WWIII: The Muslim War in Thailand has already begun…

Original Post Date: 2007-02-26 Time: 00:00:00  Posted By: Jan

[Here we go. A new front in World War III – Thailand! Jan]

PATTANI, Thailand, Feb. 22 (151)— Some are already calling it war, a brutal Muslim separatist insurgency in southern Thailand that has taken as many as 2,000 lives in three years with almost daily bombings, drive-by shootings, arson and beheadings.

It is a conflict the government admits it is losing. A harsh crackdown and martial law in recent years seem only to have fueled the insurgency by generating fear and anger and undermining moderate Muslim voices.

A new policy of conciliation in the past four months has been met by increased violence, including a barrage of 28 coordinated bombings in the south that killed or wounded about 60 people on Feb. 18.

“The momentum of violence is now beyond the control of government policy,” said Srisompob Jitpiromsri, a political scientist at Prince of Songkhla University here.

“The separatists can pick and choose the time and place of the violence without any effective resistance from the government,” he said. “They have the upper hand.”

Now the insurgents seem to be taking their war to a new stage, pitting local Buddhists against Muslims by attacking symbols of Buddhism with flamboyant brutality.

The two religions had coexisted through the years here, often in separate villages. That mutual tolerance is breaking down now, and there are fears of a sectarian conflict that could flare out of control.

“Buddhist monks, temples, novices,” said Sunai Phasuk, a political analyst with the monitoring group Human Rights Watch. “Buddhist monks have been hacked to death, clubbed to death, bombed and burned to death. This has never happened before. This is a new aspect of violence in the south.”

In another new development, said Francesca Lawe-Davies, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, some remote areas had become, in effect, off limits for the police or military, at least temporarily and perhaps permanently.

“It appears in the last year or so that insurgent groups are actually starting to control territory in a more conventional sense,” she said.

Some Buddhist and Muslim villages have begun sealing themselves off from one another, and people in both the region's towns and villages say old friendships and patterns of cooperation are being undermined by mistrust.

Entire Buddhist communities have also fled in a “de facto ethnic cleansing,” said Zachary Abuza, the author of “Militant Islam in Southeast Asia,” in a report published last month. “The social fabric of the south has been irreparably damaged.”

About 1.3 million ethnic Malay Muslims form a majority in Thailand's three southernmost provinces (151)— Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani (151)— a tiny percentage of the population of 65 million, which is overwhelmingly Buddhist.

The Muslims have complained of discrimination and attempts at forced assimilation since Thailand annexed the former Sultanate of Pattani a century ago. Armed insurgencies have risen and subsided over the past four decades, but the government may now be facing its most dangerous challenge.

“What is new about the current conflict is the level and degree of violence, the Islamist agenda of the insurgents and their unprecedented degree of cooperation and coordination,” Mr. Abuza said.

“The level of violence in Thailand's south has never been higher,” he said. “Nor has it been more brutal.”

He said in his report that there had been more than 24 beheadings in the past three years and as many as 60 similar attacks.

Human Rights Watch counted more than 6,000 violent episodes over the past three years. It said more than 60 teachers and 10 students had been killed and 110 schools (151)— the most visible signs of central government authority in many places (151)— had been set ablaze.

About half the insurgents' attacks have been against other Muslims, especially those who cooperate with the government, in what appears to be an effort to weaken central control. The victims include not only village chiefs and suspected collaborators but also those who work in government jobs, teach at government-financed schools or work in major sectors like rubber tapping.

All of this adds up to war, Mr. Srisompob said. The military has flooded the region with up to 20,000 new troops; checkpoints have been set up along the roads; soldiers travel in convoys of armored vehicles.

“In the local communities in the red zones, it already is a war situation,” he said. “It is different now from last year, from the last two years.”

The insurgency is all the more difficult to combat because it does not show its face. Unlike most similar movements, this one has not set out its demands or published a manifesto. It is a collection of violent groups without clear central leadership.

When a Thai commander proposed a new policy of negotiation last year, he said it would be difficult because he did not know whom to negotiate with.

“We are fighting a ghost,” said Chidchanok Rahimmula, a lecturer in security at Prince of Songkhla.

The policy of conciliation was put in place by Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont, who took power after Thaksin Shinawatra was ousted as prime minister in a coup in September.

Mr. Surayud apologized for the harsh policies of his predecessor during his six years in office, promised to investigate abuses and restructured the military command for the south.

People in rural areas say soldiers and police officers have become less aggressive and are trying to reach out by attending local fairs and holding dialogues.

Mr. Surayud conceded recently that none of that was working. “We can't see the results in three to four months because the painful feelings of southern people in the past four to five years run deep,” he told reporters. “This is not easy to cure.”

Indeed, the insurgency has responded by stepping up its violence, apparently in an effort to block any peace agreement. There has been no serious reply to Mr. Surayud's offer of negotiations.

People who live here, both in the villages and urban areas, say they have never been so frightened.

“Muslims feel fear, Buddhists feel fear,” said Abdullayi Che-are-sae, 39, a local official in Tapong, a settlement of 200 Muslim families in a red zone near the city of Pattani. “But we don't know who we are afraid of.”

At night, he said, the village falls silent as people close their doors and windows and turn off their lights, listening for the sounds of intruders.

Less than a mile down the road, the people of Khlong Tam, a Buddhist village, fall silent, too, he said, sharing the fears of their neighbors.

But the Muslims of Tapong and the Buddhists of Khlong Tam, who were once on cordial terms, have armed themselves and hardly speak to one another now, he said.

Here in the provincial capital, Chidchanok, who is Muslim, said she and her children check under the car every morning for bombs.

“And not only me,” she said. ”We don't go out at night. We shop at stalls in the street and don't go into the marketplace.”

She said that people were afraid now to stand close to a government official or a soldier or police officer, potential targets of bullets or bombs.

“When we are in a restaurant, if we see a soldier or policeman nearby we hurry to leave,” she said.

Shopkeepers are wary too. “In the shops near the university, if a soldier or policeman comes to buy something, the owner says, ‘Quickly (151)— just buy something and leave.' ”

Southern Thailand, she said, had become “a kingdom of terror, a kingdom of fear.”

“We really wonder about their identity and how they can be doing this,” she said of the insurgents. “They are destroying their own society. They kill the teachers. They kill the teachers who teach their own children.”

Source: New York Times

URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/26/world/asia/…/p>

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