Some neighbors fault hard-line approach in Thailand's south : Thaksin and unrest stir doubt in region 
International Herald Tribune
November 18, 2004
Nick Cumming-Bruce 

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's tough and "unrepentant" response to violence in mainly Muslim provinces in the south of Thailand, although appealing to voters in other regions of the country, is causing growing unease among Thailand's main diplomatic and trading partners in Southeast Asia, according to officials and analysts in those countries.

"We can see Asean governments are getting more concerned," said S.P. Harish, a specialist on southern Thailand at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies in Singapore.

"They are taking a supportive line, but they want the Thai government not to take the military option."

Thaksin, who prides himself on a decisive, corporate-chief-executive style of leadership, has made few concessions to calls for a softer approach to the south since Oct. 25, when troops broke up a riot in the southern town of Tak Bai. At least 78 Muslims detained in the operation died in military custody, mainly from suffocation. Thaksin said afterward that the government regretted the deaths but had done nothing wrong.

Since then, the southern provinces of Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala, which border Malaysia and include many Malay-speaking people, have suffered from a wave of killings of Buddhists attributed to separatist militants.

On Wednesday, Queen Sirikit made an emotional appeal for an end to the killing, the second intervention by Thailand's monarchy in two weeks seeking to defuse the situation. Sirikit said that during a two-month stay in the south, she "came across countless tales of brutal killings of innocent civilians as well as state officials that I must share with the Thai people so that they become aware and care for their fellow Thai citizens."

Thaksin, who has training in law enforcement, has relied on the military and the police to enforce government policy in general. He has blamed separatists and criminals for the violence and said that the law must be applied.

In the meantime, the government is planning to set up a national reconciliation council and Thaksin, normally impatient with public criticism or advice, met a group of academics last week to allow them to express their views.

Taking up a suggestion from that meeting, he called for Thais on Tuesday to fold more than 60 million origami birds that military aircraft would drop over the three provinces as a symbol of peace and to promote reconciliation.

But Thaksin, who faces a general election in February, dismissed as "nonsense" suggestions that he should apologize for the deaths of detainees. The government has yet to spell out details on the reconciliation council and other measures that it intends to pursue.

Despite calls for a new government approach by respected national figures, including a former prime minister and a former army commander, Thai political commentators say Thaksin's political party, Thai Rak Thai, or Thais Love Thais, believes that Thaksin's tough line will even win votes in other, strongly nationalist, parts of the country that regard southerners as habitual troublemakers.

The government's failure to enunciate details of any new initiatives or strategy, however, is a source of growing apprehension and tension with members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Thailand's relations with Malaysia in particular have cooled since Mahathir bin Mohamad, the former Malaysian prime minister, urged Thailand to give the provinces more autonomy, while his former deputy Anwar Ibrahim, criticized Thaksin as "arrogant."

Mohamed Jawar, director general of the Institute of Strategic and International Studies in Kuala Lumpur, said that "we are highly concerned by possible spillover" of violence across the border into Malaysia, and that "the Thai government has only been inviting trouble due to its neglect" in the southern provinces.

Briefings that Thaksin and the government have provided for some governments on the situation, far from allaying concerns, have created doubts as to how much he understands the issues at stake.

"Very disconcerting" is how a senior Asean official summed up Thaksin's assessment of the trouble.

The official added: "He doesn't really see it as a serious problem. He is completely unrepentant and says he will solve the problem after the elections. He doesn't say how but I suspect he means force."

Such a strategy is widely regarded among regional security analysts as fostering greater unrest.

An attack by Thai soldiers on southern militants who had taken cover in a mosque last April, and the deaths at Tak Bai have riveted attention of Muslims in the region and around the world, giving a religious impetus to what has been a largely ethnic problem, said Harish, the analyst in Singapore.

The extent of outside involvement in the violence of recent months, if any, is unclear, but the longer the violence continues the greater the danger that militant Muslim organizations around the world will take up the issue, according to analysts.

"This is becoming an Asean issue because of concern that the southern Thailand situation is not being managed properly," says Kumar Ramakrishna, also of the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies.

"The last thing anyone in Asean wants is for southern Thailand, like the southern Philippines, to become another flank in the global war on terror."

Copyright © 2006 the International Herald Tribune