The jihad in Southern Thailand reportedly caused over 1,800 fatalities since October, 2004, as against 3,200 in India 's Jammu & Kashmir during the same period.

While there is no doubt that broad ideological links with Muslim struggles elsewhere in the world exist, insofar as the conduct of violence in southern Thailand is concerned until a few years ago, this was still an internal phenomenon.

In order to understand the roots of southern Thai Muslim violence, one must invariably come to terms with Thai history and nationalism, and Siam's territorial boundaries. (Thongchai Winichakul, Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation, Chiangmai, 1994).

In fact, it was in response to these threats that leaders of Siam constructed a Thai national identity in order to foster a sense of nationalism. This was pursued through policies of assimilation aimed at diluting the cultural identity of minority groups, since ethnicity was seen as a potential threat to national sovereignty. It was this outlook that set the stage for the Malay-Muslim community's resistance to the assimilation strategies of the Thai state. Traditionally, a distinct Malay-Muslim identity in southern Thailand was predicated on the historical legacy of the kingdom of Patani and the cultural congruence it enjoyed with the Malays of the peninsula, and in particular those in the Northern Malay state of Kelantan. (See Saroja Dorairajoo, "Violence in the South of Thailand," Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 5, December 2004; Connor Bailey and John Miksic, "The Country of Patani in the Period of Re-awakening: A Chapter from Ibrahim Syukri's Sejarah Kerajaan Melayu Patani," in The Muslims in Thailand, Vol. II: Politics of the Malay-Speaking South, ed. Andrew Forbes, Bihar: Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, 1989).

The cumulative effect of Bangkok 's attempts to assimilate the southern Malay-Muslim provinces after their annexation in 1902 was the creation of a wider and stronger Malay-Muslim consciousness, which has expressed itself in resistance since 1903. (See Asian Review 16, 2003, The Far South of Thailand in the Era of the American Empire, 9/11 Version, and Thaksin's 'cash and gung-ho' Premiership: 137-9).

While the general consensus has been that the 1979 Afghan conflict and Iranian Revolution inaugurated Muslim radicalism in a grand fashion, one notes, curiously enough, that violence in southern Thailand already peaked once before, 1979. For example, in 1975, 70,000 Malay-Muslims protested in Narathiwat against the alleged murder of five Malay villagers by Thai marines. Another landmark incident was the bombing of the Don Muang International Airport in June 1977.

While the preceding discussion is not to suggest that Islam and the politicization of Muslim consciousness after 1979 was of no consequence, the separatist struggle employed Islam primarily as a marker of Malay ethnicity, in other words for many Muslims in southern Thailand, this is the "Islam" that has justified their struggle.

However, the violence that took place on April 28, 2004, when more than a hundred youths conducted eleven coordinated pre-dawn attacks on a series of police posts and security installations in Yala, Songkhla, and Pattani, resulting in 108 militants and 5 police and military officials being killed and 17 arrests, and in particular the raid on Krisek Mosque in Pattani, suggest that shifts are occurring within the ethno-religious nexus. According to eyewitness accounts, a number of Muslim (youths?) had streamed into Krisek Mosque on the evening of April 27 at around 8 pm, whereupon they conducted prayers and read the Quran throughout the night. At 4 am the following morning, they issued a call to jihad through the audio system of the mosque (which was used for the azaan or call to prayer) and invited others to join them. A short while later this group set out with machetes and attacked police posts and government installations in surrounding villages. Similar attacks took place in other provinces at around the same time. Despite having ample time and opportunities to disperse into the surrounding villages and forests, the militants in Pattani chose to return to Krisek, knowing full well that they would easily be surrounded. In point of fact, many of the militants were already prepared to be shahid, martyrs for Islam, and in the tradition of Muslim martyrdom had instructed family members not to wash their bodies after death, for the blood of the shahid is pure in the eyes of AllahY By 6 am, Thai security forces had massed outside the mosque. At noon orders were given by Panlop Pinmanee, Deputy Director of Internal Security Operations, to seize the mosque. Heavy weaponry such as rocket launchers and M-16 assault rifles were employed against the militants after the failure of a tear-gas attack, resulting in the massacre of all 32 individuals.

During a senate inquiry into the attacks, Kraisak Choonhavan, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, also revealed that contrary to statements made by security officers, several militants had in fact surrendered but were summarily executed. ("Inquiry into the Pattani's Krue Se Mosque Killings A Cover Commission of Thailand," ACHR Review, Asian Centre for Human Rights, New Delhi, May 5, 2004.)

Post-mortems on the bodies however, also uncovered traces of the hallucinogen Aprazolam in their blood. A similar hallucinogen was previously found in the blood of al-Maunah militants who had engaged the Malaysian police authorities in a shoot­out several years earlier after an arms heist in the state of Perak. Similar drugs however were believed to have been used by the Afghan mujahidin fighters during the campaign against the Soviet Union, and drew attention to the prospects that a new group (in fact several of the ‘youths’ killed at Krisek were found with 1,000 baht bills in their pockets) has surfaced in southern Thailand. (See also "Imam Admits Contact with Separatists," The Nation, Bangkok, September 1, 2004).

Illustrated most profoundly by the bloodstained floors and Qurans in Krisek Mosque, resistance may well be increasingly predicated on religious symbols and meanings which will continue to feed resentment as Islam takes on greater potency as an organizing principle to comprehend, rally, articulate, and express resistance against the central state. Events since April 28 give further credence to concerns that what was primarily an ethno-nationalist struggle; is fast taking on a religious flavor. In July, three Buddhist temples in the south were desecrated in attacks that quickly reminded Thailand 's Buddhist majority of the demolition of the Buddhas of Barniyan by the Taliban in February 2001. Weapons have allegedly also been found in the homes of Muslim religious teachers after surprise raids by security forces. In the attack yesterday at least one ‘tourist’ (probably more by now) died, noting that the tourism industry, with its emphasis on secular enjoyment, epitomizes all that is anathema to Islam.

Mistreatment during interrogation, abduction of suspects, and extra-judicial killings epitomize the current security policy in the south and have done little more than foster a climate of fear. (See Far Eastern Economic Review, August 12, 2004: In the South, an Iron Fist in a Velvet Glove").

Abuse of power is aggravated by rampant corruption within the southern administrative where incompetent police personnel are often "banished" to the south from Bangkok and proceed to create their own fiefdoms. (See Joseph C. Liow, "The Security Situation in Southern Thailand: Towards an Understanding of Domestic and International Dimensions," Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 2004).

Such a state of affairs has sowed much ill-feeling within the region for police administration, and the Thaksin administration's continued reliance on the policy of Martial Law that privileges the use of force and intimidation by the police will not only hamper the implementation of other policies in the south, but also influence the manner in which these policies are perceived and accepted by the Malay-Muslim population.

Public differences in opinion over the sources of violence between the Prime Minister (who blames drug gangs and bandits), the National Security Council (NSC) (corrupt officials), the military (local separatists and bad intelligence), the police (disgruntled military elements), and the interior ministry (Muslim extremists), furthermore draws attention to the severe lack of co-ordination between agencies and officials who horde information accrued in the course of their respective investigations in order to undermine the efforts of their competitors. (See for example "PM Brushes off Muslim Leaders' Call," The Nation, Bangkok, February 10, 2004).

Efforts thus among others should focus on the centralization of information gathering and dissemination under an NSC empowered to enhance the scope and depth of dialogue with the Muslim community so as to permit balanced assessments of intelligence reports and information (see our suggestion in next, part 5). The reintroduction of a centralized administrative body in the mould of the SBPAC to work closely with the NSC would open further avenues for authorities to listen and investigate complaints from southern Muslims concerning corrupt or inept Thai officials, and then transfer them out of the provinces should the accusations prove true. Plus rather than extensive investment in "state-of-the-art" surveillance equipment, the Thai government would do well to recruit and/or train a much larger pool of civilian officials (as opposed to uniformed security officers) with some degree of competence in Malay and Jawi, if not Arabic, who will be able to integrate themselves into the community and relate to Malay-Muslim culture.

The contest over the symbols and meaning of religion, in this case Islam, in political discourse and representation in southern Thailand has evolved in a manner that has shrunk the available space in the socio-political sphere, previously built up through the process of democratization and non­governmental organization (NGO) activism, for a "Thai Islam" that is clearly distinguishable from, and more conciliatory than, the ethno-nationalist Islam of separatism and the extremist brand of Islam epitomized by the Tariqah movement and propagated in certain religious schools. As violence escalates, so too does the urgency of regaining lost socio-political space for Muslims who remain opposed to extremism, but are increasingly finding themselves presented with a fait accompli.

Islamic education however has also been a potentially explosive issue in the politics of southern Thailand. In 1922, Tengku Abdul Kadir Qamaruddin launched a large campaigns against Bangkok in Thai history in reaction to legislation that required all Malay-Muslim children to attend government schools and learn Siamese. Later attempts at assimilation under Phibun Songgkram in the 1930s and Sarit Thanarat in the 1960s also sparked considerable outrage from the community and set the stage for several decades of separatist resistance.

In the context of everyday Muslim life, the religious teachers in the pondok, known as Tok Guru, playa major role as spiritual guides; but they also command great political influence. As Surin Pitsuwan presciently described, "one of (their) duties is necessarily the sporadic outbursts of political opposition to the central government in their quest for a higher degree of self-rule." (See Joseph C. Liow, "The Pondok Schools of Southern Thailand: Bastion of Islarnic Education or Hotbed of Militancy?" lOSS Commentaries, Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, Singapore, August 2004).

The biggest challenge for the Thai government to this day remains the regulation of the curriculum of the pondok education system in a manner that would not be viewed as threatening to Malay-Muslim identity. While policies have been formulated to this end, their effectiveness has been unconvincing. Since April 28, 2004 the Thai government has attempted to register the approximately 500 pondok schools in the southern provinces by promising funding for those that comply. Responses to this policy have however been markedly muted, and Muslim community leaders and village headmen express concern that participation in the registration exercise would invariably open their schools to greater government intervention and even raids by security forces.

Much of the difficulty surrounding the government's policy on pondok education stems from the suspicion that Islamic schools, particularly those that remain unregistered, breed militancy and separatism. Thai security forces believe that since 28 April, 2004 masterminds behind violence in the south are using pondok schools to recruit a new wave of militants to replenish their ranks. Because of this, the security apparatus has subjected pondok schools to Martial Law regulations, random checks, and the arrest of Tok Guru suspected of preaching violence. (See: Teacher, Student Arrested, Bangkok Post, August 13, 2004).

Thus the Thai government intelligence, believes that some of these pondok schools are part of the small but troublesome Tariqah (the Path) movement, a Sufi mystical movement that has traditionally been involved with separatism in Thailand, and that promotes the use of hallucinogens and holy water and oils in their meditation in the belief that these elements have the power to ward off bullets. Second, government sources are also concerned about pondok schools that receive funding and scholarships from Middle Eastern charities, which are suspected to be cogs in the financial network of international terrorism. For example 85 percent of Muslim students from Thailand studying abroad are being sponsored by their host institutions.

A primary objective better be, to modernize general Islamic education in a manner that fosters not only knowledge of religion, but also practical skills that will empower and equip graduates from the Muslim education system for mainstream life, and discussions on the possible creation of a Pondok Institute Association initiated by the Central Islamic Committee of Thailand are currently under way. But even then, any policy will have to first be predicated on the government's ability to locate these schools amidst a system that is highly arbitrary.

Pondok schools are often established by Muslim scholars who return from the haj and time in Middle Eastern institutions. A pondok can be established in a kampung (village) and have as little as three students on its roster. Furthermore, any move to register and regulate pondok schools, if not done adroitly and with caution, will only drive these schools underground, and further beyond the reach of the state's regulatory mechanisms. Yet even if a certain measure of monitoring is required, attempts at doing so thus far have been marked by an excessive use of force. Pondok schools are subject to surprise searches by soldiers (as opposeJ to civilian bureaucrats or state representatives) wielding guns and manhandling Tok Guru. Mosques are regularly monitored as well, but not so much for their teaching (there is a severe shortfall of state officials who are sufficiently competent in Jawi to make any sense of what is taught in mosques) as for the presence of weapons and explosives. Even more disturbing is the fact that soldiers regularly conduct these searches with dogs, and have been known to enter the sanctuary with their shoes on and rifles in hand. Such methods of "monitoring" need desperately to be changed, because they are offensive to Muslims. (See J.C. Lumbaca, "Use Special Forces in Thailand 's Troubled South," PacNet, no.35A, Pacific Forum CSIS, Honolulu, Hawaii, August 20, 2004).

Also, the existence of an Islamic university would provide a means of further education for Muslims and limit outflow to Middle Eastern and South Asian tertiary Islamic institutions. And finally, an external dimension to the southern Thai problem is the so-called Malaysia connection, and violence has on several occasions posed considerable challenges to Thailand-Malaysia relations. The Thai government harbours suspicions of Malaysian sympathy for their co-religionists and ethnic kin and continues to pressure Kuala Lumpur to play an active role in assisting Bangkok to track down militants and separatists who use dual-citizenship and the porous borders between the southern provinces and northern Malaysia to seek sanctuary in the latter. For their part, the Malaysian government holds grave reservations towards Bangkok's handling of southern Thai sentiments and in closed-door meetings has diplomatically suggested that their Thai counterparts tone down the use of force. Of interest is the outcome of recent meetings between the top leadership of the two states, in particular the decision to recruit Malaysian religious leaders to "advise" their counterparts in southern Thailand and "instruct" Thai pondok school pupils.

Hopes that the advent to power of a Muslim General ( General Sonthi Boonyaratglin) enjoying the total confidence of the highly respected Buddhist monarch and of a contrite retired General (Surayud Chulanont ) as the caretaker Prime Minister would make the terrorists more amenable to reason  have been belied by now.  Its modus operandi (MO) are now reminiscent of those followed by the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) of Bangladesh and the anti-Shia Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ) of Pakistan than of Jemaah Islamia (JI).

Thus Thai authorities are now groping in the dark in their efforts to build a coherent picture of the terrorist network, its leadership and its external linkages. Intelligence flow has been weak due to difficulty in recruiting human sources from the Muslim community, inability to detect sleeper cells and capture their members for interrogation and limited flow of technical intelligence due to the terrorists' avoidance of sophisticated means of communications.

Update Dec. 6, 2006: We can now say that (a view still prevalent when we started to write this article) what has been happening since 2004 should definitely not be seen anymore as a repeat of what had happened in the 1980s. Instead questions we are working on today are----why are so many Thai Muslims have been going to Pakistani madrasas? Are they going legally after obtaining a no objection certificate from the Thai authorities or illegally? Do they go individually or are they being motivated by some organisation to go? Who meets their expenses? What is the background of the madrasas they join? Are they run by any of the known jihadi terrorist organisations? How many of the Thai students in the Pakistani madrasas are from Thailand and how many are from the Thai diaspora in the Gulf? What do they do after they complete their education? The results of this current research will go to update our previous Asian case study published at the start of this web site:
 

 

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