SMH : Thai war on terrorism presents diplomatic headache

Thai war on terrorism presents diplomatic headache

by Marian Wilkinson | September 23, 2006

FIVE months after the September 11 attacks in 2001, the CIA captured its first big fish in al-Qaeda's network in Pakistan. Abu Zubaydah was reputed to be al-Qaeda's operations chief and United States intelligence officials wanted the option of using extreme techniques in his interrogation.

To avoid exposing their agents to war crimes charges, the CIA moved Zubaydah to a so-called "black site", outside US jurisdiction.

That site was believed to be a Thai military base, possibly the Sattahip naval station. When the black site was first reported in The Washington Post, the Thai prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, berated local journalists for taking up the story, calling them unpatriotic. He denied Thailand was hosting a secret CIA prison.

The response was vintage Thaksin. Throughout his leadership, the former prime minister publicly distanced his government from the US-led war on terrorism while privately delivering the kind of assistance that some of his neighbours in the Association of South-East Asian Nations have resisted.

Since 2001, Thailand has become a critical ally in the fight against terrorism. The Australian Federal Police has a permanent presence in Thailand, exchanging intelligence on terrorism, along with drug trafficking and people smuggling.

Australia upgraded its co-operation with Bangkok after the Bali bombing in October 2002, and last month the Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer, signed a new "treaty on mutual assistance in criminal matters" with Thailand, aimed at helping to prosecute crimes like terrorism.

Thailand's help earned the gratitude of Australia and the US, and Thaksin won new trade agreements and upgraded military, intelligence and police ties as relations flourished.

Thaksin's own "war on terrorism" in Thailand's troubled Muslim provinces in the south has been so extreme, however, that some Western intelligence experts feared his government was creating more Islamic extremism in the region. The US State Department has condemned Thaksin for scores of extrajudicial killings of Muslims by security forces.

This is one reason the coup against Thaksin presents Canberra and Washington with a delicate diplomatic problem. Neither wants to disrupt the counter-terrorism co-operation with Thailand but equally some officials are hoping the new government will handle the Islamic insurgency with less violence and more political skill.

Thaksin's heavy-handed strategy towards the insurgency has resulted in a massive upsurge in violence in the south since 2004. About 1400 people have been killed, 4000 wounded and 300 others have "disappeared", according to a new study by Dr Zachary Abuza.

Last week, a Canadian tourist and three others died in a spate of bombings in the region's commercial hub, Hat Yai. An Australian was hurt.

Last year, a senior Australian intelligence official told the Herald that "the incompetence of the Thai government" in handling the insurgency was one of the key problems for its disastrous escalation in recent years. The official said it was critical that Thaksin increased "the sophistication of the response of his government, [like] not killing people in the back of trucks".

He was referring to an incident in the village of Tak Bai in October 2004, when 85 Muslim youths died, most from suffocation, after being crammed into the back of unventilated army trucks and taken for interrogation. The horrific incident led to a massive wave of violence, including bombings and assassinations by Muslim extremists. No one has been charged, despite several military and police investigations into the deaths, Abuza said.

Speaking from Thailand this week, Abuza said Thaksin had been heavily criticised by all sides, including the military, for his handling of the southern insurgency. "The upsurge in violence unfolded under his watch but he refused to take any responsibility for it," he said.

While the insurgency is seen as dominated by local and historic factors, there are fears within the Thai National Security Council of growing links with Islamic fundamentalists in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Middle East. Two key groups, the Pattani Islamic Mujahideen Movement and the BRN-C, are the dominant forces in the insurgency.

Both have operated independently of Jemaah Islamiyah, the extremist group behind the Bali bombings, but Abuza believes there are some disturbing connections between some key religious figures in the southern provinces and Jemaah Islamiyah, especially its former leader, Hambali.

Hambali, considered the mastermind behind the first Bali bombing, was arrested in Thailand in August 2003.

A security sweep in the lead-up to the 2003 Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit in Bangkok uncovered a plot to attack Western embassies in the country.

The handling of the southern insurgency was a point of deep disagreement between Thaksin and the military officer who led this week's coup, General Sonthi Boonyaratglin. Sonthi is the first Muslim officer to head the largely Buddhist army.

Sonthi had insisted the response must include a political and economic strategy, as recommended by the Thai National Reconciliation Commission. The commission was designed to defuse the tensions in the Muslim south, after pressure on Thaksin by King Bhumidol, among others.

With Thaksin's removal, Canberra and Washington will be anxiously watching for any change in his counter-terrorism policies, especially on the southern insurgency.