Download or read book The Malay Muslim Insurgency in Southern Thailand Understanding the Conflict s Evolving Dynamic written by Peter Chalk and published by Rand Corporation. This book was released on 2008-06-10 with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Current unrest in the Malay-Muslim provinces of southern Thailand has captured growing national, regional, and international attention due to the heightened tempo and scale of rebel attacks, the increasingly jihadist undertone that has come to characterize insurgent actions, and the central government's often brutal handling of the situation on the ground. This paper assesses the current situation and its probable direction.

Download or read book Insurgency in 3 Provinces in Southern Part of Thailand written by Kanid Utitsarn and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 16 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thailand has endured a serious insurgency problem in three of its southern provinces since 2001. Many people have been killed by shootings and bombings; the principle human targets include soldiers, policemen, teachers and monks. These incidents occur nearly every day. The main objective of the insurgency group is to separate and rule three provinces in southern Thailand. They are trying to turn their fight into a religious conflict and are attempting to widen the situation; their actions have been misunderstood in the international community, especially in the Islamic world. The Thai government doesn't know how the insurgency is organized, who the commander is, or who supports them. The purpose of this research paper is to examine and analyze causes and effects of the ongoing insurgency. This will include the role of globalization and its effects on Thailand, the particular history of the three provinces involved in the revolt and its relationship to the causes of the insurgency, other factors that make the revolt more likely such as ethnic conflict, religion, poverty, crime, the policies of the Thai government towards the insurgency, and the chances for more effective policies in the future. The recent coup in Thailand may present the opportunity for a change in policy and I will conclude with some modest policy recommendations to address the root causes of the insurgency and to improve Thai counter-insurgency policies in the future.

Download or read book Southern Thailand written by N. John Funston and published by Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. This book was released on 2008 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph examines the tragic conflict in Thailand's southern Muslim-majority provinces near the border with Malaysia. Although the conflict has attracted wide national and international interest, no agreement exists on the cause of the resumption of violence in an area that had remained free of major conflict for two decades. This monograph critically examines explanations for the conflict and traces its evolution from the early 1990s to the beginning of the Samak government in 2008. The study points to a wide variety of factors that were important in the resumption of the conflict, with policies of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra being critical in determining the timing and intensity of the violence. These conditions include: (1) the resumption of an age-old conflict between Malay Muslims from Pattani, Yala, and Narithiwat Provinces against a discriminatory central government; (2) entrenched problems of criminality in an area far from the capital and with a porous border with Malaysia; (3) the disbanding of important conflict resolution institutions by former Prime Minister Thaksin, who then gave priority to hard line (sometimes extrajudicial) security policies; (4) growing Islamic religiosity, influenced by regional reform movements and international developments, including the example of extremist movements such as Jemaah Islamiyah; and (5) the growth of southern insurgent movements--which have never issued public demands and whose real leaders remain unknown. In this complex setting, no resolution to the violence appears likely in the near future, as Thaksin's main policies have been retained since the September 2006 coup that ousted his government.

Download or read book Confronting Ghosts written by Joseph Chinyong Liow and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this Lowy Institute Paper, Joseph Chinyong Liow and Don Pathan examine the ongoing violence in the majority Muslim Malay provinces of Thailand's south. Through unprecedented fieldwork, the authors provide the deepest and most up-to-date analysis of the insurgency and problems the Thai Government faces in dealing with it.

Download or read book Conspiracy of Silence written by Zachary Abuza and published by US Institute of Peace Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this eye-opening volume, the author examines the roots of the current southern Thai conflict, gives a detailed overview of the present crisis, documents the flight of the south's Buddhist community, and argues that the Thai government has woefully misplayed its hand.

Download or read book Deciphering Southern Thailand s Violence written by Sascha Helbardt and published by ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. This book was released on 2015-08-14 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars have given questions about the perpetrators of nameless violence in Southern Thailand little consideration, leaving the motives that drive Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) heavily cloaked in secrecy and speculation. This book offers a rare glimpse behind the veil that shrouds BRN-Coordinate. Using exclusive access to and detailed interviews with BRN-Coordinate members, this book analyses the communicative dimension of the insurgency. It depicts the hidden channels and organized violence that drive the regions enduring rebellion as well as BRN's dichotomous existence between silence and communication.

Download or read book Uneasy Military Encounters written by Ruth Streicher and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-15 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uneasy Military Encounters presents a historically and theoretically grounded political ethnography of the Thai military's counterinsurgency practices in the southern borderland, home to the greater part of the Malay-Muslim minority. Ruth Streicher argues that counterinsurgency practices mark the southern population as the racialized, religious, and gendered other of the Thai, which contributes to producing Thailand as an imperial formation: a state formation based on essentialized difference between the Thai and their others. Through a genealogical approach, Uneasy Military Encounters addresses broad conceptual questions of imperial politics in a non-Western context: How can we understand imperial policing in a country that was never colonized? How is "Islam" constructed in a state that is officially secular and promotes Buddhist tolerance? What are the (historical) dynamics of imperial patriarchy in a context internationally known for its gender pluralism? The resulting ethnography excavates the imperial politics of concrete encounters between the military and the southern population in the ongoing conflict in southern Thailand.

Download or read book Tearing Apart the Land written by Duncan McCargo and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2008-07-31 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since January 2004, a violent separatist insurgency has raged in southern Thailand, resulting in more than three thousand deaths. Though largely unnoticed outside Southeast Asia, the rebellion in Pattani and neighboring provinces and the Thai government's harsh crackdown have resulted in a full-scale crisis. Tearing Apart the Land by Duncan McCargo, one of the world's leading scholars of contemporary Thai politics, is the first fieldwork-based book about this conflict. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of the region, hundreds of interviews conducted during a year's research in the troubled area, and unpublished Thai-language sources that range from anonymous leaflets to confessions extracted by Thai security forces, McCargo locates the roots of the conflict in the context of the troubled power relations between Bangkok and the Muslim-majority "deep South." McCargo describes how Bangkok tried to establish legitimacy by co-opting local religious and political elites. This successful strategy was upset when Thaksin Shinawatra became prime minister in 2001 and set out to reorganize power in the region. Before Thaksin was overthrown in a 2006 military coup, his repressive policies had exposed the precariousness of the Bangkok government's influence. A rejuvenated militant movement had emerged, invoking Islamic rhetoric to challenge the authority of local leaders obedient to Bangkok. For readers interested in contemporary Southeast Asia, insurgency and counterinsurgency, Islam, politics, and questions of political violence, Tearing Apart the Land is a powerful account of the changing nature of Islam on the Malay peninsula, the legitimacy of the central Thai government and the failures of its security policy, the composition of the militant movement, and the conflict's disastrous impact on daily life in the deep South. Carefully distinguishing the uprising in southern Thailand from other Muslim rebellions, McCargo suggests that the conflict can be ended only if a more participatory mode of governance is adopted in the region.

Download or read book Buddhist Fury written by Michael K. Jerryson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-07-28 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Buddhist violence is not a well-known concept. In fact, it is generally considered an oxymoron. An image of a Buddhist monk holding a handgun or the idea of a militarized Buddhist monastery tends to stretch the imagination; yet these sights exist throughout southern Thailand. Michael Jerryson offers an extensive examination of one of the least known but longest-running conflicts of Southeast Asia. Part of this conflict, based primarily in Thailand's southernmost provinces, is fueled by religious divisions. Thailand's total population is over 92 percent Buddhist, but over 85 percent of the people in the southernmost provinces are Muslim. Since 2004, the Thai government has imposed martial law over the territory and combatted a grass-roots militant Malay Muslim insurgency. Buddhist Fury reveals the Buddhist parameters of the conflict within a global context. Through fieldwork in the conflict area, Jerryson chronicles the habits of Buddhist monks in the militarized zone. Many Buddhist practices remain unchanged. Buddhist monks continue to chant, counsel the laity, and accrue merit. Yet at the same time, monks zealously advocate Buddhist nationalism, act as covert military officers, and equip themselves with guns. Buddhist Fury displays the methods by which religion alters the nature of the conflict and shows the dangers of this transformation.

Download or read book Muslim Resistance in Southern Thailand and Southern Philippines written by Joseph Chinyong Liow and published by . This book was released on 2005-12-31 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study analyzes the ongoing conflicts in southern Thailand and southern Philippines between indigenous Muslim minorities and their respective central governments. In particular, it investigates and interrogates the ideological context and content of conflicts in southern Thailand and southern Philippines insofar as they pertain to Islam and radicalism in order to assess the extent to which these conflicts have taken on a greater religious character and the implications this might have on our understanding of them. In the main, the monograph argues that while conflicts in southern Thailand and southern Philippines have taken on religious hues as a consequence of both local and external factors, on present evidence they share little with broader radical global Islamist and Jihadist ideologies and movements, and their contents and contexts remain primarily political, reflected in the key objective of some measure of self-determination, and local, in terms of the territorial and ideational boundaries of activism and agitation. Furthermore, though both conflicts appear on the surface to be driven by similar dynamics and mirror each other, they are different in several fundamental ways.

Download or read book Trends in Outside Support for Insurgent Movements written by Daniel Byman and published by Rand Corporation. This book was released on 2001-11-20 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most useful forms of outside support for an insurgent movement include safe havens, financial support, political backing, and direct military assistance. Because states are able to provide all of these types of assistance, their support has had a profound impact on the effectiveness of many rebel movements since the end of the Cold War. However, state support is no longer the only, or indeed necessarily the most important, game in town. Diasporas have played a particularly important role in sustaining several strong insurgencies. More rarely, refugees, guerrilla groups, or other types of non-state supporters play a significant role in creating or sustaining an insurgency, offering fighters, training, or other forms of assistance. This report assesses post-Cold War trends in external support for insurgent movements. It describes the frequency that states, diasporas, refugees, and other non-state actors back guerrilla movements. It also assesses the motivations of these actors and which types of support matter most. This book concludes by assessing the implications for analysts of insurgent movements.

Download or read book Mapping National Anxieties written by Duncan McCargo and published by Nordic Institute of Asian Studies. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on first-hand research in the world's third most intensive conflict zone after Iraq and Afghanistan, this book examines the debates around reconciliation, citizenship and identity, and the prospects for some form of autonomy for the Thai South.

Download or read book The Thai Way of Counterinsurgency written by Jeffrey M. Moore and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The goal of this study is to ascertain how Thailand wages counterinsurgency (COIN). Thailand has waged two successful COINs in the past and is currently waging a third on its southern border. The lessons learned from Thailand's COIN campaigns could result in modern irregular warfare techniques valuable not only to Thailand and neighboring countries with similar security problems, but also to countries like the United States and the United Kingdom that are currently reshaping their irregular warfare doctrines in response to the situations in Afghanistan and Iraq. The first set of COIN lessons comes from Thailand's successful 1965-85 communist COIN. The second set comes from Bangkok's understudied 1980s-90s COIN against southern separatists. The third set comes from Thailand's current war against ethnic Malay separatists and radical Islamic insurgents attempting to secede and form a separate state called 'Patani Raya, ' among other names. Counterinsurgency is a difficult type of warfare for four reasons: (1) it can take years to succeed; (2) the battle space is poorly defined; (3) insurgents are not easily identifiable; and (4) war typically takes place among a civilian population that the guerrillas depend on for auxiliary support. Successful COINs include not only precise force application operations based on quality intelligence, but also lasting social and economic programs, political empowerment of the disenfranchised, and government acceptance of previously ignored cultural realities. Background: In 1965, communist insurgents, backed by the People's Republic of China and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam), began waging an insurgency against Thailand in order to overthrow its government and install a Marxist regime. The Thai government struggled, both politically and militarily, to contain the movement for years, but eventually, it prevailed. Its success was based on a combination of effective strategy and coordination, plus well-designed and run security, political, and economic programs, the latter nowadays called the 'three pillars of COIN, ' a phrase developed by David Kilcullen, a modern COIN theorist and practitioner. One of Bangkok's most successful initiatives was the CPM program (civil-military-police), which used a linked chain of local forces, police, and the military to not only provide security for villages, but also economic aid and administrative training to rural peoples. State political programs that undercut communist political programs backed by masterful diplomacy and a constant barrage of rural works helped erode the communist position. The 1980s-90s COIN against southern separatists followed similar lines. The far South's four border provinces, comprised of 80 percent ethnic Malay Muslims, had been in revolt on and off for decades since Bangkok annexed the area in 1902. Bangkok had waged haphazard COIN campaigns against rebel groups there for decades with mixed results. But after the successful communist COIN was up and running in 1980, Bangkok decided to apply similar ways and means to tackle the southern issue. The government divided its COIN operations into two components: a security component run by a task force called CPM-43, and a political-economic component run by the Southern Border Provinces Administrative Center, or SB-PAC. SB-PAC also had a Special Branch investigative capacity. Combined, the 80s-90s southern COIN strategy relied on extensive military intelligence networks to curb violence, civilian administrators to execute local political reforms, and local politicians to apply traditional Malay and Muslim problem solving techniques to keep the peace. These programs worked well against the multitude of southern insurgent groups that conducted sporadic attacks against government and civilian targets while also running organized criminal syndicates. By the end of the 1990s, with a dose of Thailand's famed diplomacy and help from Malaysia's Special Branch, Bangkok defeated the southern separatists. In January 2004, however, a new separatist movement in southern Thailand emerged - one based on ethnic Malay separatism and radical Islam. It is a well-coordinated movement with effective operational expertise that attacks at a higher tempo than past southern rebel groups. It moreover strikes civilian targets on a regular basis, thereby making it a terrorist group. Overall, it dwarfs past southern movements regarding motivation and scale of violence. Thai officials think the Barisan Revolusi Nasional Coordinate, or BRN-C, leads the current rebellion, but there are several other groups that claim to also lead the fight. Members of the insurgency are nearly exclusively ethnic Malays and Muslims. The movement demonstrates radical Islamic tendencies thought its propaganda, indoctrination, recruitment, and deeds. It is a takfiri group that kills other Muslims who do not share its religious beliefs, so it wrote in its spiritual rebel guidebook, Fight for the Liberation of Patani. BRN-C seeks to separate the four southernmost provinces of Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat, and Songkhla from Thailand in order to establish an Islamic republic. The separatists base their revolt on perceived military, economic, cultural, and religious subjugation going back to the early 1900s. And they have a point. The central government has, at different times in the past, indeed treated southerners with tremendous disdain and sometimes violence - especially those considered insurgents. But Bangkok has also instituted scores of economic and social aid programs in the south - mosque building, college scholarships, and medical aid, for example - so it has not been a continual anti-Muslim 'blood fest' as government detractors have painted it. Still the maltreatment, certainly many times less than yesteryear, has provided today's insurgents with ideological fodder for a steady stream of recruits and supporters. Combined with radical Islam, it has bonded the insurgents to a significant degree. Statistically, in the 2005-07-time frame, insurgents assassinated 1.09 people a day, detonated 18.8 bombs a month, and staged 12.8 arson attacks a month. In 2005, they conducted 43 raids and 45 ambushes. The militants target security forces, government civilians, and the local population. They have killed fellow Muslims and beheaded numerous Buddhist villagers. The insurgents' actions have crippled the South's education system, justice system, and commerce, and also have maligned Buddhist-Muslim relations. Overall, the separatists pose a direct threat to Thailand's south and an indirect threat to the rest of the country. Moreover, their radical Islamic overtones have potential regional and global terrorist implications. The Thai Government spent much of 2004 attempting to ascertain whether the high level of violence was, in fact, an insurgency. To begin with, the government, led by PM Thaksin Shinawatra, was puzzled by the fact that the separatists had not published a manifesto or approached Bangkok with a list of demands. By mid-2004, however, the insurgents had staged a failed, region-wide revolt, and their prolific leaflet and Internet propaganda campaign clearly demonstrated that a rebel movement was afoot. By fall 2005, the separatists had made political demands via the press, all of which centered on secession. By 2006, a coup against PM Thaksin succeeded and the military government that replaced him instituted a new COIN strategy for the south that by 2008 had reduced violence by about 40 percent. Some of the tenets of this new strategy were based on Thailand's past successful COIN strategies. Whether or not the government has concocted a winning strategy for the future, however, remains to be seen. This paper analyses these COIN campaigns through the COIN Pantheon, a conceptual model the author developed as an analytical tool. It is based on David Kilcullen's three pillars of COIN. The COIN Pantheon has as its base the concept of strategy, and then as the next edifice, coordination. Three pillars of security, politics, and economics rise from these to push against the insurgent edifice. The roof is the at-risk population. By researching the specifics of all these issues for the three COINs discussed here, the Thai way of COIN emerges. Then, by measuring these results against the tenets of COIN theorists David Galula, Sir Robert Thompson, and Kilcullen, the Thai Way of COIN is more clearly illuminated.

Download or read book Keeping the Peace written by Daniel Byman and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2002-03-08 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What strategies can a government use to end violent ethnic conflicts in the long term? Under what conditions do these strategies work best? Daniel Byman examines how government policies can affect the recurrence of violent ethnic conflict.

Download or read book The Thai Way of Counterinsurgency written by Jeff Moore and published by Muir Analytics. This book was released on 2013 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes the Thai way of counterinsurgency (COIN). The Thai have successfully fought and defeated two insurgencies in the past, and they are currently fighting another. The first war, which was country wide, was against communist insurgents from 1965-85. The second was on Thailand's southernmost border against a hodgepodge of separatists and criminal groups that touted everything from increased political participation, to secession, to jihad. The third and current insurgency, also on the southern border, fights for a separate state under the banner of Pattani nationalism, Malay racism, and jihad. This movement makes extensive use of terrorism by regularly targeting civilians. Why is the Thai way of COIN relevant? America and its allies – including Thailand – could use the lessons to improve their COIN doctrine. Since America's retooling of its COIN methods because of its involvement in theaters such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Philippines, the government has done scores of COIN studies in pursuit of lessons learned. One of the biggest was the U.S. Army and Marine Corps COIN manual. These studies included Vietnam, Ireland, Malaysia, Algeria, the Philippines, China, ancient Persia, Lebanon, Spain, and Haiti. The manual didn't outwardly cite examples from Thailand's successful COINs despite their value. Second, this book explains Thai national security issues and decision making in intricate detail. This is critically important to understand as America – and also the world – re-emphasizes focus on the Asia-Pacific region as of 2012. If we understand Thailand's defense priorities, both internal and external, then we can better engage it. The third reason the Thai way of COIN is relevant is it explains well the “how to” of COIN from the strategic to the operational, and in some cases the tactical. This book will be of much interest to students of counterinsurgency, SE Asian politics, strategic studies and security studies in general.

Download or read book Modern Warfare written by Roger Trinquier and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1964 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Conflict and Terrorism in Southern Thailand written by Rohan Gunaratna and published by Cavendish Square Publishing. This book was released on 2005 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: