This report on the jihad in Thailand considers and then downplays religion as a motivating factor in the violence. But to say that the Thai jihadists are not linked to Al-Qaeda, and that many Muslims there are not radicalized, or even that one of the TR Sports players dropped out of a madrassa, actually proves nothing at all about whether or not they were motivated by jihad ideology.
The underlying problem is that secular Westerners often cannot or will not understand religious motivations. They assume that if someone like Osama talks of religion, it is just a cloak for his real motivations, which must be ethnic or socioeconomic or something else. But this founders on the fact that people with ethnic and socioeconomic grievances have gone on for centuries without declaring jihad, and many have solved their problems through negotiation. Jihad is the element that inflames conflicts such that no negotiation is possible. Also, why did the great Islamic empires, which had no socioeconomic or ethnic grievances but were in fact the richest and most powerful polities in the world, nevertheless continue to wage jihads?
Just the other day I was reading an advance copy of Pat Buchanan’s new book, in which he gets as far as to say that we should listen to what the jihadists are saying. Then he retails Osama’s foreign policy grievances against the US, and says we should oblige him by withdrawing from Saudi Arabia, cutting support for Israel, etc. But why not listen to everything the jihadists say — including their universalist, expansionist manifestos, declaring that they will fight until the whole world will be ruled by Sharia? Will those men be mollified by a new, Muslim-friendly American foreign policy? Mr. Buchanan, I doubt it. Just as I doubt that the Muslims in Southern Thailand will be satisfied by anything but an Islamic Sharia state there — in which they will no doubt have the same (or worse) socioeconomic difficulties.
From the Observer, with thanks to Filtrat:
Fifty miles from the boot camp by the coast is Su So. The village, set on a ridge surrounded by forest, is dominated by the football ground’s concrete grandstand. But few play football in Su So any more. The best side in the village was TR Sports, and all 19 of its players died when they launched a dawn attack on a police post in a nearby town on 28 April.
The men had machetes and knives, the police M-16s. The team’s only survivor was the coach, Pittaiya. His brother, Kamaruddin, top scorer and captain, was killed. ‘He was a normal man, a nice man, very quiet,’ Pittaiya said last week. ‘They were all normal men. I still can’t understand how this happened.’
There are no clear explanations why more than 100 poorly armed villagers launched themselves against automatic weapons. Some blame religion, others ‘outside influences’ that convinced the men they were invulnerable. But what is clear is that the attack was part of a wider pattern that has brought the vicious little conflict in the south of Thailand, which has claimed 300 lives already this year, to a new level of intensity.
Last week two policemen, a school bus driver, a railway official and two village administrators were shot dead. One was Sawan Khaosee, who worked in Su So. When The Observer visited the village office, a few hundred yards from the football stadium, Khaosee’s desk remained piled with the papers he had been working on in the hours before his death. Khaosee was a Buddhist, like nearly 95 per cent of Thais. The villagers of Su So, like most of the people in the three provinces where the violence has been concentrated, are Muslim.The fighting that has surged there is often, by outsiders at least, said to be based in religion.
Islam is a strong element. Ever since the Sultanate of Pattani, a local Islamic kingdom, was annexed by an expansionist Buddhist monarchy more than a century ago, some have fought central rule and called for a separate Islamic state. Revolts in the 1970s and early 1980s were put down with great brutality.
The most recent violence also has a strong religious flavour. On the day that TR Sports died, another group of men attacked a police post on the outskirts of the town of Pattani after praying at a historic mosque near by. According to Niseng Nilaeh, an eyewitness, the leader called on local people to join the battle to ‘sacrifice themselves for God’. Later the police found a 30-page tract arguing that it was a religious obligation for Muslims to fight for the ‘lost land’ of the Pattani sultanate.
Religious radicalism has been growing in the south for several years. More conservative, intolerant styles of worship have been imported from the Middle East. Certainly, many of the TR Sports players had been educated in government-registered religious schools and at least two ran their own Islamic study groups. Some had studied in the 200 new medressas -independent Islamic colleges devoted purely to religion – that have sprung up in the past decade. There are some links to a Saudi-funded hardline religious college.
According to Rawsedee Lertariyapongkul, the president of the Association of Thai Muslim Youth, world events may have angered the footballers. ‘People see what is happening in Palestine and Iraq and Kashmir and feel that Muslims are being treated very badly everywhere. They want to fight for justice,’ he said.
But there is no real evidence of any link between the separatists and al-Qaeda or its local affiliates. And for every one of the TR Sports team who appeared devout, there are others who were not. The youngest in the side, 18-year-old Samit Suthonehh, had left a religious school three months earlier because he didn’t like it. Four others had just completed their compulsory military service.
Nor did the players ever show any interest in, or knowledge of, international affairs. There is no satellite dish in Su So. ‘The guys were never interested in religion or politics,’ said Pittaiya. ‘They just liked to play football. All their favourite players were from Brazil or England.’
Many say the problem is ethnic.The southern provinces are mainly Malay, not Thai.The assailants who decapitated a Buddhist monk in May left a note saying: ‘If you continue to arrest innocent Muslims, we will kill innocent Buddhists.’ But those who wounded two policemen last week threatened to ‘kill innocent Thais’ if ‘innocent Malays’ were harmed. ‘That demonstrates how confused these issues are,’ said one Thai intelligence expert.
Others point to socio economic factors. Thailand’s economic growth has left the southern provinces trailing. Su So’s village elders complain of a lack of electricity, public transport and water pumps. The government has launched major development plans – in Su So there is scheme helping women to stitch clothes for export – but many locals still feel they are treated as second-class citizens.The police are almost entirely Buddhist Thais and abuse human rights. Alleged activists, including a human rights lawyer, frequently ‘disappear’. Witnesses, who did not want to be named, said that the young men of TR Sports were executed after surrendering. The 32 men attacked in Pattani appear to have been killed in cold blood.
The final complicating factor in the south is crime. Smuggling – of arms, people and drugs – generates hundreds of millions of dollars and penetrates every part of society, including the civil administration and security authorities. Much of the violence, including a recent bomb outside a bar, is likely to be connected to business disputes. No one knows exactly who looted a huge amount of explosive from a quarry or stole 380 automatic weapons from a barracks earlier this year. But the means for massive violence are clearly available.