McCargo Uncovers previously hidden dimensions of this important regional Duncan McCargo insurgency, including the role of both Buddhism and Islam This latest book by award-winning academic Duncan McCargo, one of the world’s leading specialists on contemporary Thailand, builds on previous projects to elucidate new aspects of the intractable Southern conflict that has claimed more than 4700 lives since 2004. Mapping National Anxieties locates the insurgency in the context of Thailand’s ANXIeTIES MAPPING NATIONAL wider political conflicts, exploring the ambiguous relationships MAPPING between the Thai state and organised religion, the recent resurgence of Buddhist chauvinism and nationalism. McCargo examines the way Islamic provincial councils have been drawn into the conflict, and scrutinises the special challenges the conflict has created for Thailand’s media, which have struggled to communicate a confusing story to an NATIONAL increasingly indifferent wider public. The book then moves beyond the crisis itself to look at ways forward, starting with the controversial National Reconciliation Com- mission that was established by the Thaksin Shinawatra government to propose peaceful options for reducing the violence. Another chapter ex- ANXIETIES plores how far Malay Muslims in Thailand’s southern border provinces think of themselves as ‘Thai’, arguing that there is an important distinc- tion between legal citizenship and informal under standings of what citizenship means and entails. Finally, McCargo invites readers to ‘think the unthinkable’ by imagining the possibility of autonomy for Thailand’s Thailand’s Southern Conflict deep South, and the implications for the country as a whole. Duncan McCargo, professor of Southeast Asian politics at the Uni­ versity of Leeds, is best known for his fieldwork­based studies of Thailand’s political complexities. His Tearing Apart the Land: Islam and Legitimacy in Southern Thailand (Cornell 2008) won the inaugural 2009 Bernard Schwartz Book Prize from the Asia Society of New York. www.niaspress.dk McCargo-3 pbk cover.indd 1 30/09/2011 14:45 DUNCAN McCARGO Mapping National Anxieties Mapping National Anxieties Thailand’s Southern Conflict Duncan McCargo With an additional contribution by Phrae Sirisakdamkoeng Editorial work by Pauline Khng Mapping National Anxieties: Thailand’s Southern Conflict Duncan McCargo First published in 2012 by NIAS Press NIAS – Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Leifsgade 33, DK-2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark Email: [email protected] Online: http://www.niaspress.dk © Duncan McCargo 2012 Printed in the United Kingdom by Marston Digital Typesetting and layout: Donald B. Wagner British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data McCargo, Duncan. Mapping national anxieties : Thailand’s Southern conflict. 1. Insurgency--Thailand, Southern. 2. Political violence--Thailand, Southern. 3. Religion and state--Thailand, Southern. 4. Muslims--Political activity--Thailand, Southern. 5. Buddhists--Political activity--Thailand, Southern. 6. Thailand--Politics and government--1988- 7. Thailand, Southern-- History--Autonomy and independence movements. I. Title 959.3’044-dc22 ISBN: 978-87-7694-085-0 (Hbk) ISBN: 978-87-7694-086-7 (Pbk) For two Michaels, Connors and Montesano Contents Photographs viii Figures viii Preface ix Map xii 1. Mapping Anxieties 1 2. Buddhist Fears 16 3. Managing Islam 47 4. National Reconciliation 67 5. Communicating Conflict 92 6. Contested Citizenship 111 7. Autonomous Futures 129 8. Twin Fires 153 Appendix I: Perspectives of Thai Citizens in Virtual Communities on the Violence in the Southernmost Provinces (Phrae Sirisakdamkoeng) 160 Appendix II: Duncan McCargo’s Publications on Thailand’s Southern Conflict 184 Bibliography 187 Index 203 vii Photographs Five soldiers looking nonchalantly in the same direction at a Sungai Padi roadside checkpoint 8 A monk in the deep South is escorted by an armed soldier on his morning alms-round 23 Former Narathiwat Islamic council president and NRC member Abdul Rahman Abdul Shamat 61 NRC Chairman Anand Panyarachun on the cover of Matichon Weekly, November 2005 68 Tanyonglimo demonstrators call for Malaysian media to report incident’, 21 September 2005 93 The late Chularajamontri, Sawas Sumalayasak (1916–2010) 114 Malay Muslim youths being searched by Thai soldiers 137 Army motorcycle patrol outside Islamic school 155 Figures 1. Pramool website: ‘Speak up here if you hate southern assailants,’ 6 September 2007. 163 2. Southpeace forum: ‘Actions against southernmost provinces and problem solving’, 25 March 2009. 166 3. MThai news board: ‘Southern assailants blocked border portal police – Teacher Juling seriously injured’, 24 May 2006. 167 4. Sanook website: Betong–Hat Yai minibus shooting, 14 June 2008. 168 5. Hunsa forum: ‘Two assailants arrested after shooting teacher’, 25 January 2008. 169 6. Pantip forum: ‘Muslims should be open-minded and please read’, 24 September 2005. 178 Preface apping national anxieties should ideally be read along- side my earlier book, Tearing apart the land: Islam and legiti- macy in southern Thailand (Cornell 2008). While Tearing apart theM land located the security dimensions of the conflict within the context of politics and Islam, the present book develops a range of issues that arise from the overarching arguments I have advanced previously. In brief, Tearing apart the land argues that at the core of the southern Thai conflict is a crisis of legitimacy for the Thai state, which cannot be adequately addressed by the deployment of the security forces, and which cannot be substantially ameliorated by socio-economic development policies. Mapping national anxieties delves further into the role of religion – both Buddhism and Islam – in framing what is not simply a regional conflict, but also a national one. It explores a number of vexed related questions, including whether a fractured nation may be repaired through processes of ‘reconciliation’, how citizenship is understood by minority groups, and how far Thailand’s governance structures might be reorganised to accom- modate greater local participation. Both books result from a longstanding research project on the southern Thai conflict that was generously funded between 2005 and 2009 by the Economic and Social Research Council, grant number RES-000-22-1344. Core fieldwork was conducted from September 2005 to September 2006, thanks to a period of sabbatical leave provided by the School of Politics and International Studies at the University of Leeds. A complete list of published outputs appears as an appendix to this book. Thanks are due to the Faculty of Political Science, Prince of Songkhla University, Pattani, for hosting my stay in the region, and especially to my dedicated and endlessly supportive colleagues Srisompob Jitpiromsri and Wattana Sugunnasil. I am very indebted to my fantastic research assistants Bhatchara Aramsri and Kaneeworn Opetagon, and I received invaluable additional help from Diyaporn Wisamitanan and Piyanut Kotsarn. ix x Mapping National Anxieties A very large number of other people have aided me in this project; for a full list of acknowledgements, see pp. xvi–xx of Tearing apart the land. I must, however, mention again the constant guidance and criticisms of Chaiwat Satha-Anand, Michael Connors, Francesca Lawe-Davies, Michael Montesano and Don Pathan; as well as all those who generously shared their insights with me during the more than 270 interviews I conducted. I also benefitted immensely from the year I spent at the Asia Research Institute (ARI), National University of Singapore, 2006–2007; thanks are due to all my colleagues there, especially director Anthony Reid, and Michael Laffan. The present book has been made possible through a series of conference invitations, and permissions to reprint a number of resulting journal articles. An earlier version of the first part of chapter 1 was originally published as ‘Mapping national anxieties: Thailand’s southern conflict’ in theRUSI Journal 154, 3 (2009): 54–61. This piece began life as a presentation at a conference organised by Beatrice Heuser at the University of Reading, 10–11 October 2008. John Mackinlay urged me to write up my talk for the RUSI Journal, and the jour- nal’s then editor Terence McNamee badgered me until I did so. Many thanks to the Royal United Services Institute for allowing me to republish it here. Chapter 2 started off as a paper presented at the Association for Asian Studies 2007 annual meeting in Boston, at a panel I organised on Buddhists in the south of Thailand. It was later published as ‘The politics of Buddhist identity in Thailand’s deep south: the demise of civic religion?’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 40, 1 (2009): 11–32, in a symposium based on that panel. Thanks are due to the editors of the Journal of Southeast Asian Stud- ies and Cambridge University Press for granting permission to publish, to Justin McDaniel for sponsoring the AAS panel, and to my fellow panellists Marc Askew, Michael Jerryson and Amporn Marddent. I am very grateful to Bryan Turner, who invited me to present an earlier version of chapter 3 as a keynote address for an ARI workshop on ‘Unravel- ling of Civil Society: Religion in the Making and Unmaking of the Modern World’, in Singapore, 22–24 March 2006. That paper then appeared as ‘Co- optation and resistance in Thailand’s Muslim south: the changing role of Islamic Council elections’, Government and Opposition 45, 1 (2010): 99–113. I greatly appreciate the permission to reprint which was granted by Govern- ment