http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5121&Itemid=392
Southern Thailand's Insurgency Turns Jihadist
Written by James Blair
Friday, 18 January 2013
There's liable to be more of this
Increasing Islamist tone worries observers
Thailand's Malay Muslim insurgency in the south of the country appears to
be going in a worrying new direction, becoming more Islamist in nature.
Although the insurgency has a long history, resistance to Thai rule has waxed
and waned according to local grievances. Historically, rebellion in the deep
south has essentially been nationalist, not religious.
The region is the location of the former Malay Muslim sultanate of
Pattani, which dates back, probably, to the 13th century when it was widely
known throughout the region as a center for trade and Islamic scholarship. The
primary aim of the militants was the preservation of the Malay Muslim way of
life and the desire for autonomy. Although the militants have always been
Muslim, it would not previously have been accurate to characterize them as
Islamist or Islamic militants.
Even in the 1980s during periods of intense violence when many of the
militant leaders were also Muslim scholars, the primary aim and legitimizing
philosophy was the desire for national autonomy. Traditionally, religion has
taken a backseat to nationalism. That began to change in 2004 with a new wave
of violence, which many observers have attributed to a harsh crackdown
initiated by then-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra at the behest of the US
administration of George W. Bush as part of the global war on terror, a
now-discarded term.
In Southeast Asia, militant Islam often combined with returning
Afghanistan alumni to ignite local grievances. During the 1980s, many devout
Muslims travelled to aid their co-religionists in the Soviet-Afghan war. During
the 1990s, often after a sabbatical in the Middle East, some of these fighters
slowly filtered home to join the insurgency although it is uncertain how many
returned to Thailand. A heavy-handed Thai response that included many
extra-judicial killings further fuelled the reinvigorated insurgency.
The Islamization of the Malay Muslim insurgency deepened further in 2012.
Buddhist monks and teachers have been regularly targeted. More than 300 schools
closed recently as teachers went on strike over the worsening security
situation. In September 2012, militants threatened to kill anyone not
respecting Friday as the Muslim Sabbath, which forced many businesses to close
and many people to remain indoors for the day.
The insurgency is now primarily a rebellion legitimized by Islam. Further
complicating the nature of the rebellion are deep links to local criminal
gangs, especially those centered on drug and people trafficking. Conflict in
the Deep South is an extremely profitable business.
Since 2001 and the New York terror attacks, academics and specialists
have probed the insurgency in southern Thailand for links to global Islamic
terrorism. Nothing has been proven and the accepted wisdom is that there are no
links. This view is generally accurate. There has been no grand bargain between
local militants and global Islam, although the view does ignore important
regional links to Islamic supporters in Malaysia and Indonesia.
However, creeping Islamization is changing the nature of this previously
low-level conflict. Eventually, and regardless of the input of global Islam,
the current escalation of the conflict is likely to lead to a widening of
acceptable targets.
Time is running out for the Thai authorities. In December, the US
Institute for Economics and Peace ranked Thailand eighth, ahead of Sudan and
Israel, in a global list of 158 countries where terrorism has had the greatest
impact over the past decade.i Thailand's deputy prime minister, Chalerm
Yoobamrung, responded with the rather bizarre suggestion that there is no
terrorism in Thailand and that the high ranking was actually a
misunderstanding.ii This is despite that Deep South Watch, an independent NGO
made up of journalists and academics, has estimated that the violence in
southern Thailand has led to 14,890 casualties over the past nine years. Other
organizations put the count considerably lower.
Thai politics continue to hamper the search for a solution. Part of the
problem is that a flock of different and disparate Muslim groups, each
attempting to speak for the full insurgency, makes it difficult for Thai
authorities to find anybody to negotiate with. However, Bangkok, far from the
region and not convinced of its importance, since it is the territory of the
opposition Democrat Party, has shown no particular interest in negotiating if
someone appeared to want a solution.
It is thus unlikely that the measures necessary to solve the region's
problems will be agreed upon or enacted anytime soon. The conflict in southern
Thailand is going to get a lot worse before it gets any better.
Current travel warnings for Thailand continue to understate the risk.
While the current Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade travel
rating for southern Thailand is "do not travel," Thailand's overall rating is
"exercise a high degree of caution" despite a specific warning of the
possibility of a terrorist attack in Bangkok. Likewise, the US Department of
State provides a general warning of the possibility of terrorist activity in
Thailand and lists a selection of the worst recent attacks in southern
Thailand, but doesn't specifically warn against travel to the region. The list
includes the killing of four Malaysian tourists in 2010.
It is true that travel warnings are not a universal panacea for
protecting tourists in southern Thailand, but given recent developments it
would be prudent to update travel warnings to include the rest of Thailand and
the northern states of peninsular Malaysia (which have often provided a safe
haven for Thai insurgents).
Remarkably, the Thai insurgency has never veered near the coastal
enclaves that are packed both with wealthy tourists and westerners who own
beach properties in Phuket and other areas. There is precedent for caution. In
2001, an Abu Sayyaf raid kidnapped about 20 people from Dos Palmas, an
expensive resort north of Puerto Princesa City on the island of Palawan in the
Philippines, which had been considered completely safe.
The most valuable of the hostages were three North Americans, Martin and
Gracia Burnham, a missionary couple, and Guillermo Sobero, a Peruvian-American
tourist who was later beheaded. Martin Burnham was killed in a shootout between
the militants and Philippine authorities a year after the kidnapping. Gracia
Burnham was eventually freed.
(James Blair is a commentator on East Asian current affairs and lives in
Perth, Western Australia.)
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