Rebellion in Southern Thailand: Contending Histories 9789812304759

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Rebellion in Southern Thailand: Contending Histories

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Policy Studies 35

Rebellion in Southern Thailand: Contending Histories Thanet Aphornsuvan

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Copyright © 2007 by the East-West Center Washington Rebellion in Southern Thailand: Contending Histories by Thanet Aphornsuvan East-West Center Washington 1819 L Street, NW, Suite 200 Washington, D.C. 20036 Tel: (202) 293-3995 Fax: (202) 293-1402 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.eastwestcenterwashington.org Online at: www.eastwestcenterwashington.org/publications The Policy Studies series contributes to the East-West Center’s role as a forum for discussion of key contemporary domestic and international political, economic, and strategic issues affecting Asia. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the Center. This publication is a product of the East-West Center Washington project on Internal Conflicts and State-Building Challenges in Asia. For details, see pages 67–83. The project and this publication are supported by a generous grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. First co-published in Singapore in 2007 by ISEAS Publishing Institute of Southeast Asian Studies 30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace Pasir Panjang Road Singapore 119614 E-mail: [email protected] Website: ISEAS Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Thanet Aphornsuvan, 1948– Rebellion in Southern Thailand: contending histories. (East-West Center Washington policy studies, 1547-1349 ; PS35) 1. Pattani (Thailand)—History. 2. Thailand, Southern—History—Autonomy and independence movements. 3. Thailand, Southern—Politics and government. 4. Muslims—Thailand, Southern—Politics and government. 5. Malays—Thailand, Southern—Ethnic identity. I. Title II. Series: Policy studies (East-West Center Washington) ; 35. DS1 E13P no. 35 2007 ISBN 978-981-230-474-2 (soft cover) ISBN 978-981-230-475-9 (PDF) ISSN 1547-1349 (soft cover) ISSN 1547-1330 (PDF) Typeset in Singapore by Superskill Graphics Pte Ltd Printed in Singapore by Seng Lee Press Pte Ltd

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Contents List of Acronyms

vii

Executive Summary

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Introduction

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Siam and Patani in the Old World

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The Muslim Question

7

Contending Histories

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Formation and Development of the Patani Kingdom

13

The Patani Question and the Thai State

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National Prejudices

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Siam and Patani in the Age of Colonialism

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The Rise of the Bangkok Kingdom and Its New Strategy toward the Malay States

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Chulalongkorn Reform and the Fall of the Patani Kingdom

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Siamese Internal Colonialism?

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Thai Law and Islamic Law

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Thanet Aphornsuvan Siam and Patani in the Post-World War II Period

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Nation-building and Malay Identity

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Islamic Patronage and Reform, 1945–47

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The Seven-Point Proposal/Demand

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Contending Histories of “Separatism”

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The “Haji Sulong Rebellion”

46

The Coup of 1947 and the End of “Islamic Patronage”

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The Duson Nyior Rebellion

51

Islamization and Modernization

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Conclusion

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Endnotes

61

Bibliography

63

Project Information: Internal Conflicts and State-Building Challenges in Asia

67

• Project Purpose and Outline

69

• Project Participants List

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• Background of the Conflict in Southern Thailand

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• Map of Southern Thailand

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Policy Studies: List of Reviewers 2006–07

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Policy Studies: Previous Publications

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List of Acronyms CPT

Communist Party of Thailand

CPM

Communist Party of Malaya

NGO

nongovernmental organization

NRC

National Reconciliation Commission

SKMP

Sejarah Kerajaan Melayu Patani (History of the Malay Kingdom of Patani)

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Executive Summary Patani and Siam have long histories as adjacent regions and cultures. Patani was transformed into a semi-tributary state and eventually annexed under Siam rule in 1902. Although the Thai state has accorded some degree of religious freedom to the Muslims, pluralism and autonomous culture and politics have never been accepted. The central Thai authorities are satisfied with a degree of assimilation of individual Muslims, largely through modern secular education programs and economic development policies. But when Islam is equated with a non-Thai culture, as in the Malay Muslim south, then misunderstanding and conflict between the Malay Muslims and the Thai state becomes a breeding ground for ensuing violence. In the official mind, to be Thai Muslim is acceptable for Thai citizens, but to be Malay Muslim is not. To the Malay Muslim, the pertinent question and answer to the ethnic resurgence is “a conflict of cultures which is seen as the continuation of centuries of confrontation between the Patani Muslims and the Thai intruders.” The Muslim separatist conflict is sustained by the belief that the continued efforts of Bangkok to consolidate its control over the socioeconomic and cultural affairs of the Muslim community will lead to the erosion of Muslims’ cultural and religious way of life and the disappearance of their identity. Hence the conflict is not socioeconomic but mainly “ethnic, religious, and nationalist.”

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Thanet Aphornsuvan The 1930s and 1940s marked the formation and growth of the Islamic political movement in three provinces of southern Thailand. Since that time, the resistance movement has gone from calling for autonomy to demanding independence and from spontaneous rebellion to an organized armed revolt. By the 1990s, armed resistance by Muslim separatists had declined. However, Islamic consciousness persisted and led to a new confrontation with the Thai state over the issue of cultural identity and its suppression. Sporadic fighting between Muslim militants and Thai security forces in the Deep South reemerged at the end of 2001, and a new round of violence broke out suddenly in early January 2004. This time the violence targeted both Muslim and Buddhist citizens. The heart of the Muslim question is the issue of separatism, which became the source of political conflict between the Thai state and the Malay Muslims in the south. The origins of Malay separatism developed out of long relations between Thai authorities and the Malay Muslim political movement, particularly during the periods prior to and following World War II. This monograph traces the formation and development of the Patani Political Movement under its popular religious leader, Haji Sulong, who was charged as the first separatist leader of the Muslim movement. The “Haji Sulong Rebellion” is still regarded by the state and the Thai public as the initiator of Muslim separatism in the Deep South. A key contention of this monograph is that the difficulty in Siam/ Thai-Patani histories is the lack of understanding about the nature of old rivalries and conflicts between the two states and cultures and how the history should be read and interpreted in light of the contemporary situation. Influenced by nationalist historiography, both Thai and Patani historians have justified the ideologies and actions of their leaders in an attempt to cope with the coming of modernity and the new balance of international powers in the region. The major area of contention has been the policy of centralization by King Chulalongkorn in the early twentieth century, at which time Patani was reduced to a mere province in Siam. After the failure of initial persuasions to integrate Patani under Siam’s direct rule, the Thai government employed force to subjugate Patani and end the rule of Patani’s king. For Patani intellectuals, this period has been characterized by the loss of their raja’s sovereignty and the pawning of the Malay Muslims’ rights, liberty, and independence to the king of Siam. Furthermore, the Chulalongkorn reforms inevitably led to restrictions by Thai Buddhist

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Rebellion in Southern Thailand authorities on the practice of Islamic law and customs in the Muslim communities. This monograph thus follows the narratives of both Thai and Patani histories to indicate their differences in order to find more appropriate alternative histories which, hopefully, would provide more understanding and sympathy to both sides. By reading the competing histories of each side, the sources of political conflict that were already present in the histories of the two states and peoples—including the political status of Patani, ethnic identity, political competition in Bangkok, and bureaucratic misconduct in the south—are evident. Without a basic understanding and appreciation of each other’s cultures and ethnoreligious identities, it would be difficult to have positive political will on both sides to seriously tackle the problems. Hitherto, Bangkok sees the problem in the Muslim south as a separatist threat, while the Malay Muslims see it as one of cultural and ethnic survival. An initial attempt at historical reconciliation might be to declare a national day in the name of Haji Sulong and rewrite the history of the Patani Muslim movement, not as a rebellion, but as a democratic struggle whose aim was the building of democracy in a multi-ethnic Siamese/Thai state. In these delicate and fragile relations, the Siam/Thai state is the most important key to any lasting peaceful solution to the conflict. For lasting peace to take hold in the Deep South, the Malay Muslims must be allowed a significant role in bringing peace and prosperity back to the region. In this they will need a strong Muslim political movement. At the same time, the Thai state and government will need to be instrumental in providing conditions for the development of democratic politics among Malay Muslims.

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Rebellion in Southern Thailand: Contending Histories One of the political disturbances that has plagued Thailand longer than any of the political movements against the government in the modern period is the so-called separatism in the Malay Muslim provinces which border northern Malaysia. The southernmost provinces of Patani, Narathiwat, and Yala were a combat zone in the 1960s and 1970s during the heyday of communist insurgency led by the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) and the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT) together with Muslim separatist movements. At that time, the Thai government felt the threat of communist armed struggle was more serious than the sporadic violence committed by separatist movements against government forces. The decline and eventual end of armed communist struggle along the borders meant the decline and end of armed attacks by the Muslim separatist movements as well. In the 1990s, the only sign of violence in the Muslim south was the burning of government schools, which political experts believed was the work of Buddhist and Muslim politicians, drug traffickers, and contraband smugglers. Separatism seemed to be a ghost of the old days. However, by the beginning of the twenty-first century, the situation in southern Thailand had changed greatly. While the Thai government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra supported U.S. military action against militant Muslims after the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. (even sending a Thai army contingent to participate in

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Thanet Aphornsuvan the war in Iraq), Thai Muslims, particularly in the south, protested against Bush and Thaksin’s policy. Police reportedly skirmished with some Muslim militants in the south. Outbreaks of violence in the three southernmost provinces began in late 2003 and culminated in a raid by a group of unidentified assailants on the Fourth Development Battalion camp in Narathiwat’s Joh Airong District on January 4, 2004. The so-called January 4th incident was unique in the long history of ethnopolitical conflict in the region. According to a government report, about sixty armed men raided the Narathiwat Rajanakarin camp, shooting dead four soldiers before escaping with more than four hundred rifles, twenty pistols, and two machine guns. The attack, which Prime Minister Thaksin admitted was “a well-coordinated operation,” started with the simultaneous torching of twenty schools in ten districts in Narathiwat Province at about 1:30 A.M. Five of the schools were razed. The arsonists also torched two unmanned police posts. In Yala Province, unidentified men burned rubber tires on several roads and fake explosives were found planted in at least seven areas in the early morning hours. A disturbing aspect of the incident was its religious overtone; Buddhist soldiers were separated from their Muslim colleagues and executed (The Nation 2004: 1). The January 4th incident marked the beginning of the current violence that now plagues Thailand’s south on a daily basis. This violence is different from past conflict in its overtly religious tone and its scope and degree of sophistication. However, it is similar in that it pits the Thai the current violence...pits the state against the Malay Muslim minority, many of whom see Thai state against the themselves as being treated Malay Muslim minority unjustly. Since January 2004 new hostilities are coming to life; but current policies—and reactions to them—are informed by perceptions and prejudices rooted in the past. Following the January 4th raid, the government stepped up its control and determination to end the turmoil and mysterious attacks by assailants in the three provinces. Martial law was imposed and more troops were dispatched to the area. In addition, the police tightened their grip on suspected Malay Muslims by using heavy-handed tactics against them—

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including abductions and disappearances. Police would come to a house and tell a suspect to follow them to the police station for questioning. Usually they came without a warrant, but the villagers had no way to resist the police. Many days went by before the victims’ wives and relatives began to sense that something was not right. People in the area explained that “if the suspect was carried away by the army, chances were that he might be able to come home. But if he was carried away by the police, chance was that he would be gone for good” (Jaran 2004). In the months leading up to April 2004, local people reported that close to 200 Malay Muslims had been abducted by local police and military. But news of these disappearances was buried underneath the more popular news and official concern about “daily killings,” which the government believed to be the work of the Thai Muslim separatist movement. These daily killings, especially after the January 4th incident and the offensive by armed forces in the lower south, had expanded to include innocent local inhabitants, not only security forces or government officials. The most shocking incident for the Thai public involving Muslims in the southern provinces was the spate of killings of Buddhist monks and attacks on temples. The situation deteriorated. On the early morning of April 28, 2004, over one hundred militants launched simultaneous pre-dawn raids on eleven separate police and military outposts in the three provinces of Yala, Songkhla, and Narathiwat. A total of 107 of the attackers, mostly young people, were killed in the clashes, and 17 were arrested. Five police and military officials also died and a number were injured. The militants, armed with machetes and a few assault rifles, battled police and soldiers in one of the bloodiest days in modern Thai history. The heart of the battle was the old Krue Se Mosque, where thirty-seven Muslim militants were killed. Despite claims by the government that the attacks were nonpolitical (the prime minister at one stage said that they were the work of “drug addicts”), the historical meaning of the “April 28 Killings” was, for the first time, brought to light. Chaiwat Satha-Anand, the acclaimed peace scholar and political scientist at Thammasat University, notes the historical significance of the date: the “April 28 Revolt” of 1948 is referred to by Malay Muslims as the War of Dusun Nyior (perang or kebangkitan Dusun Nyior), while official Thai discourse calls it the Dusun Nyior Rebellion (kabot Dusun Nyior) (Chaiwat 2004b: 90).

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Thanet Aphornsuvan Then on October 25, 2004, during the month of Ramadan, a total of eighty-six Muslims died in custody for demonstrating outside Tak Bai District police station in Narathiwat against the jailing of Muslims suspected of being involved in violent incidents in the Deep South. Many victims died of suffocation after they were put on trucks, piled one upon another, and transported to a military camp. In the wake of Tak Bai, questions were raised about the method and excessive use of force by government forces in dealing with political conflicts in the area. The call for peace and justice by the public led to the appointment of an independent fact-finding commission comprised of senior government officials, whose findings confirmed the mishandling and lack of professionalism by the security forces. Following the upsurge of terrorist violence in 2004, the unrest took the forms of sniper attacks, bombings, arson, and various forms of intimidation, all of which incurred injury, loss of life, and destruction of public and private property. In the ten-year period of 1993–2003, 748 violent incidents—averaging 68 cases per year—were documented in Patani, Yala, and Narathiwat, including some cases in Songkhla and Satun Provinces. But 2004–05 saw a spike in the volume of violent incidents, with 1,843 attacks in 2004 and 1,703 in 2005, bringing the total during these two years to 3,546, or an average of 1,773 per year—a 374 percent increase over the 1993–2003 period (Srisompob and Wattana 2006: 2–3). Against this backdrop, the old narrative of “separatism” has been revived and reinforced by daily graphic reports in all kinds of media, especially the newspaper and television. With the help and dissemination of information technology and digitized media, the histories of Thai nationalism and southern separatism are readily being resurrected. Despite the waxing and waning of its influence and activities in Thailand, the Malay Muslim separatist movement has been blamed for almost every violent act perpetrated in the region, and Malay Muslim separatists are portrayed as perpetual threats to the sovereign Thai state. The portrayal of Muslim separatists as a perpetual threat is the result of Malay Muslim separatists mainstream Thai national history, with its emphasis on the rationale of the Bangkok are portrayed as government. With the U.S.-led war on perpetual threats terror and the upsurge of militant Muslims worldwide, intellectuals have cautioned the

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authorities and the public to be more attentive to and careful about what has been going on in the Deep South instead of being carried away by the mass media’s sensational headlines and government spokesmen. For the first time in the history of southern separatism, the voices of the Malay Muslims, especially those who do not support violence either by the militant Muslim movements or the government, are being heard. Many factors have led to this situation, including attempts by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), civic and women groups, and private individuals based mainly in Bangkok working closely with Malay Muslims on issues of peace and the healing of their traumatic experiences caused by those violent incidents. With pressure from public intellectuals and academics, the government finally agreed to set up the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC), headed by former Prime Minister Anand Panyarachun. The NRC joined hands with Buddhist and Islamic religious leaders, scholars, and NGO leaders from the Deep South and outside the region to try to work out peaceful means to remedy the existing turbulent situation. One thing that concerned people have found lacking is the perspective of each side. The public needs to be educated and relearn the history of the region, as well as the history of the nation. This monograph analyzes the narratives of Siam/Thailand and Patani histories side-by-side in order to understand the myth and reality of each and their interactions over time. A deeper understanding of the causes of the present conflict is only possible by bringing the competing nature of these histories to the fore. The weight of history/memory is significant in both the Thai and Malay Muslim imaginations, as can be seen from the public apology to the Malay Muslims made by the government of Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont in late 2006 in order to signify the changing policy toward the restive south. Five months later the violence continued without any positive response from the militants. When asked why the apology made by Prime Minister Surayud was not enough to deter violence by Muslim militants, the local Muslims said that it was a wrong apology. The prime minister confined his remorse to the mishandling by the Thaksin government in the previous four years. The real problem, replied the Muslims, was not just in the history of the past few years. Surayud’s apology was based on a fact, a truth, not a lie, but it was an incomplete or partial truth (Mark 2007: 6). The “Muslim question” demands the whole truth.

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Thanet Aphornsuvan One can feel the forces of history/memory very strongly in the minds of Malay Muslims and the way their stories are being constructed historically. Fearful of being persecuted by state authorities, they did not keep written texts of their history and politics in their possession. Such belief has been confirmed by many cases of alleged seditious activities by Malay Muslims in the south when the authorities have relied on seized documents in order to convict them. The power of history/memory among Malay Muslims can be seen in the logic of separatism, which relies heavily on the idea of Malay nationalism in contrast to Siamese nationalism, and the loss of Patani independence to Siam through force, which led to the exploitation and abuse of their religious autonomy, ethnic identity, and human rights. The causes of the present conflict and violence, especially as they relate to the political status of Patani and ethnic identity, were also present in earlier periods. Therefore, the competing readings of history could provide a deeper understanding of these crucial problems. The government in Bangkok sees the problem in the Deep South primarily as a separatist threat, while the Malay Muslims see it as one of cultural and ethnic survival. Of course, there are political conflicts and divisions within each side too. The Malay Muslims’ past and Bangkok sees...a separatist memory are, moreover, reinforced by threat, while the Malay the present and coming secularization as a result of modernization and Muslims see it as...survival development, which increasingly have forced or shaped their traditional Islamic education and institutions in ways that elicit strong disagreement among the Malay Muslims themselves. The reading of competing histories might not end the violence in the Deep South, but it could be the prerequisite for subsequent meaningful dialogue between Thais and Malay Muslims toward reconciliation and peaceful coexistence. The historiography of the status of Patani vis-à-vis the Siamese Kingdom is the focus of the first section of this monograph. From the Thai nationalist view, Patani was ruled by Siam, and this “fact” serves to justify the Thai government view (one that is now shared by the great majority of Thais as well) that Patani was always “under” the Thais; hence the provinces that made up the former Kingdom of Patani belong to Thailand. In revisiting the tribute status of Patani, this section challenges the popular and official reading, emphasizing that tribute-paying status was not the equivalent of a

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colonial state. Although the tribute system reflected the relative strength of one kingdom in comparison with another, it also was a way of conceding their respective autonomies. This section also offers a critical evaluation of the histories of the relations between Patani and Siam from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries by drawing on sources from both sides. The histories from each side are statist and need to be assessed critically as such. But in treating them as alternate histories, it is possible to see how divergent their perspectives are. The second section assesses the statist narratives in relation to the reforms of the Chulalongkorn era and emphasizes the processes by which the juridical arm of the Siamese/Thai state extended its reach (even as it was itself undergoing “modernization”) into the south. The consequences were the establishment of provinces out of the former Patani Kingdom and an institutionalization of Muslim difference between those provinces and the center. The analysis thus follows the narratives of both Thai and Patani histories to compare and contrast their differences in order to find more appropriate alternative histories which, hopefully, would provide more understanding and sympathy to both sides. The third section discusses the origins of the ideas and practices of “separatism,” especially from the Siamese authorities’ perspectives in the post-World War II period. It also traces the formation and development of the Patani Political Movement under its popular religious leader, Haji Sulong, who was charged as the first separatist leader of the Muslim movement. The “Haji Sulong Rebellion” is still regarded by the state and the Thai public as the father of Muslim separatism in the Deep South. The initial move by the Thai government toward peace and reconciliation with the Malay Muslims could start with an open discussion of the myth-history of the Haji Sulong Rebellion.

Siam and Patani in the Old World The Muslim Question In Thai history, the Malay Muslims of the south are portrayed as rebels. Such perception invariably has led to some misapprehension about Muslims in Thailand. For centuries, Buddhist Thais have been familiar with, and have had close contacts with, non-Malay Muslims outside the southern, ethnically Malay provinces. Non-Malay Muslims were by and large able “to develop their niche within the Thai polity despite their cultural, ethnic,

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Thanet Aphornsuvan and religious differences” (Omar 2005: 15). Apart from the Chinese, nonMalay Muslims in the central regions were gradually integrated into Thai society and government bureaucracy, found their places in the country’s economy, and cultivated their own customs and religious beliefs alongside the Thai and other ethnic groups. No racial or religious conflict with the government existed until the rise and formation of the modern Thai nation-state, at which point the Malay Muslims and other ethnic groups were labeled as minorities, and Buddhism tacitly functioned as the national religion. The long intimate contact between these groups is reflected in the local word used to refer to Malay people, khaek. The word khaek means a stranger or an outsider, a visitor or a guest. The term originally was used to refer to those who are not Thai. Gradually the term khaek was used as a qualifier to specify particular costumes, language, and eventually ethnic Malays and other Muslims themselves, including Arabs and Indians. By the late nineteenth century, khaek was used by the kings in their descriptions of the Malay Muslims in the south. It is interesting to note that at the time the notion of race was not yet formulated as a social category determining group identity. The Thai court made little or no reference to the cultural identity of Malays in the region. Siamese simply recognized racial differences of the Malay and other ethnic groups, but did not distinguish between ethnic identities. When the people or the region was distinguished in cultural terms, the word that was used most frequently was khaek and less commonly khaek melayu or melayu (Jory 2006: 2). Reflecting the political conflict of the Malay Muslims in southern Thailand, the term khaek has been regarded as inappropriate and derogatory to the Muslim people of the south because it is associated with the notion of having “guest” status in the Thai Kingdom. The more favorable terms for Thai officials are “Thai Islam” and “Thai Muslim,” which had been coined during the government of Field Marshal Plaek Phibunsongkham (hereafter shortened to Phibun) in the early 1940s. Significantly, in 1939 Phibun changed the name of the country from Siam to Thailand and designated its citizens as Thai (Charnvit 1998: 21–43). As part of the government campaign to promote Thailand as a civilized and unified nation, all ethnicities were either reduced or integrated into Thai. “Thai Islam” and “Thai Muslim” thus were thought to be a polite mode of official Thai reference to Muslims in Thailand. Their use was part of a

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general movement to build nationalism and to promote the assimilation and integration of minority groups at that time. Despite the backlash against Phibun’s nationalist policies in cultural affairs, the two terms have gained popularity not only in the government bureaucracy and in popular journalism but also among central Thai-speaking Muslim scholars and academics (Diller 1988: 134–55). Generally speaking, there are two types of Islam in Thailand based mainly on different processes of Islamization. From a nation-state perspective, two types of Muslims in Thailand can be broadly defined: unassimilated or unintegrated Muslims and integrationist or assimilated Muslims (Farouk 1988: 5). The unassimilated are the ethnic Malay-speaking Muslims of the three southernmost provinces, who have cultivated their own distinct history, culture, and religion. This pattern, starting at least from the ninth century, is the history of Malay Muslims in the areas of the southernmost states of Thailand known as Greater Patani.1 The Malays are the majority population of the four southernmost provinces of Patani, Yala, Narathiwat, and Satun. Although culturally Malay and religiously Islamic, Satun is in many other respects different from the three Malay-speaking provinces to its east. Isolated by mountainous jungles, Satun was never an integral part of the east coast Greater Patani. It was at times under the political domination of the Patani Kingdom, but its political and cultural affinities were with the west coast Malay states of Perlis and Kedah rather than with Kelantan on the east. For these reasons, the discussion of the southernmost provinces will be concerned exclusively with Patani, Yala, and Narathiwat. The assimilated Muslims are largely multiethnic Thai speaking groups living in central, north, and northeast Thailand. This second pattern of Islamization originated outside of Thailand and migrated at various points into the Thai Kingdom. Among these groups were Persians and Arabs. Others migrated from South Asia or Yunnan Province in China. Shiite Muslims from the Arab world and Persia were the most prominent and were successfully assimilated into the noble class of Siam by marriage and by serving the Siamese monarchs of Ayutthaya in the seventeenth century down to the Bangkok kingdoms in the eighteenth century. These Persian Muslims were able traders and, unlike the Malay Muslims in the South, engaged mainly in trade and commerce in urban settlements. By the middle of the seventeenth century, the Persian Muslims married local Thai women and set up families in Ayutthaya. Later, King Songtham of Ayutthaya

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Thanet Aphornsuvan (r. 1610–28) appointed the leader of the Muslim community to be Chularajmontri (head of all Muslims in Thailand, or Sheikhul Islam) to oversee the activities of Thai Muslims in the kingdom. Relations between the Malay Muslims and the Thai state had been mediated through tributary relations and were confined mostly to the southern states, especially Greater Patani and Songkhla. During the tributary system of rule, Bangkok rulers rarely had any direct contact with the Malay Muslims of Patani. They were, first and foremost, subjects of and governed by the local Muslim rajas who had pledged allegiance to the Thai overlord. The autonomous status of the Patani Kingdom had been curbed gradually during the eighteenth century relations with Bangkok dynastic rule and finally was relinquished in 1902 when Patani became a province under direct rule from Bangkok. With the creation of the Thai nation-state, the distinction between Malay Muslims of the south and Thai Muslims of the central regions became more apparent. When talking about Muslims, most Thai people will think about the people who live in the Deep South, and the Malay culture is thought to be the foundation of Islamic identity in Thailand. This tendency to identify the Muslim world with the Malay in the southernmost provinces is a result of the historical and political development of Siam and Patani. The most important factor is a tacit acceptance of the equation that Thai equals Buddhist, thus leaving aside the Muslims in the Malay world (Gilquin 2005: 51). But for Malays, their Malayness is not simply a race or ethnic group. It is the faith that binds their Muslim identity together. This can be seen from the term for converting to Islam in the local Yawi language, masok melayu, literally meaning “to become Malay.” One explanation is that any non-Muslim in southern Thailand who converts to Islam—even though he or she might have Chinese, Javanese, Indian, or Japanese origins— begins to identify with the Malay (Rattiya 2001: 62). Furthermore, older generations of Malay Muslims understood and believed that Thai/Siamese was synonymous with Buddhism. They did not want to learn the Thai language for fear of becoming Buddhist. Hence the issue of language usage by the Malay Muslims also has been very important to the identity problem. Malay Muslims almost universally speak and write Yawi, a language derived from Arabic characters. Few among them could speak Thai. This explains why ordinary Thai people understand that the “Muslim problem” is only with the Malay Muslims of the south, who have posed the greatest security threat to the Thai government ever since it attempted to bring the vassal

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states and outer provinces of the kingdom into the central administration and rule as a prerequisite for the creation of a modern independent nationstate. The question of Patani’s political status became more focused and powerful in the late 1930s and early 1940s when Siam became Thailand and the government undertook a policy of nation-building based solely on the Thai race. This time the ideology of absolutism gave way to the new popular Thai nationalism in which the state was the key driving force. Following Phibun’s statist policy, the Malay Muslims, as well as other ethnic groups, were labeled as minorities and were forced to relinquish their own cultural and religious practices in order to become Thais. Emotions ran high during this period. The whole country was being mobilized under the state’s patriotic slogans, plays, dramas, and songs—all of which were told within the new national Thai history. Specifically, the narrative made use of the recent theories of Thai ethnicity and their struggle to free themselves from Chinese oppression (Wichitvathakan 1969; Barmé 1993). Thai official nationalism thus emphasized emotional linkages between a physical territory and the people occupying this territory. Any challenge to the territorial integrity of the nation-state could be perceived as a challenge against the citizenry and therefore a call to the citizens to support the existence of the nation-state. By creating such emotional threats to its physical sovereignty, the nation-state constantly recreates itself (Dorairajoo 2004: 465–71). The history of separatism in the Muslim region of southern Thailand means that “separatists” become the convenient scapegoats, not only of blame and censure, but more importantly to facilitate the periodic recreation of the myth of the integrity of the nationstate. As a result, even when the movement may no longer be viable, the nation-state will keep it alive and well in order to galvanize citizens to constantly support the existence of the nation-state. Contending Histories Thai print media and people in general always would refer to violence in the southern Muslim provinces as part of a separatist movement trying to make trouble for the government. To most Thais, separatism is unacceptable because they believe that the four Muslim provinces of Patani, Yala, Narathiwat, and Satun along the borders of Thailand and Malaysia are unquestionably Thai. They have been within the Thai boundary ever since the beginning of Thai history, despite the fact that the modern map of

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Thanet Aphornsuvan

Thailand was not created until 1885, when the Royal Survey Department was founded (Thongchai 1994: 119). The official Thai history from the late nineteenth century onward shows Patani under Thai rule from ancient times. The date for this was the beginning of the Sukhothai Kingdom in the mid- to late fourteenth century. As a matter of fact, the Thai’s knowledge of the Malay Peninsula, which consisted of the states of Patani, Kedah, Kelantan, and Malacca has been informed principally by the “royal nationalist historiography” as coined by Thongchai (Thongchai 2001: 56–65). With the creation of a national history by the Bangkok kingdom in the late official Thai history...shows nineteenth century, most local histories Patani under Thai rule from had been removed or subjugated. Under the influence of a nationalist ancient times historiography, the Thai royal chronicles, which date back to the seventeenth century, were exploited to demonstrate the subservient and tributary relations of outlying states in Southeast Asia to the Siamese court, including those from the Malay world. From the Thai perspective, these tributary missions were clear proof of the kingdom’s moral and physical greatness over the other states in the region. This is the concept of the Cakkavatin, or king of kings, in the Buddhist political worldview. In practice, states and kingdoms in Southeast Asia had participated in the tributary system either as overlords or vassals. Significantly, tributary states are not the same as colonies of an imperial state. The former has autonomy in their rule and ownership over their lands while the latter is directly ruled by imperial powers. The question of the status of Patani State is complicated by the changing relations between the Bangkok kingdom and the Malay states in the first half of the nineteenth century, which resulted in a kind of semi-tributary relationship in which Siam exerted more direct authority over the Patani region. The Thai nationalist historiography has been nurtured and supported by two important institutions, Buddhism and the monarchy. When Thai national history was invented in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it did not simply create a new nation-state. In the process, it has effectively manufactured the sacred trinity of nation, religion, and king, embodied in the geo-body of Siam—land of the free and independent (Thongchai 1994: 164–74). That formula, according to the official Thai

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national history, has existed intact since the foundation of the first independent Thai Kingdom of Sukhothai in the 1240s. Subsequent histories would testify to the fact that Siam has been fertile ground for Buddhism, especially after The Thai nationalist historiography the consolidation of the early has been nurtured...by... Buddhism Thai states in the north into the Sukhothai Kingdom and and the monarchy in the central region into the Ayutthaya monarchy in the fourteenth century, at which time the major southern state, Nakhon Si Thammarat, also came under Siamese control. Significantly, the Thai kingdoms became Buddhist even before they became Thai. Approximately the same time that a Patani ruler was converted into Islam, Sukhothai also became a strong Buddhist kingdom. From the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries, Buddhism played a significant role in providing legitimacy to the monarchy and unifying the Thai Kingdom. In Thai school textbooks, pupils are taught that the Kingdom of Sukhothai, which was founded in the fourteenth century, had gained independence from the Khmer Empire before its unification and strengthening of the kingdom so that it could establish absolute rule over its outlying states and principalities from north to south. In the south, Sukhothai’s political power reached as far as Malacca and Temasek in the Malay Peninsula. Of course, such claims have been disputed by Patani intellectuals and academics such as Ibrahim Syukri, Abdullah Bangnara, and Krongchai Hattha (Krongchai 1998), and radical and progressive Thai intellectuals and scholars such as Jit Phumisak (1987), Sujit Wongthes (2005: 183), and Srisakdi Vallibhotama (1989). Formation and Development of the Patani Kingdom Parallel to the formation and growth of the Buddhist Sukhothai and Ayutthaya Kingdoms, Patani grew and expanded influenced by Islam, which by the fifteenth century was one of the major religions in Southeast Asia. By that time, Islam rivaled Hinduism and Buddhism and even established itself as the dominant religion in the maritime regions of the Indonesian archipelago and the Malay Peninsula. In mainland Southeast Asia, however, the majority populations and the ruling classes remained mainly Buddhist. Islam thus became a minority religion in Siam and

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Thanet Aphornsuvan Buddhism has remained the national religion. Southeast Asia had been influenced by Hinduism and Buddhism for centuries before the arrival of Islam around the ninth or tenth century. As early as the ninth century, Indian and Arab merchants had settled in Malacca, Aceh, and the Malay Peninsula, including the area that was then the southern part of Siam. From there Islam spread to other parts of Southeast Asia like Sumatra, Java, Borneo, and Kalimantan. The kingdoms and cities in that period were influenced by a mixture of Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic practices. Ethnic communities were centered according to their religious and cultural practices. Unlike in Persia and the Arabian heartland, Islam in Southeast Asia did not operate exclusively as the dominant cultural force in the region, chiefly because Islam arrived after the region had already flourished with a tapestry of beliefs and practices coming from Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, on top of the wide-spread and common local practices of ancestral worship and animism. Although Arab Muslim traders traveled through island Southeast Asia as early as the seventh and eighth centuries, there was little settlement until the late thirteenth century. Prior to the coming of Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism had functioned as the foundation of the region’s political and cultural life. Thus Islam did not come to construct a new civilization or become a hegemonic power over the communities and states; it helped to transform those Hindu-Buddhist beliefs and practices into a hybrid Southeast Asian version of Islam. Muslims, however, did bring a new dimension to Southeast Asia. Their influence had been trans-racial, encompassing all kinds of races and groups of people. The influence and language of Islam gradually created a distinct culture and politics primarily among peoples of the Malay ethnic group and Indonesian ethnic groups and tribes. Modern Muslim intellectuals have emphasized the importance of the bottom echelon of the community rather than the elite in the adoption of Islam. According to a Patani scholar, “The adoption of Islam by the Patani courtiers might have also been because of aspirations by the Patani folk for new values and life-styles, which the new faith offered” (Che Man 1990a: 34). The Malay principalities of the past consisted of Patani, Kedah, Trengganu, Kelantan, and Perlis, of which Patani was the largest and most populous. The Muslim Kingdom of Patani comprised two major Muslim dynasties: the Patani Dynasty (?–1688) and the Kelantan Dynasty (1688– 1729). Similar to other Southeast Asian kingdoms, the royal network of kinship extended throughout the Malay Peninsula, particularly between

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Patani and Kelantan. Geographically and culturally, it is obvious that the Patani elite developed closer connections with its neighbors in the Malay world than with its neighbor to the north. Unlike other groups of minorities, the Muslims of Malay origin had their own kingdom in the southernmost regions of modern-day Thailand, the history and culture of which are still alive today. The prevalent feelings and thinking among the local Malay the Patani elite developed Muslims, therefore, has been dominated by an awareness of political closer connections with...the agitation vis-à-vis the Thai state, and Malay world their culture and religion remain important sources of the political ideology. The Patani Question and the Thai State The Patani question has been informed by two major issues: first is the political status of Greater Patani or the Patani Kingdom in relation to Siam or Thailand. This problem stems from the political relations between Siam and the Malay sultanates, chief among which was Patani. The kingdom altered between dependence on and autonomy from Siam, beginning with the early Bangkok kingdom, especially from 1808 to 1902 when Patani was forcefully controlled by Bangkok as a Thai province. Second is the problem of the ethnic and cultural status of the Malay Muslims in relation to the dominant Thai Buddhist national religion and culture. The second issue has been intertwined with the rise and mobilization of Thai nationalism in the late 1930s. Since that time, Malay culture and Islam have been coercively assimilated by the dominant Thai majority. Prior to the establishment of the Bangkok kingdom in 1782, Siam and Patani had long been related through a tributary system whereby Siam was the suzerain and Patani, as well as other Malay states, was the subordinated vassal, or prathesaraj. The nature of relations between the mainland states of Southeast Asia prior to the coming of the West’s dominant form of nation-state was mainly informed by the tributary system. Based upon Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic teachings, the system recognized the reality of unequal states and status and managed to create “an effective means of regulating interactions in order to minimize clashes, rivalries, and wars, and so ensure that relative peace and order would prevail in the region” (Kobkua 1988: 1). In practice, the smaller and weaker polities bowed to the nearest

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Thanet Aphornsuvan bigger and stronger center in return for protection and orderly coexistence. The practice of tributary relations involved an exhibition of moral superiority of the powerful center and the proper recognition and respect from the lesser states in its mandala. The physical ruling over the vassal was therefore antithetical to the nature of the tributary system. The usual symbol of this recognition thus was the presentation of the gold and silver trees (bunga mas dan perak). In the Ayutthaya period (c1351–1767), the suzerain-vassal relationship between Ayutthaya and Patani fluctuated depending on the political strength of each state. When Siamese kings were strong and capable, their power over Patani was also tightened. Conversely, a Patani raja enjoyed more freedom to rule his subjects and kingdom during the time that Siam rulers were weak or occupied with other more important security tasks. In practice, the tributary states were given rights in their internal affairs together with their own customs, religion, and way of life. In return, the vassal ruler showed his/her submission by presenting the symbolic gifts in the form of golden and silver trees (bunga mas) at the prescribed times, and by accepting certain responsibilities as required by the suzerain. In return, the suzerain undertook to give protection against all threats to its vassals as well as other kinds of assistance. Relations between the Ayutthayan kings and the Malay sultanates thus were recorded in their symbolic gestures, such as the tributary visit and the presentation of the bunga mas. Ayutthaya played a significant role in the history of the region in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, assuming Sukhothai’s previous suzerain role. Tome Pires states that Patani and Siam already were well connected by the end of the fourteenth century. King Borommaracha I (1370–88) took a daughter of one of the mandarins of Patani as a concubine, and their children were married to the ruler of Singapore in 1398. Situated between stronger states, Ayutthaya in the north and Malacca in the south, Patani learned to balance the two bigger forces for the sake of its survival. At one time Patani led the force to subdue Malacca, suggesting that Patani early on became identified with Thai policy on the peninsula, in opposition to Malacca. The Ayutthaya Royal Chronicles recorded that in 1592 Kedah sent a tributary mission to King Naresuan (r. 1590–1605), which was presented to the king at his war headquarters at Kamphangphet. A Dutch document of 1640 stated that Patani and Johore missions arrived in the Siamese capital, the former bringing the customary gold and silver flowers and the latter bringing “some tributary gifts.”

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“These reports lead to the conclusion that at the very least Ayutthaya in the seventeenth century was regarded by the Malay Archipelago states as powerful and that its goodwill deserved to be cultivated” (Kobkua 2003: 212). On the other hand, the effective working of the tributary system was closely related to the military ability of the superior ruler to confirm its power over the vassal states. Incidents of war and clashes between the two parties were not uncommon. The first recorded hostility and conflict between Ayutthaya and Malacca occurred when Sultan Mudzaffar Shah of Malacca refused to send a “letter of obeisance” to Ayutthaya as demanded. Ayutthaya then sent an army to conquer Malacca, but it failed in this mission. The Sejarah Melayu (Malay annals), written in the seventeenth century under the Malacca-Johore rulers, records repeated wars between Malacca and Ayutthaya throughout the fifteenth century. In fact, the Sejarah Melayu narrates in detail two attacks by the Siamese in the fifteenth century that failed in the face of superior strategies employed by the Malay leaders, Tun Perak and Paduka Raja. To show the Malay superior spiritual power, the Sejarah Melayu claims, the Siamese prince who was in Ayutthaya was killed by a magic arrow from the Malacca ruler (Ibid.: 206). The next reported conflict was the rebellion of Patani against Ayutthaya’s rule in 1564 after Ayutthaya’s capitulation to the Burmese. In that year a party of Malay rebels from Patani, which was supposedly called in to help fight against the Burmese, managed to seize the palace, forcing the Thai king to flee to a nearby sanctuary. According to the Malay sources, Sultan Mudhaffar Syah of Patani and King Chakkapat of Ayutthaya earlier experienced good relations following a friendly visit by the Malay sultan. But soon thereafter, a military expedition led by Sultan Mudhaffar Syah to Ayutthaya ended in his death and annihilation of the army. The delicacy of such tributary relations can be seen from an explanation by the Malay source that the king of Ayutthaya treated his Malay colleague very improperly, “kerana Raja Siam memandang darjat baginda itu sangat rendah dari padanya” [because Raja Siam considered His Majesty’s rank to be very much inferior to his own] (Tueew and Wyatt 1970: 228). The biggest armed confrontation between the two kingdoms occurred during the reign of King Prasat Thong (r. 1630–56) and Queen Raja Ungu of Patani (r. 1624–35). At that time, Patani had adopted an anti-Siamese policy, probably with the support of Johore. The war between the two states was explained in the Thai royal chronicle as rebellion against the crown and in the Hikayat Patani as a Siamese attack. Jeremias van Vliet, a

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Dutch merchant-adventurer who came to work in Ayutthaya in 1633, wrote that the rebellion arose “by the ambition of the late princess [Raja Ungu] to obtain the highest power and by the great authority of some mandarins especially Dato Bestaar (who was not loved by most of the Orangh Cayos). . . .” Patani thus argued for its legitimacy in its rebellion by “[making] known to the public that the king of Siam did not have the right to wear the crown and that he has killed the true kings and their heirs.” The last statement, actually, was absolutely true, because King Prasat Thong usurped the throne and murdered two princes before making himself king. In May 1634 Prasat Thong sent some 30,000 troops to attack Patani. The first campaign failed to take Patani. The second, successful campaign came in 1636 with a In May 1634 [Ayutthaya King] larger army and ships built for the Prasat Thong sent some 30,000 expected assault. By that time the queen of Patani had died and her troops to attack Patani daughter had succeeded the throne as Raja Kuning (r. 1635–1688?). The new queen adopted a peaceful coexistence with Siam, asking for the mediation of the Sultan of Kedah. She sent her envoys to Ayutthaya to present the bunga mas of tribute. “This was accepted by his Majesty with great pleasure, and herewith peace was made between the two kingdoms. No claims were made from either side for insults suffered or for damages” (van Vliet 1910: 41). Raja Kuning even visited Ayutthaya in 1641 to renew the peace. Until the end of the Ayutthaya Kingdom, there were no reports of war and conflict between Siam and the Malay states, because the former was concerned with conflict and wars with other kingdoms and states in mainland Southeast Asia. The status of the Malay states, however, changed a great deal in the early Bangkok kingdom due to the shifting policies of Siam toward the Malay Peninsula. In 1816, Bangkok’s King Rama II initiated a novel policy of divide and rule over the region of Patani after facing recurring rebellions. The Patani Kingdom was divided into seven provinces: Patani, Nhongchik, Raman, Ra-ngae, Saiburi, Yala, and Yaring, known in Thai as Khaek Jet Huamuang (seven Muslim frontier provinces). That was the beginning of a new kind of state relations, which were not the same as the old vassal states because now Siam ruled more directly over the region, exercising at will its power of appointing and selecting the region’s governors, who were more

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like frontier provincial governors. Thus by the mid-nineteenth century, the Patani Kingdom had become a semi-tributary state. National Prejudices Patanis’ perceptions of their history have also been influenced by modern thinking and sensitivity, including the idea of nationalism, which has helped shape the world views of both Siam and Patani in imagining their own pasts and histories. The modern history book, the Sejarah Kerajaan Melayu Patani (SKMP), authored by Ibrahim Syukri, is the best illustration of this issue. Written by a native of Patani well educated in his local traditions and culture (as evidenced from the texts being written in the Arabic-derived Jawi script), the SKMP is heavily influenced by the idea of Malay nationalism. The SKMP was published in the late 1940s not in Patani but in Pasir Putih, Kelantan. The book was clearly in opposition to the Thai stance on every political matter, so it was suppressed in both countries, and few copies appear to have survived. Generations of Patani intellectuals and students related the story of a hidden and secret encounter with the manuscript usually from their parents. It became the underground book for new generations of Patani intellectuals. The SKMP delineates the origins and development of Siam from the ninth century AD, when Thais were able to consolidate their power over the Lao and Khmer Kingdoms in the mainland of Southeast Asia. The people from Siam “began gradually to move south and gain a foothold in order to expand their livelihood” (Syukri 1985: 8). Because those people came from Siam, the Malays called them Siamese, or Siam-Asli, in order not to confuse them with the present-day Thai. In the beginning of early contacts between the Malays and the Siam-Asli, the latter were able to gain more power in Malaya through migration of successive groups that dates back to the fourth and fifth centuries AD. It is interesting to read the analysis of the SKMP on the establishment of the Thai race in Malaya. “During this long period there came to be many who settled in Malaya, after which the Siam-Asli began to share the power of the Hindus through associating and intermarrying with them. This finally caused the blood of the Hindus to mingle with the blood of the Siam-Asli and brought them the ancient power of the Hindus. Eventually the result of this mingling caused the Hindu rajas to change and become of Siam-Asli blood. Finally by degrees, the power of the Hindus in Malaya fell

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Thanet Aphornsuvan into the hands of the Siam-Asli.” (Ibid.). At that time the Siam-Asli held power throughout Malaya. After the eight century, the Malay Kingdom of Srivijaya was established in the islands of Sumatra. This kingdom eventually subjugated the countries of the Siam-Asli and the whole of Malaya. The power of the Siam-Asli was completely destroyed. With the disappearance of the power of the Siam-Asli from Malaya, the Thai people, who came from the south of China, began to settle and build a kingdom in the area south of the Indochinese peninsula to be known as Siam, or the Thai Kingdom. During the fourteenth century, the Malay Kingdom of Patani ranked as one of the largest and most important kingdoms of the entire Malay Peninsula (Fraser 1966: 1). According to the SKMP, Patani was in the southern part of the Malay Peninsula covering several other Malay kingdoms such as Kedah, Perlis, Kelantan, Trengganu, Perak, Pahang, Selangor, Negeri Sembilan, Johor, Malacca, Pulau Pinang, and Singapura. In ancient times, the Malays had rule over Champa and Singgora (or Songkhla). After the decline of these kingdoms, the Malays were scattered. Some moved north and founded a new country called Pattalung, which today is under the rule of Thailand. The Malays also settled in Singgora and Nakhon Si Thammarat. The SKMP reminds readers that, “the information cited above has shown how long were the voyages and how great was the spirit of the Malays at that time, who came to rule in the countries of people everywhere. This is very different from the Malays of today” (Syukri 1985: 12). Comparing the narrative on the origins of both the Siam/Thai and Patani Kingdoms, it is clear that the SKMP demonstrates the equal rise of the two states. The name of Sukhothai is not mentioned during the first official contact between Sultan Mahmud Shah of Patani, who sent a mission to the raja of Siam-Thai in Ayutthaya (Ibid.: 23). From this account, the author of SKMP, reflecting the sentiment of the local Patani educated circle, saw the early development of Malay Patani as separate from Siam-Thai: each had its own history and origins. Thus the first mission sent to Siam was based on an equal status and warm relations toward Ayuttahya, as recorded in the Hikayat Patani. Sultan Muzafar Shah, who succeeded his father, Mahmud Shah, also considered visiting the country of Siam-Thai “in order to make acquaintances and to create a closer friendship with that country’s raja.” This time the friendship mission turned sour because “His majesty was not well received by the raja of Siam-Thai because the raja of Siam-Thai considered the rank

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of his majesty very much lower than his own”(Ibid.: 25). After staying in Ayutthaya for a few days, he returned to Patani “with a feeling of grievance and dissatisfaction aroused by the proud nature of the Siam-Thai.” Characteristic of the nationalist narrative, the SKMP does not take into consideration the internal conflict among the Malay states. The elites are portrayed as homogeneous in their relations with Siam. Even though Patani, due to its prosperity and role as the “cradle of Islam” in the region, often took the leadership of the Malay principalities, especially in their political relations with Siam, there still was a conflict of interest between Patani and Kedah. On the other hand, Patani had special close affinities with Kelantan based on blood-ties, similar culture, and geographical position (Kobkua 1988: 159). Suffice it to say that premodern or traditional historical writings of both Thai and Malay bore similar attitudes and perceptions of the other as different and of unequal merit and power. They could treat the other side as a neighbor friend or enemy depending on the situation at that moment. Interestingly, after the arrival of British colonial agents at the close of the eighteenth century, increased negative responses to the social and cultural differences between the two neighbors appeared. Buddhist Siam was often pitted against the Islamic Malay states. New perceptions made them suspicious and contemptuous of each other. The Hikayat seri Kelantan could hardly hide its contempt of Siam when referring to its religion and culture. The ruler of Kelantan, Sultan Abdullah, expressed contempt for his more powerful neighbor when it was reported to him that the king of Siam wanted to take his wife, the legendary Puteri Saadong, as the Siamese king’s own. “The Siamese are indeed infidels; they do not know proper etiquette; they even want to marry the wives of others.” The same sentiment also was shared by the sultan of Perak who, although hard pressed on all sides in 1818, nevertheless refused to send tribute to Bangkok because “I am a king of the ancient race. I am he who holds the Dragon Betel Stand and the Shellfish which came out of the sea, which came down from Bukit Siguntang . . . I am the oldest of all the kings in this part” (Osman 1961: 55–57).

Siam and Patani in the Age of Colonialism The Rise of the Bangkok Kingdom and Its New Strategy toward the Malay States One of the beliefs among Thais influencing Siam and Patani relations is that there was no such thing as an independent Patani Kingdom, especially

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Thanet Aphornsuvan after the founding of the Bangkok kingdom in 1782. The argument is based on the way the territory comprising the Muslim-dominated provinces was conquered. In the Thai view, this land was rightfully won in a war waged by the Bangkok monarchs and ultimately incorporated as part of the Thai state through the Anglo-Thai Treaty of 1909. For more than two centuries, although there were two major rebellions (1563, c1632) by Patani against Ayutthaya, the tributary relations between the two seemed to work satisfactorily to both sides. But with the rise of the new Siamese center in Bangkok, the dynasty based its strength on Chinese merchants and forces, and Bangkok elites increasingly were oriented toward the China trade and connections, reflected in its policies and successful foreign trade. However, the wealth and status of Bangkok soon were challenged and threatened by the increasingly hostile European powers. The political status of Greater Patani thus became the central issue in the contest between Siam and Great Britain in the nineteenth century, when Britain expanded its influence and control over the Malay Peninsula. In response to the new economic and political environments in the nineteenth century, Bangkok began to seriously organize the states in the deep south, particularly the traditional Malay vassal states. The traditional tributary relations between them were not enough for Siam to maintain its hegemonic role vis-à-vis the Malay states, which by that time also tried to play the British against the Siamese. Both sides came to realize that their political ambitions were in opposition: while Bangkok wanted to use Patani as a strategic base for its power, stability, and interests in the southern region, Patani also desired to be independent to pursue its own economic interests arising from trade with the new international market open up mainly by Western powers (Kobkua 1988). With the changing strategic importance of the Patani region, the traditional tributary relations between Bangkok and the Malay states could no longer contain their shifting interests to the point of maintaining peace and order in the regional balance of power. The deterioration of the tributary system therefore can be seen from the six major armed revolts of Patani against the suzerain from 1808–1902. During the reign of King Rama III (r. 1824–51), Siam clearly expressed its changing policy toward the Patani region, stating that the Malay Peninsula was its sphere of influence. The Bangkok kings sent an army to subdue any sign of disloyalty and rebellion against their rule, resulting in large-scale military expeditions and loss of life of the local Malay population. In 1821

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Bangkok invaded and seized Kedah, extending its suzerainty over the neighboring state of Perak. Clearly the Malay Peninsula became a hostile place for Siam in the rivalry with Britain. In 1824, rumors spread in Bangkok that the British were preparing a great expedition to seize Kedah and after that would proceed to attack Siam. In 1825, Henry Burney from the British Indian government came to negotiate with Siam on issues relating to war in Burma, trade agreements, and conflicts in the Malay states. The British wanted Bangkok to cease its pressure against Perak and Selangor, and if possible restore Sultan Ahmad of Kedah to his throne. The first treaty signed between the British and Bangkok in 1826 recognized the position of Bangkok in Kedah, Kelantan, Trengganu, and Patani, including the independence of Perak and Selangor. The Burney Treaty gave Siam confidence in dealing with the West (Wyatt 1984: 170). More important in the long run was its ability to exploit to its interest the contradiction that was a result of Western influence. The conduct of Siam’s policies and decisive measures against its vassal states was a case in point. Chulalongkorn Reform and the Fall of the Patani Kingdom The most important period in the development of historical consciousness among Thais and Malay Muslims of the south is the era of reform under King Chulalongkorn, or Rama V (r. 1868–1910). For Thais this was a great period in Thai history, when King Rama V brilliantly steered the kingdom from Western colonialism and managed to transform the country into a modernized and civilized nation in the eyes of the West. On the opposite end of the spectrum, this same era turned out to be a dark page in the history of the Patani Kingdom, because it finally led to the end of the Malay rajas rule. The SKMP characterizes it as “the loss of the sovereignty of its rajas, the destruction of the right of suzerainty of the Malays in the country of Patani, and the pawning of all rights to liberty and independence to the raja of Siam-Thai” (Syukri 1985: 77). The Malay Muslims were coerced into becoming Thai citizens by the Thai government in a series of Thai-ification policies in the Malay provinces from 1902 to 1944. As a result of the administrative reform under King Chulalongkorn in 1901, the traditional principalities, which enjoyed autonomous status, were turned into provinces under direct rule from Bangkok. From that time, tribute was no longer required, but the treasuries of the Malay provinces had to be handled by the Revenue Department as in other Thai provinces. In the case of Patani, the reform began in 1902

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and was completed in 1906 to coincide with the final agreement with the British, who ratified the boundaries between Siam and British Malaya. With that reform, the raja and royalty in Patani were removed from positions of influence and Malay Muslims were coerced interest and replaced by Thai into becoming Thai citizens bureaucrats in Bangkok. Patani intellectuals have different readings of the change in this period. In 1902, according to the SKMP, “the Siam-Thai raja in Bangkok decided to change the system of government in his subject territory of Patani. He wanted the seven provinces in Patani to be combined into a single province, called a region (boriwen). He abolished the sovereignty and authority of the seven Malay rajas and placed the government of the country of Patani under the supervision and control of the raja of Singora.” The Thai king well knew that this plan would be resisted strongly by the Malay rajas because “this meant withdrawing their sovereignty and their right of overlordship in the country of Patani.” A Siamese envoy was sent to Patani in order to discuss this matter with the Malay rajas. In this meeting “he requested the signatures of the Malay rajas as a token of permission and agreement with the wish of the raja of Siam.” At the same time, he promised to give pensions to the rajas and their households until their deaths. However, the rights and revenues in the country of Patani all had to be surrendered to the raja of Siam in Bangkok. The Malay rajas would no longer be forced to send tribute of the bunga mas to Bangkok (Ibid.: 75). The controversial aspect of this meeting and agreement between the Siamese envoy and the Malay rajas was the truth underlying the event and agreement. Siamese chronicles and historical narratives of the Chulalongkorn centralization program do not elaborate this incident in any great length. The mainstream Thai narrative maintains that, due to the expansion and threat of the British in the Malay Peninsula, Siam felt the urgency to consolidate its boundary in order to preserve its independence as a sovereign nation-state. Many Thai historians maintain that the centralization of Patani under Bangkok’s rule was done with consideration, for example, granting the former rajas and their families, together with the nobility, “fixed but adequate pensions” and abolition of the requirement to send tribute in the form of golden and silver trees (Nantawan 1976: 203). In

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fact, the Malay sultans and nobility were not only unhappy with the fixed pensions but, more importantly, with the loss of financial independence in their own lands. The government’s compensation, wrote Siamese nobility, “was worth marginally more than the income which the Malay nobility had previously made from their financial administration” (Tej 1968: 269). Worse were the many new taxes introduced and administered by Thai officials in the Malay states. Revenue was divided between Bangkok and the Malays, with the former taking as much as 87.5 percent and the latter only 12.5 percent. Because of Malay discontent, their share of revenue was increased to 20 percent in the following year, 1903 (Tej 1989: 194). The reason for the abolition of tribute is very revealing. Although Thai historians of later generations see in that practice a gesture of kindness and accommodation to the new situation facing the Malay rajas, Patani views were more critical. From standpoint of the Patani and other Malay rajas, the controversy over the end of bunga mas was direct intervention into their proper authority over the Malay subjects and proper relationship with Siam as an overlord. In 1901, the Siamese commissioner began to collect in Patani the poll tax designated to pay for the bunga mas. This was done while the raja of Patani was visiting Singapore. When he returned, half of the population had already paid the tax to the commissioner. The raja, who felt personally responsible for delivering the bunga mas, issued a proclamation notifying those who had not yet paid to pay him in the usual manner. When the high commissioner heard this, he ordered over one hundred men to patrol Patani and see that the tax was collected and turned over to the commissioner. The same order was issued to the other Malay states as well. The conflict over the tax and bunga mas clearly epitomized the political struggle between the rajas and the Siamese commissioners following the Bangkok administrative reform. It is revealing to see that the Malay rajas tried to cling to the traditional tribute relationship between Greater Patani and the Bangkok suzerain power, as expressed the Malay rajas tried to in their insistence on sending bunga mas in the old manner, while the Thai state cling to the traditional had changed its concept and recognized tribute relationship that symbolic tribute had no value anymore. It therefore seemed appropriate to directly collect the poll tax as a straightforward means of obtaining the revenue (Koch 1977: 71–72).

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Thanet Aphornsuvan Another crucial impending political issue was Siam’s dilemma of holding on to its largely autonomous tributary states populated by different ethnic groups. The status and designations of these tributary states clearly were open to Great Britain’s and France’s ambitious take-over. The Malay rulers could exploit these anomalies in order to remain as independent as they had been in the traditional system of provincial administration. For these reasons, Siam decided to abolish the tributes (kruang ratchabannakan and ngoen suai). Essentially this move was an important stage of the integration of the tributary states and outer provinces into the centralized administration of Siam. As a result, designations of the tributary states and outer provinces were no longer carrying with them ethnic names. Instead they were designated with scientific directions of north, northwestern, and south. In effect, Siam declared that it no longer recognized the ethnic differences between the populations of the inner provinces and the Lao, Cambodian, and Malay of the outer provinces. They were all Thai. In 1901, Siam ignored the ethnic and cultural differences between the inner provinces and the seven Malay states and changed their collective name to that of the Area of the Seven Provinces (Boriwen Chet Huamuang). They were no longer autonomous or dependent states. Prince Damrong, the Minister of the Interior and the key person leading the reform, said that, “the old tradition was outdated and also dangerous to the kingdom if it is mentioned. Therefore the king began the reform of the administration of the kingdom, centralizing all Thai territories into one country, abolishing a tradition of tribute whereby the vassal states have to send in their golden flowers, changing names of those states, and stopping referring to those people as [non-Thais]” (Tej 1989: 199). The next crucial contention between Patani and Thai histories over the signing of the 1902 agreement was its sincerity. The SKMP strongly condemns that Siam used “all sorts of trickery and deceit” to deceive many of the Malay rajas so that “they were willing to give their signatures admitting agreement with the wishes of the raja of Siam-Thai” (Syukri 1985: 75). Only Tungku Abdulkadir Kamaralludin, raja of Patani, staunchly resisted the wishes of the raja of Siam and did not give his signature to the envoy from Siam who came to Patani. The main reason was that the raja of Patani knew that “the desire of the raja of Siam meant the seizing of all rights of the Malay people, including the right of suzerainty over the country of Patani, and that the fate of the Malays would be to fall under the yoke of subjugation to the Siam-Thai, having lost their rights to freedom

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and independence” (Ibid.: 76). Ibrahim Syukri in the SKMP makes clear that Tungku Abdulkadir “was fully determined not to agree to the wish of the raja of Siam-Thai.” The Siamese envoy thus decided to arrest the raja of Patani. “One day he [the envoy] pretended to invite his majesty to the house where he was staying. He said he wanted to discuss many things. As soon as his majesty came to his house he was quickly confined by the Siam-Thai men in a room and not permitted to leave. This affair was so quickly carried out that his majesty himself did not realize what was happening.” “When the fact of his capture was known to the Malay chiefs they came in a crowd intending to free their raja from the captivity of the Siamese. But his majesty thought it useless to allow his people to spill their blood because he knew the strength of the people of Patani at that time was too small. So they left his majesty in captivity.” The other Malay rajas acquiesced to the demands of the Siam-Thai raja, except for the raja of Ligeh and Rahman, who were of the same opinion as the raja of Patani. However, because they were threatened by Siam, these rajas later were forced to sign the agreement. Afterward the Siamese envoy returned to Bangkok, taking with him Tungku Abdulkadir Kamaralludin of Patani, hoping that he could be forced to give his signature there. “But his majesty was a Malay raja of stout heart and greatly valued the sovereignty of the kingdom of Patani. He steadfastly resisted the wish of the raja of Siam-Thai. As a result, he was sent to a prison in Phitsanulok, north of the city of Bangkok. “Then many among the Malays of Patani who were loyal to his majesty resolved to go together to Phitsanulok. Some of them died on the way and some of them died there” (Ibid.: 76). After two years and nine months in confinement, the raja of Patani was released and allowed to go back to Patani. The tone and feeling of the SKMP is clearly an expression of Malay nationalism in which the Patani Kingdom is portrayed as another nationstate, yet weaker than the Thai nation-state. Tungku Abdulkadir thus was perceived as the people’s leader in opposition to the Siamese desire to subjugate Patani. On the Thai side, historians relate the attempt at central control over Patani as provoking varying degrees of resentment from those of the Malay nobility who lost their vested interest. “The Malay Raja of Pattani did not take kindly to direct Thai rule. The Ministry of the Interior encountered a conspiracy and passive resistance to its policy of reorganization from provinces of Pattani, Saiburi and Ra-ngae. However, opposition to the

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reform collapsed with the deposition and exile of the Rajas of Pattani and Ra-ngae. The latter was allowed to return to Ra-ngae after having promised to comply with the Regulations of 1901. Tengku Abdul Kadir, Raja of Pattani, was released after spending more than two years in a Northern Malay Raja of Pattani Thai jail. He was allowed to go back to his former place of residence, having did not take kindly to signed an understanding with the Thai direct Thai rule...” Government to refrain from politics” (Nantawan 1976: 203). In 1915, Abdulkadir left Patani to take up residence in Kelantan, which was under British rule. The former king of Patani continued to inspire rebellions against Thai rule even from the other side of the border. After the resistance, Siam relaxed the pace of centralization of the Malay states and adopted “progressive methods of provincial reform” (Ibid.: 203). In 1906, the Area of the Seven Provinces was administratively amalgamated into a new circle named Circle Patani, and a new Superintendent Commissioner was appointed. By that arrangement, neither power nor influence was left to the former raja and nobility. The area of Greater Patani finally had become an integral part of the emerging Thai nation-state. Outside the personal realm of religious concern, the Chulalongkorn administrative reforms penetrated extensively into the rajas’ basis of influence. It transformed the Greater Patani region into the seven provinces under the supervision of a Thai governor appointed by Bangkok. New fiscal, judicial, and policing arrangements were made according to the Bangkok government goals. The local Malay officials who were allowed to retain office were converted into salaried officials. An incident in 1901 known in Thai history as a revolt (kabot) by the raja of Patani followed considerable resistance and rebellion in the north, northeast, and the south that arose from Bangkok’s new centralized system. King Chulalongkorn in 1902 expressed privately to Prince Damrong his anxiety concerning the centralization of the former tributary states of Lao and Melayu. He admitted that Siam had perverted the administration of the Lao Provinces and the Seven Malay Provinces from its true states. It can also be said that we have imported but have misused a foreign model of administration. . . .When

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the British use this model of administration, they go to advise and to supervise rulers whom they treat as the owners of the provinces. . . . We, on the other hand, treat the provinces as ours, which is not true; for the Malays and the Lao consider that the provinces belong to them. When we say that we are going to trust them, we do not really do so, but send commissioners and deputy commissioners to supervise them. The commissioners and deputy commissioners are then empowered only either to manipulate them as puppets or, if that is not possible, to spy on them and to pass on their secrets. We cannot, however, really protect ourselves against anything in this way. I do not think that an administration, which is so full of deviousness, can result in our mutual trust and peace of mind.

The King ended his letter on a pessimistic note by saying that he was “sorry not to have any solution (for this problem) at the moment” (Tej 1968: 279). But to those in Patani, especially the following generations, the year 1902 was regarded as “the year of the ultimate fall of the country of Patani, the loss of the sovereignty of its rajas, the destruction of the right of suzerainty of the Malays in the country of Patani, and the pawning of all rights to liberty and independence to the raja of 1902 was regarded as “the year of Siam-Thai. That was the last and most unfortunate year in the the ultimate fall of the country of history of the fall of the Malay Patani…” kingdom of Patani” (Syukri 1985: 77). This memory would be revived again in the late 1970s when suddenly there appeared a lesser known militant Muslim group by the name of Black December (1902). The name did not ring a bell for most Thais, who did not know that it was taken from the historical event of final incorporation of the Patani region into the Thai Kingdom. The group was active in Yala and claimed responsibility for the bomb explosion in the king’s presence on September 22, 1978. Siamese Internal Colonialism? The role of the British during the fateful transformation of the Malay states is another area of contention between Thai and Patani histories. In the course of their agreements and negotiations, the Thai and British

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Thanet Aphornsuvan governments had turned the Malay vassal states into their own colonial territories. In 1897, Siam and Great Britain signed a secret convention aiming at the protection of Britain’s interests over the Malay Peninsula and Thai integrity from foreign aggression. Siam soon discovered its disadvantage resulting from that convention and proposed to terminate it by agreeing to cede certain Malay states to the British (Thamsook 1971: 4). The AngloThai Treaty of 1909 resulted in the transfer of the Thai suzerainty over Kedah, Kelantan, Trengganu, Perlis, and the adjacent islands of Langkawi from Thailand to Great Britain. By this treaty, Thailand gave up its claim to sovereignty over the territory south of the Thai-Malaysia border. In return, the British acknowledged Thai sovereignty over the region north of the border, including Satun. The British also renounced extraterritorial rights in Thailand. Thus Siam and Great Britain had decided by themselves the division and redrawing of territory that would have far-reaching consequences for the Malay population in the southern border of Thailand. The problem was that those Malay states had not been consulted or told before hand. For rajas of Kedah, Kelantan, and Trengganu, the transfer of their legal status from Siam to be under the exact nature of British rule was not something they welcomed. The Treaty of 1909 thus was seen by many northern Malays as a betrayal, and the ruler of Kedah purportedly said that his country had been “bought and sold like a buffalo” (Andaya and Andaya 1982: 197).

For many years Thai historians have maintained that the ceding of Kedah, Kelantan, Trengganu, and Perlis to Great Britain was tantamount to the loss of Thai territories to the imperialist power. The loss of the four former Malay states, together with the loss of Battambong and Srisophon in Cambodia to France in the 1893 Paknam crisis, were seen as the loss of distant Thai territories in order to save the nation. Until recently, this official account has been accepted by all political groups and parties, including the left and right in Thailand. Thongchai Winichakul is the first Thai historian who contests this thesis of territorial loss (Thongchai 2001: 56–65). He counters that the whole episode was one of imperial contests and scramble for power and interest over the small Malay states between imperial Siam and imperial Great Britain. The contest ended with the British victory over Siam and the ceding of the four Malay states. Yet,

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Thongchai continues, Siam never owned those Malay states, since they had been autonomous vassal states. How could Thailand, after cessation of its right and power over those four Malay states, claim that it had lost its own territories? Thai Law and Islamic Law Siam’s attempt to impose Thai rule and law over the former principalities and outlying provinces that it did control caused considerable controversy. Siam’s administrative authority cut into Malay Muslim life and community in the exercise of law and justice. From the beginning of the policy of centralization under King Rama V, Thai historians maintain, careful consideration was made to integrate the Muslim population into the Thai citizenry. Government authorities, particularly the king, took note of the religious differences between Thai and Muslim and of the political implications of their discord, so they allowed Muslims to practice their customs when they came to conduct business with the royal government in Bangkok. That respect for religious differences among Siamese subjects was more of a traditional rule of the kingdom whereby the king was supposed to give protection to all who came under his power and patronage, including all races and religions, rather than an acknowledgement of the rights of specifically Muslim religious beliefs and practices. Similar to other colonial powers under which local law and custom were modified or transformed to meet the standard of modernity, after the Chulalongkorn reforms Bangkok began to apply the general law in its administrative structures all over the kingdom. This meant additional negative impact of the Chulalongkorn reform for Patani’s legal autonomy. In 1902, Bangkok stipulated that “no law shall be established” without specific royal consent. This was meant to deter the rajas from using their influence in the area. Bangkok began to apply the The king wanted a single legal general law in its administrative system applicable to the entire country. Faced with disapproval structures all over the kingdom from a determined religious leadership, which regarded the decree as transgressing their sacred domain, the king reached a compromise with them that the state would refrain from imposing its will over the

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Thanet Aphornsuvan sensitive areas of family relations and inheritance. So-called personal matters thus came under Islamic law and Islamic scholars (ulama), and public legal issues were under Thai law. Interestingly, the same practice of leaving personal law within the realm of the traditional also was applied to the issue of Thai family and marriage. It is debatable whether the exemption of Muslim personal law from Thai law was, indeed, an understanding of the Malay Muslim’s plight or simply a strategy Siamese elite employed in dealing with the adoption of modernity. On a more subtle reading, Siam, like colonial governments elsewhere, “considered practices related to family and religion sources of local cultural authenticity and, therefore, necessary to preserve in some form” (Loos 2006: 94). Even with that exemption, the problem in administrating justice in the Malay Muslim south remained. From the Siamese point of view, Islamic law in the area, as elsewhere in Muslim countries, was neither systemized nor uniform. The government, therefore, moved in to control procedural matters involved in the administration of the religious courts, or the Qadi’s Court. In order to maintain the religious court within the Thai legal structure, the government was involved in the selection of the ulama to sit on the panel of justices. In the Thai case, it resolved that the Muslim judges sat on the court together with the Thai judges, who in the end had the liberty to confirm or reject the advice made by the Muslim judges. The final judgment, thus, remained in the hands of the Thai judges sitting in the ordinary Thai courts (Surin 1985: 125–26). Obviously, such practice and policy were met with disapproval from most of the Muslim scholars and religious leaders, who saw them as an act of religious intervention. From a critical comparative perspective, Tamara Loos asserts that Siam under Chulalongkorn consciously designed a pluralist legal system in the country, a situation Siam had experienced under the unequal extraterritorial rights with Great Britain, Japan, the United States, and most European powers. Similarly, Siam subjected the Malay Muslims of the south to a colonial-style legal system. It was likely that Siam got this idea from the British colonial practice in setting up the rule of law in Malaya by leaving the personal law in the hands of the indigenous rulers and traditional elites. Not entirely following the British in protecting Malay customary law, or adat, the Siamese government failed to mention adat as an arena of local elite jurisdiction. “A hallmark of colonial states,” Loos maintains, “plural legal systems established a hierarchy of legal rights and obligations among various populations founded in theory on the separation of the secular

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colonial state and religion” (Loos 2006: 74). Bangkok thus intervened extensively in the substantive and procedural laws regulating Patani’s Islamic courts and personnel, contrary to its promises. Before the incorporation of Bangkok...intervened extensively Greater Patani, the region was in...Patani’s Islamic courts ruled by a Malay raja. Although Patani was under Thai suzerainty, its raja still ruled on the basis of sharia and Malay customary law (adat melayu). Important Islamic institutions were the mosque, or masjid, or in Thai surau, and pondok (religious school). The masjid functioned as a center of rule and administration as well as a place for religious practice and community hall. The pondok was a learning center for the community. These two institutions were very important for the well-being of all Muslims. The implementation of administrative centralization in this region inevitably intervened and replaced local rule and customs with central rule and regulations. Soon after that, the provincial hall was to replace the old masjid as a signification of the coming of the separation of religion from politics. By tampering with the sharia in the Muslim community, Siamese authorities had opened up a wider basis for conflict. This time it was not mainly between the ruling elite of Siam and Patani. Rather, the conflict now moved down to the middle and the bottom echelons of Thai and Patani society. The rift of mistrust and misunderstanding between Thai Buddhist and Malay Muslim thus was planted and waiting to be exploited by subsequent political developments in Thailand and Malaya.

Siam and Patani in the Post-World War II Period Nation-building and Malay Identity The event that has been crucial to the contentious histories between Siam/ Thai and Patani occurred in the modern period when Siam overthrew its monarchy in June 1932 and replaced it with a constitutional monarchy.2 A representative form of government came into being, although it was under the influence of the military faction of the ruling People’s Party and half of the Parliament was indirectly elected by people’s delegates and the other half hand-picked by the party. The June 24, 1932, revolution was the key change that transformed the old absolutism into a new, as yet unclear,

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Thanet Aphornsuvan national state based on a constitutional form of government. The core members of the People’s Party were new men (no women) who came from the middle class of central Thailand and went to schools in Bangkok. Included in the original party were four Muslims from around Bangkok: Nai Banchong Sricharoon or Haji Abdulwahab, later appointed as a senator; Nai Cham Phomyong or Haji Shamsudin Mustafa, later the Chularajmontri; Nai Prasert Sricharoon; and Nai Karim Sricharoon. The main task of the People’s Party and government was to stabilize the country and move it in a progressive direction according to the Six Principles of the People’s Party, namely to maintain national independence, security, and economic wellbeing, as well as guaranteeing equality, liberty, and education to the people. The Malay Muslims soon realized that national democratic politics required much more effort and cut into their own way of life and beliefs, and that democracy was actually not a panacea to their plight and injustice. The first general election in 1933 testified to the existing problems in the region. All elected MPs in the four Malay Muslim provinces except Satun were Thai Buddhists. The next election in 1937 was the only time that Patani, Yala, and Narathiwat managed to elect Muslim representatives to the Parliament, while Satun lost the place to a Buddhist candidate. But electoral success was brief for the Malay Muslims. After Field Marshal Phibun came to power in 1938, he began to implement a policy of Thai nationalism as part of his campaign of nation-building. In subsequent elections from 1938 down to 1948, seats from the Malay Muslim provinces were mainly held by the Thai Buddhist politicians except Satun, which managed to keep its Muslim representative throughout the Phibun government. Despite some misgivings about the new political system, the formation of a new constitutional government in Siam and the decline of the monarchy brought new legitimacy and a source of power to the new political groups and movements. For the Malay Muslims this change was very welcome. It allowed them the chance to reorganize and provided an alternative to resistance to the government’s efforts to integrate them into the mainstream Thai population. The general Malay Muslim population, however, was not ready for full participation in the rituals of democratic practice. The low level of literacy and the government’s suspicion of their leaders’ political goals were significant factors (Surin 1985: 75–76). Although elections did not give full satisfaction to the Malay population, they at least provided them with another public space to speak their minds. In return, there was

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also less forceful resistance from the Malay Muslims. Thus, this was the only period in which considerable peace and order was maintained in the area, although mistreatment of the local population by government officials, especially the police, persisted. Bangkok relied more on the local officials and provincial bureaucracy to implement policies and administer the region. Members of Parliament could alleviate the people’s grievances by bringing matters directly to the government and the ministries concerned. However the real power to redress wrongs still rested with ministerial and provincial officials. It was not until after the Second World War, when economic hardship and insecurity in people’s lives was intensified by government officials’ corrupt practices, that a majority of the Malay Muslim leaders and the people began to lose confidence in the government and came to the belief that their elected MPs had not been able to function as their real representatives. Nevertheless, the democratic government under the People’s Party showed signs of understanding the particular practices of the southern Muslims and their distinct role in the nation’s political life. The government implemented the Civil Law concerning the Family in the whole kingdom in 1934, but exempted the former Greater Patani from the new code. Instead the government allowed the Muslim provinces to continue observing Islamic law regarding the family, property, and inheritance which had been issued under King Chulalongkorn. Yet the hope of mediating the government’s penetration into Muslims’ lives and society was cut short by Parliament’s limited role and influence in national politics. The centralized bureaucracy continued to exert its power and control over the provinces. With the rise of militarism in 1938, the government under Field Marshal Phibun began to mobilize the population under the banner of Thai nationalism, from which a policy of forced assimilation was promulgated with little or no toleration for the unique culture of other minorities. Phibun’s nation-building policy was aimed at the reform and reconstruction of the social and cultural life in the country as well as its physical representation. Since the coup in 1932 had ended the absolute monarchy, for the first time the government attempted to replace old ideas and feudalistic practices among the population with what they thought were modern and civilized practices. In his address to the cabinet and senior officials in 1941, Phibun asserted: “In an effort to build a nation with a firm and everlasting foundation, the government is forced to reform

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Thanet Aphornsuvan and reconstruct the various aspects of society, especially its culture, which here signifies growth and beauty, orderliness, progress and uniformity, and the morality of the nation” (Thinaphan 1978: 89). Phibun’s stress on culture was a result of the rise of militarism and nationalism in post-World War I Asia. The other factor was the opportunity to break away from the traditional fetters of the monarchy. The imminent threat of war among the major powers persuaded Thai leaders to choose a stance for the country: civilized and strong or slave and weak. In order to be recognized as civilized and modern by powerful nations, the country had to do away with “the people [who] remain poor in culture and exhibit ignorance about hygiene, health, clothing, and rational ways of thinking” (Ibid.). With these firm beliefs on the goal and status of a nation, Phibun’s government enforced the National Culture Act. The most sensitive part was known as ratthaniyom, or the State Decrees. The ideas of Thai-ness and Thai nationalism were developed under this policy. The perception of a civilized Thai nation-state devoid of remnants of feudalism was actually very Eurocentric in its presumption and ideas. Various minority groups were affected by this cultural policy, but the Malay Muslims of the south were especially hit by these new cultural laws and regulations. The terms “Southern Thais” and “Islamic Thais” were to be referred to simply as “Thais.” The term “Thai Islam” was an invention of the Thai government to indicate that, while it did tolerate religious differences at that time, it did not consider that there should be any other significant differences among citizens of Thailand. Under these laws penalties were prescribed for those who failed to observe the regulations concerning “proper dress, behavior and etiquette” when appearing in public places. Other regulations required women to wear hats and Western dress, forbade the chewing of betel and areca nuts, and instructed in the use of forks and spoons as the “national cutlery.” The most sensitive regulation was the abolition in 1944 of Islamic family and inheritance laws, which had been allowed to function since the annexation of the Patani region in 1902. By imposing Thai civil law in the four Muslim provinces, the government also removed the Islamic judge who had been deciding family and property cases among the Muslims. Interestingly, Muslims in the provinces all went to the Islamic courts in Kelantan, Kedah, Trengganu, and Perlis Provinces for justice. From 1943 to 1947, no cases were filed by the Malay Muslims in the Thai court at all. Furthermore,

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Malay Muslims were no longer permitted to observe Fridays as public or school holidays. Most disturbing were Thai attempts to convert Muslims to Buddhism. This period thus saw the increased radicalization of the Malay Muslim movement and the unrelenting enforcement of the nationalist policies from which the seeds of resistance and irredentism were sewn. In its bid to consolidate the Thai Kingdom, the Phibun government decided to join with the Japanese government and declared war against the Allies. Japan, in return, assisted Thailand to retake its former Malay dependencies, Kelantan, Trengganu, Kedah, and Perlis, which had been ceded to Britain in 1909. However, the transfer This period...saw the...unrelenting of these provinces to Thai enforcement of the control in 1943 not only benefited the Thai state but also nationalist policies strengthened ties among the Malay Muslims in Patani. They could now renew their ties and share their problems with their brethren in Malaya. Tengku Mahmud Mahyiddin, the youngest son of the former raja of Patani, found it difficult to live in Thailand, went back to Kelantan and, during the Japanese occupation of Malaya, joined the resistance movement. In 1944, a member of Parliament from Narathiwat, Tengku Abdul Jalal bin Tengku Abdul Mutalib, son of the late raja of Saiburi,3 submitted petitions to the Phibun and Khuang governments protesting mistreatment by Thai officials which had caused economic hardship and religious discontent. The government’s reply after a series of investigations was that the local authorities had acted in a correct and proper manner in carrying out their policies of religious and cultural assimilation. As a result Tengku Jalal left Narathiwat for Kelantan and joined Tengku Mahyiddin in providing leadership to the Malay Muslim struggle for their rights and justice. In the same year, Haji Sulong, a charismatic religious leader, also set up an Islamic organization in Patani, the Patani Malay Movement (He’et alNapadh alLahkan alShariat) with the object of promoting Islam and encouraging cooperation among Muslim leaders in order to fight against the government’s tampering with the Islamic way of life. The policy of forced integration and assimilation of Malay Muslims into the Thai national state, however, was

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Thanet Aphornsuvan halted in 1944 when Phibun fell from power. Subsequent governments were more sympathetic to Muslim sentiments and quickly addressed the new radical protest arising from the Muslim constituency in the south. Islamic Patronage and Reform, 1945–47 In 1945, in order to normalize the radicalized political situation in the Muslim south, the Thai government under Prime Minister Khuang Aphaiwong, under the advice of Regent Pridi Phanomyong, promulgated the Islamic Patronage Act. The aim was to restore “pre-Phibun conditions” in the four southernmost provinces. The rights to observe Friday as a religious holiday and the restoration of Islamic family and inheritance laws were returned to the Muslim community. The reform of Islamic affairs also included the reappointment of the Chularajmontri to act on behalf of the king regarding Muslim concerns. Following the 1932 revolution, the Chularajmontri, an office that had been established under the Thai monarchy since the time of the Ayutthaya Kingdom, was abolished. There had been no appointment of a new Chularajmontri since the end of the absolute monarchy in 1932. It was not until the turmoil and disaffection among the Muslims in the south threatened the stability of the central Thai government that a new Chularajmontri was hurriedly appointed. The first Chularajmontri in the democratic period was a Muslim commoner, Cham Promyong (Haji Shamsudin Mustafa), a Sunni Muslim who was also a member of the People’s Party and senior government official in the Public Relations Department at that time. He was born in Samut Prakan Province east of Bangkok and studied Islam at a university in Egypt. His immediate duty was to mediate with the local Muslim intellectuals and movements. Unfortunately, the coup of 1947 forced Cham out of office and into exile in Kelantan. The military-led government then appointed Tuan Suwansat, a religious teacher in Bangkok, to be the new Chularajmontri. The government also changed the role of the Chularajmontri from the king’s advisor on Islamic affairs to advisor to the government. Tuan Suwansat remained until Chularajmontri Prasert Mahamad, also a Sunni teacher from Bangkok, took his place in 1981. To the present day, all Chularajmontri have come from Bangkok; none have ever come from the south. Apart from Cham Promyong, no Chularajmontri has been whole-heartedly accepted by the southern Malay Muslims.

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The sensitive issue of Islamic judges, or Dato Yuttitham, was also resolved by reinstating the Dato Yuttitham, within the Thai civil court. This time the Bangkok political leaders moved to patronize the Malay Muslim south by making the Dato Yuttitham an official of the Justice Ministry (kha ratchakan). On November 19, 1946, the government issued a law regarding the implementation of Islamic law in the four Muslim Provinces. On December 13, the Ministry of Justice announced new regulations concerning the appointment and qualifications of the Dato Yuttitham, one of which was the ability to read and write Thai. The government’s procedure and appointment of Dato Yuttitham was met with opposition from many Muslim leaders, in particular Haji Sulong. He disagreed with the idea and resisted it throughout. His objection was that the government officials, as nonbelievers (kafir), could not appoint a Muslim judge. It amounted to a breach of Islamic faith and practice. Another criticism of the new role of the Dato Yuttitham was that his decision on Islamic legal matters was final and no appeal was allowed. The criticisms among Muslim leaders were that the Thai government was not qualified to appoint an Islamic judge, and the Islamic courts should function separately from the Thai civil courts, as in the past. Regarding the idea of having separate courts—Thai civil and Islamic courts—the government replied that it would be too costly to maintain two separate courts, especially when relatively few religious cases were heard each year. The issue of Islamic courts and the Dato Yuttitham thus created commotion and cleavage among the Muslim leaders in the south as well as between Muslim leaders and the government. But for Haji Sulong this issue put him on the blacklist for his obstinate political opposition to the Thai government. For a brief period following the end of the war until 1947, Pridi’s Islamic patronage policies, which aimed at reform and reconciliation, succeeded to a certain degree in establishing national Islamic institutions acceptable to both the government and Muslims. Previous Islamic traditions and practices were reinstated or allowed. A positive development was the [From 1945 to 1947] opening of a free and open dialogue between Malay Muslim leaders and the previous Islamic traditions government. But with post-war and practices were reinstated economic hardship and scarcity, especially the shortage of rice in the

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Thanet Aphornsuvan south and the smuggling of rice along the border areas, the patronage policies could not deflect the course of southern Malay Muslim disaffection for Thai rule and the growing nationalist sentiment. The Seven-Point Proposal/Demand On top of the simmering conflict were complaints and petitions from the local Muslim population regarding the cruel and unjust practices of Thai officials, particularly the police. One can sense the pained feelings of the Malay Muslims from the account by Ibrahim Syukri in Sejarah Kerajaan Melayu Patani. The author points out that At this time [1945–46] there was a sort of contagious disease among the Siamese officials which led to disregard of directives and the taking of bribes. This occurred from the highest officials to the lowest peons. A matter that was very important could not succeed if bribes to the officials were not first prepared. With the police, a criminal who was caught could with ease be safe and free if he gave them a bribe. Repeatedly, when a Malay was accused of friendship with bad elements, he was immediately arrested by the Siamese police, taken to a lonely place, and beaten before he was taken to the place of detention. This also happened to Malays accused of taking part in political movements critical of the government. They were always threatened and slandered in various ways by the Siamese police, arrested, or simply beaten without bothering to take the matter to court (Syukri 1985).

The post-war lawlessness and corruption increased elsewhere in Thailand too, but the most serious situation was in the southernmost provinces which had become the center for smuggling, particularly of rice into Malaya. The government under Luang Thamrong and Pridi started negotiations to bring the Muslim political leaders within the state’s patronage and eventually secure their cooperation. On April 3, 1947, a commission of inquiry to investigate the situation in the four southern provinces was sent to Patani to listen and give sympathetic support to the plight of the Muslims there. Upon hearing news of the coming of the government commission, the Malay Muslim leaders on April 1 held an emergency meeting at the Provincial Islamic Council of Patani to draft a proposal concerning political rule and the rights and religious affairs of Muslims.

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That meeting produced the following seven demands: 1. The government of Siam should have a person of high rank possessing full power to govern the four provinces of Patani, Yala, Narathiwat, and Satun, and this person should be a Muslim born within one of the provinces and elected by the populace. The person in this position should be retained without being replaced; 2. All of the taxes obtained within the four provinces should be spent only within the provinces; 3. The government should support education in the Malay language up to the fourth grade in parish schools within the four provinces; 4. Eighty percent of the government officials within the four provinces should be Muslims born within the provinces; 5. The government should use the Malay language within government offices alongside the Siamese language; 6. The government should allow the Islamic Council to establish laws pertaining to the customs and ceremonies of Islam with the agreement of the (above noted) high official; 7. The government should separate the religious court from the civil court in the four provinces and permit [the former] full authority to conduct cases (Ibid.: 89–90). Although the document was not overtly separatist in intent, its calls for political autonomy were also not unambiguous. In retrospect, it actually was the first demand by local citizens for self-government or decentralization of the Bangkok administration and rule. At the meeting, the government commission expressed its uneasiness regarding the demands. The Commission of Inquiry summoned Haji Sulong, as the leader responsible for the document, to inform him which demands would be acceptable and which were not. Of course, the government was not ready to accept a set of demands that was too progressive and even radical to the ruling group at

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Thanet Aphornsuvan that time. The most that the government was willing to do was to make concessions on the issue of religious freedom and to accept the idea that Muslims in Thailand could become part of the Thai national family as “Thai-Muslims.” But the government could not accept the idea that any particular ethnic group could demand separate rights or regional autonomy purely on the basis of its distinct ethnic identity. Such an acceptance would have meant undermining the core belief in the indivisibility of the Thai nation, based on the trinity of nation, religion (Buddhism), and king. Prime Minister Thamrong brought the seven-point demand to a cabinet meeting for consideration in July 1947. The cabinet resolved that overall the seven-point demand could not be met because “the existing form of government at the present is appropriate. To reorganize the region into a kind of monthon or Circle is inappropriate since it would divide [the country]” (Chalermkiat 2004: 79). To Thai officials, Malay Muslim selfgovernment or autonomy was tantamount to secession of the Muslim provinces from the Thai nation-state. Four months later, the government still mulled over other proposals, like teaching Malay in schools, improving rubber plantations and transportation, allowing Friday as a religious holiday, and so forth. But there was no clear answer regarding the region’s future political status, which for the Malay Muslims was the most pertinent demand. The situation in the area remained bleak, with rampant arbitrary oppression of the Malays by the Thai authorities. In August, a second commission of inquiry investigated specific charges raised against the police and other officers before the first commission. Although during the period of the inquiry the individuals who had been subject to complaints had been withdrawn from the south, they had since started trickling back again. No action had been taken by the government against these officials, but in Patani “the police had taken reprisals against all who gave evidence before the Commissions by launching a fresh campaign of shooting and blackmail” (Whittingham-Jones 1947: 8). Toward the end of 1947, around 200 cases of disturbances and robberies occurred in Patani Province. The government claimed that most of the victims were Thai Buddhists, who told the police that after the raids the bandits left the burning houses shouting “ido Melayu!” (Malays awaken!). For the first time a public school in Patani also was burned down. Leaflets were dispersed around town calling for Malay political awakening.

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With little hope of concessions by the government, Haji Sulong stepped up his campaign for political change by leading a boycott of the appointment of the Dato Yuttitham by the government. He called for the right of Muslims to determine their own justice. By the middle of 1947, police were keeping a close watch on Haji Sulong and his political mobilization of the mosques (masjids), religious schools (pondok), and more modern, nonreligious schools. Reports from secret agents indicated that Haji Sulong was planning to organize Muslim people to protest against the government and to invite Tengku Mahyiddin from Kelantan to return as leader of the four southern provinces. Contending Histories of “Separatism” Generally it is held that the Malay Muslims’ disdainful feelings toward the Thai government intensified under Phibun’s war-time government (1938– 44), which was supported by Japanese imperial forces, and his second government (1948–57), which came to power by means of a coup overthrowing the liberal regime of the Pridi Phanomyong faction. It is commonly believed that it was under both Phibun governments that the Malay Muslims in the south suffered their worst political oppression. But in fact the beginning of violent clashes between the Malay Muslims and the government forces took place before Phibun stepped in as prime minister for the second time. Given the complexity of the issues involved and sudden changes of government in a short span of time (four governments in five years), it is quite possible that many fine points crucial to the understanding of the real political situation at that time have been omitted or generalized in order to fit the subsequent national political development. From the Thai official and popular versions of the origins of separatism in the Malay south, the Haji Sulong Rebellion of 1948 was the beginning of the whole problem. This turning point soon became known as the Malay Muslim revolt in 1948 after Phibun’s return to power. It followed the Khuang government’s rejection of demands put forward by Haji Sulong, then President of the Islamic Religious Council, calling for Patani Malays to be appointed to governorships of the four provinces and to 80 percent of government administrative posts in the area, and for a Muslim board to be established to control all Muslim affairs. According to the Thai narrative, the arrest of Haji Sulong provoked a renewal of the insurrection, which escalated further after his disappearance and presumed death in 1954.

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Thanet Aphornsuvan In fact, no “revolt” by the Malay Muslims occurred in 1948. The sevenpoint demand also was not the real cause for the arrest and prosecution of Haji Sulong, as later believed by scholars and the public. There was, however, “unrest” and “protests” by the Muslims in the three southernmost provinces (not four, as reported by government officials and newspapers, because Satun never has been part of the Malay Question), even before the arrest of Haji Sulong. Of course, additional protests occurred after his arrest by the local police. The largest and most serious uprising occurred on April 26–28, 1948, which grew out of clashes in the village of Dusun Nyior, Narathiwat Province. The incident later became known as the “Dusun Nyior Rebellion” [kabot Dusong Yor] and is generally understood as an attempted rebellion provoked by the arrest of Haji Sulong. Subsequently, the Dusun Nyior Rebellion dissipated under the story-line of the “Haji Sulong Rebellion.” But the wheel of history completed itself in the clashes between militant Malay Muslims in the three southernmost provinces and government forces that took place on April 28, 2004. This incident has led, for the first time in fifty-six years, to the revival and retelling in full to the public of the story of the 1948 “Dusun Nyior Rebellion.” According to the official Thai narrative of the 1948 Dusun Nyior Rebellion, following the arrest of Haji Sulong that January, the Malay Muslim people banded together in meetings and began planning a terrorist act. Government security forces closely monitored and kept track of their movements. Those who were afraid of being arrested by the government decided to flee the country. The Provincial Islamic Committee of Patani was also dissolved. Meanwhile, certain political parties and newspapers in Malaya reported the events in the south in a sympathetic manner, hoping that the people would rise up against the Thai government and achieve their goal of separating the Muslim provinces from the Thai state to join with Malaya. Soon the “situation in the border provinces of the south became unpredictable” (sathanakan mai pen thi na wai wang jai), which prompted the government to send more police forces to Narathiwat hoping to restore order. Then on April 28, 1948, a rebellion broke out in Dusun Nyior. Haji Tingamae, or Ma Tinga, set himself up as leader of the group. He led the group in clashes with the police for thirty-six hours. Eventually the situation returned to peace and normalcy. The police arrested two persons, one of them the district chief (kamnan) of Tanjongmas, and charged them with treason. Ma Tinga managed to escape but was

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apprehended in 1954 and jailed for one year in Narathiwat before he escaped from prison and joined the Chinese Communist rebels. The intertwined and convoluted histories of the “Haji Sulong Rebellion” and the On April 28, 1948, a rebellion “Dusun Nyior Rebellion” of broke out in Dusun Nyior 1948 are important to our understanding of the Malay Muslim post-World War II political movement. A critical point is that there were differences, nuances, and conflicts among the Malay Muslims, communities, and movements. However, for outsiders, particularly the Thai state and government, the Muslim communities in Thailand are always perceived to be homogeneous and static. A further point adding to the complexity of the Haji Sulong and Dusun Nyior Rebellions is that the year 1948 was a critical juncture both for Thailand and even more so for British Malaya. In Thailand, key events in the national politics of this period were the mysterious death of King Ananda Mahidol in June 1946 and the coup d’état in November 1947. For the newly-established Federation of Malaya, still under British rule, it was the Emergency of 1948. During the 1940s Haji Sulong became the symbol of the Malay Muslim struggle against the racist policies of the Thai state and unjust practices of government officials, particularly following his arrest in January 1948, court trial, and eventual murder in 1954. The Thai political narrative of this period focused on the role of Haji Sulong as the sole leader and cause of the “rebellion” in the south and of the uprising at Dusun Nyior. Until the 1970s, Thai literature on Malay separatism in general and the Dusun Nyior Rebellion in particular was silent on the origins and nature of the initial political Haji Sulong became the symbol dialogue between the Malay the Malay Muslim struggle Muslims and the Thai government. On the other hand, the Thai government quickly constructed a story of the uprising that characterized it as a separatist movement. To this end the government needed a target and evidence to justify its suppression of the local rebellion and to reaffirm its rule over the

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Thanet Aphornsuvan Muslim south. Haji Sulong thus was arrested and cast as the important leader of the “1948 Rebellion,” after which he became the reconstructed symbol of opposition to the Thai government and separatism. Meanwhile the “Dusun Nyior Rebellion of 1948” was understood as a sub-plot of the Haji Sulong Rebellion. It was not until the latest clashes on April 28, 2004, that the Thai public began to learn more about what really happened in April 1948. The “Haji Sulong Rebellion” The “Haji Sulong Rebellion” was the master narrative written by the Thai state in order to understand the nature and causes of the Malay Muslim political activities of the time. As noted, the Thai government needed Haji Sulong as leader of the Malay Muslim movement in order to justify systematic suppression of the Muslim opposition. The ultimate goal of such a narrative was to emphasize “separatism” in the Malay south. Without a doubt, this narrative drastically affected political relations between the Malay Muslims and the Thai government. Looking back at the 1948 revolt, the question is whether it was really an attempted rebellion that failed. Was it from this rebellion that the ideology of separatism was planted by the Thai government regarding the alleged intentions of the Malay Muslims? The answer to this question would not only help shed light on the origins of separatism in the area but also help us understand more clearly the present eruption of violence in the south and find appropriate ways to deal with and remedy the worsening situation. Politically, the appearance of Haji Sulong was very significant as a departure from the old history of Malay Muslim political activism. Previously, the long history of their struggle against Thai domination and subjugation was centered on the leadership and traditional power of the raja of the old Patani Kingdom. In a sense, that struggle was structured within the hierarchical social relations between Siamese kings and Patani rajas. The causes and outcomes were always the same: clashes over power, status, and interests of both royal elites and the defeat of the weaker force, sometimes by means of trickery and deception in addition to military action. Even though the local Muslim people began to participate more in the rebellion against the Thai absolutist state as a result of direct and increased political and economic exploitation, Islam as a driving political and cultural force was still minimal or even absent.

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The emergence of Haji Sulong as a potential leader of the Muslim community in the south, at a time when the palace of Patani was empty, began to offer a new vision and focus for the people’s identity. In this revival of Malay nationalism, a new formula had been created from which political autonomy based on Islamic principles would be championed at the very moment of the birth of political democracy in Thailand. The Patani Muslim Movement, spearheaded by Haji Sulong, thus became a mass movement and importantly marked the first time that the movement turned to a religious figure for leadership. Haji Sulong spent twenty years as a student in the Middle East, including study in Mecca with famous Islamic scholars, from which his first experience with nationalism was formed (Ockey 2004: 100–10). It is important to note that the intellectual and political climate of the first quarter of the twentieth century had exerted a similar influence on the young students of that generation, for example Pridi Phanomyong and Plaek Kittasangka (Phibun) from the central region, and Thong-in Phuripat and Tiang Sirikhan from northeastern Thailand. These young members of the intelligentsia represented the new men and women of southern, central, and northeastern parts of a changing country. All of them were attracted to the ideas of nationalism and modernity, together with an awareness and cultivation of self-consciousness. The Muslim intellectual, however, was different from the others due to the emergence of Islamic revivalism in the Middle East and the Malay Peninsula. While Haji Sulong was influenced by Arab nationalism, the other Thai intellectuals were imbued with the spirit of secular constitutional revolution exemplified by the Young Turk revolution of 1908 and the Republican Revolution of 1911 in China. Haji Sulong returned to Patani in 1927, the same year that a group of progressive Thai students gathered in Paris to plan for the revolution in Siam. To his eyes, Patani and the Muslim communities there were poor and backward, like the Arab communities at the beginning of the rise of Islam. The glory and reputation of old Patani as the “cradle of Islam” in Southeast Asia was now replaced by a community in decline where people were animistic in their religious practices and ceremonies. Scenes of the deprivation of the local Muslims prompted a change of heart inside Haji Sulong. As a good Muslim, he had a duty to teach and disseminate an Islam that was as close to the words of Allah as possible.

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Thanet Aphornsuvan Haji Sulong started teaching as a Toh Guru (toh khru), travelling to various communities in Patani. His teaching elicited opposition from traditional Muslim teachers, who later reported his activities to the provincial (monthon) governor as “a potential threat to the peace and security of the area.” The governor of the area summoned him for questioning, but due to a lack of evidence he was released. On the other hand, villagers flocked to hear Haji Sulong’s teaching. They eventually encouraged him to open an Islamic school in Patani in place of the local pondok. He agreed to the idea and campaigned for school donations and support among the Muslim population and even from Thai Buddhist supporters. The school project received wide support from the people, but it also generated divisions among Muslims themselves and between Patani Muslims and the Thai elite, particularly as the governor of Patani was controlled by the absolute monarchy. Subtle friction between Malay nationalism and Thai royalnationalism started to emerge from this time. One figure who was opposed to Haji Sulong’s political orientation was Phraya Rattanapakdi (Chaeng Suwanchinda), the last royal governor of Patani. He was later removed from office by the People’s Party government in 1933 because of his royalist stance. Surprisingly, he would be reappointed governor after the 1947 military coup and immediately played a fatal role in the arrest of Haji Sulong, with whom he had close contact for quite some time, on treason charges. Earlier Haji Sulong, whose eloquence as an orator was well known, had worried the Thai authorities. By the late 1930s, reports and rumors regarding Haji Sulong’s activism began to stir discomfort among certain factions of the government and officials. They were unsure of his public role and the political implications of his followers. So local officials were instructed to secretly follow and keep track of his activities and movements. As mentioned earlier, contests and conflict among the Muslims themselves pervaded relations between the modern and traditional Muslim elite. Haji Sulong’s first rival was the Abdunlabut family, of Yaring District in Patani Province. Phraphiphitpakdi (Tunku Mudka Abdunlabut), who served as district officer under the new political system, rose to become governor of Satun. When he ran for Parliament in 1937, Haji Sulong supported Jaroen Suebsang, a senior public health official in Patani, and a Thai-Buddhist whose political views were more progressive. That accounted for the subsequent successful elections for Jaroen Suebsang from 1938 to 1948.

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Another political problem for Haji Sulong was his contact with Tengku Mahyiddin, whom the Thai government believed was the leader of a separatist movement in southern Thailand. By placing Haji Sulong and the Malay Muslim Movement in the context of the rise of Malay nationalism in the age of independence and anti-colonialism, we can better understand the aspirations of the Malay Muslims of southern Thailand. The origins and growth of Patani intellectuals can be traced back to the first two decades of the twentieth century, when a wave of reform and modernization blew through the Malay world. The first generation of Patani intellectuals went from local pondok education to further their studies in Mecca and returned to open modern religious schools in the south. They began to break with older Muslim leaders. This period, called the “reawakening” by academics (McVey 1989; Roff 1965), was characterized by the emergence of the Malay Muslims’ self-awareness and identity under Islamic principles. The Patani awakening was influenced partly by religious students, most of whom were inclined toward modernism, who had come over from or gained experience in the northern states of Malaya when these had come under Thai administration during World War II. It also drew intellectually on Malay nationalist and populist sentiments expressed by political groups in Kelantan and Kedah. At this point, the leadership of Haji Sulong was crucial because he belonged to the The Patani awakening...drew...on modern generation of Muslim intellectuals. He was the first Malay nationalist and populist Patani ulama who had studied sentiments extensively in Mecca. That is why when he returned to Patani in 1927, he found that the local practices were incorrect and the Islamic faith was still mixed with Thai animism. He was among the ulama who distrusted the government’s involvement in the religious affairs of the community and believed that political intrusion into the legal and religious matters of Muslims since the reign of King Chulalongkorn was corrupting the purity of Islam. Haji Sulong made clear that his life mission was to follow the footsteps of the Prophet Mohamed to “elevate and purify Islam.” His idea of a “proper” Muslim community therefore involved attempts to bring justice and progress

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Thanet Aphornsuvan together with the practice of Islam. He was convinced that such a community could not be established as long as it remained solely under Thai rule. During the course of his popular religious leadership in the province, he realized the potency Sulong...realized the potency and possibility of Islam as a and possibility of Islam political force. The Muslim movement thus carried in it a as a political force deep faith in Islamic political involvement and social activism. The Coup of 1947 and the End of “Islamic Patronage” The event that drastically turned the tables was the military coup on November 8, 1947. In retrospect, this coup was the most critical of all in terms of the changes it led to in Thai politics and the significance it had on the events to come. Two factors, one internal and the other external, did much to determine the direction of politics after the coup. The first was the mysterious death by gunshot of the young King Ananda Mahidol in June 1946. This event led to the forced resignation of Pridi Phanomyong as prime minister and ushered in the return of the royalist-conservativereactionary politicians and officials to the helm of the Thai state. The 2nd factor involved the post-war economic difficulties and the rise of nationalist-independence movements in the region. The coup group, calling itself the Khana Patiwat (Revolutionary Party), consisting of a retired army commander and a group of young key commanders, seized power from the Thamrong-Pridi government, which had dominated government and politics since the end of World War II. With Phibun and the army out of power and no other opposition political leaders in sight, the coup was a big surprise to all. In the early stages, the coup group had to beg and finally blackmail Phibun to accept its leadership. However, as Phibun was unable to head the military-controlled government because of his war crimes record and strong objections from England and the United States, Khuang Aphaiwong was invited to head the interim government instead. But the signs soon were obvious that Phibun was the army’s choice and his return was certain: the question was simply when. The shift at the center of power in Bangkok sent a dangerous warning to the Patani Muslims. This dramatic turn of events explains why Haji Sulong and other

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Muslim leaders urgently requested Tengku Mahyiddin in Kelantan to head a Patani resistance movement and to send out appeals for support to the outside world. As the Malay Muslim leadership was making its seven-point demands, the government was still headed by Khuang Aphaiwong from the Democrat Party. However, the response from the Khuang government was even less sympathetic than Thamrong’s. At one point Khuang’s response to their demands was that he was too busy with other government business. Besides, said Khuang, the problems of the Malay Muslims had been around for so long that it would not make a difference if they gave him more time to settle the issue. It is likely that by late 1947 Haji Sulong and his followers realized their hope of dialogue with the government had come to an end. The only available weapon against the government was now a campaign of noncooperation, which by then had become “transformed into a political strategy with religious overtones” (Surin 1985: 159). Haji Sulong and his movement thus planned to boycott the upcoming general election in January 1948 in their provinces. An incident in December 1947 which appears to have led to an escalation of the conflict between the Malay Muslims in Patani and the government was the murder of a Thai police officer by bandits near the village of Kampong Belukar Samok, Narathiwat Province. A police unit was sent out to the village, arresting Malay youths and torturing them to find out who among them was the murderer. The police charged them with supplying provisions and assistance to bandits. Later police “burned the village because it was charged that the residents of the village were befriending the bandits. As a result of this fire twenty-five Malay families were made homeless” (Syukri 1985: 87). The Duson Nyior Rebellion By late 1947 the new Minister of the Interior under the Khuang government, also a retired army general named Luang Sinadyotharak, was deeply worried about the disturbances and unrest in the Muslim south. Amid the defensive mood of the illegitimate government, he opted for a drastic measure to quell disorder and restore “peace and order” to the region. He dismissed the governor of Patani and replaced him with Phraya Rattanapakdi, whom he trusted would be able to remove the root causes of the Muslim problem since he had governed Patani previously. The last governor of Patani under

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Thanet Aphornsuvan the absolute monarchy, Phraya Rattanapakdi had been deposed by the People’s Party government in 1934. As a retired official hoping to run for a Parliament seat, he had been unable to gain the support of Haji Sulong. In a way they were at once acquaintances and foes. Upon setting foot back in Patani, Phraya Rattanapakdi gathered detailed reports about Haji Sulong and his activities and submitted them to the Interior Minister for decisive action (Rattanapakdi 1972: 1–6). Believing that it could root out the problem once and for all, the Khuang government (not Phibun’s, as generally believed) authorized the arrest of Haji Sulong. On January 16, 1948, Haji Sulong and his associates were arrested and charged with treason. As expected, the arrest ignited simmering discontent in the region, and the flames were fanned by Malay politicians across the border. A little less than a month after the [Haji Sulong’s] arrest detention of Haji Sulong, the Patani provincial ignited simmering attorney requested the court to bring the case to trial at Nakhon Si Thammarat provincial discontent in the region court. The reason for a speedy trial was that the defendants in this serious case led a wellorganized movement with a large number of followers. Provincial officials were alarmed when they brought Haji Sulong and his followers to the court and requested the right to continue to hold the accused while the police conducted further investigations. A huge crowd of Muslim people gathered at the court. It was clear that the arrest of Haji Sulong had hurt Muslim sensibilities so much that officials were fearful of possible unrest during the trial (Rattanapakdi 1966: 97). In late February a popular uprising took place in several districts of Patani, Yala, and Narathiwat. Violent clashes with police and security forces occurred throughout the region, with hundreds killed and thousands fleeing across the border to Malaya (Syukri 1985: 97). As the situation in the south deteriorated, Phibun finally replaced Khuang for his second stint as prime minister on April 8, 1948. On April 26 clashes between the Muslim villagers and police and military forces took place at Duson Nyior in Ra-ngae district, Narathiwat. The government’s version of the story held that the still confusing “Dusong Yor Revolt” was led by a religious leader, Haji Abdul Rahman, and joined by some leaders who had fled from the village Kampong Belukar Samok. The crowd first attacked the police station and threatened to take over a village

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(Straits Times 1948.) The clashes with the police forces lasted two days and involved up to a thousand men in an open battle. At least 400 Malay Muslim peasants and 30 policemen were killed (Che Man 1990a: 67). The Muslim version of events was that police started shooting at the villagers during the ceremony of “oil bathing.” The villagers were organized and prepared to defend themselves against raids by Chinese communist bandits from the border area. The police were suspicious of their activities and gatherings so they attacked the villagers first. From all accounts, it is likely that the Dusun Nyior Revolt was a culmination of many simmering conflicts and problems between Malay Muslims and government officials at that time. Thai officials and the government exhibited deep prejudice and fear over the real motives of the Malay Muslim people. The police report on the incident states that the Dusun Nyior villagers were armed with sten guns, carbines, and grenades, when in fact they possessed only knives, spears, and whatever weapons they could find in the village. Furthermore, the spontaneous uprising was not planned or part of the Haji Sulong Rebellion, as narrated by the official discourse (Chaiwat 2004a: 98–105). Following the suppression of the clashes, some 2,000–6,000 Malay Muslims fled to Malaya. Soon an estimated 250,000 Patani Muslims had signed a petition requesting the United Nations to preside over the separation of the four Muslim provinces so that they could join with the newlyformed Federation of Malaya. The Phibun government declared a state of emergency in the Muslim provinces and sent three regiments of special police to Narathiwat, declaring that their task was to combat “the Communists” (Che Man 1990a: 67). Undoubtedly the Patani issue attracted international attention, including from the Asia Relations Organization, the Arab League, and the United Nations. Appeals for support were also made to Muslim countries, including the states of the Arab League, Indonesia, and Pakistan. Support was received from Malay groups within Thailand as well as from the Malay Nationalist Party in Malaya. The situation was tense. Guerrillas began to move across the border from inside Malaya into southern Thailand. Religious leaders on both sides of the border were calling for a jihad (holy war) against the Thai authorities (Christie 1996: 89). The political impact of the Duson Nyior Revolt can be seen from the state attorney‘s charges against Haji Sulong. These included “plotting and organizing to change the traditional Royal government of the kingdom

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Thanet Aphornsuvan over the four provinces, i.e., Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat, and Satun; causing injury to the independence of the state; and provoking violent disruptions in the country by outside forces” (Rattanapakdi 1966: 75–78). The evidence implicating Haji Sulong and three of his followers on the charge of plotting against the independence of the Thai nation was a printed letter in the Malay language, dated January 5, 1948, inviting Tengku Mahiyiddin to be the leader of the Malay Muslims in order to demand political autonomy. The letter stated, “We, the Islam Malays under the reign of Siam, beg to inform you that we cannot bear any more injustice, hardship, oppression and the loss of all personal liberty that has been imposed on us by the officials and Siamese government.” Although they had begged the government several times to give them their “rights and privileges as human beings,” in return the government had given them nothing, not even a reply. Thus, “we give you herewith, full powers and rights to do anything possible and proper to satisfy our requests, so that we may live as any other human beings in this world, having personal liberty, regaining our Malay racehood, and our Islamic religion. With these aims and wants we, individually, of our own accord and pleasure, put hereunder our signature and/or thumb prints . . . to appoint you as an above mentioned representative” (Surin 1985: 158). In the eyes of the Thai government, this letter incited the public to hatred of the Thai government and officials which could lead to defiant acts and unrest within the kingdom. The provincial court eventually found Haji Sulong guilty of making public the letter to Tenku Mahyiddin, which had defamed and humiliated the Thai government and its officials. It is interesting how the court translated that offense into a guilty verdict. At that time the country still used the first criminal law code R. S. (Bangkok Era) 127 which was promulgated under King Chulalongkorn in 1909. R. S. 127 Code, which had been duplicated from the British Criminal Code in India, was the first modern code drafted in Siam, as demanded by the Western powers. In order to severely punish Haji Sulong, the court had to state that the said wrongdoing amounted to “an offense of sedition within the kingdom according to Criminal Law Code clause 104.” Haji Sulong and his associates thus were found to have committed a crime of rebellion against the state and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment. The prosecutor appealed the case, arguing for a more severe punishment of Haji Sulong and citing evidence that a separatist movement was planning a rebellion, although it lacked any clear armed force. Again it is ironic that

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the Thai authorities were trying very hard to portray the Malay Muslims as separatists joining with the Malay nationalists on the other side of the border who were agitating against the British rule. The Appeals Court, finally, concurred with most of the charges, especially the defamatory letter and seditious acts of Haji Sulong. The new sentence thus increased the jail term to the maximum of seven years, but owing to the defendants’ willingness to cooperate with the investigation and trial procedures, the court granted a reduction of the sentence to four years and eight months. The Supreme Court (Dika) also confirmed the same sentence. Here lays the irony of the first Malay Muslim “separatist.” Even though the court found no evidence of sedition, it nevertheless was able to punish him as a “rebel” (kabot) based on what it considered to be Haji Sulong’s unruly behavior toward the Thai state and government though the court found no evidence officials. This was possible of sedition, it...was able to punish because of the subjective judgment by the judges based [Haji Sulong] as a “rebel” on a section on rebellion and sedition in the old Criminal Code R. S. 127. He therefore became a rebel and separatist against the Thai state by the act of law.4 The arrest and prosecution of Haji Sulong can also be seen as the result of a power struggle between the Pridi and Phibun factions. The Pridi Phanomyong group had dominated national politics and government during and after World War II. His political base came largely from the Free Thai Movement, with its members fairly widespread throughout the country, in particular in the northeast. The Muslim south was also drawn to Pridi’s group as a result of the implementation of the Islamic Patronage Act in 1945 and the reappointment of the Chularajmontri. Phibun’s power base, however, consisted of the loose coalition of the army and royalist politicians under the Democrat Party and senior government officials. It is revealing to note that all the prominent political leaders of the northeast and the south were eventually massacred by Phao’s police force, which became Phibun’s most important power base, in the early 1950s. This followed the failure of the attempted coups by Pridi and his Free Thai adherents and the Navy in 1949 and 1951. They were accused without trial of plotting or working in separatist movements against the sovereignty and integrity of the Thai state.

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Thanet Aphornsuvan Haji Sulong spent four years and six months in jail before he was released in 1952. He returned to a Patani rife with anger and resentment against the government. Then in 1954 he mysteriously disappeared after reporting to the Special Branch Police office in Songkhla Province. Popular belief held that he and his companions, including his eldest son, Wan Othman Ahmad, had been “killed by the Thai police under General Phao Siyanond, then Director-General of the Police Department, on the night of 13 August 1954. They are said to have been tied to heavy stones and drowned in the sea behind Nu Island” (Nantawan 1977: 85; Panomporn 1984: 141). Islamization and Modernization From the late 1950s to the present, relations between Malay Muslims of the south and Thai authorities have changed little. Mistrust, patronizing, and misunderstanding on the part of government officials are still prevalent. Fear, resentment, and disapproval of Thai rule and power are also rampant among Malay Muslims. relations between Malay Similar policies aimed at integration Muslims of the south and Thai and assimilation of the Muslims is still being prescribed to the local authorities have changed little government officials. The modernization period in Thailand was largely a product of Cold War international politics in Asia. In the case of Thailand, it covered the period from 1957 to 1973, first with the rise of Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat (r. 1958–63) and ending with the demise of Field Marshal Thanom Kittikachorn (r. 1963–73) in the studentled popular uprising of October 14, 1973. The main theme of government policy was socioeconomic development aimed at internal peace and unification of various classes and ethnic groups in the country under the ideology of nation, religion, and king. From the 1960s onward, the government introduced development policies aimed at raising social and economic conditions of the Malay Muslims in order to convince them of the good intentions of the Thai government. Nevertheless, Prime Minister Sarit’s motives were aimed at the integration of the Malay Muslims into the Thai nation. In 1960, Sarit made his first official trip to the south, during which he made a striking

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address to the nation deploring that the border provinces were not Thai because people down there did not speak Thai. He then gave advice to improve the Thai identities in the border provinces of the south. “I want many Thai brethren in the Northeast, the North and the Central part to go South and settle on land and earn a livelihood there. They should increase loyal Thai blood there. There is plenty of good virgin land with much water. The government will help you in allotment of land and establishment of settlements. . . . Strive for a living with ambition and endurance, with the strength of your own two arms . . . for the sake of yourselves, your families and your nation” (Bangkok Post 1960).

Following the speech, the government introduced the new Self-Help Land Settlement Project in the deep south and transferred landless farmers from the north and especially from the northeast to the area covering several thousand acres of land. To the Malay Muslims, the project was an implicit policy of equalizing the population ratio. The settlements became more and more inhabited by the northeastern immigrants who, of course, were Buddhists. Moreover, these new Buddhist communities received special assistance from local Thai officials, including land-holding rights and title deeds, as well as financial and technical assistance, much more easily than their Muslim counterparts (Arong 1989: 100). Consequently, the national development policy became a contradictory force within Malay Muslim society. Although it brought about social and economic improvements for some, it also weakened the social values and cultural institutions that had for a long time served to resist government penetration into Malay Muslim society. Significantly, the government seized control of the pondok, which is a traditional institution of religious purification and transmission, and put it under a unified system of public schools with a common Thai curriculum throughout the country. To justify the move, officials claimed that pondok schools offered low-quality education (Surin 1985:168–69.) The resistance put forth by some religious leaders and younger Muslim activists led to the emergence of violent separatist organizations rallying under the banner of radical Islamic principles. Interestingly, although the government succeeded in gaining national security from its development and pacification programs in sensitive areas, a sense of insecurity was created among minority groups.

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Thanet Aphornsuvan Conclusion The main difficulty in Siam/Thai-Patani histories is the lack of understanding about the nature of old rivalries and conflicts between the two states and cultures and how the history should be read and interpreted in light of the contemporary situation. Given the diverse and long coexistence of many religions and traditions in southern Thailand, the Malay Muslims—with their distinct and “unassimilated” history—are nevertheless willing to negotiate and deal with changes from outside. Although the Thai state accorded some degree of religious freedom to the Muslims, pluralism and autonomous culture and politics have never been accepted. The central Thai authorities are satisfied with a degree of assimilation of individual Muslims largely through modern secular education programs and economic development policies undertaken by the Sarit government. But when Islam is equated with a non-Thai culture, as in the Malay Muslim south, then misunderstanding and conflict between the Malay Muslims and the Thai state becomes a breeding ground for violence. In the official mind, to be Thai Muslim is acceptable for Thai citizens, but Malay Muslims are not accepted. The short period from the 1930s to 1940s marked the formation and growth of an Islamic political movement in three provinces of southern Thailand. Following that formative period, the resistance movement evolved from the call for autonomy to independence and from spontaneous rebellion to an organized armed revolt. By the 1960s, political separatism became an accepted norm among many Malay Muslims in the deep south, with the launching of many armed organizations and fronts such as Barisan Nasional Pembebasan Patani, which originated in the 1940s with headquarters in Kelantan; The Barisan Revolusi Nasional organized in 1974; and the Patani United Liberation Organization in 1968. The politics of the Islamic community were no longer domestic and traditional but had become international. The movement was ready to link and receive spiritual and material support from outside the region, including from Arab Muslims. To the Malay Muslim, the pertinent question and answer to the ethnic resurgence is “a conflict of cultures which is seen as the continuation of centuries of confrontation between the Patani Muslims and the Thai intruders.” The Muslim separatist conflict is sustained by the belief that the continued efforts of Bangkok to consolidate its control over the socioeconomic and cultural affairs of the Muslim community will lead to

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the erosion of Muslims’ cultural and religious way of life and the disappearance of their identity. Hence the conflict is not socioeconomic but mainly “ethnic, religious, and nationalist.” Indeed, concludes a Patani intellectual, “while Bangkok views cultural autonomy for the Muslim community of the Patani region to be a threat to Thai national territorial integrity, the Patani Muslims regard the concept of ‘national selfdetermination’ as a fundamental right of every people” (Che Man 1995: 249). By reading the competing histories of each side, it is evident that the sources of political conflict—including the political status of Patani, ethnic identity, political competition in Bangkok, and bureaucratic misconduct in the south—have been present in the history of the two states and peoples. Understanding, empathy, and respect for each other’s culture and “...Patani Muslims regard... ethnoreligious identity could lead to positive political will on both sides. An ‘national self-determination’ initial attempt at historical as a fundamental right...” reconciliation might be to declare a national day in the name of Haji Sulong and rewrite the history of the Patani Muslim movement, not as a rebellion, but as a democratic struggle whose aim was the building of democracy in a multi-ethnic Siam/Thai state. In these delicate and fragile relations, the Siam/Thai state is the most important key to any lasting peaceful solution to the conflict. Given the current violence, it is necessary that the government demonstrate its political determination to resolve the conflict in the region by peaceful means. Armed force should be used only to support a political resolution. In the long run, the Malay Muslims must be encouraged and allowed to fully participate in the restoration of peace and the building of a prosperous community that respects their culture and religion.

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Endnotes 1.

2.

3. 4.

The English rendering of the name “Patani” is based on Malay spelling referring to the old Patani Kingdom down to its annexation by Siam in 1902, while the Thai government usage of “Pattani” is based on Thai spelling of the Province. In the 1980s, the spelling of the word “Pattani” or “Patani” became a political act reflecting the ethnoreligious consciousness of the authors. “Patani” is used with historical connotations preserving the sense of a former Malay sultanate comprising the present-day provinces of Yala, Narathiwat, and Patani. On the other hand, the word “Pattani” is a Thai-ified spelling. It merely signifies the name of a province in southern Thailand. Historically, “Pattani” refers only to an administrative entity and a sense of a struggle already ended. See Chaiwat Satha-Anand, “Pattani in the 1980s: Academic Literature and Political Stories,” Sojourn, Vol. 7, No. 1 (February 1992), 1–38. See a more detailed discussion of this part in my previous research article, “Origins of Malay Muslim ‘Separatism’ in Southern Thailand,” Asia Research Institute Working Paper No. 32, Oct. 2004. Tengku Jalal’s Thai name was Adul Nasaiburi. This fact, and insights regarding the code and its unusual sentence, was told by Den Toh Meena, the youngest son of Haji Sulong, in Patani on February 26, 2007.

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Nantawan Haemindra. 1976. “The Problem of the Thai-Muslims in the Four Southern Provinces of Thailand” (Part I ). Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 7(2): 197–225. ———. 1977. “The Problem of the Thai-Muslims in the Four Southern Provinces of Thailand” (Part II). Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 8(1): 85–105. Nation. 2004. January 5. Ockey, James. 2004. “Botrian jak prawatsat: Haji Sulong lae muslim pak tai” (Lesson from history: Haji Sulong and the Muslim provinces of the south). Silapawatthanatham 25(6):100–10. Omar Farouk. 1984. “The historical and transnational dimensions of Malay-Muslim separatism in southern Thailand.” In Lim Joo-Jock and S. Vani, eds.1984. Armed Separatism in Southeast Asia. Singapore: Regional Strategic Studies Programme, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. ———. 1986. “The Origins and Evolution of Malay-Muslim Ethnic Nationalism in Southern Thailand.” In Abdullah, Taufik, ed. 1986. Islam and Society in Southeast Asia. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. ———. 1988. “The Muslims of Thailand: A Survey.” In Forbes, ed. 1988. Historical and Cultural Studies. ———. 2005. “Islam, Nationalism, and the Thai State.” In Sugunnasil, Wattana. 2005. Dynamic diversity in Southern Thailand. Chiangmai: Silkworm Books. Osman, Modh Taib. 1961. “Hikayat seri Kelantan” (History of Kelantan). M.A. thesis, University of Malaya. Panomporn Anurugsa. 1984. “Political Integration Policy in Thailand: The Case of the Malay Muslim Minority.” PhD diss. University of Texas at Austin. Rattanapakdi, Phraya. 1966. Prawat muang pattani (A history of Pattani). Bangkok. ———. 1972. Din dan thai nai lam thong (Thai territory in the Golden Peninsula). Bangkok: Cremation Volume. Rattiya Salae. 2001. Kan patisampan rawang sasanik thi prakot nai changwat patani yala lae narathiwat (The interaction among religious adherents as found in Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat Provinces). Bangkok: Thailand Research Fund (TRF). Roff, William R. 1965. The Origins of Malay Nationalism. New Haven & London: Yale University Press. Scupin, Raymond. 1976. “Islam in Thailand before the Bangkok Period.” Journal of the Siam Society 7(2). Srisakdi Vallibhotama. 1989. Raingan kan wijai ruang muang boran nai anajak sukhothai (Report on research on the old cities in the Kingdom of Sukhothai). Bangkok: Thai Khadi Research Institute, Thammasat University. Srisompob Jitpiromsri and Wattana Sugunnasil. 2006. “Nature of Violence in the Deep South of Thailand.” Paper prepared for the second study group meeting on Burma for the East-West Center Washington project on State Building Challenges in Asia, July 12–13, Bangkok, Thailand. Sujit Wongthes. 2004. Rath patani nai Srivijaya kao kae kwa rath sukhothai nai adit (Patani state in Srivijaya was older than Sukhothai state in history). Bangkok: Matichon Press. Surin Pitsuwan. 1985. Islam and Malay Nationalism: A Case Study of the Malay Muslims of Southern Thailand. Bangkok: Thai Khadi Research Institute, Thammasat University.

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Thanet Aphornsuvan Syukri, Ibrahim. 1985. History of the Malay Kingdom of Patani (Sejarah Kerajaan Melayu Patani). Translated by Conner Bailey and John N. Miksic. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Center for International Studies. Tej Bunnag. 1968. “The Provincial Administration of Siam from 1892–1915.” PhD diss. University of Oxford. ———. 1989. Kan pokkrong thesaphibal kong Siam B.E. 2435–2458 (The provincial administration of Siam, 1892–1915). Bangkok: Thammasat University Press. Thamsook Numnondh, 1971. “Kan jeraja tang kan toot rawang tai kab angkit 1900– 1909” (Diplomatic negotiations between the Thai and the British, 1900–1909). In Wanwaithayakon. Bangkok: Social Science and Humanities Textbooks Project and the Social Science Association of Thailand. Thinaphan Nakhata, 1978. “National Consolidation and Nation-Building (1939– 1947).” In Thak Chalermtiarana, ed. 1978. Thai Politics, 1932–1957: Extracts and Documents. Bangkok: The Social Science Association of Thailand. Thomas, M. Ladd. 1989. “Thai Muslim Separatism in South Thailand.” In Forbes, ed. Politics of the Malay-Speaking South. Thongchai Winichakul. 1994. Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation Chiangmai: Silkworm Books. ———. 2001. “Prawatsatthai bab rajachatniyom” (Royal Thai national historiography). Silapawatthanatham 23(1): 56–65. Tueew, A. and David K. Wyatt.1970. Hikayat Patani: The Story of Patani, 2 vols. The Hague: Martinus Nujhoff. Whittingham-Jones, Barbara. 1947. “Patani—Malay State Outside Malaya.” The Strait Times, Oct 30. Wichitvathakan, Luang. 1969. Ngan konkwa ruang chonchat tai (Research on the Tai race). Bangkok: Army Printing Press. Wyatt, David K. 1984. Thailand: A Short History. Chiangmai: Silkworm Books. van Vliet, Jeremias. 1910. “Translation of Jeremias van Vliet’s Description of the Kingdom of Siam.” Translated by L. F. van Ravenswaay. Journal of the Siam Society 7(1): 1–108.

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Internal Conflicts and State-Building Challenges in Asia Project Information

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Project Rationale, Purpose, and Outline Project Director: Muthiah Alagappa Principal Researchers: Morten Pedersen (Burma/Myanmar) Saroja Dorairajoo (southern Thailand) Mahendra Lawoti (Nepal) Samir Kumar Das (northeast India) Neil DeVotta (Sri Lanka) Rationale Internal Conflicts and State-Building Challenges in Asia is part of a larger East-West Center project on state building and governance in Asia that investigates political legitimacy of governments, the relationship of the military to the state, the development of political and civil societies and their roles in democratic development, the role of military force in state formation, and the dynamics and management of internal conflicts arising from nation- and state-building processes. An earlier project investigating internal conflicts arising from nation- and state-building processes focused on conflicts arising from the political consciousness of minority communities in China (Tibet and Xinjiang), Indonesia (Aceh and Papua), and southern Philippines (the Moro Muslims). Funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, that highly successful project was completed in March 2005. The present project, which began in July 2005, investigates the causes and consequences of internal conflicts arising from state- and nation-building processes in Burma/Myanmar, southern Thailand, Nepal, northeast India, and Sri Lanka, and explores strategies and solutions for their peaceful management and eventual settlement. Internal conflicts have been a prominent feature of the Asian political landscape since 1945. Asia has witnessed numerous civil wars, armed insurgencies, coups d’état, regional rebellions, and revolutions. Many have been protracted; several have far-reaching domestic and international consequences. The civil war in Pakistan led to the break up of that country in 1971; separatist struggles challenge the political and territorial integrity of China, India, Indonesia, Burma, the Philippines, Thailand, and Sri Lanka; political uprisings in Thailand (1973 and 1991), the Philippines (1986), South Korea (1986), Taiwan (1991) Bangladesh (1991), and Indonesia (1998) resulted in dramatic political change in those countries.

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70 Although the political uprisings in Burma (1988) and China (1989) were suppressed, the political systems in those countries, as well as in Vietnam, continue to confront problems of legitimacy that could become acute; and radical Islam poses serious challenges to stability in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia. The Thai military ousted the democratically-elected government of Thaksin Shinawatra in 2006. In all, millions of people have been killed in the internal conflicts, and tens of millions have been displaced. Moreover, the involvement of external powers in a competitive manner (especially during the Cold War) in several of these conflicts had negative consequences for domestic and regional security. Internal conflicts in Asia can be traced to contestations over political legitimacy (the title to rule), national identity, state building, and distributive justice––that are often interconnected. With the bankruptcy of the socialist model and transitions to democracy in several countries, the number of internal conflicts over political legitimacy has declined in Asia. However, the legitimacy of certain governments continues to be contested from time to time, and the remaining communist and authoritarian systems are likely to confront challenges to their legitimacy in due course. Internal conflicts also arise from the process of constructing modern nation-states, and the unequal distribution of material and status benefits. Although many Asian states have made considerable progress in constructing national communities and viable states, several countries, including some major ones, still confront serious problems that have degenerated into violent conflict. By affecting the political and territorial integrity of the state as well as the physical, cultural, economic, and political security of individuals and groups, these conflicts have great potential to affect domestic and international stability. Purpose Internal Conflicts and State-Building Challenges in Asia examines internal conflicts arising from the political consciousness of minority communities in Burma/Myanmar, southern Thailand, northeast India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. Except for Nepal, these states are not in danger of collapse. However, they do face serious challenges at the regional and local levels which, if not addressed, can negatively affect the vitality of the national state in these countries. Specifically, the project has a threefold purpose: (1) to develop an in-depth understanding of the domestic, transnational, and international dynamics of internal conflicts in these countries in the context of nationand state-building strategies; (2) to examine how such conflicts have affected

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71 the vitality of the state; and (3) to explore strategies and solutions for the peaceful management and eventual settlement of these conflicts. Design A study group has been organized for each of the five conflicts investigated in the study. With a principal researcher for each, the study groups comprise practitioners and scholars from the respective Asian countries, including the region or province that is the focus of the conflict, as well as from Australia, Britain, Belgium, Sweden, and the United States. The participants list that follows shows the composition of the study groups. All five study groups met jointly for the first time in Washington, D.C., on October 30–November 3, 2005. Over a period of five days, participants engaged in intensive discussion of a wide range of issues pertaining to the conflicts investigated in the project. In addition to identifying key issues for research and publication, the meeting facilitated the development of cross-country perspectives and interaction among scholars who had not previously worked together. Based on discussion at the meeting, twenty-five policy papers were commissioned. The study groups met separately in the summer of 2006 for the second set of meetings, which were organized in collaboration with respected policy-oriented think tanks in each host country. The Burma and southern Thailand study group meetings were held in Bangkok July 10–11 and July 12–13, respectively. These meetings were cosponsored by The Institute of Security and International Studies, Chulalongkorn University. The Nepal study group was held in Kathmandu, Nepal, July 17–19, and was cosponsored by the Social Science Baha. The northeast India study group met in New Delhi, India, August 9–10. This meeting was cosponsored by the Centre for Policy Research. The Sri Lanka meeting was held in Colombo, Sri Lanka, August 14–16, and cosponsored by the Centre for Policy Alternatives. In each of these meetings, scholars and practitioners reviewed and critiqued papers produced for the meetings and made suggestions for revision. Publications This project will result in twenty to twenty-five policy papers providing a detailed examination of particular aspects of each conflict. Subject to satisfactory peer review, these 18,000- to 24,000-word essays will be published in the East-West Center Washington Policy Studies series, and

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72 will be circulated widely to key personnel and institutions in the policy and intellectual communities and the media in the respective Asian countries, the United States, and other relevant countries. Some studies will be published in the East-West Center Washington Working Papers series. Public Forums To engage the informed public and to disseminate the findings of the project to a wide audience, public forums have been organized in conjunction with study group meetings. Five public forums were organized in Washington, D.C., in conjunction with the first study group meeting. The first forum, cosponsored by The Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, discussed the conflict in southern Thailand. The second, cosponsored by The Sigur Center for Asian Studies of The George Washington University, discussed the conflict in Burma. The conflicts in Nepal were the focus of the third forum, which was cosponsored by the Asia Program at The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The fourth public meeting, cosponsored by the Foreign Policy Studies program at The Brookings Institution, discussed the conflicts in northeast India. The fifth forum, cosponsored by the South Asia Program of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, focused on the conflict in Sri Lanka. Funding Support The Carnegie Corporation of New York is once again providing generous funding support for the project.

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Project Participants Project Director Muthiah Alagappa, Ph.D. Director, East-West Center Washington (from February 2001 to January 2007) Distinguished Senior Fellow, East-West Center (from February 1, 2007)

Burma/Myanmar Study Group Morten Pedersen United Nations University Principal Researcher

Martin Smith Independent Analyst, London David I. Steinberg Georgetown University

Mary Callahan University of Washington Christina Fink Chiang Mai University

David Tegenfeldt Hope International Development Agency, Yangon

Saboi Jum Shalom Foundation, Yangon

Mya Than Chulalongkorn University

Kyi May Kaung Freelance Writer/Analyst, Washington, D.C.

Tin Maung Maung Than Institute for Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Tom Kramer Freelance Consultant, Amsterdam

Ardeth Thawnghmung University of Massachusetts, Lowell

Curtis Lambrecht Yale University

Meredith Weiss East-West Center Washington

David Scott Mathieson Australian National University

Khin Zaw Win Independent Researcher, Yangon

Win Min Chiang Mai University

Harn Yawnghwe Euro-Burma Office, Brussels

Zaw Oo American University

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Southern Thailand Study Group Saroja Dorairajoo National University of Singapore Principal Researcher

Chandra-nuj Mahakanjana National Institute of Development Administration, Bangkok

Thanet Aphornsuvan Thammasat University

Duncan McCargo University of Leeds

Marc Askew Victoria University, Melbourne

Celakhan (Don) Pathan The Nation Newspaper, Bangkok

Suchit Bunbongkarn Chulalongkorn University

Surin Pitsuwan MP, Thai House of Representatives

Kavi Chongkittavorn Nation Multimedia Group, Bangkok

Thitinan Pongsudhirak Chulalongkorn University

Neil John Funston Australian National University

Chaiwat Satha-Anand Thammasat University

Surat Horachaikul Chulalongkorn University

Vaipot Srinual Supreme Command Headquarters, Thailand

Srisompob Jitpiromsri Prince of Songkla University, Pattani Campus Joseph Chinyong Liow Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Wattana Sugunnasil Prince of Songkla University, Pattani Campus Panitan Wattanayagorn Chulalongkorn University Imtiyaz Yusuf Assumption University, Bangkok

Nepal Study Group Mahendra Lawoti Western Michigan University Principal Researcher

Lok Raj Baral Nepal Center for Contemporary Studies, Kathmandu

Itty Abraham East-West Center Washington

Surendra Raj Bhandari Law Associates Nepal, Kathmandu

Meena Acharya Tanka Prasad Acharya Memorial Foundation, Kathmandu

Chandra Dev Bhatta London School of Economics

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75 Sumitra Manandhar-Gurung Lumanthi and National Coalition Against Racial Discrimination, Kathmandu Harka Gurung (deceased) Transparency International, Nepal Dipak Gyawali Royal Nepal Academy of Science and Technology, Kathmandu Krishna Hacchethu Tribhuvan University Susan Hangen Ramapo College, New Jersey Lauren Leve University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Prakash Chandra Lohani Former Finance Minister, Nepal

Anup Pahari Foreign Service Institute, Arlington Rajendra Pradhan Social Science Baha, Kathmandu Shree Govind Shah Environmental Resources Planning and Monitoring/Academy of Social Justice & Human Rights, Kathmandu Saubhagya Shah Tribhuvan University Hari Sharma Social Science Baha, Kathmandu Sudhindra Sharma Interdisciplinary Analyst (IDA), Kathmandu Dhruba Kumar Shrestha Tribhuvan University

Pancha Narayan Maharjan Tribhuvan University, Kirtipur

Seira Tamang Centre for Social Research and Development, Kathmandu

Sukh Deo Muni Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi

Bishnu Raj Upreti National Centre of Competence in Research, Kathmandu

Northeast India Study Group Samir Kumar Das University of Calcutta Principal Researcher

Dipankar Banerjee Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, New Delhi

Sanjay Barbara North Eastern Social Research Centre, Assam

Kalyan Barooah Assam Tribune

Sanjib Baruah Center for Policy Research, New Delhi Bard College, New York

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M.P. Bezbaruah UN – WTO (World Tourism Organization), New Delhi Pinaki Bhattacharya The Mathrubhumi, Kerala

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76 Subir Bhaumik British Broadcasting Corporation, Kolkata

Sukh Deo Muni Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi

Bejoy Das Gupta Institute of International Finance, Inc., Washington, D.C.

Bhagat Oinam Jawaharlal Nehru University

Partha S. Ghosh Jawaharlal Nehru University Uddipana Goswami Center for Studies in Social Science, Kolkata Sanjoy Hazarika Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research, New Delhi Anil Kamboj Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi Bengt Karlsson Uppsala University, Sweden Dolly Kikon Stanford University Ved Marwah Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi Pratap Bhanu Mehta Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi

Pradip Phanjoubam Imphal Free Press, Manipur V.R. Raghavan Delhi Policy Group Rajesh Rajagopalan Jawaharlal Nehru University Swarna Rajagopalan Chaitanya––The Policy Consultancy, Chennai E.N. Rammohan National Security Council, New Delhi Bibhu Prasad Routray Institute for Conflict Management, New Delhi Ronojoy Sen The Times of India, New Delhi Prakash Singh Border Security Force (Ret’d.) George Verghese Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi

Sri Lanka Study Group Neil DeVotta Hartwick College Principal Researcher

Sunanda Deshapriya Centre for Policy Alternatives, Colombo

Ravinatha P. Aryasinha American University

Rohan Edrisinha Centre for Policy Alternatives, Colombo

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77 Nimalka Fernando International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination & Racism, Colombo Bhavani Fonseka Centre for Policy Alternatives, Colombo Mario Gomez Berghof Foundation for Conflict Studies, Colombo Air Vice Marshall Harry Goonetileke Colombo Anberiya Hanifa Muslim Women’s Research and Action Forum, Colombo Dayan Jayatilleka University of Colombo N. Kandasamy Center for Human Rights and Development in Colombo S.I. Keethaponcalan University of Colombo

Darini Rajasingham Centre for Poverty Analysis, Colombo John Richardson, Jr. American University Norbert Ropers Berghof Foundation for Conflict Studies, Colombo Kanchana N. Ruwanpura Hobart and William Smith Colleges, New York P. Sahadevan Jawaharlal Nehru University Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu Centre for Policy Alternatives, Colombo Muttukrishna Sarvananthan Point Pedro Institute of Development, Sri Lanka Peter Schalk Uppsala University, Sweden Asanga Tilakaratne University of Kelaniya

N. Manoharan Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, New Delhi

Jayadeva Uyangoda University of Colombo

Dennis McGilvray University of Colorado at Boulder

Asanga Welikala Centre for Policy Alternatives, Colombo

Jehan Perera National Peace Council of Sri Lanka, Colombo Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam MP, Sri Lanka

Jayampathy Wickramaratne Ministry of Constitutional Affairs, Sri Lanka Javid Yusuf Attorney-at-Law, Colombo

Mirak Raheem Centre for Policy Alternatives, Colombo

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Background of the Conflict in Southern Thailand The three “southern border provinces” of Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat have an ambiguous status within the Thai nation and state. Officially part of Siam since 1909, the region roughly corresponds to the former Malay sultanate of Patani. The area remains around 80 percent Malay-speaking and Muslim, and has never been properly incorporated culturally or psychologically into Buddhist-dominated Thailand. Bangkok has largely pursued a policy of assimilation and standardization, making few concessions to the distinctive history and character of the region. Like the rest of Thailand, the southern border provinces are administered mainly by officials dispatched from the distant capital. The region has a long tradition of resistance to the rule of Bangkok, and political violence has emerged at various junctures in modern history. Some of this violence was perpetrated by the Thai state. Landmark events included the 1948 Dusun-yor incident (in which dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Malay-Muslim villagers were killed in Narathiwat) and the 1954 arrest and “disappearance” of prominent Islamic teacher Haji Sulong at the hands of the Thai police. Radical “separatist” elements began waging a guerrilla war against the Thai state in the 1960s, and fighting reached its most virulent stage during the late 1970s and early 1980s. A number of groups were behind the fighting, including the Patani United Liberation Organization (PULO) and Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN). By 1980 as many as 1,000 insurgents were carrying out regular attacks in the south, and had even staged a number of bombings in Bangkok. But the Prem Tinsulanond government (1980–1988) successfully reined in the violence, granting amnesties to former militants and setting up new security and governance arrangements in the area, coordinated by the Southern Border Provinces Administrative Center (SBPAC). Prem’s policy was to co-opt the Malay-Muslim elite with a combination of political privileges and development funds, much of these brokered by the army. Though far from perfect, these policies were broadly effective for about two decades. During the first term of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra (2001– 2005), however, the security situation in the south deteriorated sharply. An overconfident Thaksin dissolved the Prem-era special administrative arrangements and placed the highly unpopular police force in charge of security in the Deep South. These politically motivated policy blunders

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80 coincided with a sharp rise in militancy and the reemergence of violent resistance to the Thai state. On January 4, 2004, more than 50 militants staged a daring raid on an army camp, seizing a large cache of weapons and scoring an enormous propaganda victory. In the three years that followed, almost 2,000 people were killed in political violence in the region. The two worst days of violence were April 28, 2004, when more than 100 men died in simultaneous attacks on a series of security posts, culminating in a bloody siege at the historic Krue Se mosque; and October 25, 2004, when 78 unarmed protestors died in Thai military custody, apparently mainly from suffocation, following mass arrests at Tak Bai, Narathiwat. These two incidents greatly undermined the legitimacy of the Thai state and boosted the militant movement. Nevertheless, the origins and character of the political violence in the south remained a highly contentious issue. At least some of the killings in the region were popularly attributed to extrajudicial murders carried out by, or on behalf of, the Thai security forces, while others were undoubtedly revenge killings or simply ordinary criminal acts. The militant movement has declined to make public statements of responsibility or to issue any demands, thus contributing to a growing climate of fear. Although there seems every reason to believe that the majority of incidents are being perpetrated by people with militant sympathies, the nature of the militant movement remains somewhat unclear. Some analysts insist that the movement is essentially a reconfigured version of earlier groups such as BRN-Coordinate, while others see the movement as a shadowy and largely ad hoc network. Whereas earlier political violence in the region used mainly “separatist” rhetoric, drawing on notions of Malay identity and history, anonymous leaflets circulated since January 2004 have invoked explicitly “jihadist” sentiments. Most analysts of the conflict remain skeptical about claims that the southern Thai violence is linked with transnational networks such as Jemaah Islamiya (JI); the causes of the conflict seem overwhelmingly homegrown. Thaksin’s mishandling of the south was one factor contributing to the September 19, 2006 military coup d’état. Ironically, though Thaksin had favored security-based solutions to the violence, many senior army commanders advocated political solutions such as those advanced by the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC)—a high-level body established by Thaksin to propose new policies to address the southern violence, but

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81 whose conclusions the prime minister had spurned. The new militarybacked Surayud Chulanont government adopted a more conciliatory approach to the conflict from October 2006, yet the violence continued unabated, and much vaunted “dialogue” with the militants failed to produce results.

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Map of Southern Thailand

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List of Reviewers 2006–07 The East-West Center Washington would like to acknowledge the following, who have offered reviews of manuscripts for Policy Studies. Itty Abraham East-West Center Washington

Greg Fealy Australian National University

Jaya Raj Acharya United States Institute of Peace

David Finkelstein The CNA Corporation

Vinod K. Aggarwal University of California, Berkeley

Michael Foley The Catholic University of America

Muthiah Alagappa East-West Center Washington

Sumit Ganguly Indiana University, Bloomington

Edward Aspinall Australian National University

Brigham Golden Columbia University

Marc Askew Victoria University, Melbourne

Michael J. Green Center for Strategic and International Studies Georgetown University

Sanjay Barbora Panos South Asia, Guwahati

Stephan Haggard University of California, San Diego

Upendra Baxi University of Warwick Apurba K. Baruah North Eastern Hill University, Shillong Sanjib Baruah Bard College

Natasha Hamilton National University of Singapore Farzana Haniffa University of Colombo Rana Hasan Asian Development Bank

Thomas Berger Boston University Ikrar Nusa Bhakti Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), Jakarta C. Raja Mohan Nanyang Technological University

M. Sajjad Hassan London School of Economics Eric Heginbotham RAND Corporation Donald Horowitz Duke University

Mary P. Callahan University of Washington

Chinnaiah Jangam Wagner College

Richard Chauvel Victoria University, Melbourne T.J. Cheng The College of William and Mary

S. Kalyanaraman Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi

Chu Yun-han Academia Sinica

Bengt Karlsson Uppsala University

Ralph A. Cossa Pacific Forum CSIS, Honolulu

Damien Kingsbury Deakin University

Neil DeVotta Hartwick College

Mahendra Lawoti Western Michigan University

Dieter Ernst East-West Center

R. William Liddle The Ohio State University

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86 Satu P. Limaye Institute for Defense Analyses

James Scott Yale University

Joseph Chinyong Liow Nanyang Technological University

Amita Shastri San Francisco State University

Owen M. Lynch New York University

Emile C.J. Sheng Soochow University

Gurpreet Mahajan Jawaharlal Nehru University

John Sidel London School of Economics

Onkar S. Marwah Independent Consultant, Geneva

Martin Smith Independent Analyst, London

Bruce Matthews Acadia University

Selma Sonntag Humboldt State University

Duncan McCargo University of Leeds

Ashley South Independent Consultant

Donald McFetridge Former U.S. Defense Attaché, Jakarta

Robert H. Taylor University of London

Udayon Misra Dibrugarh University

Tin Maung Maung Than Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Pratyoush Onta Martin Chautari

Willem van Schendel Amsterdam School for Social science Research

Andrew Oros Washington College

Jayadeva Uyangoda University of Colombo

Morten Pedersen United Nations University, Tokyo

Meredith Weiss East-West Center Washington

Steven Rood The Asia Foundation, Philippines

Thongchai Winichakul University of Wisconsin, Madison

Danilyn Rutherford University of Chicago

Wu Xinbo Fudan University

Kanchana N. Ruwanpura University of Southampton

Harn Yawnghe Euro-Burma Office, Brussels

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Policy Studies Previous Publications Policy Studies 34

Policy Studies 26

Creating a “New Nepal”: The Ethnic Dimension

Taiwan’s Rising Rationalism: Generations, Politics, and “Taiwanese Nationalism”

Susan Hangen, Ramapo College of New Jersey

Shelley Rigger, Davidson College

Policy Studies 33

Policy Studies 25

Postfrontier Blues: Toward a New Policy Framework for Northeast India Sanjib Baruah, Bard College

Initiating a Peace Process in Papua: Actors, Issues, Process, and the Role of the International Community

Policy Studies 32

Timo Kivimäki, Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Copenhagen

Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka: Changing Dynamics

Policy Studies 24

Jayadeva Uyangoda, University of Colombo

Policy Studies 31

Muslim Resistance in Southern Thailand and Southern Philippines: Religion, Ideology, and Politics

Political Authority in Burma’s Ethnic Minority States: Devolution, Occupation, and Coexistence

Joseph Chinyong Liow, Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, Singapore

Mary P. Callahan, University of Washington

Policy Studies 23

Policy Studies 30

The Politics of Military Reform in Post-Suharto Indonesia: Elite Conflict, Nationalism, and Institutional Resistance

Legalizing Religion: The Indian Supreme Court and Secularism

Marcus Mietzner, Political Analyst

Ronojoy Sen, The Times of India, New Delhi

Policy Studies 22

Policy Studies 29 Conspiracy, Politics, and a Disorderly Border: The Struggle to Comprehend Insurgency in Thailand’s Deep South

India’s Globalization: Evaluating the Economic Consequences Baldev Raj Nayar, McGill University

Marc Askew, Victoria University, Melbourne

Policy Studies 21

2006

China’s Rise: Implications for U.S. Leadership in Asia Robert G. Sutter, Georgetown University

Policy Studies 28 Counterterrorism Legislation in Sri Lanka: Evaluating Efficacy

2005

N. Manoharan, Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, New Delhi

Policy Studies 20

Policy Studies 27

Edward Aspinall, Australian National University

The Helsinki Agreement: A More Promising Basis for Peace in Aceh?

Japanese Public Opinion and the War on Terrorism: Implications for Japan’s Security Strategy Paul Midford, Norwegian University for Science and Technology, Trondheim

(continued next page)

These issues of Policy Studies are presently available in print and PDF. Hardcopies are available through Amazon.com. In Asia, hardcopies are available through the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore at 30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace, Pasir Panjang Road, Singapore 119614. Website: http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg/ Online at: www.eastwestcenterwashington.org/publications

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Policy Studies Previous Publications continued Policy Studies 19

Policy Studies 11

Nine Lives?: The Politics of Constitutional Reform in Japan

Autonomy in Xinjiang: Han Nationalist Imperatives and Uyghur Discontent

J. Patrick Boyd, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Richard J. Samuels, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Gardner Bovingdon, Indiana University, Bloomington

Policy Studies 10 Secessionist Challenges in Aceh and Papua: Is Special Autonomy the Solution?

Policy Studies 18 Islamic Radicalism and Anti-Americanism in Indonesia: The Role of the Internet

Rodd McGibbon, USAID, Jakarta

Merlyna Lim, Bandung Institute of Technology, Indonesia

Policy Studies 9

Policy Studies 17

Konrad Huber, Council on Foreign Relations

Forging Sustainable Peace in Mindanao: The Role of Civil Society

Policy Studies 8

The HDC in Aceh: Promises and Pitfalls of NGO Mediation and Implementation

Steven Rood, The Asia Foundation, Philippines

The Moro Conflict: Landlessness and Misdirected State Policies

Policy Studies 16 Meeting the China Challenge: The U.S. in Southeast Asian Regional Security Strategies

Eric Gutierrez, WaterAid, U.K. Saturnino Borras, Jr., Institute of Social Studies, The Hague

Evelyn Goh, Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, Singapore

Policy Studies 7 The Tibet-China Conflict: History and Polemics

Policy Studies 15

Elliot Sperling, Indiana University, Bloomington

The Xinjiang Conflict: Uyghur Identity, Language Policy, and Political Discourse

Policy Studies 6

Arienne M. Dwyer, The University of Kansas

Violent Separatism in Xinjiang: A Critical Assessment

Policy Studies 14

James Millward, Georgetown University

Constructing Papuan Nationalism: History, Ethnicity, and Adaptation

Policy Studies 5

Richard Chauvel, Victoria University, Melbourne

The Papua Conflict: Jakarta’s Perceptions and Policies

2004

Richard Chauvel, Victoria University, Melbourne Ikrar Nusa Bhakti, Indonesian Institute of Sciences, Jakarta

Policy Studies 13 Plural Society in Peril: Migration, Economic Change, and the Papua Conflict Rodd McGibbon, USAID, Jakarta

Policy Studies 4 Beijing’s Tibet Policy: Securing Sovereignty and Legitimacy

Policy Studies 12 Sino-Tibetan Dialogue in the Post-Mao Era: Lessons and Prospects

Allen Carlson, Cornell University

Tashi Rabgey, Harvard University Tseten Wangchuk Sharlho, Independent Journalist

(continued next page)

These issues of Policy Studies are presently available in print and PDF. Hardcopies are available through Amazon.com. In Asia, hardcopies are available through the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore at 30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace, Pasir Panjang Road, Singapore 119614. Website: http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg/ Online at: www.eastwestcenterwashington.org/publications

07 EWC PS35 Review

By: ROS

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Fonts: AGara, Albertus

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Policy Studies Previous Publications continued Policy Studies 3 Security Operations in Aceh: Goals, Consequences, and Lessons Rizal Sukma, Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Jakarta

Policy Studies 2 The Free Aceh Movement (GAM): Anatomy of a Separatist Organization Kirsten E. Schulze, London School of Economics

2003 Policy Studies 1 The Aceh Peace Process: Why it Failed Edward Aspinall, University of Sydney Harold Crouch, Australian National University

These issues of Policy Studies are presently available in print and PDF. Hardcopies are available through Amazon.com. In Asia, hardcopies are available through the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore at 30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace, Pasir Panjang Road, Singapore 119614. Website: http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg/ Online at: www.eastwestcenterwashington.org/publications

07 EWC PS35 Review

By: ROS

89

Size: 155 x 232mm

J/No: 07-10939

6/26/07, 9:41 AM

Fonts: AGara, Albertus

90

07 EWC PS35 Review

By: ROS

90

Size: 155 x 232mm

J/No: 07-10939

6/26/07, 9:41 AM

Fonts: AGara, Albertus