According to the Bangkok Post of March 2, the interim prime minister of Thailand, General Surayud Chulanont, has ordered that more police officers be sent to the south in response to persistent and growing violence that has resulted in over 150 casualties in the last two weeks alone.
The problems of the south are a direct consequence of the region already being saturated with corrupt and abusive police and soldiers brought from other parts of Thailand. The human rights violations and other unchecked excesses of the police especially were among the primary causes of the rapid escalation in violence during 2004 and 2005. The former administration responded to every incident by sending more. Now the current military-appointed prime minister, despite rhetorical commitments towards peace, is offering the same solution: for lack of a solution, no solution is also pretended to be a solution.
The National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) set up by the government of Pol. Lt. Col. Thaksin Shinawatra ostensibly to find a way out of the southern morass went to great trouble to identify the real causes of the renewed conflict, and propose meaningful solutions: not pretend ones. Its findings were all but ignored by the authorities, including by the September 19 coup leader, General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, who was in command of the military in the region at the time. The interim administration too has failed to show any genuine interest in its findings and recommendations, and its softened words have not been matched by deeds.
The NRC at no point suggested that the solution to the southern conflict would be to pour in more police and soldiers. On the contrary, it observed that “the violence that took place in the area was a reaction to the state’s excessively harsh tactics, which resulted from miscalculated strategies and circumstantial assessments”, and that “the violation of people’s rights by state officials has the effect of aggravating the situation”. Both the current interim prime minister and the new national police chief have acknowledged the same in recent times, yet their proposed solution to the violence is apparently to exacerbate it.
Some persons may find this idea contradictory, but under the current circumstances in Thailand it is not. The solution to a regional crisis requires the involvement and genuine commitment of the centre. But where the centre is itself in crisis, the regional crisis becomes a crisis within a crisis. The solution to the one depends on the solution to the other. But in Thailand, as in many other countries that have been caught in similar straits, the regional crisis may be held hostage to the purposes of parties in the national crisis.
The Asian Human Rights Commission poses the following question to all persons concerned about the violence in the south of Thailand: what does the army stand to gain by stopping it? Nearly 400 years ago, Thomas Hobbes rightly observed that, “All men that are ambitious of military command are inclined to continue the causes of war and stir up trouble and sedition.” How true that is of Thailand today. Nobody should underestimate the extent to which this military government, like any other, must obtain legitimacy by creating, not extinguishing, threats to national security that oblige its long-term involvement in one guise or another.
How long can the regime use the former prime minister as a believable bogeyman for everything that has gone wrong in Thailand over the last five months? It needs other dangers to society to justify its renewed institutional control, which includes, under the latest plan, arrangements for senior army officers to be appointed as “deputy governors” in all 76 provinces. These officers are to be given responsibility to monitor “political undercurrents”, the new expression for anything the military junta considers a menace to its authority, and report to the revamped Internal Security Operations Command headed by General Sonthi himself. Apparently, a number have been sent to the south already. No doubt they will find plenty to keep the army involved there for a long time to come.
There are no easy solutions to the problems in the south of Thailand. But whereas under a proper government some may perhaps be found, under a military government there are only non-solutions. Unable and probably unwilling to come up with solutions, it instead takes advantage of the crisis. So the regional crisis is made a plaything in the bigger national crisis; more police and soldiers get sent south not because there is no other solution but precisely because they are not the solution.
