1National Security Policy documents are policy papers produced by the Office of the National Security Council (ONSC), a governmental agency founded in 1959 to advise and give policy recommendations to the Prime minister and the cabinet. Modelled on its American namesake, the ONSC was focused, until 1973, on the ways to counter the communist insurgency. Afterwards, the insurgency in the Southern border provinces became one of its top priorities.37

2Between 1978 and 1998, there were three policy documents elaborated by the Office of the National Security Council concerning the situation in the Southern border provinces and approved by the cabinet, the first one in January 1978, the second one in November 1988 and the third one in June 1994. The philosophy of these three documents was of a common inspiration and there is considerable overlapping between them. Nevertheless, we have chosen to present them separately, in order to better reflect the evolution in the authorities’ approach to the southern border issue.

1 - The Policy Documents

1.1 - National Security Policy on the Southern Border Provinces of 1978

3The main pillar of the 1978 policy relied on a strong conviction that the focus should be put on education and identification with the Thai society, if one wanted to solve the “Southern terrorism” problem. Thus, the document dwelt on the need to reinforce the learning and speaking of Thai language among the young Muslims and offer them special quotas in order to increase the enrolment in secondary and vocational schools.

4Under the headline of “socio-psychological aspect”, it said: “[The authorities must] quicken the pace of work to popularize the learning and speaking of Thai among young Muslims. Encourage them to enrol in secondary and vocational schools by offering them special quotas to these institutions”38

5One of the issues was that many of the young Muslims preferred to go to study in pondok, or religious schools, a trend which was seen by the authorities as preventing their assimilation to Thai society. In 1966, the National Security Council had advised the government to prohibit the opening of new pondok, and to force all existing pondok to register. After that, the Ministry of Education was charged to convert these registered pondok into “private schools teaching Islam”, by adding secular teachings to the strictly religious curriculum. But this policy had not been very successful as most of the pondok evaded registration, and the owners of those who did register were not welcoming to assistant teachers coming to teach secular subjects.

6Lessons were drawn and the policy was modified by an Executive Order taken by Prime Minister Kukrit Pramoj in 1975. In speeches broadcasted on radio and TV in Hat Yai, he indicated: “As for the religious schools or pondok, the government will not get involved, influence, modify, or interfere to the effect of turning them into private or other types of schools. When the purpose of the pondok is for religious education, the government will support them to focus only on religious teaching. For all other areas of education, whether secondary or vocational studies, the government will establish separate schools”40

7Accordingly, the policy gave up the campaign to transform pondok into private schools, but focused on those who had already registered, with the aim to instil part of the Thai curriculum in their program and particularly to reinforce the teaching of Thai language.

8The 1978 cabinet resolution said that it was necessary to “Increase the study of general subjects in the private schools that were converted from pondok”41

9The view was that young Muslims had to go through the Thai education system and be proficient in Thai language if one wanted them to be “good members” of Thai society and to distance themselves from the insurgency movement.

10The second pillar of the 1978 policy was to engage the local Muslim leaders in solving the problem of the southern border provinces. The cabinet resolutions stipulated that the government should: “Encourage Thai Muslims to participate in local government and voice their opinion on problems”42

Children in a school in Yala province (Photo Arnaud Dubus, 2005)

11The local Muslim leaders did stand up to the challenge of getting involved in local politics, but not without some adverse consequences as we will see in the second part of this chapter. A key element in order to support this policy of engagement was the Executive Order No. 8/2524 on the improvement of administration in the southern border provinces, signed in 1981 by the then Prime minister, General Prem Tinsulanonda. This order restructured the responsibilities for the Southern Region by creating two new entities, the Southern Border Province Administrative Centre (or SBPAC) and the Civilian Police Military Task Force 43 (or CPM 43). As already noted in the previous chapter, the former had the responsibility of civilian administration and development work, and played a key role in re-establishing some measure of trust between the local population and the civilian officials with the crucial help of an Advisory committee composed of religious leaders and scholars well respected by local people.

12The Civilian Police Military Task Force 43 was put, as already seen, in charge of all security aspects. It brought together the Border Patrol Police, the Rangers and the Thai military, with the objective of better coordinating the operations of various security agencies.

13The issue of the despising and brutal behaviour of local officials towards Malay Muslims is another point made in the National policy on the southern border provinces of 1978. It actually figures in all policies concerning the deep South since the time of King Rama V, who, in an 1897 regulation, insisted that the candidates for official positions in the South must possess sufficient knowledge of the local Malay language to be able to communicate with the people and understand their religious beliefs and practices.43 In 1978, the document insisted on a “careful selection of officials sent to work in the area” and on the need to make sure “they treat Thai Muslims with fairness”.

1.2 - National Security Policy on the Southern Border Provinces of 1988

14The policy of 1988, which was set for five years (1988-1992) but actually lasted until 1994, was the first to be elaborated under an elected Prime minister. In July 1988, Chatichai Choonhavan, at the helm of the Chart Thai party (Thai Nation party), had won the elections and took over from non-elected Prime Minister Prem Tinsulanonda who had been leading the government since 1980. Despite this important evolution in the Thai political landscape, there were not many changes in the policy towards the southern border provinces. The 1988 National security policy on the deep South is, to a large extent, a continuation of the objectives and policy prescriptions already stated by the 1978 document: promotion of the Thai language among the Malay youth, efforts to increase the number of Malays in the secondary and vocational public schools, better selection of the officials sent to work in the border provinces, and to take into account the views of Malay Muslims leaders in the governments’ efforts to solve the conflict.

15There were nevertheless a few new notions introduced in 1988. The first one was the insistence on the importance of mutual appreciation of the respective cultures by the Thai Buddhists and the Malay Muslims. The policy document said that there is a need to “Increase the openness of the Muslims’ society and make all sides appreciate cultural differences.”45

16Despite the vagueness of the formulation and the slight about the “lack of openness” of Muslim society, it is important to note that it is the first time the “cultural issue” is mentioned in a policy document, in stark contrast with the policies since 1966 which did not contain any mention of the necessity to respect the religious and cultural identities of the Malay Muslims. It shows that the central authorities were aware that the southern conflict cannot be reduced to a security issue and that its cultural dimension is a major factor.

17Another innovation in the 1988 document, was the policy of “quasiamnesty” aiming to “persuade the terrorists to surrender and join the effort in developing the Thai Nation instead.”46

18This approach had actually already been tested in 1975 under the tenure of Prime Minister Kukrit Pramoj with some successes. The basic principle was to not prosecute individuals who surrendered and were not the object of any incriminating evidence and to prosecute those with arrest warrants, but to give them lenient sentences.47

Gold shop in Yala city market with the signboard in Thai, Chinese and Jawi writing (Photo Arnaud Dubus, Octobre 2006)

1.3 - National Security Policy on the Southern Border Provinces of 1994

19Between 1988 and 1994, Thailand had gone through turbulent political times. Prime Minister Chatichai Choonhavan had been overthrown by a military coup d’Etat in February 1991, and in May 1992 the military shot into a crowd of demonstrators opposing the appointment of Coup maker General Suchinda Kraprayoon as Prime minister. Finally, revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej saved the day by admonishing both Suchinda and the main leader of the demonstrators, Chamlong Srimuang, to drop their mutual hostility. Suchinda resigned. At the time of the writing of the 1994 policy, the Prime minister was Chuan Leekpai, the leader of the Democrat Party, which had narrowly won the elections of September1992. The Democrat Party had its political basis in the upper part of Southern Thailand and had always claimed to have a good knowledge of the deep South. The 1994 security policy on the southern border provinces was the first to place a strong emphasis on economic development as a way to solve the conflict; by increasing the standard of living of Malay Muslims. The idea behind it was that the high poverty level in the border provinces, compared to the other provinces of the Kingdom, was one of the main causes for the unrest. The document insisted on the need to: “promote and facilitate trade and investment in the area, especially by improving transportation, communication and government services”.48

20The awareness and importance of cultural and communication factors was repeated in a more specific manner than in the 1988 policy. The 1994 policy advised the authorities to “Narrow the gap in the use of language in communication between citizens and government agencies by supporting the learning of each other’s languages”

21It meant that Malay Muslims were not anymore the only ones to be admonished to learn Thai, but local civil servants were, from now on, also supposed to learn Malay.

22As in every policy document in the last decades, the 1994 Cabinet resolution articulated in a blunt way the persistent issue regarding the behaviour of local officials towards the Malay villagers, stipulating that, “in terms of government and administration” there is an imperative need to “Reform the civil service in order to make it dependable for the citizens instead of being an institution that creates conditions for social conflicts”.

2 - Analysis of the Policies’ Implementation

23One of the positive aspects of the policy implementation in this period was the SBPAC’s success in enhancing the participation of local people in the problem solving, mostly through the advisory committee. Because the SBPAC had the authority to transfer officials out of the region, including military, who had abused their power and caused trouble with the locals, the villagers came to regard the agency as one of the only forms of recourse against arbitrary conduct and unfair treatment. Between 1978 and 1995, over 100 civil servants were transferred out of the region for bad behaviour, an estimated 80 per cent of them police officers.49 One of the consequences was that the distrust between public officials and Thai Muslims was significantly reduced.

24Despite the SBPAC’s achievements, there was not much improvement in the quality of civil servants sent to the border provinces, or in their understanding of the local context. The habit of sending officials to the South as a punishment after these officials had committed a fault in some other provinces remained.

25Given this situation, it is understandable that one of the main demands of the Malay Muslims, at the end of the 1980s and at the beginning of the 1990s, was the desire for a much higher number of local Muslims serving in high ranking civil servants position in the southern border provinces.51 This was made difficult by the way the Thai bureaucracy is conceived. “From the point of view of the government, the bureaucracy is a national bureaucracy, and there should be no expectation that its official in the lower South – or any other region – should come from that region”, notes Ockey.52 In the southern border provinces, as in other provinces, low ranking civil servants usually come from the local population, but it is not the case for high ranking administrators. This does not usually create a problem in most of the country, but it does in the deep South, where it is crucial for the officials in strategic positions to have not only a deep knowledge of the situation, but also to understand the Malay Muslim viewpoint. Andrew Cornish, who did a one-year field research in the mid-1990s on the rubber economy in Khala, a village of Yala province, showed how this lack of knowledge was hindering the implementation of government development project: “Most government workers have little or no knowledge of, or interest in, Malay language or culture [...]. At the Yala head office, none of the civil servants were able to speak Malay. [...] All extension workers in Yaha district were Thai. Nobody showed an inclination to learn Malay beyond acquiring a handful of simple expressions”.53

26At the time of the 2001 elections, of the 44 district officers in the Malay Muslim provinces, only seven were Muslims; of the 318 assistant district officers, 77 were Muslims. The proclaimed will to have local Muslim leaders participating in the search for a solution to the southern issue should have logically begun by listening to their demands, but instead the path chosen was to impose or suggest to them the forms of “participation”.

27The integration into national politics proved less problematic than the integration into the national bureaucracy. Despite an upsurge in separatist violence, especially with the advent of the Pattani United Liberation Organisation (PULO) after 1976, Malay Muslim politicians continued to be actively involved in local and national politics, responding well to the stated policy of “engaging Muslim leaders”. In 1986, Pattani MP Den Tohmeena founded the “Wadah faction”, regrouping prominent Malay Muslim politicians in order to gain leverage and obtain cabinet seats. Since then, the Wadah faction has joined different parties and several of its members – Den Tohmeena, Areepen Utharasint, Wan Muhammad Nor Matha – became deputy-minister or even minister and promoted a Malay Muslim agenda within the government.54

28From the 1980s onwards, political competition intensified at the local level, with the positive effect that Malay Muslim local politicians could counterbalance Bangkok appointed civil servants. But there was also some less welcome consequences. One of the results of the “engagement policy” has been to undermine the respect of the villagers for the traditional leaders, like the imams, who were now “challenged by headmen, kamnan (sub-district chiefs) and sub-district council chairs, all of whom were now elected”.55 The loss of prestige of the imams, as well as the increasing rivalries between imams from different mosques and with local politicians weakened the traditional structures of leadership in the village. One of the consequences is that some villagers became more prone to listen to the advocates of violence.

29On the security front, the insurgency was drastically weakened by the policy of amnesty aiming at “persuading terrorists to surrender and join the effort in developing the Thai Nation instead”. After an initial attempt by the Kukrit Pramoj government in 1975, this policy was implemented in earnest by Prime Minister Prem Tinsulanonda and army chief General Harn Leenanond, starting from 1980 under the banner of the Tai Rom Yen campaign (Peaceful South). The strategy combined an intense military campaign against the die-hard insurgents, measures to win hearts and minds of the Malay Muslim population, including, if possible, militants and economic developments projects in rural areas. In 1986, then army chief General Chaovalit Yongchaiyud pursued this effort with his Harapan Baru (“New Hope”) strategy. Although at first the approach was less successful than against the communist guerrillas, it began to be effective after a few years.56 From the mid-eighties, insurgent groups were not any more able to launch large attacks on the authorities, and turned towards banditry.

30The development programs were used by the government as a strategy of penetration into the Malay heartland.57 But, as shown by Cornish, there was a strong resilience from Malay communities, resulting in a flurry of small acts of “everyday resistance” to minimize the encroachment of the Thai State.58 This was made easier by the fact that the development projects were designed by the high ranking civil servants who had no knowledge of the structures of village level Malay communities, and thus could not imagine how to adapt the projects to the local conditions.

31One concrete achievement on the economic front was the establishment, after 1993, of a Joint economic development project between Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand (Indonesia-Malaysia-Thailand Growth Triangle). The project brought an increase of economic investment in Southern Thailand, but its effect vanished after the 1997 Asian economic crisis.