Thai army Chief of Staff Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha said Jan. 24 that attacks in the country's deep south on Jan. 22 were attempts by separatists to draw international attention to their struggle. The separatist movement is active in the three provinces of southern Thailand — Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala — in which 80 percent of the populations are ethnic Malay Muslims who do not identify with the Thai government. The separatists have agitated for independence or autonomy many times since the 1930s, with the most recent outbreak of violence starting in 2001.
Prayuth's comments appear to contradict what is known about the separatist militants, who historically have focused on local issues and shown little interest in international attention or targets, and he did not provide any evidence for the claims. Though it is not clear why Prayuth issued the statements, there is some historical precedence on the issue: Thaksin Shinawatra, the exiled former Thai prime minister and brother of recently elected Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, was ousted in a military coup in 2006 that the military claimed occurred because of Thaksin's failure to deal with southern separatist militants. Yingluck's government has recently taken increasingly aggressive measures to rein in the influence of the military, and Prayuth's comments — pointedly raising the same problem the military used as a rationale for removing Thaksin from office — may be intended as a warning to the civilian government against trying to undermine the military's role.
Tactically, the Jan. 22 attack bore several similarities to previous separatist attacks. Militants first struck a military outpost at Ban Chalako in the Sai Buri district of Pattani province with small arms. The initial strike did not inflict any casualties but the small outpost called for reinforcements. The vehicle carrying reinforcements from Wat Sakkhi hit a roadside improvised explosive device (IED) while en route to the outpost that injured the six soldiers inside. In planning a secondary attack to cause additional damage, the militants showed a certain level of sophistication, indicating they either had intelligence on the planned response by local forces, or more likely, had tested and observed the military response and timing to coordinate the second attack.
Militants used this tactic during a wave of attacks in October 2011 in Yala province. On the evening of Oct. 25, militants carried out 15 strikes, some of which were secondary roadside IEDs designed to hit responding forces. Since 2004, roadside IEDs have become a fairly common tactic, along with armed assaults, assassinations and IEDs employed against military bases or schools.
Since the separatists have long been known to possess the sophistication required for the Jan. 22 attack and because they struck a military outpost — a target consistent with their usual target set — it is not apparent why Prayuth chose to speak out over this particular incident. However, his comments could be interpreted as a political warning to Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra. Yingluck's government has recently undertaken a number of assertive moves to undermine the influence of the Thai military. These include the Jan. 20 Cabinet reshuffle that replaced Defense Minister Yutthasak Sasiprapa, who was known to have relatively cordial relations with the military and whose appointment after Yingluck's Puea Thai Party took power was widely seen as a conciliatory gesture toward the military. Yutthasak was replaced with former Air Chief Marshal Sukumpol Suwanatat, who has close ties to former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and has been outspoken in his criticism of the military coup against Thaksin and other military interference in the civilian government.
After a public show of cooperation during the floods that ravaged Bangkok beginning in September 2011, the military likely perceived Sukumpol's appointment as an indication that the Puea Thai Party's goal of curtailing military influence was regaining importance. The party has long had a hostile relationship with the military establishment, which has typically supported the conservative Democrat Party. Prayuth himself was the commanding general in several crackdowns on protests by Thaksin's political movement the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD) aka the Red Shirts.
In 2004, after Thaksin's election as prime minister, two major incidents marked the beginning of an uptick in insurgent activity that has not decreased since, only ebbed and flowed. The first was the army raid on the Kru Ze mosque on April 28, 2004, and the second was an Oct. 25, 2004, incident when more than 80 demonstrators were killed by security forces (most by suffocation in a prison truck) in Tak Bai, Narithawat province. These incidents increased recruiting potential for the decentralized cell-based collection of militants.
Thaksin's opponents often blamed the ongoing violence on his mishandling of the situation, but the insurgency had been festering since 2001 and was based on issues unrelated to his premiership. The insurgency was not handled any more effectively by the military government that replaced Thaksin from 2006 to 2008, nor by any civilian government since then. Because no one has put forth a clear plan to deal with the separatists, it seems far more likely that Prayuth raised the sensitive issue to send a warning to Yingluck's government, rather than to voice true concern over the direction of the government's policy.
