Thailand, Malaysia face tough battle to quell Muslim unrest
Thailand, Malaysia face
tough battle to quell Muslim unrest
Thailand and Malaysia face a tough battle to quell separatist unrest on their common border following more deadly attacks last weekend, despite fresh peace efforts by the neighbors, analysts said.
The attacks coincided with many Thais’ celebration of the start of Tet, the Lunar New Year, prompting military officials to accuse the militants of trying to frighten ethnic Chinese and Buddhist residents to flee the region.
Muslims account for only 5 percent of Thailand’s population of 65 million and live mostly in the three southern provinces bordering Malaysia.
The strikes came on the heels of Thailand’s agreeing that Malaysia help facilitate peace talks with the shadowy insurgency, which has battled the government for three years. The conflict has killed nearly 2,000 people.
But experts said the attacks, the bloodiest since bombs in Bangkok on New Year’s Eve killed three people, underscored the Muslim militants’ resolve to derail any bilateral efforts to bring peace to the south.
The insurgents “were sending signals that they were not interested in the bilateral peace efforts at all, and also telling the Surayud government that it was not making any progress on [ending] the violence,” said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political analyst at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University.
Surayud came to power after a military coup last September that ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra. Surayud quickly adopted a conciliatory approach to the rebels, reversing Thaksin’s heavy-handed tactics, because this is the policy choice of the chief of staff of the Thai armed forces, Gen. Sondhi Boonyaratkalin.
General Sondhi led the coup that removed Thaksin and is largely responsible for making Surayud prime minister. He is a Muslim. He had found himself at odds with ousted Prime Minister Thaksin over his hard-line military approach to the Muslim insurgency. General Sondhi’s preference was for peace with his co-religionists to be achieved through negotiations.
Knowledgeable sources have told The Manila Times that what made Sondhi launch the coup was Thaksin’s go-signal to his loyalist generals in the Thai armed forces to mount a coup themselves, replace Sondhi with a Thanksin loyalist and place Thaksin on top of a martial-law government.
Gen. Sondhi’s faction in the military preempted the Thaksin loyalists’ move.
Surayud was himself a former chief of staff. At the time of the coup he was a member of King Bhumibol’s privy council and was known to be one the king’s most trusted advisers.
On becoming PM, Surayud immediately apologized to the Muslim community for past abuses, offered to meet insurgent leaders and proposed a special economic zone in the south, one of the kingdom’s poorest regions.
But almost daily bombings, shootings and arson attacks continue to rock the provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala, all at the Malaysian border.
The rebels’ tactics have turned particularly gruesome this month. A Buddhist ice cream vendor was beheaded in his cart. Parents have been killed in bombings as their terrified children watched.
Signs are already emerging that public patience in the rest of Thailand is wearing thin with Surayud’s softer approach.
The Nation newspaper asked why the government would even “offer to negotiate with brutal insurgents who are actively waging a secessionist war against the Thai state and brutally butchering innocent civilians on a daily basis.”
Even before the latest attacks, efforts to launch peace talks faced an uncertain path, largely because no one knows who the militants are.
The insurgents never claim responsibility for their attacks, and have made no public demands.
“Both the Thai and Malaysian governments have made it clear they are not sure who they should be talking with,” said Francesca Lawe-Davies, an analyst with the International Crisis Group.
“It is going to be a long and complicated process.”
The region has a long history of separatist violence over the century since Thailand annexed what had been an autonomous Malay sultanate.
Veteran separatist groups that spearheaded previous outbreaks of violence in the seventies and the eighties have openly embraced calls for talks. But that has failed to quell attacks which experts and military officials say are being led by radicalized youth.
Three people were arrested Tuesday over the weekend carnage, all of them students in their 20s attending local Islamic schools. Army officials said that during the attacks the militants were drugged on a local plant used as an opium substitute.
Srawut Aree, professor of Muslim studies at Chulalong-korn University, said militants have stepped up their attacks for fear Surayud will succeed in winning the hearts and minds of southern Muslims.
“Surayud is trying to reach out to Muslims, and insurgents are worried that people will side with the government. If this happens, the south problem will be solved quickly. That’s why we are seeing a spike in attacks,” he said.