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Thailand and Malaysia face a tough battle to quell separatist unrest
on their common border following more deadly attacks last weekend,
despite fresh peace efforts by the neighbors, analysts said.
Islamic separatists staged some
49 bombings, shootings and arson attacks Sunday and early Monday in
the Thai south, killing nine and wounding 44.
The attacks coincided with many
Thais’ celebration of the start of Tet, the Lunar New Year,
prompting military officials to accuse the militants of trying to
frighten ethnic Chinese and Buddhist residents to flee the region.
Muslims account for only 5
percent of Thailand’s population of 65 million and live mostly in
the three southern provinces bordering Malaysia.
The strikes came on the heels of
Thailand’s agreeing that Malaysia help facilitate peace talks with
the shadowy insurgency, which has battled the government for three
years. The conflict has killed nearly 2,000 people.
But experts said the attacks, the
bloodiest since bombs in Bangkok on New Year’s Eve killed three
people, underscored the Muslim militants’ resolve to derail any
bilateral efforts to bring peace to the south.
The insurgents “were sending
signals that they were not interested in the bilateral peace efforts
at all, and also telling the Surayud government that it was not
making any progress on [ending] the violence,” said Thitinan
Pongsudhirak, a political analyst at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn
University.
Surayud came to power after a
military coup last September that ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra.
Surayud quickly adopted a conciliatory approach to the rebels,
reversing Thaksin’s heavy-handed tactics, because this is the
policy choice of the chief of staff of the Thai armed forces, Gen.
Sondhi Boonyaratkalin.
General Sondhi led the coup that
removed Thaksin and is largely responsible for making Surayud prime
minister. He is a Muslim. He had found himself at odds with ousted
Prime Minister Thaksin over his hard-line military approach to the
Muslim insurgency. General Sondhi’s preference was for peace with
his co-religionists to be achieved through negotiations.
Knowledgeable sources have told
The Manila Times that what made Sondhi launch the coup was
Thaksin’s go-signal to his loyalist generals in the Thai armed
forces to mount a coup themselves, replace Sondhi with a Thanksin
loyalist and place Thaksin on top of a martial-law government.
Gen. Sondhi’s faction in the
military preempted the Thaksin loyalists’ move.
Surayud was himself a former
chief of staff. At the time of the coup he was a member of King
Bhumibol’s privy council and was known to be one the king’s most
trusted advisers.
On becoming PM, Surayud
immediately apologized to the Muslim community for past abuses,
offered to meet insurgent leaders and proposed a special economic
zone in the south, one of the kingdom’s poorest regions.
But almost daily bombings,
shootings and arson attacks continue to rock the provinces of
Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala, all at the Malaysian border.
The rebels’ tactics have turned
particularly gruesome this month. A Buddhist ice cream vendor was
beheaded in his cart. Parents have been killed in bombings as their
terrified children watched.
Signs are already emerging that
public patience in the rest of Thailand is wearing thin with
Surayud’s softer approach.
The Nation newspaper asked why
the government would even “offer to negotiate with brutal
insurgents who are actively waging a secessionist war against the
Thai state and brutally butchering innocent civilians on a daily
basis.”
Even before the latest attacks,
efforts to launch peace talks faced an uncertain path, largely
because no one knows who the militants are.
The insurgents never claim
responsibility for their attacks, and have made no public demands.
“Both the Thai and Malaysian
governments have made it clear they are not sure who they should be
talking with,” said Francesca Lawe-Davies, an analyst with the
International Crisis Group.
“It is going to be a long and
complicated process.”
The region has a long history of
separatist violence over the century since Thailand annexed what had
been an autonomous Malay sultanate.
Veteran separatist groups that
spearheaded previous outbreaks of violence in the seventies and the
eighties have openly embraced calls for talks. But that has failed
to quell attacks which experts and military officials say are being
led by radicalized youth.
Three people were arrested
Tuesday over the weekend carnage, all of them students in their 20s
attending local Islamic schools. Army officials said that during the
attacks the militants were drugged on a local plant used as an opium
substitute.
Srawut Aree, professor of Muslim
studies at Chulalong-korn University, said militants have stepped up
their attacks for fear Surayud will succeed in winning the hearts
and minds of southern Muslims.
“Surayud is trying to reach out
to Muslims, and insurgents are worried that people will side with
the government. If this happens, the south problem will be solved
quickly. That’s why we are seeing a spike in attacks,” he said.
ShinoYuasa/AFP, with
background details and analytical passages added by The Manila
Times Op-Ed staff.
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