Thailand’s troubled South: An uphill struggle to end insurgency

A “traveling doctor” paying a home visit to a patient

“Do you think my approach is the right one and will help to bring to an end southern Thailand’s insurgency problem?” Lt-Gen Udomchai Thamsarorat asked the gathering of foreign press corps. He asked it thrice at the end of a briefing, seemingly desperate to earn resounding approval from the foreign journalists.
The timid response showed clearly that the correspondents weren’t entirely convinced about the strategy the general had just laid out.
Lt-Gen Udomchai is the commanding general of the Fourth Army Area Command and also commanding officer of the Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC), Fourth Army Area Command, Forward.
He is in charge of tackling an insurgency that has gripped Thailand’s lower southern provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat, whose populations are predominantly Muslims of ethnic Malay extraction. While separatist violence has occurred in the region for decades, the insurgency intensified in 2004 and further escalated after the heavy-handed measures imposed by the then-government of Thaksin Shinawatra. Since then, the violence has claimed almost 5,000 lives, many of them teachers, government officials and military personnel – which the terrorists regard as representatives of the hated central government in far-away Bangkok – but also countless civilians, humble rubber tree tappers, Buddhist monks and even local Muslims accused by the insurgents of collaborating with the authorities.

A detainee in his cell

During the press briefing Lt-Gen Udomchai estimated that about 20 percent of the southern population either supports or at least sympathizes with the insurgency and around 7,000 insurgents are currently active. He conceded that during its early years the army lacked an understanding of the insurgency and “may have” resorted to the wrong actions.
“For the first two years we didn’t realize that the situation was entirely different from the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT) insurgency [of the 1980s]. We fought [the Muslim insurgents] like we did the Communists. Eventually we realized that the only way to handle the situation in the long term was to attempt to create an understanding between the local Muslim population and us to restore peace,” he said.

To sow understanding

Of course easier said than done. For decades, successive central governments neglected the southern provinces. They regarded their Muslim populations as second-class citizens, tried to suppress their cultural heritage including the local Malay dialect known as “Yawi” and at the same time delegated fewer development funds to the lower south than to any other region in Thailand. Those decades of mismanagement have now come back to haunt the country.
But to the credit of Lt-Gen Udomchai and his predecessors, much has been implemented in the right direction. Col Pas Wongsarapee is the commander of the Yala Special Task Force, an army unit responsible for security in Krongpinang district  of Yala province. His unit originally comes from Naresuan Army Base in Phitsanulok province, some 1,400 kilometers to the north, nearly all of its soldiers hail from northern Thailand.
“One of our first tasks was to familiarize the soldiers with Muslim culture and the completely different way of life that prevails down here in the south and among our fellow Muslim citizens. We needed to instill an understanding for and respect of local culture in them,” he said.

Adul Yama (20), a detainee at the “Reconciliation Promotion Center”

‘Traveling doctor, teacher’

The strategy seems to have worked, as everywhere our inspection tour led us, there was genuinely friendly interaction between the northern soldiers and the locals. One of the reconciliation projects implemented by the task force is the “Traveling Doctor” initiative. Many villages in the region still lack even rudimentary medical care in the form of basic healthcare centers, established elsewhere in Thailand in even the remotest hamlet. The task force dispatches army doctors as well as trucks serving as “moving pharmacies” to provide consultations, simple treatments and medicines free of charge. More importantly, it aims to show the population that military presence is not only designed to “suppress”, but that it can have a tangible benefit.
Krongpinang district has no hospital and the ailing had to travel to the provincial capital for treatment.

Cell block at the “Reconciliation Promotion Center”, where Muslim insurgency suspects are detained

“Now we make our rounds to private homes and provide medical services,” said Dr. Anuchit Suksamai, a general practitioner graduated from Bangkok’s Phramongkutklao military medical school and now attached to the Yala Special Task Force Unit. In its fortified compound the unit also runs a medical facility open 24-hours.
“I alone treat some 10 to 20 patients a day, but our general patient turnover is about 50 to 100 people daily,” said Dr. Anuchit, proudly hinting at a bar chart pinned to a wall and detailing the increasing numbers of patients taking advantage of the service.
 “Traveling Teacher” is tied to the same project to cope with the severe lack of teachers in the lower south. They had been savagely murdered for their mere association with the central government. Moreover, many school facilities have been assaulted in the past, including the public school in Laemu village, torched by unknown assailants in mid-May 2004, and where a teacher was shot dead the next year. As a result, Yala province does not rank particularly high on a teacher’s wish list for a career advance. The “Traveling Teacher” initiative covers 10 public schools, including the one at Laemu, 5 private schools and 35 nurseries around the district. Army personnel take over classes when teachers are not available or are elsewhere, to tutor children in subjects ranging from easy mathematics to basic English.

Col. Pas Wongsarapee

Boosting forensics

While the situation may have eased somewhat when compared to previous years, violence is far from resolved. Khunying [an aristocratic title bestowed by Thailand’s monarchy comparable to ‘Lady’] Dr. Porntip Rojanasunan is the country’s most celebrated forensic scientist and director-general of the Central Institute of Forensic Science under the Ministry of Justice. Involved for seven years in the conflict, she is trying to establish forensic procedures that can help to bring perpetrators to justice. The results so far have been remarkable.
“Previously, military personnel were quite ignorant how to preserve the evidence at a crime scene and often enough destroyed it unwittingly,” said Dr. Porntip.
After long hours of education soldiers are more aware how to preserve a crime scene and leave the evidence intact. The military will now be calling in forensic staff to avoid contamination – particularly important when DNA sampling becomes the latest tool of Dr. Porntip’s forensics team for identifying culprits. The National DNA Database maintained at the institute now contains DNA samples of some 50,000 individuals, which can be used for cross-matching.
Besides establishing the identity of alleged insurgents through sophisticated DNA-matching techniques, another responsibility of Dr. Porntip’s team is to figure out where war weapons and bombs used in attacks originate.
“There is little doubt that most of the bombs are assembled here in Thailand, but we have evidence that most if not all of the components come across the border with Malaysia and, in some cases, from as far away as India,” she asserted.

Porous borders, hard to seal

The porous border between Thailand and Malaysia - very hilly with dense forest cover - appears to be one of the major obstacles faced by both military forces and the supporting agencies in pursuing suspected militant insurgents.
“After a successful assault, the operatives simply retreat across the border, and we have no effective way of sealing it off,” attested Lt-Gen Udomchai.
His views were echoed by Dr. Porntip, who added that the insurgent movements seem to have no concrete umbrella organization or at least clearly-defined groupings.
“In all those years [since the intensification of the insurgency] there was not one single group claiming responsibility for any of the countless bombings, ambushes and assaults. Instead, small groups appear to conduct their terrorist activities rather independently from one another,” she said.
However, some sort of information exchange must be taking place, because the forensic scientist also has recognized that bombs have become more sophisticated.
 “The terrorists must have received special training”, although it remains unclear who is conducting it and where, she added.
In the meantime, Thailand continues to fight an uphill battle against shadowy insurgent groups who tend to stage their assaults either in the deepest dark of night or at the dawn of day, then disappearing into thin air  – often without a trace – as quickly as they have materialized.

Dr. Porntip Rojanasunan, director-general of Central Institute of Forensic Science, Ministry of Justice

On the second day of our press visit, two separate bomb attacks were carried out in Yala and Pattani. In Yala, the bomb was hidden under a roadside bridge, exploding when two military rangers left their outpost to conduct a routine patrol. The Pattani bomb reportedly was hidden inside a 15 kg cooking gas cylinder on a pushcart parked on a footpath.
It apparently was triggered by remote control as a group of Buddhist monks on their daily morning alms round and escorted by soldiers passed the pushcart. The next day 30 heavily armed men launched an attack in the early morning hours on the home of a former village headman in Yala.

‘Unlocked’ detention

In the light of such violence, a detention facility within the vast grounds of Pattani’s Ingkhayut Borihan military base almost gave the impression of a holiday resort, which was further reinforced by the slightly cynical name sign “Art Resort” gracing its main gate.
Officially classified as a “Reconciliation Promotion Center”, the facility encompasses several single-storey cell blocks neatly arranged around an ample yard with lawns, volleyball and basketball courts. Besides engaging in sports and being taught useful skills like vegetable gardening and how to produce organic fertilizer and pesticides, detainees also frequently undergo counseling from religious leaders and other respected members of the local Muslim communities. The ultimate goal is “to ask them to return and contribute to society under the civil rights guaranteed by Thailand’s constitution,” according to detention center director, Pol Lt-Gen Natthapat Rasmisukhapop.
The facility, opened in 2005, only houses suspects of insurgent activities. There are only 11 detainees, mostly male in their early twenties. Conditions at the camp seem to be a breeze. Individual cells are comparatively comfortable, each having its own shower cell and toilet. The cell doors remain unlocked day and night, a fact that was corroborated by several detainees, although undetected escape through the vast, heavily guarded and fortified grounds of the surrounding military base might be practically impossible.
During interviews with several of the suspects, none would openly confirm any mistreatment, although they clearly displayed frustration with their respective situations.
“I was arrested by soldiers at home in the presence of my mother and grandmother and have been here for three days,” said 20-year-old Adul Yama, insisting he didn’t know why he had been detained.
“I am not aware that I did anything wrong and have yet to hear any charges against me,” he said, adding that he had so far not been visited by any lawyer.
Under Thailand’s emergency decree, suspects cannot be held without formal charge longer than seven days; under martial law, that period must not exceed 30 days.
Another, who preferred to remain anonymous, admitted that he was arrested for having killed “a friend in the village”, although he declined to elaborate.
But interviewed by another journalist and while a government official was present, he changed his story and insisted he didn’t know why he was held.
While journalists from ten different countries in Europe and Asia were free to interview prisoners it was obvious that we were shown a ‘model facility’, perhaps to create an image deviating from accusations of maltreatment and occasional torture claimed by human rights organizations.

Failed strategy?

This center is slated to close by end of October. Asked whether this impending closure after roughly six years of operation would be tantamount to conceding that the concept of “reconciliation promotion” had failed, Lt-Gen Udomchai misunderstood or deliberately chose to circumvent the question: “Do you think my approach is the right one…?” he asked thrice. Journalists response was withheld, ovation denied.
The conflict in southern Thailand is the result of a multitude of factors and there can be no easy solution. Two things are clear, though: Firstly, Thailand will – rightfully – never allow the three southernmost provinces to secede. Secondly, heavy-handed suppression as implemented during the Thaksin Shinawatra government created new wounds and opened old ones and certainly was not the way of bringing peace to the troubled region.
Understanding and benevolence seems more appropriate. Perhaps Lt-Gen Udomchai is not so far off the right track.
Thailand has traditionally been a melting pot of different ethnical groups keeping their own heritages and customs. Unlike in some other neighboring countries ethnic clashes are few and ethnicity-induced bloodshed even fewer. If people in other parts of the country can co-exist peacefully, then there is still hope for the troubled south, too.