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Abstract
Why have militants in southern Thailand utilized anonymous and at times indiscriminate terrorist violence against civilians? This article gauges three explanations: resource wealth, weak states, and strong states. I argue that terrorist violence against civilians in southern Thailand is partially sustained and largely structured by the considerable institutional strength of the Thai state. This helps sustain the conflict by providing an additional grievance and it structures the form of violence by forcing militants underground and severing their links to civilians. A potential response would be to trim state agencies and scale back the presence of the state in Patani.
Acknowledgments
The author acknowledges the generous support of the Security and Defense Forum at Canada's Department of National Defense and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. This article emerged from a panel with Jacques Bertrand and Francis Bradley at CCSEAS in Vancouver. It benefited from the insight and support of Nathan Allen, Diane Mauzy, Aim Sinpeng, Chalida Tajaroensuk, Kamol Kamultrakul, Srisompob Jitpiromsri, Nelson Rand, and Chidchanok Rahimmula. I would also like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers at Terrorism and Political Violence for their exceptional support and insight.
Notes
John Funston, “Southern Thailand: The Dynamics of Conflict,” Policy Studies 50 (Washington: East-West Center, 2008): xii.
Ted Robert Gurr, Why Men Rebel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970).
See Hannah Arendt, On Violence (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1970); Stathis Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 20.
Michael K. Connors, “War on Error and the Southern Fire: How Terrorism Analysts Get It Wrong,” in Rethinking Thailand's Southern Violence, ed. Duncan McCargo (Singapore: National University of Singapore Publishing, 2007), 145–164; Rohan Gunaratna, Arabinda Acharya, and Sabrina Chua, Conflict and Terrorism in Southern Thailand (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish, 2005), 60; Zachary Abuza, Conspiracy of Silence: The Insurgency in Southern Thailand (Washington: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2009).
For a similar definition, see Kofi Annan, “UN Reform” (21 March 2005).
Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Peter B. Evans, “The State and Economic Transformation: Toward an Analysis of the Conditions Underlying Effective Intervention,” in Bringing the State Back In, ed. Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 46–47.
Michael Mann, “Infrastructural Power Revisited,” Studies in Comparative International Development 43, nos. 3–4 (December 2008): 355–365. This allows a state to be characterized as strong, even if its capacity is “highly variable.” Karen Barkey and Sunita Parikh, “Comparative Perspectives on the State,” Annual Review of Sociology 17 (1991): 526.
Barry Buzan, People, States, and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1991): 69, 97.
Jeremy M. Weinstein, Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 22.
Caspar Fithen and Paul Richards, “Making War, Crafting Peace: Militia Solidarities in Sierra Leone,” in No Peace, No War: An Anthropology of Contemporary Armed Conflicts, ed. Paul Richards and Bernhard Helander (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2005), 130.
Paul Berman, Revolutionary Organization: Institution-Building with the People's Liberation Armed Forces (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1974).
Weinstein, Inside Rebellion (see note 9 above), 20.
Stathis N. Kalyvas, “Book Review: Inside Rebellion,” Comparative Political Studies 40, no. 9 (September 2007), 1147.
Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968), 1.
Political parties feature as “the principal institutional means for organizing the expansion of political participation.” Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (see note 14 above), 398.
Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol, eds., Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War,” American Political Science Review 97, no. 1 (February 2003): 88.
Joel Migdal, State in Society: Studying How States and Societies Transform and Constitute One Another (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (see note 14 above), 5.
Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (see note 3 above), 26.
Thanet Aphornsuvan, “Rebellion in Southern Thailand,” Policy Studies 35 (Washington: East-West Center, 2007); David Wyatt, Thailand: A Short History (Hong Kong: Silkworm Books, 1984), 254.
Joseph Chinyong Liow, Islam, Education, and Reform in Southern Thailand: Tradition and Transformation (Singapore: ISEAS, 2009), 83.
The large number of secessionist groups frequently leads terrorism experts to list each of them, as if fragmentation is more threatening than unity. Terrorist experts have few incentives to downplay threats.
International Crisis Group, “Southern Thailand: Insurgency, not Jihad,” Asia Report 98 (May 2005): 2.
Srisompob Jitpiromsri, with Panyasak Sobhonvasu, “Unpacking Thailand's Southern Conflict: The Poverty of Structural Explanations,” in Rethinking Thailand's Southern Violence (see note 4 above), 89–, 89–111.
The number of major attacks grew from 467 during 1993–2000, to 283 during 2000–2003, and 1,843 in 2004. Funston, “Southern Thailand: The Dynamics of Conflict” (see note 1 above).
Duncan McCargo, Tearing the Land Apart: Islam and Legitimacy in Southern Thailand (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008), xi; Shefali Rekhi, “New Solution Needed for Thai South,” The Straits Times (12 March 2009).
McCargo, “Thaksin and the Resurgence of Violence in the Thai South,” in Rethinking Thailand's Southern Violence (see note 4 above), 67.
Marc Askew, “Conspiracy, Politics, and a Disorderly Border: The Struggle to Comprehend Insurgency in Thailand's Deep South,” Policy Studies 29 (Washington: East-West Center, 2007), 4. Some Democrats fanned the violence for political gain, distributing videos of the Tak Bai massacre in electoral campaigns. Ukrist Pathmanand, “Thaksin's Achilles' Heel,” Rethinking Thailand's Southern Violence (see note 4 above), 81.
The Nation, “Tak Bai and Krue Se Report” (2005).
Possible exceptions include state patronage, a minor drug trade, and smuggling across the Malaysian border.
Funston suggests that “insurgents do not seem to require extensive funding.” Funston, “Southern Thailand: The Dynamics of Conflict” (see note 1 above), 20.
Funston, “Southern Thailand: The Dynamics of Conflict” (see note 1 above), 39. Abuza suggests that “the local population is increasingly casting its lot in with the insurgents.” He provides no evidence to support this claim. Abuza, Conspiracy of Silence (see note 4 above), 143.
Surin Pitsuwan, Islam and Malay Nationalism: A Case Study of the Malay-Muslims of Southern Thailand (Bangkok: Thammasat University PhD Thesis, 1985), 13.
Connors, “War on Error and the Southern Fire” (see note 4 above), 153.
Raymond Scupin, “Muslim Accommodation in Thai Society,” Journal of Islamic Studies 9, no. 2 (1998): 255.
Duncan McCargo, “Autonomy for Southern Thailand: Thinking the Unthinkable?” Pacific Affairs 83, no. 2 (June 2010): 261–281; Bangkok Post, “Matubhumi Pins its Hopes on South Focus” (30 June 2009), http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/politics/19357
Fred W. Riggs, Thailand: The Modernization of a Bureaucratic Polity (Honolulu: East-West Center Press, 1966). The Thai bureaucracy is so dominant that “policy becomes less efficient because the bureaucratic units are neither coordinated nor linked effectively to other state institutions.” Erik Martinez Kuhonta, “Studying States in Southeast Asia,” in Southeast Asia in Political Science, ed. Erik Martinez Kuhonta, Dan Slater, and Tuong Vu (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008), 36.
Abuza, Conspiracy of Silence (see note 4 above), 166.
Abuza, Conspiracy of Silence (see note 4 above), 181; McCargo, Tearing the Land Apart (see note 27 above), 95.
Duncan McCargo, “Thailand's National Reconciliation Commission: A Flawed Response to the Southern Conflict,” Global Change, Peace & Security 22, no. 1 (February 2010): 75.
Amnesty International, “Thailand: Torture in the Southern Counter-Insurgency” (2009), 4.
McCargo, “Thaksin and the Resurgence of Violence in the Thai South” (see note 28 above), 52.
Abuza, Conspiracy of Silence (see note 4 above), 166.
International Crisis Group, “Southern Thailand: The Problem with Paramilitaries,” Asia Report 140 (October 2007), 1.
Brian McCartan, “Religion, Guns Tear Apart South Thailand,” Asia Times (2 September 2009), http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/KI02Ae01.html
McCargo, Tearing the Land Apart (see note 27 above), 122.
McCargo, “Thaksin and the Resurgence of Violence in the Thai South” (see note 28 above), 58.
The Rangers were expanded again in 2007, “despite its well-deserved reputation for brutality and corruption.” International Crisis Group, “Southern Thailand: The Problem with Paramilitaries,” 1.
Hasan Madmarn, The Pondok & Madrasah in Patani (Kuala Lumpur: Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 2002).
McCargo, Tearing the Land Apart (see note 27 above), 19. See also Scupin, “Muslim Accommodation in Thai Society” (see note 36 above), 8.
Michael Jerryson, “Appropriating a Space for Violence: State Buddhism in Southern Thailand,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 40, no. 1 (February 2009): 33–57.
McCargo, Tearing the Land Apart (see note 27 above), 34.
Surin, Islam and Malay Nationalism (see note 34 above), 108–109.
The Majelis cooperates with the Thai Embassy in Saudi Arabia to monitor Thai Muslims. WK Che Man, Muslim Separatism: the Moros of Southern Philippines and the Malays of Southern Thailand (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 162.
McCargo, Tearing the Land Apart (see note 27 above), 35. For many, the state has “used up the legitimacy of local Islamic leaders.” Interview with Srisompob Jitpiromsri, Pattani (6 June 2008).
Referring to sub-district and village elites, Surin suggests that “Rather than serve the villagers as their representatives, these individuals become the eyes and the ears for the officials.” Surin, Islam and Malay Nationalism (see note 34 above), 24.
C. Rajchagool, “Tambon Administrative Organization: Are the People in the Dramatis Personae or in the Audience?” United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific Bulletin 69 (2003), 36.
Bangkok Post, “Vote Fraud Mars TAO Elections” (7 September 2009); The Nation, “Vote Rigging Rampant in Local Polling: EC” (7 September 2009).
Interviews in Bukit Timang Village, Thepa, Songkhla (30 May 2008).
Interview with family in Bacho, Narathiwat (31 May 2008).
Marc Askew presents a similar story about a village headman, who after attacks by suspected militants, became a suspect for local security forces, and has been “subject to continued and open suspicion by officials since then.” Marc Askew, “Landscapes of Fear, Horizons of Trust: Villagers Dealing with Danger in Thailand's Insurgent South,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 40, no. 1 (February 2009), 72.
Askew, “Conspiracy, Politics, and a Disorderly Border” (see note 29 above), 27.
Askew, “Conspiracy, Politics, and a Disorderly Border” (see note 29 above), 34.
Villager in Bukit Torun, Sabai Yoi, Songkhla (30 May 2008).
Peter G. Gowing, “Moros and Khaek: The Position of Muslim Minorities in the Philippines and Thailand,” in Readings on Islam in Southeast Asia, compiled by Ahmad Ibrahim, Sharon Siddique, and Yasmin Hussain (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1985), 185.
Buzan, People, States, and Fear (see note 8 above), 83.
Andrew Cornish, Whose Place is This? Malay Rubber Producers and Thai Government Officials in Yala (Bangkok: White Lotus Press, 1997).
Abdul Khalik and Desy Nurhayati, “Thai Govt, Muslims Agree to End Conflict,” The Jakarta Post (22 September 2009).
While some attacks are coordinated, there is “little evidence of centralized control and command … and those involved in the violence had no clear objectives.” McCargo, “Autonomy for Southern Thailand” (see note 37 above), 267.
Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (see note 3 above), 147.
Askew, “Conspiracy, Politics, and a Disorderly Border” (see note 29 above).
McCargo, Tearing the Land Apart (see note 27 above), 50–52.
Abuza, Conspiracy of Silence (see note 4 above), 164.
Srisompob Jitpiromsri, “Unpacking Thailand's Southern Conflict” (see note 25 above), 96. This term was later used by Abuza.
Gunaratna, Acharya, and Chua, Conflict and Terrorism in Southern Thailand (see note 4 above), 103.
This phenomenon is known as “reverse discrimination.” Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (see note 3 above), 156.
McCargo, “Autonomy for Southern Thailand” (see note 37 above), 262.
Cited in McCargo, “Thailand's National Reconciliation Commission” (see note 41 above), 83.
This was applauded because Thai “bureaucrats stood to gain something from the proposal—more senior positions—while elected politicians from the region would effectively be guaranteed at least one cabinet seat.” McCargo, “Autonomy for Southern Thailand” (see note 37 above), 275.
Srisompob Jitpiromsri and Duncan McCargo, “A New Ministry for the South: New Governance Proposals for Thailand's Southern Region,” Contemporary Southeast Asia 39, no. 3 (2008), 416–417.
Srisompob and McCargo, “A New Ministry for the South” (see note 81 above), 422.
Gunaratna, Acharya, and Chua, Conflict and Terrorism in Southern Thailand (see note 4 above), 106.
McCargo, “Autonomy for Southern Thailand” (see note 37 above), 262.
Michelle Ann Miller, “The Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam Law: A Serious Response to Acehnese Separatism?” Asian Ethnicity 5, no. 3 (2004), 346.
Gunaratna, Acharya, and Chua also reject regional autonomy, but on the grounds that it may help radicals achieve independence. Gunaratna, Acharya, and Chua, Conflict and Terrorism in Southern Thailand (see note 4 above), 106.