Muslim Malay-Thai Insurgents Fight for Independence

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Thailand's U.S.-trained military, unable to win its 15-year-long war against Muslim Malay-Thai guerrillas, announced it is considering "autonomy or special administrative arrangements" in the south where insurgents staged fresh assaults, adding to the 7,000 people killed on all sides.

"I do not demand a cease-fire first before the dialogue," said Gen. Udomchai Thamsarorat, head of the National Security Council's Peace Dialogue Panel.

"Autonomy or special administrative arrangements, yes we can talk and we can compare it, or we can map it out if we believe the [Thai] prime minister's instruction about decentralization for people to feel comfortable under the government," Gen. Udomchai said describing a compromise that Bangkok earlier avoided.

Academics and researchers suggested autonomy should allow southern Muslims to run their communities including school curriculums, the election of governors, wider use of Malay language instead of Thai, family legal decisions, and other local issues.

But Islamic traditions in the south are blamed for at least 18 deaths this year -- most of them babies -- from measles because many locals fear the vaccine contains pork-based substances. Officials deny using such ingredients.

Muslim autonomy in majority-Buddhist Thailand will not appear anytime soon, and may be an empty promise to pacify insurgents.

" Gen. Udomchai Thamsarorat has failed to progress with peace talks, which to be meaningful must include the main [separatist] perpetrators of the violence, the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN)," a Nation newspaper editorial said on January 15.

"Udomchai is simply going to have to concede something to the BRN as a lure."

Gen. Udomchai did not elaborate on how autonomy might function during his January 11 "briefing" at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand.

To emphasize his remarks however he was flanked by officials from the National Intelligence Agency, National Security Council, 4th Army Support Command, and the Royal Thai Army's Internal Security Operations Command.

They issued a statement that said Thailand would "promote" the "goal of power sharing and decentralization on the basis of a plural society...in line with the constitution of Thailand and international norms, without any conditions leading to territorial separation."

The seemingly unwinnable guerrilla war has bloodied Thailand's southernmost provinces of Pattani, Narathiwat, Yala and parts of Songkhla.

In the latest attacks, insurgents killed two Buddhist clergymen on January 18 in Narathiwat province and injured two others after about half a dozen rebels arrived at a temple on motorcycles.

Authorities believe the assault displays an escalation fueled by guerrillas under Barisan Revolusi Nasional's (BRN) new leader, former 60-year-old Pattani province's Islamic teacher Sama-ae Koh Zari.

Mr. Sama is suspected of living across the southern border in northern Malaysia and is more hard-line against Thailand's peace efforts because his aim is independence.

Rebels also killed a police sergeant on January 13 when six insurgents on three motorcycles rode up to a guard post during lunch in Narathiwat province.

CCTV showed one of the rebels shooting into the police post's open window while riding as a passenger behind another insurgent. Four more guerrillas sprayed gunfire at the site.

On January 10, rebels disguised in military uniforms walked into a Pattani provincial school and shot dead four armed defense volunteers who reportedly had Muslim names and were supposed to be protecting nearby teachers and students.

The guerrillas greeted the volunteers who were sitting down, said they were inspecting the school, opened fire and stole their assault rifles.

More than 7,000 people on all sides have perished in the southern violence during the past 15 years, according to independent researchers and Thai media.

The military has talked peace with leaders of moderate rebels.

But the estimated 6,000 armed BRN insurgents who stage bombings, assassinations and other hit-and-run attacks refuse to attend the talks.

The guerrillas enjoy sanctuary by crossing Thailand's porous frontier into Muslim-majority Malaysia where politically powerful Islamists occupy a northern sliver among Malaysia's larger, more moderate and diverse society.

Malaysia's government meanwhile also suggests autonomy for Thailand's resource-rich but impoverished south.

BRN want to create a Pattani nation under Muslim traditions -- including children's Islamic education, women in headscarves and niqab veils, and other disciplinary rules -- and stop Bangkok's Buddhist influence.

BRN is inspired by a former independent ethnic Malay sultanate in the same southern provinces which Thailand annexed in 1909.

Officials and analysts reject descriptions of BRN's fight as religious, and describe it instead as an ethnic, nationalist struggle to regain ancestral land.

But Muslim rebels have killed more than a dozen Buddhist clergymen since 2004 and attacked several Buddhist temples, hoping to force Buddhists to leave the south.

The army guards many southern temples and often escorts Buddhist monks during their silent, single-file, barefoot walks each dawn, allowing devotees to offer monks cooked food, new robes, toiletries and other alms.

"All the monks can still conduct monkhood practices as usual," 4th Army Region Commander Lt.-Gen. Pornsak Poonsawat said after the January 18 killing of two Buddhist clergymen.

"But more officers will be deployed to provide security for monks collecting alms," Lt.-Gen. Pornsak said.

Guerrillas do not control any territory in the south where more than 90 percent of the 1.7 million people are Muslim.

But the army cannot stop them, so the government, investors, residents and Buddhist clergy remain fearful of an inevitable next attack.

Insurgents often detonate improvised explosive devices hidden in motorcycles, cars and along highways, killing and maiming troops and civilians.

Rebels also target businesses, rubber plantations, automobile showrooms, hotels, restaurants, shopping malls and other commercial venues to convince ethnic Thais to leave.

The army meanwhile tries to fix their flawed strategy.

"We no longer head back to the bases when night falls, only to let militants plant bombs that will go off in the morning," Lt.-Gen. Pornsak said in October when he began his command.

"Patrols are being beefed up," Lt.-Gen. Pornsak said.

The military is unable to concentrate its full attention on fighting the insurgency because many of its top leaders are running a coup-installed junta in Bangkok, which keeps them focused on complicated politics.

For example, Army Chief Gen. Apirat Kongsompong is also secretary-general of the junta, which calls itself a National Council for Peace and Order.

He also commands the junta's "peace-keeping force" scattered across Thailand.

Gen. Apirat was recently busy warning pro-election demonstrators that they must obey the regime's censorship rules and "not step over that line."

Defense Minister Prawit Wongsuwon meanwhile is also deputy prime minister and often embroiled in the junta's complexities.

The retired army general suffers allegations of corruption over a personal million-dollar wristwatch ownership scandal which he denied, avoiding prosecution.

Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha has also been distracted for nearly a decade with Bangkok's politics.

When he was army chief, he led a 2014 coup after playing a role in a 2006 putsch.

Mr. Prayuth is currently trying to schedule national elections after postponing his earlier promised dates, including a now-defunct February 24 poll which has yet to be rescheduled.

The southern insurgency meanwhile is not much of an issue among election candidates.

Richard S. Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based journalist from San Francisco, California, reporting news from Asia since 1978 and winner of Columbia University's Foreign Correspondent's Award. He co-authored three non-fiction books about Thailand, including "'Hello My Big Big Honey!' Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews," "60 Stories of Royal Lineage," and "Chronicle of Thailand: Headline News Since 1946." Mr. Ehrlich also contributed to the chapter "Ceremonies and Regalia" in a book published in English and Thai titled, "King Bhumibol Adulyadej, A Life's Work: Thailand's Monarchy in Perspective." Mr. Ehrlich's newest book, "Sheila Carfenders, Doctor Mask & President Akimbo" portrays a 22-year-old American female mental patient who is abducted to Asia by her abusive San Francisco psychiatrist.

His online sites are:

https://asia-correspondent.tumblr.com
https://www.amazon.com/Hello-Big-Honey-Revealing-Interviews/dp/1717006418
https://www.facebook.com/SheilaCarfenders
https://www.amazon.com/Sheila-Carfenders-Doctor-President-Akimbo/dp/1973789353/

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