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General Wattanachai Chaaimuanwong, then chief security advisor to Prime
Minister Surayud Chulanont, declared that it was likely the new generation of
militants are “loosely guided by a large council” of veteran fighters and religious
leaders. 6 Furthermore, insurgents occasionally appropriate religious epithets to
justify their struggle, the most common being the depiction of themselves as
“mujahidin” carrying out a “jihad,” or holy warriors carrying out a holy struggle.
Another common refrain is that Islam justifies an “uprising against unjust rule.” 7
Finally, religious motifs related to notions of religious governance and lifestyle
have been regularly mobilized in the course of conflict, where the “jihad” in
southern Thailand is portrayed as a war to drive out Siamese “kafir” and
reinstate Muslim governance.
Not surprisingly, the Thai security establishment has been particularly perturbed
by the seemingly religious flavour of the conflict in the south. Cognizant of
global trends, policy-makers in Bangkok are quick to point to growing Islamic
religiosity across the Muslim world that quickly translates into acts of defiance.
In the case of southern Thailand, Thai veterans of the mujahidin struggle against
the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s serve as a source of inspiration to
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the current conflict. This generates a contradictory message whereby political
leaders and security officials are reluctant to publicly admit the role of returnees
as inspirational leaders returning to the fray, while also pointing to the risks of
increasing religiosity.
At first glance, it seems logical that insurgents’ use of religious references, such
as the Qur’anic injunction to fight against the oppression of Muslims and talk
about liberating their Patani Darussalam homeland from Siamese colonialism,
resonate with the plight of the Malay-Muslims in southern Thailand. It is thus
tempting for analysts to conclude that these insurgents are in fact fighting for
Islam and thereby susceptible to the lures of the global jihad and foreign
extremist ideologies. To that end, some have tenuously attempted to connect the
dots between the Thai conflict and rising Islamic consciousness and the growth
of Islamism on the part of Malay-Muslims in southern Thailand, implying a risk
of greater violence. These analysts reach such conclusions, however, without
6
Interview with General Wattanachai, Bangkok, 22 April 2007.
7
Interviews conducted with a member of the original BRN, who is now a member of BRN-C, and
who is currently in charge of several cells involved in the contemporary insurgency and on
condition of anonymity, in May 2006, February 2008, and March 2009 (I am not at liberty to
publicly disclose the venue of these meetings).
8
“Government seeks help from local clerics,” The Nation, 4 June 2004.
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