Henry Crumpton in Bangkok: A Healthy Degree of Skepticism is Needed

By Zachary Abuza

Yesterday the State Department Coordinator for Counter-Terrorism, Henry Crumpton, was in Bangkok where he met Deputy Prime Minister/Minister of Justice Chidchai Vanasatidya, who assured him that the insurgency in southern Thailand is under control. This is the same Chidchai, who less than a week ago, publicly lashed out at the nation�s intelligence services for their utter failings, including being unable to stop 101 coordinated arson attacks in one night. "They know we have the situation under control and that the problem is a domestic matter," said Chidchai after his meeting with Crumpton according to a report in today�s The Nation.

The insurgency is far further along that anyone expected when it became headline news on 4 January 2004. It has raged for 25 months now and has taken on a life of its own. Between January 2004 and January 2006, more than 1,200 people have been killed. In January 2004, violent incidents averaged 30 per month; by December 2004, they averaged 120 per month. By June 2005, bombings averaged more than one per day. More than 300 were killed and more than 300 wounded in the six months following the introduction of the Emergency Decree in July 2005. In 2006 alone, almost 30 people have been killed, 7 in one day and five of these were policemen. The presence of over 40,0000 security forces �one third the number of US troops in Iraq, in an area of only 9,036 square kilometers - has done little to stem the insurgency.

The insurgents have become sophisticated in a number of other ways. Not only are attacks becoming more clinically precise, we also saw an increase in the number of coordinated attacks in 2005. For example, on 26 October 2005, saw 34 coordinated night time attacks that left six people dead in raids. In another incident, 18 locations in six different districts were hit in one night. In another, militants hit two dozen outposts in one night, killing five and seizing 42 firearms. More than 100 government weapons had been stolen by militants in November-December 2005.

It has been a massive intelligence failure. Chidchai has stated publicly that 190 suspect insurgents have been arrested and that the problem is 40 percent solved. Yet almost none of the leadership has been captured. The handful of mid-level members currently detained were captured by the Malaysians, not the Thai government. Most of those 190 are very low ranking members who have little understanding of the movement or intelligence to provide as they are organized in strict compartmentalized cells.

The social fabric of Thailand�s Muslim-majority south is fraying. Insurgents have considerable popular support owing to the government�s heavy handedness and poor implementation of policies. Most agree with the insurgents that the Thai government is insincere in offering real social justice and will address their legitimate grievances. Those who do not support the insurgents are silenced: since March 2005, the insurgents have killed more of their co-religionists than Buddhists. But perhaps that�s because de facto ethnic cleansing has already occurred. There are estimates that 1/10th of the Buddhist population have left the south. The October attack on a Buddhist monastery in which a Monk was hacked to death with machetes, a novice monk also killed and the living quarters torched, drove many away for good.

The intelligence failure has been for two main reasons: the Thais have been searching for the usual suspects, the insurgents active in the 1970s-1990s, who are no longer involved. The insurgency is being run by Afghan-trained veterans and radical madrassah leaders. The second reason is that the Thai�s have been unable to see the religious aspect of the conflict: this is not just an insurgency but a social revolution in which an austere and intolerant Salafism is being imposed on society.

Authorities are still making too broad sweeps. For example, of the twenty-seven insurgents arrested between July when the Emergency Decree went into effect and September though only six were charged with for causing unrest; nine were released and the remainder detained without charge. These broad sweeps alienate the communities whose intelligence is essential. Now the government is compiling crude �blackjlists� to search for insurgents. People on the blacklist have to report for �re-education.� If they do not they are imprisoned, but if they do the insurgents threaten their lives.

There have also been several major setbacks in legal proceedings against the insurgents. Thai prosecutors have repeatedly reached too far in bringing charges against detained militants or suspected insurgents. Most of the important legal proceedings in the past few months have ended in acquittals. For example, Najmuddin Umar, the former head of Pusaka, a charity that was used to funnel Gulf and Saudi funds into the region was acquitted of involvement in the insurgency due to insufficient evidence. He and a co-defendant were charged with 12 counts, including allegations linking them to the 4 January 2004 raid on the army depot that is seen as the insurgency�s starting point. Yet there was no evidence to link him to the raid. The Thai government constantly searching for the one mastermind � and the courts are having none of it. There has barely been a successful court proceeding against the insurgents.

While the insurgency has not moved to the direction of terrorism against soft or western targets in Bangkok or Phuket, the potential is there. The militants certainly have the technical capacity to do so. The potential for more foreign elements to get involved is also there. The conflict has already escalated beyond where any analyst could have predicted, and the Thai government is no closer to resolving it, then it was two years ago.

TrackBack