_Towards Peace in Southern Thailand_ by Dr Dennis Walker, Monash Asia Institute/PSI, Monash Univeristy, Australia 3146 [dennis.walker@monash.edu].
The insurrection by Islamo-Malay separatists that broke out in early 2004 in Patani, Southern Thailand, has triggered the deaths of thousands of Muslims and Buddhists: both sides have committed atrocities. The conflict is hard to resolve through mediation by outside organizations and governments because the anger of the large minority among the Malays who wage the independence struggle stem from compound grievances that over time have fused into one massive alienation from the Thai state. Malay people in Southern Thailand feel that they are not getting a just share of the raw materials and fish wealth being transferred out of their country, and that they are being governed in a rigid and autocratric way by the centralized Thai bureacracy that takes its techniques, policies and detaiiled orders from the government ministries in far-away Bangkok. A fair proportion of Southern Thailand's Muslims feel, wrongly, that the Thai army is exploiting the protracted conflict to maintain its size, to multiply the flow of government finance to it, and to maintain a control not just of its operations but of the development of society as a whole in the Muslim South, as against Bangkok's civilian ministries. Malcontents in Southern Thailand gripe that the Thai government in Bangkok has for a century been following a program to eliminate their language Malay by making Thai the language of literacy and even conversation through Thai government schools that enforce monolingualism. For around three years there have been rumors that the old PULO nationalists have been joined by some elements of the BRN (C) or National Revolutionary Council, to negotiate a compromise solution with the Thai giovernment. Patanian Muslims I spoke with, of the modern strata who might make passable livelihoods under a compromise settlement, more or less dismissed these contacts as likely to lead to nothing. The recent contacts between the BRN (C) and Thai officials, though, may be more serious. Firstly, figfhters on both sides have more motive to end the violence because after nine years of continuous fighting it has become clear that neither of the two armies has the capacity to crush the other. The rebels are more highly motivated than the Buddhist Thai soldiers who are sent to the South from Central and North Thailand. The Patani rebels have increasingly fired upon the Thai army and police less as the tiny rag-tag atomized bands but in coordinated multiple units. On the oother hand, the Thai army in March 2013, due to improved intelligence, was able to mow down a large-scale attack by numerous rebels on an army base. The rebels cannot delude themselves that victory is near. Because of the huge extent to which Thai Buddhists outnumber the Patani Muslims, it is unlikely that the Thai state would ever seriously negotiate with the Muslim rebels unless the Western countries that make Thailand's war effort possible cut the arms they sell to the Thai army. The Western states could incrementally contract Thai authority and awesome prestige in Patani with unmistakable warnings that it will lose the South unless it negotiates a compromise settlement on new bases. If Western governments widely distributed their Malay and Indonesian publications in Southern Thailand that would give a strong signal to the Thai system that the old monoolingualizing Thai nationalism has to go so that Patani membership in the Thai state can be re-engineered as a multi-cultural enterprise. If there is serious pressure from the West upon the Thai state to carry through the changes that the liberal young IT Buddhists in Bangkok want for Patani, the shilly-shallying Thai system may get serious about a way out of a war that otherwise may never end, for the interests of both groups.
ReplyDelete_Towards Peace in Southern Thailand_
by Dr Dennis Walker, Monash Asia Institute/PSI,
Monash Univeristy, Australia 3146 [dennis.walker@monash.edu].
The insurrection by Islamo-Malay separatists that broke out in early 2004 in Patani, Southern Thailand, has triggered the deaths of thousands of Muslims and Buddhists: both sides have committed atrocities.
The conflict is hard to resolve through mediation by outside organizations and governments because the anger of the large minority among the Malays who wage the independence struggle stem from compound grievances that over time have fused into one massive alienation from the Thai state. Malay people in Southern Thailand feel that they are not getting a just share of the raw materials and fish wealth being transferred out of their country, and that they are being governed in a rigid and autocratric way by the centralized Thai bureacracy that takes its techniques, policies and detaiiled orders from the government ministries in far-away Bangkok. A fair proportion of Southern Thailand's Muslims feel, wrongly, that the Thai army is exploiting the protracted conflict to maintain its size, to multiply the flow of government finance to it, and to maintain a control not just of its operations but of the development of society as a whole in the Muslim South, as against Bangkok's civilian ministries. Malcontents in Southern Thailand gripe that the Thai government in Bangkok has for a century been following a program to eliminate their language Malay by making Thai the language of literacy and even conversation through Thai government schools that enforce monolingualism.
For around three years there have been rumors that the old PULO nationalists have been joined by some elements of the BRN (C) or National Revolutionary Council, to negotiate a compromise solution with the Thai giovernment. Patanian Muslims I spoke with, of the modern strata who might make passable livelihoods under a compromise settlement, more or less dismissed these contacts as likely to lead to nothing.
The recent contacts between the BRN (C) and Thai officials, though, may be more serious. Firstly, figfhters on both sides have more motive to end the violence because after nine years of continuous fighting it has become clear that neither of the two armies has the capacity to crush the other. The rebels are more highly motivated than the Buddhist Thai soldiers who are sent to the South from Central and North Thailand. The Patani rebels have increasingly fired upon the Thai army and police less as the tiny rag-tag atomized bands but in coordinated multiple units. On the oother hand, the Thai army in March 2013, due to improved intelligence, was able to mow down a large-scale attack by numerous rebels on an army base. The rebels cannot delude themselves that victory is near.
Because of the huge extent to which Thai Buddhists outnumber the Patani Muslims, it is unlikely that the Thai state would ever seriously negotiate with the Muslim rebels unless the Western countries that make Thailand's war effort possible cut the arms they sell to the Thai army. The Western states could incrementally contract Thai authority and awesome prestige in Patani with unmistakable warnings that it will lose the South unless it negotiates a compromise settlement on new bases. If Western governments widely distributed their Malay and Indonesian publications in Southern Thailand that would give a strong signal to the Thai system that the old monoolingualizing Thai nationalism has to go so that Patani membership in the Thai state can be re-engineered as a multi-cultural enterprise.
If there is serious pressure from the West upon the Thai state to carry through the changes that the liberal young IT Buddhists in Bangkok want for Patani, the shilly-shallying Thai system may get serious about a way out of a war that otherwise may never end, for the interests of both groups.