Thai Buddhist woman killed and burned.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/thai-buddhist-woman-killed-and-burned/2007/04/11/1175971159708.html
One day short of the nine month anniversary of the Thai Coup that deposed former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the acting PM General Surayud Chultanont, acknowledged that the situation in the South “had deteriorated,” and suggested the permanent closure of remote schools, a bitter acknowledgement that the military was unable to stop attacks on teachers and schools.
In all more than 2,300 people have been killed and close to 6,000 wounded in the Thai insurgency that began in January 2004. The violence since the coup has spiked, some 600 have been killed, despite the fact that one of the many justifications for the coup was to remedy Thaksin’s mishandling of the insurgency. The government installed by coup leader General Sonthi Boonyaratglin promised a two-prong strategy to fix the south: to win back the hearts and minds of the moderate Muslim community and to improve the capacity of the security services to neutralize the insurgents. They have failed on both counts and the government of Prime Minister Surayud Chultanont has proven incapable of quelling the violence.
There have been several trends in the violence since the coup. First, the IEDs have become larger, and now rural roadside IEDs average around 15 kilograms. Many more IEDs are command detonated which has improved the accuracy of detonation. The result of these factors is that more soldiers are being killed than ever before. In one instance a week ago, 12 soldiers were killed with a single bomb on 31 May. On 15 June, an IED flipped a truck with seven soldiers in it; all were then shot execution style by insurgents. The use of second bombs, set off both with timers and command-detonated charges has also increased. Sadly Thai security forces and first responders still fall victim to this, by not securing the scene of the first attack. Cell phone detonators are still being used, but increasingly timers – such as Casio watches- and command detonations are being used.
Second, the killings have become far more brutal: One third of the 30 beheadings, has transpired in 2007. There have been almost as many machete attacks, and the desecration of corpses has become routine. In one case, a Buddhist woman was still alive when insurgents set her ablaze. Many attacks are meant to elicit shock and fear. In March 2007 a minivan was disabled and all ten Buddhist passengers, including two girls and two women, were shot execution style. The majority of victims are still killed by gunshots, but the added macabre has increased the sense of fear. The victims now regularly include women, children, Buddhist monks, as well as Muslims themselves.
Third, teachers and schools continue to be targeted with appalling frequency. 80 teachers have been killed and some 200 schools arsoned. On 11 June, three Buddhist teachers, including two females, were killed in Narathiwat, when two gunmen got off a motorbike and walked straight into the school library, and shot the women in front of some 100 children. The attack closed more than 260 schools for the week. On 13 June, insurgents torched 13 schools in Yala and Pattani provinces nearly simultaneously. Schools across the three provinces have been shut down for weeks at a time, destroying the social fabric and increasing the rate that Buddhists are fleeing the south.
Fourth, insurgents have stepped up their attacks on economic and communications targets, crippling the already weak economy.
The violence has led to de facto ethnic cleansing: Some 15-20 percent of the minority Buddhist population (more than 45,000 people) has fled, and insurgents routinely leave leaflets threatening those who stay. Insurgents now engage in the practice of dhinni, taxing non-Muslims, who pay for a degree of safety. Buddhists who remain, are often engaging in vigilante justice, portending a broader sectarian conflict.
Coup leader General Sonthi and Prime Minister Surayud promised a two pronged strategy to quell the violence: the first a basket of policies to win back the support of the moderate Muslim community, the second to improve the capacity of the security forces to go after the insurgents. The government has failed on both counts.
Regarding the hearts and minds component, the government has done a number of things. In October 2006, Prime Minister Surayud publicly apologized for the policies and excesses of the Thaksin administration. He pledged to abolish the practice of extrajudicial killings by security services (such as those employed in 2001-2002 against drug dealers, resulting in the death of almost 2,500 people), and re-education camps. Yet, reprisal killings by the security forces have sharply increased and the culture of impunity, enshrined in the 2005 emergency decree that gives blanket immunity to security forces, has gone un-addressed. Surayud promised the adaptation of the Malay language and suggested establishing local sharia courts. These have only been partially implemented. The government announced that entered into negotiations with the “insurgents” though it was clear that they were talking with the previous generation, and not those responsible for the violence. While preaching reconciliation, the government now debates whether to enshrine Buddhism as the official state religion in the new constitution, an act that will further alienate the Muslim population and vindicate the insurgents’ position that the Thai state is patently anti-Muslim.
The government has likewise failed in its efforts to improve the capacity and efficacy of the security forces. Immediately after the September 2006 coup, the army rewarded itself, not surprisingly, with a 50 percent budget increase: but with no apparent effect. Coordination between the security forces remains abysmal – one would think that a military coup would resolve that, though it hasn’t. The various bureaucracies continue to hoard intelligence, and not cooperate with one another. The military re-established the Southern Border Provinces Administrative Command (SBPAC) that was dismantled by Thaksin in 2002, but it remains under-staffed and under-funded. The Army has revived the Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC), but the effort there seems to be to eliminate the power and influence of the other security services. The real problem is not just of coordination, it is of the right number of troops.
The army commander, General Sonthi, has refused to dedicate the necessary troops needed to provide security in the south, preferring to keep them deployed in the north to stave off a counter coup. There only some 20,000 troops deployed in the south, and they are in static positions, confined to barracks, with little overt presence. While Sonthi argues that more troops would give the image that the south was under occupation, a degree of security is needed to protect the community from the insurgents. There are few checkpoints and patrols. Undeterred, insurgents can attack at will. Instead most of the policing is being done by the trigger happy, but poorly trained and unaccountable Ranger paramilitary. The Rangers have engaged in retaliatory killings that have only driven more of the population into the arms of the insurgents. The Thai media has accused the military of cowardice, using the paramilitaries as cannon fodder, to keep army death tolls lower. The police continue to be corrupt and inept. While the government claims that arrests are up, they have been low-level insurgents, with little intelligence value. Most are released, which has infuriated the military. Only some 20 people in three and a half years have been convicted in courts for their insurgent activities.
Sadly, General Sonthi refuses to acknowledge the Islamist and separatist agendas of the insurgents. In denial about such basic facts, it is no wonder the government cannot come up with any policies or effective solutions. The insurgency is gaining momentum, and a growing number of people are joining the militants or at least giving them passive support as the state has failed to provide security and is unable or unwilling to offer social services. Bangkok remains preoccupied with elite machinations, unconcerned about the single most important security threat in the region, complacent that the insurgency remains confined to the Muslim south. Nine months with nothing to show- more reasons that the generals should cede power immediately.
June 18, 2007