A Land Apart - Documentary Film Trailer

For the past three years myself, and my film partner, have been working on a documentary film about the crisis in Southern Thailand. This is the trailer and the film, we hope, will be out within the year. Please keep in mind that it is a rough draft. The film's name 'A Land Apart' is also a working title so any recommendations for a film name would be appreciated.

The file is rather large so, depending upon your bandwidth, it could take some time to load.

Lost Lands

Young Muslim men attending the opening of a new mosque in Pattani's Yaring district. December 2006.

In Janruary 2007, the Junta's leader, General Sonthi Boonyarataklin, spoke to the local media and claimed that the military and government have access and control in all Thai territory.

He was responding to media suggestions that large portions of rural areas in the Deep Southern insurgent provinces of Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat have become no-go areas for anyone associated with the Thai government.

There is limited truth to the General’s claim but, in reality, a crude form of autonomy has emerged in the Southern provinces.

What General Sonthi neglected to acknowledge is the fact that unless the military actually occupies a town or village with 100 or more combat troops they are not actually in control.

Soldiers and police officers have been the one consistent target of insurgent attacks and their freedom of movement has subsequently been curtailed.

The result has been a consistent retreat of government forces into heavily fortified bases and sandbagged police stations.

How such a retreat would look on a map of the Southern provinces might be similar to the appearance of islands in an ocean.

The islands would represent clusters of government forces and the vast ocean would represent territories that government forces can not travel unless moving en mass.

The large islands of government forces are congregated in the provincial capital cities of Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat and the lesser islands would be district capitals and the occasional rural military base.

It is in the vast ocean of rural countryside that the Thai state is no longer in control. As the state’s forces have retreated into their urban strongholds a basic form of autonomy has emerged in the countryside.

Sonthi is right to claim that the military can go where they want but, the problem is, they rarely do.

Some rural villages are now starting to experience years of self-rule. It is in such quasi-autonomous villages that insurgent fighters have adopted the position of authority abandoned by the state.

It is also in such quasi-autonomous villages that virulent interpretations of Islam, imported from such places as Afghanistan, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia, are free to fester.

The pondocks (Islamic schools) that operate in the Deep Southern provinces are beyond the reach of government and religious officials so there is simply no accountability or control for schools that might be preaching hatred instead of Islam.

With the combination of separatist militants operating as village level authorities and the infiltration of radical Islam the hope that a foreseeable resolution to Southern violence will emerge is highly unlikely.

In fact, there are signs that the separatists are growing more confident.

Rumors have been circulating that one of the next acts of defiance won’t be a violent attack but will be the raising of the Islamic Republic of Pattani flag above the rural villages of the South.

To remove those flags, General Sonthi will have to dispatch combat troops to take the flags down.

But it won’t just be a couple of troops, it will have to be a major military offensive.

The Thin Line of Military Rule

It didn't take long for protests to form and test the limits of marshal law. The golden object at center on the top of Democracy Monument is a representation of Thailand's constitution. Protesters are particularly angry that the 1997 constitution was thrown out. Bangkok - 2006.

In the days and weeks following September 19, 2006, when the military deposed controversial Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, there was a palpable sense of celebration in Bangkok.

Prior to the coup the country had been locked in a dangerous stalemate; many urban middle-class citizens despised the Prime Minister, yet he commanded enough support in the rural areas to remain in office.

Most analysts worried that the political divide, aggravated by Thaksin’s failure to either step-down or negotiate with the mounting opposition, would not just keep the country trapped in political limbo but would lead to serious and bloody clashes in the streets.

When General Sonthi Boonyaratglin’s tanks forced Thaksin from power many people celebrated because they felt that the stalemate had been broken without bloodshed, and were hopeful that the political crisis was over.

Thailand was in its coup d’etat honeymoon period.

Now that two months have passed, the optimistic honeymoon period is now giving way to a much more cynical mood.

The removal of the stalemate by military muscle has revealed itself to be a temporary solution. The “unprecedented divisions in society” that the Junta cited as their rationale for moving against the government may not be so easily healed.

Worse yet, the Junta’s foray into the political arena has created a host of new problems. In order to seize power the military trespassed upon democratic terrain, declared martial law, banned political gatherings, severely censored the media, and dissolved the popular 1997 constitution.

Removing Thaksin might have been popular at first, but once people realised that the “bloodless” coup d’etat had also delivered a serious blow to civil society and democracy, the political price of the coup increased dramatically.

The coup has also raised uncomfortable memories of military rule.

In the years 1971, 1973, and 1991 Thailand experienced violent struggles between supporters of civilian democratic rule and the military.

Those violent struggles have shaped Thailand’s political arena significantly. Clearly attempting to distance themselves from that history, one of the first statements made by the Junta (re-branded the Council for National Security), was that they would install an interim civilian government and hold elections within a year.

The appointment of Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont and his quasi-civilian government was seen as a good start, but one might argue that it is merely a token nod towards democracy.

The Junta has still reserved the right to dismiss the new government if they choose, so clearly power remains firmly in the military’s hands.

Anti-coup sentiment is already starting to appear on the streets of Bangkok.

The first act of direct defiance against martial law saw about 300 protesters gather around Democracy Monument to demand elections and the reinstatement of the 1997 constitution.

It was a cautious baby step as far as public dissent goes, but an important one nonetheless.

The huge anti-Thaksin protests that had rumbled around the capital before the coup might begin to trade in their old placards for anti-coup placards and return to the streets.

If this happens, the Junta will be faced with a damned if they do, damned if they don’t scenario. If they end martial law and allow protestors to gather, the numbers could swell into a dangerous challenge to the Junta’s authority.

If they quash the budding movement they will trigger historical comparisons to the brutal military regimes of the past.

There is one situation that the Junta could capitalize upon in order to retain public support. This revolves around their dramatic policy u-turn vis-a-vis the insurgency-racked Southern provinces.

Unlike Thaksin’s violent and wholly incompetent track record in the South, the Junta has pulled back the stick and extended an olive branch.

This should not come as a real surprise since General Sonthi was, before seizing power, the military commander in charge of pacifying the uprising.

He had also publicly quarrelled with Thaksin’s strategy but was bound by hierarchy to submit to the Prime Minister’s authority.

Now that Sonthi is in charge he might just be in a position to alter the course of the rebellion. This would be a monumental undertaking, however, since Thaksin’s antagonistic failures did not simply produce sympathy for the separatists, but has opened the door for real Islamic extremists, who may be intent on declaring jihad.

Despite the changing mood, the Junta might still survive their brief tenure with some popularity intact, but they are on very perilous ground.

If they can resuscitate the basic rights of the citizens, restore democracy, avoid negative historical comparisons with past military regimes, weather the challenges from civil society, and make positive changes in the increasingly bleak Southern rebellion, then they could earn a novel place in Thai political history.

But their chances for success are extremely low and there seem to be a number of pivotal forks in the road.

If, for example, the “unprecedented divisions in society” have not been healed after a year of military rule, would the Junta postpone elections? If such a delay did take place, or if any other hurdle scuttles the Junta’s exit plan, then the Junta’s reputation and governing term might quickly transform into a dictatorship.

As the Thai people are well-aware, such a dictatorship might have much darker prospects than Thaksin’s controversial tenure.

The ‘Thai body’ and its Periphery

Burmese citizens, huddled together on a rubber inner tube, illegally crossing the Moei River that separates Thailand from Burma. Mai Sot, Thailand/Myawadi, Burma - 2005.

At 8 am and 6 pm the national anthem can be heard across Thailand.

In schools children sing it, television and radio stations dutifully broadcast it, loud speakers mounted upon telephone poles in cities and villages cackle with it, and everyone within the state – even at its very edges and whether citizen or not – are expected to stop what they are doing, stand-up, and wait respectfully until the song ends.

Thailand is the unity of Thai blood and body.
The whole country belongs to the Thai people, maintaining thus far for the Thai.
All Thais intend to unite together.
Thais love peace but do not fear to fight.
They will never let anyone threaten their independence.
They will sacrifice every drop of their blood to contribute to the nation.
They will sacrifice every drop of their blood to contribute to the nation.
CHAI YO. [Cheers].

The national anthem, like the border containing the state, is a work of political fiction.

If Thailand was indeed ‘the unity of Thai blood’ with the territorial body of the state then the space created – the political state of Thailand – would be an exclusive space for ethnic Thais.

While circumnavigate the Thai border, the territorial edge of the ‘Thai body’, it is not the lack of actual ethnic Thais that is most striking but the range of ethnic diversity that is most striking.

The periphery of the state is characterized by ethnic diversity that is manifest in contested territory, contested identities, and contested politics.

The circumference of the ‘Thai body’ has very little in common with the narrow nationalist identity espoused by the state.

Yet it is not that the Thai state is particularly at fault.

The ethnic nationalism that causes alienation in peripheral communities is a by-product of the global system of demarcated nation-states.

To understand how embedded the paradigm of the demarcated nation-state is one simply has to think of one global institution – the United Nations. The Thai state is simply exercising spatial governance, with nationalism as a tool of state-craft, in a reflection of the international system of 'nations'.

The real fault is, of course, the irrational concept of a border coupled with the fiction of a nation.

A border demands that a singular polity exercises absolute sovereignty over a specifically finite space.

At the sharp edge of sovereign space another polity becomes the absolute sovereign.

The concept may not seem irrational if the border was only to contain finite geographic space but the border contains heterogeneous humanity that becomes subject to the homogeneous identity projected by a ‘nation-state’.

Majority identity (in this case ‘Thai’) vs. minorities issues are implicit in the creation of a nation-state.

To have a demonstration of Thai nationalism stressing identity singularity we can again return to the border and the national anthem.

Physically crossing over the sharp division from Burma, Cambodia, Malaysia, or Lao is to instantly be disciplined into Thai political space.

The flow of ethnic/religious/cultural/political diversity that flows over the border stops at 8am and 6pm to observe the political ritual of the national anthem.

For the average visitor the anthem might be an inconsequential event.

But for the residents of the periphery, those that are not Thai but live within the political ‘Thai body’ they are told twice daily that the land they occupy ‘belongs to the Thai people’ and not them.

Coup d'etat or Revolution?

Combat troops deployed to guard against a possible counter-coup at Democracy Monument. Bangkok - September 20, 2006.

On September 19th the Thai military, lead by General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, removed Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra from power.

The event was quickly labelled a coup d’etat and the international community – particularly Western states – condemned it and lamented the break down of democratic principles.

The view from the streets of Bangkok has been rather different.

The word revolution (ปฏิวัต) has been used to describe the recent events and scenes of citizens giving flowers to soldiers seem to support the idea of a popular movement against an unpopular government.

The difficulty is that ‘coup d’etat’ and ‘revolution’ are not interchangeable terms and each describes very different events.

The expression coup d’etat carries with it ideas of ruthless tyrants vandalizing democratic ideals in bloody street clashes.

Revolution, on the other had, conjures images of a people’s power movement breaking free from the iron grip of a brutal and unjust dictatorship.

If the terms coup d’etat and revolution have both been used to describe the toppling of Thaksin’s government then Thailand’s political crisis might be best understood as being a combination of both.

Was it a Coup?

The short answer is clearly ‘yes’ but the long answer is ‘yes, but…’.

Tanks did roll, combat troops were deployed, and Thaksin was overthrown by General Sonthi – that is a fact.

Yet the long answer would have to question Thaksin’s corrosive effect on democracy and the consequences of allowing him to remain in power.

Thaksin’s rise to power in 2001 as a populist billionaire was indeed a happier time in Thai democracy.

Sure, the Thai political arena is known to creatively bend the rules which results in vast sums of money exchanging hands, positions of power being doled out to cronies or family members, and blood is often spilled but there certainly are recognizable democratic traits.

At the poll booths citizens are free to choose who they like and the election process is perceived internationally as free and fair.

As Thaksin’s political problems began to mount the rules of democracy declined.

Libel suits launched by Thaksin against the media and private individuals became commonplace.

Yes, the media was free to say what they wanted but most could simply not afford it. Thaksin’s gang of lawyers had forced the media to ‘self censor’ to avoid costly and time consuming legal battles.

Thaksin had also dismantled the foundations of Thailand’s democratic institutions. The ranks of the judiciary, the Senate, and the now disgraced Election Commission were all swollen with Thaksin’s friends and family.

The most recent snap election that Thaksin called to defuse the myriad of calls for him to step down resulted in a boycotted single-party election, massive claims of fraud, a rare intervention by the king, the election’s subsequent annulment, and finally the jailing of pro-Thaksin Election Commission officials for malfeasance.

Thaksin’s stubborn grip on power had simply destroyed the democratic process.

Was it a Revolution then?

Maybe not a textbook revolution but there has been widespread public support.

The tanks forming road blocks around the seat of political power, Government House, have been covered in flowers in a spontaneous gesture by the residents of Bangkok.

The military has reciprocated with its own symbolic gesture of alliance to the people. Although the troops are combat ready, most have removed their ammunition clips from their rifles.

Yes, they are armed, but not armed against the people.

The justification for seizing power, as claimed by the military’s new Committee for Democratic Reform, was based upon welfare of the people.

Speculation that the highly polarized political crisis would lead to violent clashes was not just speculation but the public was resigned to the inevitability of violence.

Violent incidents between pro and anti-Thaksin camps were growing in frequency and in brutality in the weeks before military take over.

A large anti-Thaksin protest by the People’s Alliance for Democracy that was scheduled to take place if the military intervention had not happened had the very real possibility of massive bloodshed.

Rumours were circulating that a well armed division of Forestry Police were being transported to Bangkok put down the protest.

Because widespread violence was expected the military claims they were duty bound to intervene.

The highly influential retired General, Prem Tinsulanonda, just over a month before the military action, gave a speech to cadets telling them that the loyalty of the military is to the king first, the citizens next, and the government trailing behind in a distant third.

It seems as though Prem’s words were not just hollow rhetoric but a strategic declaration of military alignment with the growing number of dissatisfied citizens.

A final, and extremely important, indication that the military action was on behalf of the people was the action’s royal approval. It is well known in Thailand that the King’s approval can legitimize or topple a government.

During the last major conflict that brought soldiers onto the streets, in 1991, the King intervened with some ‘words of advice’ and diffused a violent power struggle.

It was vitally important for the military leaders to have royal approval but, more revealing, is that royal approval would not likely have been granted if the overthrow of the government wasn’t in the people’s best interest.

During the first week of military rule there has been a palpable sense of revolution on the Bangkok streets.

The challenge is now for the military to maintain that feeling of revolution. Yet to maintain the revolutionary goodwill it will require the military to step down and return the political realm to civilian control.

If the feeling of revolution is lost then a true textbook coup d’etat has taken place and an era of military rule, an era of dictatorship, has began.

Breaking the Horizontal Link

If the link between religious/ethnic groups in the Southern communities is broken then the conflict may become intractable. Muslim and Buddhist girls attending a festival. Pattani - 2006

The situation in Thailand’s far South, in its modern phase, is beginning to resemble many other intractable conflicts over territory that exist all around Southeast Asia and the World.

The argument that I have outlined, in previous posts, is that the fuel that feeds the conflict has little, if anything, to do with a conflict between opposing faiths or cultures.

The problem is fuelled by the application of modern territorial governance, the use of religion to legitimise government, the connection between militarization and the insecurity industry, and exacerbated by the incompetence of Prime Minister Thaksin.

To conceptualise the dynamics of the conflict, as explained by Dr. Chaiwat Satha-Anand of Thammasat University, it is necessary to distinguish both a horizontal and a vertical dimension.

On the horizontal plane is the community.

The South has long been a multicultural region and religious/ethnic conflict is rare, if not absent.

To understand a contested territory as implicitly peaceful may seem contradictory to reality yet that is precisely the situation.

It is not just the residents that claim a strong sense of peace in their community but it should also be considered the logical reality.

For the residents of the South to be locked into religious or ethnic conflict would contradict the reality of a community that has had countless generations living and evolving in a distinctively multicultural space.

The key feature of Southern Thailand is that it has its own unique culture that can be defined as specifically multicultural.

The vertical plane is where the Southern communities interact with the state and that is the source of mistrust, anger, and ultimately of violence.

The Thai state, emulating a homogenous nation-state, promotes a highly unrealistic ethno-religious nationalism that demands that its citizens be both ethnic Thai and Buddhist.

Instances of practiced nationalism, such as the flag raising ceremony, are also mirrored by the hiring of Thai-Buddhists in civil service and military, access to political power, business loans, etc.

The cumulative result is a sense of alienation by those who do not fit the Thai-Buddhist mould.

Such alienation is manifest in the militant’s preference for attacking symbols of the state - police, army, and government buildings.

The future of the conflict has the potential for a much greater escalation of violence.

The community link, the horizontal connection of peace and tolerance existing between religious/ethnic groups in the South, is showing signs of weakening.

The government’s continually misguided and draconian tactics have opened the door for extremists to enter into the conflict.

The growing number of bombings, shootings, and brutal beheadings that have specifically targeted ethnic/religious groups may have the ability to break the horizontal link that binds the Southern communities together.

If the horizontal link is broken the conflict will enter a new stage in which violence will not be confined between the state and militants but could be unleashed across religious/ethnic differences.

The Apocryphal 'Nation-State'

By disciplining non-state 'others' the Thai state exercises its existence. Burmese migrants being deported back to Myawadi, Burma - 2005.

“States attempt, physically and discursively, to marginalize or destroy various aspects of centrifugal otherness: ethnic solidarities, reasserted nationalisms, indigenous movements, and draft resistances, all dissonant elements proclaiming the tenuous hold of states over territories and identities”

Thailand is not a nation-state yet it is striving to become one.

In a complex process of ethnic competition and state formation a myth has been nurtured that Thailand is built around a nation of ‘Thais’.

By adopting the Westphalian model of a nation-state, Thailand has conformed to the logic of the international system at the expense of ethnic diversity within its borders.

To become a nation-state the dominant state sanctioned identity, the Thais, have had to internally colonize their territory by subjugating minority identities to create and perpetuate not only the political state but the very definition of Thai identity.

The process of Thailand’s self-colonization has striking similarities to the theoretical foundations of Europe’s colonial adventures.

As Siamese (Thai) identity was transforming under pressure from the arrival of Europeans it was placed in comparison to the state’s own subaltern identities.

Siamese comparisons followed the intellectual fault identified by Palestinian academic Edward Said in his seminal work; Orientalism.

The failings of Thai orientalism stem from classifying and applying stereotyped roles for minorities as ‘primitive’ and ‘traditional’ – mirroring the same sense of superiority that Europeans used to rationalize their colonial presence.

Like the colonial powers were doing across SEA, the Siamese began an orientalist study of the ethnic minorities that the state's modern borders contained.

The Siamese classified them, detailed their customs, their dress, their beliefs, and opened museums to display the ‘others’ within their borders.

By interpreting the state’s minorities as ‘primitive’ and ‘traditional’ the state cast itself in a rationally paternalistic roll whose dominance over minorities was implicit.

The unique utility of orientalism is the way that the classification of ‘others’ does more to identify the ‘self’ (in this case the Siamese) than that of the ‘other’ (the minorities).

If the ethnic minorities were ‘primitive’ and ‘traditional’ then the Siamese would be ‘advanced’ and ‘modern’.

As a tool of nationalist state-craft it is essential to have an ‘other’ as there is simply no nation if it can not be compared to an apposing minority or alternate nation.

The minorities within Thailand’s borders serve a necessary function of being the ‘other’ to Thailand’s ‘self’.

By studying and classifying the state’s minorities as oppositional ‘others’ the Thai state has been able to define who the ‘Thai’ are and what the ‘Thai state’ represents.

Non-state identities being ‘others’ within the Thai state act as a threat to the state’s identity while paradoxically giving the state legitimacy by allowing the state to express its own existence.

The ‘otherness’ of minorities is closely associated to alternate nations and, particularly if viewed through the global Westphalian system of nation-states, their presence within the state represents a violation of state order that must be either assimilated into the defined nation-state identity or be controlled by the state’s legitimate right to use force.

By disciplining the ‘others’ within their territory, the nation-state exercises its existence and its identity is brought to life.

As the modern Thai state has adopted the Westphalian model it has conformed to the logic of the international system at the expense of the country’s minorities.

Thailand has colonized itself into the international system and has/is attempted/ing to internally colonize the non-state identities within its borders.

Essentially, the very definition of Thai identity has been articulated because it is in contrast to the minorities and the state's presence is brought to life by exercising authority over the country’s minorities.

A Trip to Tong Hong

From the village of Tong Hong the setting sun falls into Shan State. Tong Hong, Thailand - 2000.

The small village of Tong Hong is located on Thailand’s far northwestern frontier with Burma.

A scattering of thatched huts and a few cement buildings are shaded within a bamboo forest resting on the top of a small mountain.

In the evening, the day’s fading light filters through the haze of slash-and-burn agriculture and the sky glows in brilliant shades of golden red.

Looking west, towards the setting sun, a series of mountain ridges shimmer in the golden light and continue rolling west beyond the horizon.

Although it is a tranquil view, the sun is setting over more than a half century of armed rebellion, an ever changing mixture of ethnic/ideological armies, vast poppy fields, heroin and methamphetamine refineries, and a huge population of internally displaced people that have been forced from their homes and are surging against the Thai border.

The sun is setting upon Shan State, Burma and the village of Tong Hong has a front row view of the border's humanitarian crisis.

How small Thai towns and villages like Tong Hong experience border issues and conflict in Shan State might be best understood as either internal or external.

Issues inside the Thai border commonly revolve around the various ethnic minorities or ‘hill tribes’.

Although the majority of them were born and have lived their lives in Thailand they are not officially citizens of the state.

Under a staggered citizenship scheme most peripheral minorities are not classified as actual citizens but classified as residents whose rights and movements are severely curtailed.

The major challenge for residents without the same rights as regular citizens is the cycle of poverty linked to the absence of government provided education and health care.

Even though education or health care are not provided the state further discriminates against minorities by restricting their movement.

If minority groups wish to migrate for economic reasons or to access state funded education and health care they are prohibited from leaving either their districts or provinces.

The residents living along the borderlands have literally been locked out culturally and economically from Thai society.

Common external problems, emanating from Shan State, that border villages experience are refuges fleeing conflict, economic migrants fleeing poverty, and a steady flow of drugs – heroin for the international market and methamphetamines for the Thai market.

(please see previous post for description of conflict and drug production in Shan State: Between Armed Factions,Drug Production,and International Borders).

The combination of internal poverty stricken residents and the external forces of refugees, economic migrates, and drugs has resulted in both a humanitarian crisis and a heavy military/police presence.

Although there is an extremely limited effort to address humanitarian issues the frequency of police patrols and military road blocks gives the impression that the full might of Thai law enforcement agencies have been unleashed upon the borderlands.

In response to humanitarian issues revolving around the international border, the village of Tong Hong has opened a free medical clinic.

The clinic, a small building with a cement floor and a thatched bamboo roof, was opened and run by an ethnic Shan resident named Sai Sam.

Although he is not an official doctor his clinic is often the sole medical centre that minorities and migrants have access to.

Sai Sam’s clinic is operated with an extremely frugal budget supplied by international donors (one of those donors, the group that introduced me to Sai Sam, is a Canadian group called Medical Mercy Canada – http://www.medicalmercycanada.org/).

Both internal and external border issues are evident at the clinic.

Each morning a group of 20-30 patients can be seen mingling around waiting for medical assistance.

Migrant workers from Shan State make up the majority of clinic visitors.

Thai employers have a nasty reputation for exploiting migrant labour and, if labourers complain of low or withheld wages, employers are known to call immigration and have those complaining deported.

Due to the precarious legal and economic situation that migrant labourers exist in they have no access to state assistance and no resources to pay for medical assistance when they become ill.

The situation in the surrounding villages is similar to the economic migrants – a lack of medical access or the inability to afford it.

Sai Sam treats many of the ethnic minorities at his clinic but also makes ‘house calls’ to the surrounding villages.

Taking medical care to the various villages is a necessity due to the fact that there is no public transportation and patients often have to walk for an entire day to reach the clinic.

A common ailment for both migrant labourers and the region's minorities is malnutrition.

Although the hills are teeming with orchards and valley floors are partitioned into lush rice paddies basic sustenance is a constant challenge.

Migrant labourers often receive less then half of the legal minimum wage which barely affords them enough to eat.

The situation for minorities is more complicated but a combination of their remote locations, no access to fertilizers, and the 'bleaching' of the soil results in small crop production with limited nutritional value.

Although the bulk of Sai Sam's patients are economic migrants and minorities there are often refugees arriving from the frontline of conflict in Shan State.

The stories of why they have fled often revolve around gross human rights violations by the Burmese army - the Tatmadaw.

The residents of Shan State are often 'recruited' at gun point by the Tatmadaw to act as porters transporting military equipment and supplies.

While transporting supplies the porters are forced to walk in front of the armed columns to act as both human shields and mine sweepers.

Because the of the high likelihood of being killed either in conflict or from physical exhaustion/malnutrition many porters flee to Thailand.

The porters that reach Sai Sam's clinic are often severely malnourished, suffering from untreated injuries, slightly dependent upon opium used to relieve pain and fatigue, and deeply traumatized.

The curious fact of the border region is that the internal and external issues of the region are not actually locally driven issues but issues influenced by politics of countries and distant economies.

Shan State is locked into perpetual conflict because of its resistance to becoming subservient to a large state dominated by ethnic Burmese.

Thailand's minorities are forced to be residents of a large country that is alien to their culture, language, and beliefs yet is also a country that actively discriminates them.

And finally, the drug based economy of Shan State is directly fuelled by the global thirst for illicit drugs.

Although this posting has focused upon one village and how it is influenced by border issues it should be noted that Tong Hong is one of thousands of villages lining Thailand's periphery.

Each one of those villages is intimately linked to the internal and external issues that revolve around borders.

Tong Hong may have a front row view to the humanitarian crises that exists along the border but, unfortunately, so do the thousands of other villages.

The Insecurity Industry

Part of the solution or part of the problem? Heavy militarization has created more problems than solutions. Fourth Army Soldiers - Narrathiwat - 2005.

Although rarely reported, a driving force in the conflict is the insecurity industry.

As peace in the South has been replaced by conflict the traditional economic base has also been replaced by conflict related industries.

The industry of insecurity has become a self-perpetuating economy that benefits and thrives with each bomb, each shooting, and continues to grow in proportion to the violence and the number of soldiers sent to quell the violence.

The insecurity industry might be difficult to encapsulate as a singular concept due to the highly diverse revenue streams that are associated with it but it is possible to draw some simple links between violence and the economy.

The rise of daily violence forces local retail stores to employ security guards, attacks on plantations send agriculture workers to the cities to fill the security guard positions, more soldiers arrive and have disposable income for entertainment, the closure of small industries ensures that entertainment industries have no trouble finding staff, civilians are worried by daily violence so they begin purchasing their own guns, militants need weapons so they begin to fund their insurgency by selling arms to the worried civilians, influential businessmen and politicians use their knowledge of government activites/contracts to extend their economic interests while ensuring that the violent cycle continues by demanding more troops from the central government.

Because the insecurity industry is heavily weighted in illegal industries the aggregate result is increased crime.

Many of the illegal businesses are involved in smuggling, alcohol and drugs, or prostitution and all introduce a higher rate of non-insurgency related violence.

The thriving illegal business environment also demands a high level of corruption and collusion in the police and civil service.

The result of illegal industries has been a serious challenge to law and order and a perceived sense of lawlessness.

The challenge for the government is that local residents feel that law and order has broken down and that the dramatic increase in military strenght has only succeeding in introducing more lawlessness and more violence.

In essence, the massive security apparatus has been associated with the rise of crime and increased lawlessness.

The key part of the equation is that once the varied insecurity industries are running each new explosion and each new soldier is good for business.

For the government to respond to the violence by increasing troop numbers results in a catch-22 that might counter some violence but will also feed the industry that depends upon violence to exist.

The logical way out for the government is for a smaller, less visible, and locally sensitive intelligence organization (exactly the role of the Southern Border Provinces Peace-Building Command that Prime Minister Thaksin dismantled) that can address security concerns without itself becoming one of the sources of further insecurity.

Yet Thaksin’s government has so far opted to continue to pour more combat troops into the South.

The Religious Conflict that Isnt Religious

“The issue is not one of the separation of church and state…for there is no church in Islam. The issue is one of legitimacy: what kind of state and what kind of community? Does legitimacy come down from the divine to the one man, the halife, shadow of God on earth and thence to the ulema and to human society, or does legitimacy arise from a free and open exercise of political rights? The question is indeed central to Islam, and has been central from the very beginning.”

The rebellion in Southern Thailand is often misunderstood and over simplified into the primary dichotomy of Muslim vs. Buddhist.

Yet such a basic dichotomy is not an accurate representation of the role of religion in the conflict.

What lies at the heart of the conflict, in relation to Islam and Buddhism, is not an incommensurable religious difference but a conflict inspired by the use of religion in state-craft.

Thailand has consistently, through both historical and modern periods, employed Buddhist cosmological practices in the pageantry of state ceremonies and rituals.

The problem that arises in the Malay-Muslim population of the South is that Buddhist spectacles of state legitimacy are rejected, and possibly even offensive, to the Malay-Muslim community.

Such rejection of Buddhist forms of legitimacy are evident in the Malay-Muslim tendency to look towards Islamic religious symbols and institutions that supply a similar role in strengthening the Muslim opposition to the Buddhist state.

Such forms of religious state-craft may sound overly abstract yet when religion is used in state rituals it is easy to identify.

A simple example is found in the flag raising ceremony that takes place every morning in all state run schools across the country.

Students are assembled in a school’s courtyard for a brief round of exercise, to listen to school announcements, to say a Buddhist prayer, and to sing the national anthem as the flag is raised.

Although the Buddhist prayer is the most obvious ritual that may draw unease from Muslims, the Thai flag, the emblem of the country that seeks to represent the citizens, also represents Buddhism.

The Thai flag consists of five horizontal stripes of three colors.

The Color red represents the blood of the Thai people, the color blue represents the much revered Monarchy, and the white stripes represent Buddhism (designated as Buddhism in the reign of King Vajiravudh).

As the national anthem is sung, in which citizens sing of their willingness to die for the values of the nation, the flag and its representation of Buddhism is raised into the sky.

Attending a flag raising ceremony in the primarily Muslim deep South one can not only see scores of Muslim students standing in silence as the Buddhist prayer is recited but can also recognize the Buddhist cosmology embedded within such state ceremonies.

Although the flag raising ceremony is just a minor example, the use of Buddhist political legitimacy is more problematic when Buddhist morality dictates the creation of legal codes. Before the Thais extended governance in the South the Malay-Muslims where governed by Sharia law that found its legitimacy as a holy law passed down to man from God – not from a Thai-Buddhist government.

When the South was placed under Thai control there was a crude (from a Southern perspective) replacement of the law dictated by Allah to a law dictated by a state and predicated upon Buddhist forms of legitimacy.

The use of religious legitimacy in government has essentially created an artificial and singular Buddhist state where religious homogeneity is obviously lacking.

If the future of the conflict is to be defused then the legitimacy of the government should have a diluted dependency upon Buddhism and the introduction of an Islamic perspective.

What might be even more appropriate is that the strategy of religious legitimacy be reevaluated in a broader reevaluation of what the Thai state is.

Although traditional governmental sources claim the number of Muslims in Thailand is about 3.9 percent, academic sources claim that the actual percentage could be as high as 8% to 10%. If ten percent of the population rejects the state’s employment of Buddhist legitimacy then the ideology that supports the state is at risk of collapse.

Rendered down more simply, if peaceful relations between the Buddhists and the Muslims have been the norm at the community level in the South then it is the government’s own efforts of legitimacy that creates the sense of illegitimacy and is ultimately the source of conflict.