Malaysian role vexes Thai conflict

ARCHIVES 2012

By admin-s On Sep 21, 2012

(Asia Times) — PATTANI – When Malay Muslim insurgents recently staked Malaysian flags along roads, pedestrian bridges and on electricity poles across Thailand’s predominantly Muslim southernmost provinces, the symbolic acts of rebellion highlighted Malaysia’s often overlooked cross-border role in the deadly conflict.

Although Thai officials have consistently characterized the situation as homegrown, that interpretation is stretched by the fact that many Malay Muslim Thai nationals share an ethnic and religious affinity with Malaysia’s ethnic majority. Malaysia has long served as a source of sanctuary for ethnic Malay separatists who launch attacks in Thailand and flee to safety across the border.

There have been widespread allegations that northern Malaysia, particularly Kelantan state, has been used for insurgent training and planning. Many insurgent fighters and others tied to the separatist rebellion are known to have drawn on the strategic advice of an older generation of Malay Muslim separatists who reside in Malaysia.

The flag hoisting incidents served as a stark reminder that Malaysia will need to play a significant complementary role if the unprecedented levels of violence that have engulfed the historically restive ethnic minority region since early 2004 are to be subdued.

August 31, the day insurgents raised Malaysian flags across the southern Thai provinces of Pattani, Narathiwat, Yala and parts of Songkhla, symbolically marked both the anniversary of Malaysia’s independence from colonial rule and the founding of Bersatu, a separatist umbrella group established in 1989.

Sources with knowledge of the clandestine insurgent movement told Asia Times Online that orders for the highly-coordinated incidents were given by separatist leaders based in Malaysia.

Some Malay Muslim sources tied the events to Thailand’s colonization of the region, a former Malay sultanate. They believed that precisely 103 incidents were staged, equal to the number of years that the former region known as Patani has been under formal Thai rule. (The Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909 demarcated borders between Siam, present-day Thailand, and Malaysia, ending traditional tributary relations.)

The close coordination and wide geographical spread of the events have once again raised questions about the insurgency’s structure, which has often been portrayed as highly fragmented and competitive among various groups and factions. While the separatist movement is known to be comprised of many groups, including factions from old rebel groups like the Patani United Liberation Organization (PULO) and Barisan Revolusi National (BRN), a loosely structured secretive senior council coordinates with all of them, according to one informed source.

Delicate diplomacy
Thai officials said soon after the incidents that insurgents were trying to spark a conflict between Thailand and Malaysia. Other sources with access to the movement, however, suggested that the incidents underscored a longstanding desire among many in the shadowy separatist movement for Malaysia to play an intermediary role in a negotiated peace process with the Thai government.

Malaysia’s state-influenced media was initially silent on the incidents. Later, on September 2, Malaysian media quoted officials who said only that they did not know why Malaysian flags were raised on Thai territory. Senior Thai government officials, meanwhile, insisted that that they maintain cordial ties with Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak’s administration.

On September 8, Najib met with the Thai prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting held in Russia. Najib assured Yingluck that Malaysia would cooperate fully in solving problems related to the insurgency and said that he was satisfied with Thailand’s policies towards the restive region.

Despite these diplomatic niceties, the two countries have a conflicted history over Thailand’s predominantly Malay Muslim southernmost provinces. In the 1960s and 1970s, for instance, Malaysia was complicit in providing assistance to separatist groups fighting against Thai rule.

By the 1990s, Malaysia began to withdraw its support for separatist groups after Thailand played an instrumental role in the eradication of the Communist Party of Malaysia (CPM) in 1989. In 1998, Malaysia handed over key leaders from PULO to Thai authorities, contributing to that period’s relative regional calm.

When the separatist insurgency began to resurface in 2001, Thai authorities hoped for cooperation with their Malaysian counterparts to track down separatist figures based in Malaysia, end the use of dual nationality to tighten border security, and clamp down on smuggled goods, particularly oil and narcotics.

A bilateral border agreement signed in 2000 that focused on combating criminality and promoting cooperation in areas of socio-economic development initially signaled a new era of bilateral cooperation, but Malaysian assistance dwindled as the insurgency intensified.

As a result, Thai frustration with Malaysia has lingered over the course of this nearly decade-long phase of the conflict. On August 23, General Akanit Muansawad, director of Thailand’s Neighboring Countries Border Coordinating Center, expressed his displeasure over Malaysia’s lack of assistance in a local television interview.

Akanit, a long time key figure in unofficial talks with separatist figures based abroad, clearly emphasized that Malaysian authorities knew that separatists used their territory as sanctuary from Thai forces and had not taken any concrete measures to stop the practice.

Sources with access to insurgents said that Akanit’s interview added fuel to insurgents’ fire to stage the August 31 incidents, which included five bombings that wounded six security officials. Asia Times Online was not able to independently confirm the claim.

While Akanit’s views are widely shared privately among Thai security officers based in the South, making such statements publicly went against the grain of recent Thai diplomacy with Malaysia. Since the ousting of Yingluck Shinawatra’s older brother, former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, in a 2006 military coup, Thai officials have avoided publicly criticizing Malaysia’s alleged role in sustaining the insurgency.