Posted on 09/20/2006 3:54:59 AM PDT by excludethis
Thailand must negotiate with leaders of an ethnic Malay Muslim separatist insurgency if it wants to end bloodshed in its troubled Muslim-majority southern provinces, the country’s army chief said on Friday.
General Sondhi Boonyaratkalin said the violence, which has claimed more than 1,500 lives, would not be quelled if authorities only arrested the foot-soldiers of the militancy, but refused to talk to its instigators. “It is necessary to talk to make lasting peace,” Gen Sondhi, the first Muslim to head the Thai army, told Thai journalists on Friday.
ADVERTISEMENT The appeal for talks with insurgents came a day after bombs in 22 banks across the province of Yala exploded almost simultaneously, killing a retired official, and injuring 28 people.
The highly co-ordinated attacks on the banks, including two state-owned Islamic banks, demonstrated the militants’ rising technical capacity, and their willingness to strike at the foundations of the economy of the region, an ethnic Malay Muslim-majority enclave in Buddhist-majority Thailand.
“Nothing is spared,” said Sunai Phasuk, a political analyst with Human Rights Watch. “So far, they have targeted administrative structures, security forces, law enforcement, educational structures, and cultural structures, like Buddhist monks. Now they attack the economic structure, which means nothing put in place by the Thai state is accepted.”
Since the renewed flare-up in January 2004 of a decades-old separatist insurgency, Thaksin Shinawatra, the prime minister, has promised to shower the troubled region with money to accelerate economic growth, while also imposing a state of emergency that allows security forces to use harsh measures to crack down on suspected militants.
Mr Thaksin has, in public, staunchly refused to engage in negotiations to end the long-standing conflict, which has at its roots resistance by ethnic Malay Muslims against forcible assimilation into the Thai state, and resentment at discrimination against them in jobs and education.
Yet behind the scenes, some Thai officials have been quietly engaging over the last year with “certain individuals” – including prominent southern Thai Muslims in political exile – who are seen as potentially able to influence the insurgents.
“The army has been trying to talk with the intellectual leaders of the militant groups,” Mr Sunai said.
However, Mr Sunai said negotiations still faced formidable obstacles, including ensuring that those southern Thai Muslims in contact with officials could actually exert influence on the ground.
"He stopped trying to understand them a while ago and is now focused strictly on enjoying those differences while chasing the gold."
One of my pet theories: you can't "understand" them unless you are them. There's just too much cultural noise to absorb (them) and overcome (us).
AM - Please don't remove this story from "Breaking News." The facts that the coup leader is a Muslim and is advocating peace with terrorists are certainly new and important.
For all we now you are a muslim yourself. This man is clear: Thailand MUST negotiate with leaders of an ethnic Malay Muslim separatist insurgency if it wants to end bloodshed in its troubled Muslim-majority southern provinces, the country’s army chief said on Friday.
> I don't need yahoo.com to get my news
And thanks to you, neither do I.
Don't let the killjoys run you off. Oops, bad choice of words.
This story is not breaking news, but neither is it a rehash or uninformed. It is background on the new military ruler of the Thai government and thus is important information.
Bingo. Shades of Austria.
ROTFLMAO. Have a good day.
"You are smoking something to believe....."
You are demented to assert that a single - that is one - Muslim in the Thai government could singlehandedly pull off a national coup without the assent, participation, and cooperation of his exclusively Buddhist peers.
Wake up. Look at the facts. Merely on the face of it, this couldn't possibly be a "Muslim coup". 99 percent of those involved are Buddhist (and from what little I understand, the King himself despises Thaksin).
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:jF-JSyzCHO4J:rss.iscabbs.com/getpost.cgi%3Fforum%3D68%26post%3D42862+%22General+Sondhi+Boonyaratkalin%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=3
General Sondhi Boonyaratkalin, said last week that the government should rethink its strategy and engage the insurgents in dialogue rather than just arresting or killing them.
"Currently we are hitting the snakes at their tails, and that never makes snakes die," he said. "The strategy must be to talk with the snakes. It is necessary to talk to make lasting peace."
His criticism came after Mr Thaksin accused the military of not doing enough to rein in the fighters he regards as terrorists.
ENOUGH SAID!!
The problem isn't the MSM in this case, it is the absolute ignorance of people who refuse to see facts and let go of whatever agenda they are trying to push.
The facts, as of now, is Thailand is in a much better position to move forward as a nation than it has been in the past 6 months. A lot of very positive things have happened today including Sondhi appointing a committee to look into corruption and the King giving his blessing to what has happened. Of course, these things are not reported on, only how Muslims now control the government. LOL.
I hope you're right, but friends of my parents lived through Hitler's Germany. They were awash in pro-Hitler propaganda that was intended to keep them from seeing anything bad about the guy and what he was actually doing. They were hoodwinked into thinking he was good and a visionary, for example, as he spearheaded the Volkswagen, and had the Autobahnen built.
Claiming to be right just because "you're there" isn't necessarily the be-all and end-all.
At the same time, I still hope you're right. Time will tell. In the mean-time, we can all remain alert.
HF
Were you there during the tsunamis? Are you on the coast? Or up in the mountains? I understand from speaking to some friends who also live there (in the mountains) that the lifestyle up high is vastly different than on the coast and that the cost of land and construction is unbelievably low. My buddy lives in a place that he had built (30 years ago) for about $150,000 American and is over 16,000 SQ Ft. Does that sound right?
Since you seem to get all your news from Google, try searching for the keywords, "Tak Bai" and "Krue Se". It will give you a better idea of how the Army, under Sondhi, prefers to deal with the southern problems.
Wasn't here during the Tsunami luckily. For $150,000 US, approximately 6 million baht, you can get a hell of a nice place in the countryside and literally live like a king. I don't know if you could afford something that big, but then I don't know why anyone would want something that size either...
I always thought the "accident" of transporting 600 Muslim terrorist supects across the peninsula, in covered trucks, and in the heat of the midday, was a bit suspect and probably a not-so-subtle message from the Thai military to the terrorists.
Thank you for your posts in this thread. Your words mean infinately more to me than any agenda pushers here. There are many more lurkers here I am sure that appreciate your posts. Don't get discouraged!
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