Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
06BANGKOK926
2006-02-16 02:19:00
SECRET
Embassy Bangkok
Cable title:  

U.S.-THAI MILITARY COOPERATION IN THE CONTEXT OF

Tags:  PGOV PREL TH POL MIL 
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S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 03 BANGKOK 000926 

SIPDIS

DOD FOR USD(P) EDELMAN AND ASD RODMAN FROM AMBASSADOR BOYCE
STATE FOR S/CT CRUMPTON AND EAP A/S HILL

E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/15/2016
TAGS: PGOV PREL TH POL MIL
SUBJECT: U.S.-THAI MILITARY COOPERATION IN THE CONTEXT OF
SOUTHERN VIOLENCE

Classified By: Ambassador Ralph L. Boyce. Reason 1.4 (a and d)

S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 03 BANGKOK 000926

SIPDIS

DOD FOR USD(P) EDELMAN AND ASD RODMAN FROM AMBASSADOR BOYCE
STATE FOR S/CT CRUMPTON AND EAP A/S HILL

E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/15/2016
TAGS: PGOV PREL TH POL MIL
SUBJECT: U.S.-THAI MILITARY COOPERATION IN THE CONTEXT OF
SOUTHERN VIOLENCE

Classified By: Ambassador Ralph L. Boyce. Reason 1.4 (a and d)


1. (S) Eric and Peter: My country team continues to
explore ways to improve our military cooperation with
Thailand in order to address the violence in the South here.
I know these are issues that are important to you. I'd like
to share my views with you and suggest ways we can help the
Thai. I recently met with Hank Crumpton and believe we
should seek his input too. I see three basic ways to focus
our military cooperation strategy:

--1) Improve the professional and operational skills of the
Royal Thai Armed Forces, especially the Thai Army;
--2) Help the Thai break down stovepipes between the Thai
military, police forces, and civilian agencies;
--3) Do everything we can to ensure the Thai respect
international human rights norms as they counter the violence.

However, in order to successfully implement such a strategy,
it is important to clearly understand the roots of the
violence in southern Thailand which make this situation very
different from the southern Philippines and Indonesia.

THIS IS ETHNIC, NOT RELIGIOUS


2. (S) At its core, the violence in southern Thailand
arises primarily from ethnic rather than religious tension.
Unlike in other parts of Thailand where Muslims speak Thai
and are linguistically and culturally linked to their
Buddhist neighbors, Muslims in southern Thailand speak a
different language, have different customs, and resent being
treated as second class citizens. They are proud of their
distinct -- fundamentally Malay -- heritage. The unrest can
be traced back to 1902 when Britain and Siam drew a border
between the once-independent sultanate of Pattani and British
Malaya -- thereby separating ethnic Malays in what is now
southern Thailand from their kinsmen in what is now northern
Malaysia. This is not a new issue for the Thai.


3. (S) Unrest in the South has smoldered on and off for
over a hundred years. It will likely continue to simmer for
years to come. However, unlike the Philippines and
Indonesia, where the security forces cannot operate in large
areas of those countries, the RTG controls all of southern

Thailand. There are roughly 45,000 security forces (police
and military) deployed in an area smaller than Connecticut.
Most importantly, unlike the Philippines -- which seeks U.S.
direct involvement in and around Mindanao -- the RTG does not
want U.S. troops or trainers working in the South. I can't
underscore this point too much -- Prime Minister Thaksin and
his Government do not want us to operate in the South.

DO NO HARM


4. (S) Right now, southern separatists direct their anger
at the government in Bangkok, not at the United States. A
U.S. presence or perception of U.S. involvement in the South
could redirect that anger towards us and link it to the
international jihadist movement -- a link that is currently
absent. Likewise, we are working hard to avoid feeding
rampant, outlandish speculation that we are somehow fomenting
the violence in the South in order to justify building
permanent bases -- a very sensitive issue in Thailand. We do
not want to jeopardize our access to key military facilities
in Thailand like Utapao Naval Air Station. Utapao was
invaluable during Operation Unified Assistance and allows us
to quickly ferry materiel from the Pacific to the Persian
Gulf.


5. (S) We must ensure that any offers of assistance or
training pass the "location and label" test. Put simply, we
should ensure that U.S. personnel are kept away from the far
South and we need to make sure that we do not label any
assistance or training as directly linked to the southern
situation.

WHAT THAI POLICY IS AND WHAT THEY HAVE DONE


6. (S) The RTG's CT effort in the South has been plagued
by Thaksin repeatedly changing his policies and lead
agencies. Shortly after taking power, Thaksin decided to
dissolve the joint civilian-police-military Task Force which
since the 1980s had successfully contained the
separatist-related violence. The loss of that coordinating
body increased the natural propensity of the Thai bureaucracy
to stovepipe information and not cooperate operationally.
The problems caused by this lack of coordination have been
compounded by the constant shifting of both the civilian and
military leadership responsible for the South. In addition,
Thaksin has often set unrealistic deadlines for his deputies
to "solve" the southern problem and has been inconsistent in
his policy statements, creating a situation where the
operational leadership has a weak mandate and lack of
strategic focus. Now, he finally appears settled on Army
CINC GEN Sonthi Boonyaratklin (who is a Muslim with a Special
Forces Background) as his chief military representative.
Sonthi recently assured me that the Army had rebuilt its
intelligence and political network in the South, which is a
good sign. Nonetheless, Thaksin himself retains a tight hold
on policy decisions in the South and there is little
guarantee that he couldn't switch course again in response to
an actual or perceived setback. But irrespective of which
agency has the titular lead in the South, implementation of
the CT effort will remain a joint effort among the Army,
Police, and civilian officials and thus will require improved
coordination and elimination of crippling stovepipes among
agencies.
WHAT ARE THE GAPS? A) MILITARY SKILLS


7. (S) As mentioned above, I see three areas ripe for
improving our work with the armed forces. First, making the
Thai military more capable. Our current military assistance
program, using Joint/Combined Exercise Training (JCET) funds,
is good but could be expanded. If funds and trainers were
available, we could augment our JCET program and improve Thai
facilities for training. Existing efforts include:

--JCETs programs focused on enhancing general CT
capabilities, counter-insurgency operations, civil affairs
and psychological operations, and information warfare. Since
FY04 over 2500 Thai soldiers from 50 different units have
been trained in counter-insurgency by U.S. Special Forces.

--Building a National Training Facility (NTF). We have
worked with the Thai for over a year to develop an NTF that
can serve as a world-class training facility. Such a site
could not only help hone CT skills and provide human rights
training, but is a key tool to improve peace keeping skills
for soldiers in the region under the Global Peace Operations
Initiative (GPOI). We have been cobbling funds together to
make the NTF a center of excellence and could use more.

--PSYOPS. We presently support a U.S. Military Information
Support Team (MIST) unit from Ft. Bragg attached to the Thai
Army. This team will likely be augmented by an experienced
Civil Affairs planner within the next month or so who will
assist with campaign planning and product support to counter
ideological support to terrorism. I think it is worth
exploring doing more in this area -- including creating
training material aimed at soldiers rotating to the South to
make them more sensitive to local customs and religious
beliefs. That being said, it is critical that the Thai
military be in control. Under the current arrangement, the
MIST Unit works out of Thai Army Special Warfare HQ in
Lopburi north of Bangkok, nowhere near the South, under the
explicit direction of GEN Sonthi, the Thai Army Commander.

B) POOR COORDINATION WITH THE POLICE FORCES


8. (S) The area most ripe for exploration is improving
coordination between the Thai military and the Thai Police.
There is a glaring lack of public confidence in the justice
system here -- creating an atmosphere ripe for human rights
abuses. Thai police are generally not as professional as the
military and there is little coordination between the two
institutions. Recently, we began to explore what steps we
can take to break down these barriers. One obvious example
is to invite a few key Thai police to U.S.-sponsored military
training courses and to invite key Thai military officers to
U.S.-sponsored police training courses. Other possibilities
worth exploring include:

--Expanding DOJ's International Criminal Investigative
Assistance Training Program (ICITAP). ICITAP has years of
experience in Indonesia, Colombia and elsewhere in providing
fundamental skills to police and prosecutors that allow them
to conduct investigations and prosecute cases under the rule
of law. Helping train police in crime scene preservation and
forensic techniques and instilling in them an understanding
of the prosecutorial process could reduce the risk of
extra-judicial killings. Expanding key courses to include
military participation could enhance cooperation between the
military and police.

--Doing more work on IEDs. DOD, DOJ and Intelligence
agencies have all recently sponsored training courses for the
Thai aimed at detecting and mitigating the risk posed by
IEDs. In the future, we should explore mixing the student
make up for these courses to break down the walls between the
military and the police.
--Working more closely with ILEA Bangkok. Although ILEA has
its limitations, I'd like to see the Thai military included
in more ILEA courses. We've initiated discussions with DOJ
and INL about this.

C) A LACK OF HUMAN RIGHTS AWARENESS


9. (S) I urge all senior U.S. officials visiting Thailand
to ask the Thai to conform with international norms while
working in the South and warn them what might happen to
important programs like IMET should they resort to
extra-judicial means. You and I know this is not an idle
threat. If funding could be found, we could expand our human
rights training for the Thai military. Existing efforts
include:
-- Regular human rights courses as part of JCET. Since 2004,
JCET programs have included more comprehensive human rights
training before the trained unit deploys to the South. This
training has been conducted jointly by U.S. and Thai Special
Forces.

--Advanced courses. In response to the October 2004 Tak Bai
incident in which 80 Southern Muslims died after a
demonstration while in police custody, we worked with the
Defense Institute of International Legal Studies (DIILS) to
set up a more thorough human rights training program for Thai
enlisted troops as well as mid-level and senior officers. We
could expand this program should funding be available.

--Improving military police skills. We are planning to use
State Department GWOT funds to be administered by U.S.
Marines to pay for non-lethal weapons for Thai troops in the
hope of avoiding major human rights violations.

IN CLOSING


10. (S) The Thai are looking for more intelligence
cooperation. We share as much intel as we can with them and
are doing myriad things to make them more capable. I think
they have some unrealistic hopes that there is a technical
silver bullet that will solve their problems (e.g., UAVs).


11. (S) There is no clear endgame to this 100-year-old
insurgency. Given our recent experience in nearby countries,
I think we need to craft a strategy that is realistic,
effective, and sustainable -- and limits our direct
involvement. I look forward to hearing your reaction and
stand ready to assist as you move forward.

Sincerely,
Skip
BOYCE