well known, and it will get much worse before it gets better. Israel has been doing great job too, and still is, because they had guts to tell EU heartbleeds to fork off, and mind their own business.

The current regeime in Eygpt is in fact justifying it's mass killings and death sentences for hundreds in a single trial as being based upon interpretations of Islam (in the same manner as extremists) & highly likely to generate further Islamic extremism and violence in the coming years, not a reduction.

The trial is based on the attack on the Police station, isn't it? Yeah, it's a just an excuse, but real reason is sensible, and it has nothing to do with interpretation of Islam. I pretty much described it the first post. In case you are unaware, we are talking about the group that cuts heads on camera in Syria, and blows crowded markets in Israel (ever heard of Hamas?).

Edited April 29, 2014 by vadimbz

[trainman34014]

The only 'Truth ' anyone here is interested in is the bottom line in their bank book. People's lives being lost are of little or no consequence unless it's someone 'in my family ' and there is the possibility of a pay out.

[marko kok prong]

Just feel sorry for all the innocent people caught up in it,sadly i cannot see the situation improving any time soon.

[wandasloan]

There is no desire by the Thai government to really investigate this and other HR abuses.

You can leave "Thai" out of that statement and it is equally true in any forum, anywhere.

But I don't understand the headline at all. Both the truth and the facts about the "Krue Se incident" are very well known to anyone who cares. They were and are not addressed by many governments. No one has been or is made to be accountable - but you can't get any closer to truth than we were already, 9 years and 6 months ago. There is no controversy about the truth.

Just feel sorry for all the innocent people caught up in it,sadly i cannot see the situation improving any time soon.

And in respect to the truth, I would leave "innocent" out of that statement. Even the families knew pretty much what was going on and for various reasons, some of them quite sad, did nothing about it until their sons and brothers were dead. Many of them were caught up, even unwillingly, in terrible events,but "innocent" doesn't describe it well. "Unwitting" maybe, if you're generous.

.

Edited April 29, 2014 by wandasloan

[squarethecircle]

I read that the Krue Se mosque was partially built 500 years ago, next to the site of an old Chinese temple, by a Chinese convert to Islam. The convert's sister said she would commit suicide unless he reverted to Chinese religion, but he didn't, so she hung herself nearby Krue Se mosque. Ever since, locals have considered it to be "cursed", and its building remains incomplete to this day.

It also angers me to see how this alleged tragedy gets an outcry - keep in mind that the people holed up in Krue Se mosque had violently attacked Thai authorities, holed up in the mosque, called their brethren to support their "struggle", refused to come out, and thus were certainly not innocents - while the ongoing ethnic and religious cleansing of people who are clearly innocents, goes on without any real concern from the "human rights advocates". Hope everyone tells them to fork off.

Edited April 29, 2014 by squarethecircle

[SanSaiExPat]

Thai govt can (apparently could) do some things right. Maximum force and zero tolerance is the only way to deal with violent muslims. Egyptian junta understands it too (http://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/28/world/africa/egypt-politics/), so do Burmese.

Hopefully in time more nations/governments will join the club.

Your POV is not supported by military professionals who are responsible for COIN strategy & tactics, nor the history of polical resolutions over the past 40 years or so.

To support extreme Buddhist nationalists and organisations such as Group 969 in Burma is short sighted.

The current regeime in Eygpt is in fact justifying it's mass killings and death sentences for hundreds in a single trial as being based upon interpretations of Islam (in the same manner as extremists) & highly likely to generate further Islamic extremism and violence in the coming years, not a reduction.

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/politics/7723/egypt_s__secular__gov_uses_religion_as_tool_of_repression/

And your point of view sir, is not supported by reality. The Counter Insurgency (COIN) plan that was previously heralded by General Stanley McChrystal for US efforts in Afghanistan has failed and is failing everywhere it has been tired. It is failing in our ability to clear areas of insurgents and in the ability of the Afghans to govern cleared areas. And now, again, in Iraq we are losing control to even influence the slightest outcome. As I speak Iran is pouring troops and military equipment into Iraq. Belatedly, this month the US is beginning to send in a gaggle of intelligence "experts" to try to assess the damage and formulate a response. But getting back to COIN,which you so foolishly bring up in your original post. The huge budgetary impact of the COIN strategy is finally beginning to be discussed by the Pentagon and as a result , plans are now being floated to implement "counterinsurgency light". However these "improvements" to COIN are just as flawed at the original underlying plan. In contrast, even in death, Osama bin Laden's plan to bankrupt the US through drawing us into expensive and unwinnable wars is working just as he described in 2004. But more and more US military and "serious" politicians and career diplomats. (Not Obama appointees.) are arriving at the same conclusion as the original poster. Kill them all! The only way to salvation for the world is to wipe out the rabid, radical Muslim extremists wherever they are found in the world. If your uncomfortable with that approach I suggest you get on your knees, face Mecca (find qibla) and pray. You want to make sure you get lined up right, because a prayer carelessly sent in the wrong direction is invalid.) 555

[simple1]

@Sansaiexpat & vadimbz. Whilst is off topic in relation to Thailand, you both focus on US COIN strategy, the US are not the only players in this space.

In Afghanistan both the Oz & UK forces had reasonably COIN strategies that achieved a degree of success. In my opinion, which has been articulated by senior strategists & analysts, one on the contributing factors to lack of success by the US was not to engage at village level to assist the locals to take on the Afghan / Pakistani Taliban and other extremist groups. Nor to successfully counter those in the Pakistani security forces and some politicians who are known provide safe haven, train, fund and supply extremist operations in Afghanistan.

In Iraq the US implemented a highly successful COIN strategy "Sunni Awakening" that contributed to a huge reduction in Al Qaeda and affiliated groups attacks. This operation fell by the wayside after the pull-out by US and coalition forces with the descent, yet again, to sectarian and politically motivated killings. Many believe this outcome is due to the very poor political leadership by the current Iraqi government.

A more recent COIN strategy success is in the Philippines, that after nearly 40 years and 130k plus deaths together with many years of assistance by US Special Forces Group based in the Philippines has resulted in a political resolution, not solely due to government military operations.

Whilst Islamic extremism is alleged to be slowly increasing its influence in Thailand’s deep South, I personally do not subscribe to the viewpoint it is the prime contributor to the ongoing conflict.

In my opinion to suggest that the only strategy to address Islamic extremism is by killings is nonsense.