SOUTHERN VIOLENCE: RECENT DEVELOPMENTS AND NEW

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 BANGKOK 003220

SIPDIS

NSC FOR PHU

E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/27/2018
TAGS: PGOV PHUM PINR PREL PTER TH
SUBJECT: SOUTHERN VIOLENCE: RECENT DEVELOPMENTS AND NEW
IDEAS ON THE GROUND

REF: A. CHIANG MAI 154 (CHAVALIT FOLDS WHO'S DEALING NOW?)

B. BANGKOK 3033 (CHAVALIT EXITS QUICKLY)

C. BANGKOK 2871 (PEACE TALKS IN INDONESIA)

D. BANGKOK 2181 (UNKNOWN GROUP CALLS A CEASE-FIRE)

E. BANGKOK 2255 (THAI OFFICIALS BRIEF DIPLOMATS)

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Classified By: DCM JAMES F. ENTWISTLE, REASON 1.4 (B, D)

Summary and Comment
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1. (C) On an early October trip to southern Thailand, we
observed a robust but low profile security presence and an
atmosphere that subjectively appeared less tense. The Deputy
Commander of the Royal Thai Police in Yala told us that the
number of insurgents willing to conduct operations in Yala
was dwindling, and the province was more secure than in
previous months. The vice governor of Yala also felt the
situation had improved recently, and speculated that the
improvement was due to increased trust and cooperation from
villagers who were feeling the benefits of a greater stake in
governance. A group of academics from educational
institutions in the deep south told us that any apparent drop
in the violence was likely to be only transitory if the
government was unable to take action to ameliorate the sense
of powerlessness felt by Malayu-Muslims in southern Thailand.
Recognizing the scant political interest in Bangkok in the
violence in the South, these academics are working on a
political construct for alleviating the conditions that are
driving the violence based on community self-empowerment
within a special administrative zone. They also noted an
increasing interest among NGOs and international
organizations in the conflict, and commented that the U.S.
had an image problem; one International Visitor (IV) returnee
offered his assistance in addressing the latter challenge.


2. (C) Comment: Although our interlocutors in southern
Thailand all report that the situation in the South has
improved recently, it is unclear whether the South is truly
more secure; the number of people killed on a monthly basis
has not changed significantly. It is clear, however, that a
large number of people inside the government, the security
services, and academia have a solid understanding of the
issues feeding the insurgency and are working on ideas to
deal with them. All these efforts, however, will eventually
need support from a national government currently distracted
by the political drama in Bangkok. We hope these provincial
level efforts will be allowed the time, authority, and
resources to build the capacity to move reconciliation
forward should the time come when Thailand has a government
that is prepared to tackle the southern problem with the
requisite seriousness. End Summary and Comment.

While Bangkok is Preoccupied, the Insurgency Continues
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3. (C) According to Deep South Watch at Prince of Songkhla
University, the frequency of violent incidents in the deep
south is trending down, implying a possible improvement in
the security situation. Since August 2007, violent incidents
associated with the insurgency have averaged around 100 per
month, down from a pre-August 2007 monthly average of about

200. The actual number of people killed on a monthly basis,
however, has not changed dramatically since the beginning of
2008, and the trend (ref e) of attacks becoming more lethal
has continued. In September, according to statistics from the
Isara news service, 55 people died in 94 violent incidents,
for a death per incident rate of 0.581. For comparison, in
all of 2007, the rate was 0.428, and for the first six months
of 2008, it was 0.5349.


4. (C) In early October, poloff traveled to the deep south
for discussions with provincial officials, academics, and
NGOs to see what may have changed in the security situation
since our last visit in May, and whether the changes in the
violence statistics reflected any developments on the ground.
In travels through Pattani, Songkhla, and Yala, we found an
atmosphere that appeared less tense than in May. We

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observed no convoys of military vehicles or motorcycle
patrols. Downtown Yala was filled with pedestrians, and
markets that had been at the center of previous bomb attacks
were packed with people doing business. In Pattani, the
shops and restaurants surrounding the C.S. Pattani hotel, the
site of a major bombing last March, were busy into the night,
which was a change from our previous trip when shops were
shuttered up tight immediately after dark. There were,
however, many more police and military checkpoints along the
roads, and what appeared to be semi-permanent military
encampments alongside schools and temples.

Police Efforts in Yala
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5. (C) In an effort to explain the security situation in
Yala, Col. Charoon Khachasith, Deputy Commander of the Yala
Provincial Police, asserted that there was less violence than
in previous months. He said the security forces were
confident they were making progress in dealing with the
security situation and insisted the police were instituting
new procedures to seek court orders prior to making arrests,
and basing arrests on forensic evidence gleaned from seized
weapons and explosives. Charoon said there continued to be
issues of trust between police forces in Yala and the local
civilian population, but he maintained this situation was
improving and that they were getting better cooperation from
locals. He also admitted that better cooperation with the
local population came with its own challenges, one of which
was protecting people who did cooperate. Noting press
reporting on the large number of Muslims being assassinated,
he said the majority of police sources were village leaders
who were trying to help and local village defense volunteers
and who were open about their involvement with the police.
These people were constantly in danger - in no small part
because of their own openness about working with the police.


6. (C) Charoon claimed that while the police were working to
gain the trust of the civilian population, the real factor
limiting the violence in Yala was the diminishing number of
insurgents with an ability to carry out attacks; he said the
insurgents were unable to recruit fast enough to replace the
losses they were suffering in armed clashes and arrests. To
illustrate his point, he described a September 18 clash in
the Muang district of Yala in which two insurgents were
killed. According to Charoon, one of the two was a major
bomb producer. He said since the clash, there have been no
bombings in the district. (Note: According to Thai press, a
gun battle in the Muang district of Yala between police and
insurgents left two militants dead, and one police officer
wounded. The press reports described the insurgents as core
leaders in Yala. Although we have no reason to doubt
Charoon,s assertion that the police in Yala are gathering
more forensic evidence prior to making arrests, we have not
seen this evidence used in prosecutions. End note.)


7. (C) Charoon did not believe the violence in Yala had grown
more vicious or random, as reported in some press sources,
and contended that much of the reporting was missing the
point. According to Charoon, many of the apparently "random"
targets are actually victims of circumstance: people who
stumble into an area where insurgents were planning or
carrying out operations, and those who did not heed warnings
to avoid certain areas. This was often why rubber tappers
were killed; they were in the wrong place at the wrong time,
he explained. Insurgents continued to see teachers,
government officials, and people who cooperated with the
authorities as fair targets; they generally surveilled these
targets for several days before assassinating them. Charoon
ended the meeting by claiming that a large, un-quantified
proportion of the violence had little to do with the
insurgency but was due to crime, personal vendettas, and
politics. He also asserted that narcotics, while a problem
among youth in the South, did not play a major role in
funding the insurgency or feeding the violence.

A Glimmer of Hope: community empowerment?
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8. (C) Grisada Boonraj, vice governor in charge of security
affairs in Yala, also asserted that Yala was quieter than in
previous months and credited increased local cooperation for
the improvement. Refraining from discussing conditions in
the neighboring provinces of Narathiwat or Pattani or
offering statistics, Grisada said the improvement in the
security situation may be due to provincial level efforts in
Yala that focused on devolving some governing authority to
the local village level. He said it was beyond the power of
the provincial level authorities to fight the hard-core
elements in the insurgency committing the violence, or to
solve the many political conflicts that may be fueling the
fighting. He said the provincial authorities could, however,
try to remedy the "unfair treatment" many Muslims in southern
Thailand based their grievances on, and to undercut the
conditions that violent militants exploited.


9. (C) At the center of Grisada,s efforts is a scheme that
gives local citizens a bigger stake in how they are being
governed. He said each village in Yala was establishing a
committee composed of a local religious leader, the village
headman, and a representative of the tambon administrative
organization. (Note: A tambon is a sub-district level
administrative body. Its governing body, the tambon
administrative organization, is composed of appointed and
elected members. End Note) The committee was empowered to
work with local citizens and the Ministry of Interior (MOI)
to establish rules and regulations that enable them to deal
with issues such as local crime, drug abuse, and personal
conflicts without involving the police or MOI officials. He
said the goal was to give these committees the power and
resources to resolve local problems so security personnel did
not become involved. Grisada said the police were
cooperating with this scheme, but the army was having a
harder time buying into it because they were afraid it would
lead to a loss of state control. Grisada was convinced that
these committees were behind the increase in local
cooperation with officials in Yala. He credited one such
committee with recently convincing 12 teenagers associated
with the insurgency to turn themselves in to provincial
authorities. (According to Grisada, they were recruited when
they were age seven).


10. (C) Moving on to another aspect of his scheme, Grisada
said he was searching for a way to reach "at-risk" youth in
the province. He said many families in Yala were poor and
had many children. This often resulted in parents having
only limited control of their children, particularly if both
parents worked. The problem was compounded when families
were caught up in the violence and one of the parents was
either arrested, injured or killed. Grisada,s remedy is to
establish a series of youth centers in tambons and villages
to reach out to this "at-risk" population. He said the
centers would offer activities, vocational training, and
counseling to keep the kids out of the insurgency, and away
from drugs and crime. He acknowledged these centers, which
were still in the idea phase, would need to be closely
integrated into villages and tambons in order for villagers
to trust them, and not be seen as yet another attempt by the
Thai government to assimilate Muslim youth into Thai culture.



11. (C) Grisada said the Islamic committees in Yala had only
been marginally helpful in his efforts. He said most
committee members were afraid to cooperate with him, and a
local political conflict was compounding the problem: local
clerics in the Yala Islamic Committee were unhappy with
academics from Yala Islamic University (YIU) and Prince of
Songkhla University (PSU) who were becoming involved in local
issues. He said YIU and PSU had worked with him to put
together a book explaining Islamic teaching in a way that
dispeled the assertions of radical clerics in the South who
were using Islam to justify the insurgent violence. The
local clerics objected to the project on the grounds that the
academics were essentially outsiders trying to tell them how
to practice Islam. According to Grisada, this should not be
interpreted as an endorsement by the local clerics of the

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insurgency, but rather a reaction to outside influence.

Academics have a Plan (and advice)
--------------


12. (C) At an academic roundtable we hosted at the C.S.
Pattani hotel, Srisomphop Kitphiromsi and Ibrahim
Narongraksakhet from PSU Pattani, Dr. Sukri Langbu-te from
YIU, and Ayub Pathan, journalist and former head of the Isara
news service, dissected the political situation in Bangkok
with regards to the southern insurgency. The group was
keenly aware that the political turmoil in Bangkok left
little room for any high level political focus on southern
Thailand; they all agreed that the fracas in the capital had
little meaning for Malayu Muslims in the South. Ayub Pathan
pointed out that the limited violence Bangkok had experienced
through police efforts to open the parliament on October 7 (2
deaths) was minor compared with what happened on a daily
basis in southern Thailand. He speculated that, given the
current news environment in Bangkok, the insurgents would
need to do something truly big to get into the headlines.


13. (C) All participants roundly discounted former Deputy
Prime Minister Chavalit Yongchaiyuth,s rhetoric about
brokering a peaceful solution to the insurgency (ref B),and
said Chavalit's southern network was not really relevant
anymore. They were equally dismissive of the reports of
multiple tracks of negotiations (refs B-D). They generally
believed there was a core group leading the insurgency, and
that no one who mattered had been involved in any of the
negotiating tracks. Both Srisomphop and Ayub acknowledged
that the security situation was better than it was a year
ago, but claimed that it meant little for the actual
resolution of the conflict: this was a lull, and the
violence would come roaring back once the insurgents, whose
networks had been disrupted, managed to regroup. Without
resolution of the underlying governance issues, they said,
the violence would continue.


14. (C) Srisomphop and Sukri said the political distraction
gripping Bangkok actually gave them some political space to
outline a solution to the insurgency. Srisomphop said
conceptually it focused on the need to give Malayu Muslims a
bigger stake in their own governance. He said the paper
called for the establishment of a "special administrative
zone" in the South, within the context of the Thai state and
constitution. He maintained that this was not the same as
autonomy, but that it revolved around an elected governor,
and would be similar to the special political status
currently enjoyed by Bangkok and Pattaya. Srisomphop and
Sukri acknowledged this may be a step too far; they advocated
an initial step in this direction in the form of a Ministry
for southern Thailand, with a Minister drawn from the ranks
of elected MPs from southern districts.


15. (C) The academics were all aware of the increasing number
of organizations -- international organizations, NGOs and
embassies -- looking to fund projects in the South. Although
there was no consensus on whether the increased attention was
good or bad, both Ayub and Sukri pointed out that there was
generally little enthusiasm for U.S. attention. "You need to
understand," Sukri said, "the U.S. has an image problem."
People in the South followed international developments and
had an unfavorable opinion of U.S. policies, particularly in
the Middle East. Ayub, who had traveled to the U.S. as part
of our International Visitors program, said his perceptions
of U.S had changed as a result of his trip; though still
wary, he now understood the U.S. to be a positive influence
in the world. He said it would be beneficial to both the
South and the U.S. to change this negative perception of the
U.S.; he expressed a willingness to work with us, in
conjunction with other IV grantees, on ways to improve our
image.
JOHN