Government misreads the religion factor in South

It didn’t take long for the bomb to go off. Thailand’s call for a ceasefire during Ramadan, it seems, has fallen on deaf ears, as insurgents in the Malay-Muslim deep South continue to carry out roadside bomb attacks unabated, with no end in sight.

But things were already falling apart even before the formal call for a peaceful Ramadan. A planned press conference for last Thursday, in which Hasan Taib, the designated Barisan Revolusi Nasional-Coordinate (BRN-C) “liaison”, was supposed to announce a ceasefire, was cancelled for unknown reason. 

The following day, Ahmad Zamzamin Hashim, the retired Malaysian government official facilitating “peace talks”, put on a brave face and said the two sides – Thailand and the BRN-C – will work hard to curb attacks. The period for calm pointed out by Zamzamin runs from July 10 to August 18. Ramadan this year runs from July 8 to August 7. The pledge, said Zamzamin, was part of “a common understanding to work toward achieving a violence-free Ramadan”.

Like the peace talks, Zamzamin took a big leap of faith when he made the public announcement just a day after a 50-kilogram bomb destroyed a military truck, injuring eight soldiers travelling through Raman district. 

Moreover, just hours after the announcement was made, that Friday evening saw Sofan Tanyong-Ali survive a shooting attack in Narathiwat’s Rueso district as he was riding his motorbike home. 

On Monday, Torleh Sapae-ing, once suspected of being an insugent by authorities, survived a midday shooting in Yala’s Banang Sata. On Tuesday, an Islamic teacher, Mahdaree Ali, was shot dead at close range, also in Banang Sata, as he was going to tap rubber. Later that day saw the shooting death of Abdullohing Ngoleng at the Salahudin Withaya Ponoh School in Yala’s Muang district.

While the authorities were tightlipped about these shootings, they could not deny the political underpinning for the Wednesday roadside bomb attack against a Paramilitary Ranger unit patrolling Banang Sata. 

The same morning also saw insurgents attack soldiers in Narathiwat’s Joh I Rong subdistrict, with a roadside bomb followed by a 15-minute firefight that left two soldiers with serious injuries. These were signs of things to come. 

Sources in the BRN-C blamed pro-government death squads for the shootings in Banang Sata but declined to confirm or deny if the targets were cell members. “Babor Li was a religious man and he should have been left alone,” one BRN-C source said.

BRN-C members were also dismissive of Zamzamin’s statement. They said Bangkok has convinced Kuala Lumpur to go along in playing the religious card – the Ramadan card – believing that this would put the onus on the separatist movement to reduce the violence. 

The Thai government has been extremely embarrassed by the fact that violence has spiked since the February 28 peace talks announcement that was billed as a spectacular breakthough.

A source in the BRN-C said a peaceful Ramadan was not a bad idea and pointed out that this topic was discussed between them and militant leaders on the ground more than two months ago. 

That all changed when Thai authorities started to politicise the issue, thinking they could outsmart the militants by putting the onus on them. On June 9, hundreds of imams across the region were invited to a public event sponsored by the Southern Border Provinces Administration Centre (SBPAC), during which the issue of a peaceful Ramadan was raised by government-friendly imams, including Abdulrahman Abdulsamat, who is also a card-carrying Pheu Thai Party member. 

Clerics who took part in the function said the government’s agenda was so obvious but nobody wanted to be seen as being against peace during Ramadan. 

For the insurgents and local residents, Ramadan or not, violence continues regardless. It has been this way for the past ten years, since a new generation of Malay-Muslim separatist insurgents surfaced to take up arms against the state. 

But for the Thai authorities, Ramadan offers an opportunity to play the religious card to discredit the insurgents, who have shown that they can attack just about any place at any time they want, regardless of the month. 

Exiled separatist leaders said it was a big turn-off seeing how this predominantly Buddhist state tries hard to play up religion to discredit the insurgents.

During the Kru Se Mosque standoff on April 28, 2004, militants who went up against machine-guns with little more than machetes were described as drug-crazed youths who had embraced a wrong version of Islam and Thai history. Their organisational manual, “Berjihad di Patani”, written to motivate them, was called by the government as the new Koran. 

Security planners have also tried to get Muslim clerics to state that insurgents killed by security forces should not be buried as shahid, or martyrs, in line with Islamic principles. They also want clerics to say the conflict has no religious justification. So far, no cleric has come forward to say that – nobody that the insurgents respect anyway.

Separatist militants acknowledge that they don’t have the support of the Thai Muslim community outside the Malay-speaking region. Nevertheless, they maintain that their fight against the Thai state is a just cause because Islam permits uprising against unjust rule.

Apparently, the Malaysian and Thai participants in the peace talks wanted to get Hasan to make a public statement committing himself to a ceasefire during Ramadan, despite knowing that he has little influence with the BRN-C leadership, much less the insurgents on the ground. Hasan’ doesn’t want this hot potato, thus the decision not to conduct the press conference last week, said a BRN-C source.

Patani Malay exiled leaders say playing the religious card is a mistake, and it could cause Thailand unwanted consequences, like inciting foreign radical Islamist groups, if the conflict is perceived as a religious one. 

Luckily for Bangkok, Thailand has survived a diplomatic assault from Muslim countries because a number of prominent Thai Muslim figures have, over the years, lobbied those countries to go easy on Thailand, even in the aftermath of low points like the Tak Bai massacre and the Kru Se Mosque standoff, in April and September 2004, respectively. 

But such diplomacy has its limits, as seen at last year’s Organisation of Islamic Cooperation ministerial meeting in Djibouti, when the organisation slammed Thailand with a strong-worded statement about its handling of the deep South.

But instead of trying to address shortcomings, the Thai authorities, on the other hand, continue to look for ways to discredit the insurgents, thinking that the more tarnished they are morally, the better off Thailand’s position will be in the eyes of the public and the international community. 

But the reality suggests otherwise, as local Malay-Muslims have no qualms about supporting the militants.