The smell of blood hung over the Krue Se mosque... Its historic brick walls were marred by hundreds of bullet holes. Its marble floors were gouged where rocket-propelled grenades exploded. A torn, bloodstained Koran lay salvaged in the courtyard… Muslim rebels chose to die Wednesday in a hail of lead and shrapnel rather than surrender to police… To many, the dead were heroes. 1 - Richard C. Paddock, Los Angeles Times

In the aftermath of September 11 and the Bali bombings of October 2002, Southeast Asia came into focus as a “second front” in the war against international terrorism. The arrests of dozens of suspected Al-Qaeda operatives in Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines, as well as the presence of groups such as the Jemaah Islamiah (JI), Abu Sayyaf, Laskar Jihad, and the Kumpulan Mujahideen Malaysia (KMM) signaled to US strategists and policymakers that militant Islam had made significant headway into that part of the world.²

In February 2002, an FBI report called Malaysia a “primary operational launch pad” for the September 11 attacks, and some US analysts drew comparisons between the Philippine’s Abu Sayyaf and the Taliban in Afghanistan³. Exaggerations and rhetoric aside, Southeast Asia is definitely a region of deep-seated historical grievances and simmering ethno-religious animosities that manifest in sporadic outbursts of extreme violence between Muslims and non-Muslims.

Recent weeks saw two bloody clashes involving Muslims in Southeast Asia. After two years of relative calm, violence exploded once again between Muslims and Christians in Ambon, the administrative center of Indonesia’s Moluccas islands. Tens were killed and hundreds injured, with buildings, homes and places of worship destroyed by rioters and rival militias.

During the same week, 108 Muslims were slain by police in Thailand’s southern province of Pattani. Thai officials claim that the youth attacked several police stations and checkpoints in an attempt to steal firearms. However, regional police commander Prung Boonpadung pointed out that most of the dead were teenagers. Sources also pointed out that the young Islamist were armed only with machetes and a few guns.⁴

Alerted in advance of the attack, Thai security forces gunned down tens of the Islamists. Facing almost certain defeat at the hands of heavily armed police, the young rebels retreated to a 16th century mosque, one of the holiest Islamic sites in Thailand.⁵ Police surrounded the mosque and called on the Islamists to surrender. When they refused, Thai forces fired hundreds of bullets and grenades into the mosque. The assault left the mosque awash in blood and left none of the Islamists alive.

In an attempt to preserve Thailand’s normal image as a peaceful tourist destination, Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra dismissed the Islamist attack as the work of local gangs. Tourism is Thailand’s primary source of income, with 11 million visitors every year.⁶ However, a Pattanese separatist group issued a call to arms to Muslims living in the south of Thailand, where an insurgency has been waged sporadically for four decades. statement. The statement, posted on the Pattani United Liberation Organization (PULO) website, called for a Muslim uprising and warned foreigners to stay away from Thailand’s top tourist destinations. “We are calling all of you to rise up against the Siamese (Thais),” the PULO statement read, describing the government’s treatment of Muslims as “terrorism.”⁷

The Historical Roots of Conflict

Thailand is a predominantly Buddhist nation of around 60 million people. Almost 10% of the population is Muslims, living mostly in the five southern provinces bordering Malaysia.⁸ Most Muslims in southern Thailand are ethnic Malay who speak a dialect known as Yawi. They constitute a majority in the three southern provinces of Yala, Pattani and Songkhla. Although there is no precise date for the introduction of Islam to Thailand, it is evident that Southeast Asia’s initial contact with Islam was through Arab traders in the region as early as the 8th century AD.⁹

Eventually, Arab and Persian pioneers settled in Thailand, setting up businesses, taking local wives and bringing up their children according to the principles of Shari’ah law. In time, they were joined by their Indian coreligionists, and by the latter half of the 10th century there was an established Muslim community in Thailand.¹⁰ Between the 12th and 15th centuries Islam spread extensively, with large numbers of people converting, including the King of Pattani, who declared an “Islamic kingdom” in 1457.¹¹

The subsequent Islamization of Pattani replaced many elements of the Hindu-Buddhist culture, and the Muslim religious elite came to dominate the kingdom’s sociopolitical system. However, the Muslim dynasty was abolished in 1786 when Pattani was conquered by the Kingdom of Siam. Under Siamese rule, Muslim provinces were governed by Siamese-appointed bureaucrats working under a centralized administrative structure. Muslim rebellions in opposition to Siam’s administrative “reforms” were suppressed. The subsequent Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909 guaranteed Siam’s undisputed control over Pattani, following which the Siamese government took various measures aimed at weakening the Islamic identity of the Pattanese to develop a mono-ethnic, Buddhist, Thai state.¹²

Under Siamese rule, the local governors of the Muslim-majority provinces were replaced by Thai rulers. In addition, an act was passed in 1921 forcing Muslims to attend Siamese schools to receive a secular education. As a result, Islamic schools were closed and the power of Muslim scholars was greatly undermined.

During World War II, the Thai military regime of Pibul Songkhram initiated a series of policies aimed at the forcible assimilation of Muslims. The wearing of western-style trousers was made compulsory for men, and Muslims were prevented from adopting Muslim names or using the Malay dialect. In addition, Shari’ah law was set aside in favor of the Thai Buddhist laws of marriage and inheritance.¹³

Such policies generated a great deal of resentment among the Muslim population of Thailand. Consequently, Haji Sulong, the president of the Islamic Religious Council, submitted a seven-point list of demands to the Thai government, calling for an end to the government’s discriminatory policies. The Thai government responded by arresting Haji Sulong and his associates and charging them with treason.

By the end of World War II the Thai state had militarily subdued the Pattani separatist movement.¹⁴ In the initial post-war period, the government tried to adopt a more conciliatory stance towards Muslims in the south. But centuries of marginalization and suppression at the hands of Thai officials, state penetration of Muslim civil society and the absence of Pattanese political participation contributed to mutual antagonism between both sides. This antagonism erupted on April 28, 1948, in a pivotal event known as the Dusun Nyiur incident - a violent clash between Thai police and Pattanese Muslims that left an estimated 1,100 Muslims and 30 policemen killed and set the stage for the rise of more militant Muslim separatist groups.¹⁵

The Dynamics of Muslim Separatism

Modern Islamic insurgent movements in southern Thailand, the southern Philippines and Aceh arguably represent the most visible signs of armed separatism in Southeast Asia today. The roots of ethno-religious unrest in each of these regions stem from the same basic factors: insensitivity to local concerns, regional neglect, military repression and forcible attempts to impose uniformity of language and social behavior on entire communities.¹⁶

Armed separatist movements in Southeast Asia represent a serious, pervasive and notably persistent phenomenon. This is evident in the phenomenon’s duration and severity, as well as its resistance to negotiated settlements. For example, the war in Mindanao between Muslim separatists and the Philippines government has been ongoing for decades, causing some 100,000 casualties and creating over 500,000 refugees. More importantly, in all cases of separatism, one can detect the clash between the dominant group and its cultural values and the subordinate one with its own religious-cultural identification. National identity is invariably defined in terms of “the dominant group’s values and culture, with other groups on the periphery tending to be left out.”¹⁷

The Pattanese rebellion in southern Thailand in the post-World War II period is the case of a Muslim Malay minority, with its distinct culture, traditions, history and language, trying to break free from the vestiges of a dominant Buddhist Thai culture. The heavy-handed and often insensitive attempts by central authorities to impose Thai-Buddhist culture on the Muslims have resulted in Pattanese resentment and a fear of losing their own identity to the Thai, perceived as foreigners or intruders.¹⁸ Additionally, the underdeveloped nature of southern Thailand relative to the rest of the country has contributed greatly to Muslim feelings of deprivation and marginalization. In fact, Muslim provinces account for only 1.5% of Thailand’s gross domestic product. The south has virtually no industry, the infrastructure is abysmal and tourism is underdeveloped despite extensive natural beauty.¹⁹

Two principal militant groups remain active in southern Thailand: PULO and New PULO. Both organizations operate independently and have been largely unwilling to coordinate their activities due to differences in their strategic outlooks. However, the two groups managed to coordinate a series of attacks (codenamed “Falling Leaves”) aimed at killing state workers, government officials, law enforcement personnel and attacking symbols of Thai Buddhist repression. Between August 1997 and January 1998, no less than 33 separate attacks were carried out as part of this shared effort, resulting in nine deaths, several dozen injuries, and considerable economic damage.

PULO is the largest and most prominent of the Malay Muslim groups in southern Thailand, operating since the 1960s. The group was established in 1968 by Kabir Abdul Rahman - an Islamic scholar disillusioned by the ineffectuality of the established Malay opposition in Pattani. His group brought together “a younger, more militant generation of Thai Muslims many of whom had been radicalized while studying overseas - becoming an active insurgency with the politicization of Malay students in the mid- to late 1970s.”²⁰

PULO’s insurgent activities are carried out by the movement’s armed wing, the Pattani United Liberation Army (PULA), which directs the majority of its attacks against Thai government buildings and cultural and educational facilities in the south. New PULO emerged as a dissident faction of PULO in 1995. The group has pursued the goal of Pattanese self-autonomy, albeit “through less dramatic but more consistent actions than its parent organization.”²¹

Conclusions

The most recent episode of carnage against Muslims in Pattani will doubtless have significant internal repercussions. The Thai government has thus far failed to realize that heavy-handed security-based approaches end up radicalizing oppressed communities and increasing popular support for resistance groups. The US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and the continuing presence of foreign troops in many Muslim societies have already worked to radicalize the Muslim community in Thailand and increase their awareness of global Muslim grievances.

This increased awareness contributed to the Pattanese perception that Thai oppression against them is part and parcel of a global campaign aimed at suppressing Muslims worldwide.²² Last year, reports indicated that the US was seeking to establish a military base in Thailand to help government forces combat Muslim separatists.²³ If the US eventually takes an active role in suppressing Muslims in the south, the global confrontation between Muslims and the US will definitely widen. Moreover, the crackdown on Pattanese Muslims may also have an impact throughout Southeast Asia due to the multiple ideological and logistical linkages between Muslim separatists operating in the region.

Given recent US war crimes in Iraq and America’s insistence on militarily confronting Islamist groups throughout the world, Al-Qaeda’s ideology will definitely become more prevalent among oppressed Muslims worldwide. As Jason Burke noted in a recent Foreign Policy article: “al-Qaeda is more lethal as an ideology than as an organization. ‘al-Qaedaism’ will continue to attract supporters in the years to come - whether Osama Bin Laden is around to lead them or not.”²⁴

Kareem M. Kamel, PhD, is an Egyptian analyst based in Cairo, Egypt. He holds an MA in International Relations from the American University in Cairo and a PhD in Political Science from the American University of London. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the American University in Cairo and specializes in the politics of Islam and the Middle East, international relations, and foreign policy analysis.

By  Kareem M. Kamel, PhD

Source : islamonline