50 Days After the Coup Thai Violence Continues Unabated

By Zachary Abuza

Despite optimism that the 19 September coup in Thailand would lead to a quick resolution of the southern insurgency, violence has continued unabated. The Council for National Security, as the junta calls itself, and the government of caretaker prime minister Surayud Chulanont have made many important gestured to the Muslim community, including public apologies for the Thaksin government’s policies, the dropping of charges against 58 unarmed protestors, the ending of blacklists, and the offer of some sharia law. Most importantly they were hailed for offering to begin talks with the insurgents. I reacted to these talks in this blog before and in the Jamestown Foundation’s Terrorism Monitor with a high degree of skepticism. The continued violence on the ground is as much empirical evidence as one needs to see that the people that the Thai government is talking with (the exiled leaders of last generation insurgents PULO and Bersatu) have no effective control over the two groups most responsible for the violence, the Narisan Revolusi Nasional Coordinate (BRN-C) and the Gerakan Mujihidin Islami Pattani (GMIP). Moreover, with few arrests and the ability to attack at will, it is hard to see what incentive they have to negotiate.

Yesterday, insurgents executed near-simultaneous bomb attacks on eight car and motorcycle showrooms in downtown Yala, wounding 13 people. In June rebels detonated 22 bombs simultaneously in all of the commercial banks in Yala.

In the 50 days since the coup, 70 people have been killed, including 3 police and 9 soldiers, and 126 people have been wounded (including 23 police and 18 soldiers). There have been 42 bombings (with at least 3 bombs defused) and 17 arson attacks that have destroyed at least 10 schools.

As Golda Meir famously noted, “You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.”

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