Whitewashing The Thai Jihad
Maybe it was a bit of both. Shortly after Thaksin Shinawatra’s coming into power the armed Muslim resistance in Thailand’s South was resurrected. I first took it for a war between local vested interests, for a rather misleading chain of conincidences. Because Thaksin had curtailed the power of the army and strengthened the police.
The whole fragile balance of power and influence in the South collapsed. What had started as sporadic attacks against facilities of the central government over time escalated into a full-blown armed resistance operating out of the covers of darkness and better knowledge of the terrain.
A hotelier in Pattani told me back in 2001 that daily murders and killings are nothing new in Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat. Talk of a jihad, as the hotelier put it, was completely exaggerated. The hotelier as well was to be proven wrong.
Front Page Magazine recently published an analysis “Whitewashing the Thai Jihad,” a timely backgrounder written by Robert Spencer about the unsolved South and worthwhile read.
Spencer enters with a recent ruthless attack – and quickly draws his conclusion: Nobody could ever whitewash a jihad. He blames the simplifications of the mainstream media for the see-no-jihad, speak-no-jihad, hear-no-jihad coverage. As if the bloodshed would simply fade away.
By Robert Spencer, Front Page Magazine
In a recent story on a jihadist attack on a wedding party and other jihad activity in Thailand, Agence France Presse added a concluding paragraph that was typical of mainstream media coverage of the Thai jihad and of jihad activity in general. For while AP, Reuters, AFP and the rest never saw a piece of Palestinian propaganda they didn’t like, they also never saw a jihad they couldn’t whitewash.
AFP’s concluding paragraph blandly placed all the blame for the conflict on the non-Muslim Thai government:
More than 3,000 people have been killed since separatist unrest broke out in January 2004 in the south, which was an autonomous Malay Muslim sultanate until mainly Buddhist Thailand annexed it in 1902, provoking decades of tension.
All was well, you see, until the Buddhists of Thailand, motivated apparently only by rapacious imperialism, annexed the poor autonomous Malay Muslim Sultanate. AFP does not mention, of course, that the Malay Sultanate at that time was making war against the Siamese during the war between Siam and Burma, and Thailand conquered it in that context – making it Thai by a right of conquest that has been universally recognized throughout human history (except, of course, when it comes to Israel and to any Muslim land that is conquered by non-Muslims).
Along with this come the media’s allergy to the word “jihad,” and its frequent recourse to the passive voice when discussing what the jihadists did. Sometimes inanimate objects act, apparently of their own accord. For example, in a March story on bombings in southern Thailand, Reuters’ lead paragraph stated: “Bombs killed three men and wounded 21 people in three separate attacks in Thailand’s troubled Muslim far south, police said on Sunday.” Reuters gives no hint as to who is doing the bombing and who are the victims – which in itself is a clear indication that the bombers are not the government or pro-government vigilantes, but jihadists.
The story continues in this vein. Its second paragraph tells us that a bomb was hidden in the car, but with no hint as to by whom. In paragraph 5 we learn that in the three southern provinces, “2,500 people have been killed in gun and bomb attacks since a separatist insurgency erupted in January 2004.” The separatist insurgency just erupted, you see, like a volcano. It was an act of God, a force of nature. Here again Reuters gives the reader no hint as to who the separatist insurgents are, or who killed the overwhelming majority of those 2,500 people. In paragraph 6, we learn how the “suspected militants” set off another bomb, but once again are given no hint as to who these militants are.
Same thing in paragraph 7: Unidentified “insurgents” ambush the security forces. In paragraph 8, it’s simply a “bomb,” a random, accidental object, that unaccountably wounded four people. But also in that paragraph we learn that this is all taking place in “the three far south provinces which formed an independent sultanate until annexed by Thailand a century ago.” Reuters and AFP are in step on this: The only background they give suggests that Thailand is entirely responsible for provoking the conflict, and should simply have left the Malay Muslims alone.
Only in paragraph 10 of the Reuters story are we finally told that “Buddhist monks” are among the chief targets of the still-unidentified “militants” – which should lead the informed reader to identify them as Islamic jihadists and Sharia supremacists. But they come to that identification with no help from Reuters.
In reality, the Thai jihadists are uniquely brutal even by the standards of their jihadist brethren, and are fighting to correct the outrage, as they see it, of non-Muslim rule over a Muslim population in southern Thailand. But the AFP and Reuters stories exemplify the kind of coverage that jihad activity receives from the mainstream media as a matter of course. The perpetrators of jihad violence are not identified, their ideology is never discussed, and the conflicts they provoke are blamed on their victims. This kind of coverage is of a piece with the U.S. government’s new see-no-jihad, speak-no-jihad, hear-no-jihad policy: Both appear to be based on wishful thinking. Both seem to emanate from the idea that if we simply do not allow ourselves to notice jihad activity, it will somehow fade away from neglect. If we pretend that Islam is peaceful, violent Muslims will lay down their arms.
The price we will have to pay for these fantasies could be very high.
While clearly religion and Islamic ideology are at play in the violence and terror in the South, to call it all jihad is simplistic. Far more intelligent and informed scholars – both Thai and foreign – studying the situation in the Deep South, and conversant in Thai, have offered much more nuanced and illuminating analyses than Mr. Spencer. His reactionary, right-wing bromides don’t add anything to the discussion.
I have no idea who Robert Spencer is, or what his ideology is, but this piece if not helpful. If it is so easy to know this is a jihad, please explain exactly what organizations are supporting it. Most important explain exactly what it is that they want. Can’t do it? Nobody else has, either. The violence is baffling – I’ve never seen a jihadist movement like this. Even Al Qaeda published a manifesto explaining what they objected to and what they wanted done. In the South no organization ever claims credit for bombings or murder. I believe there are propaganda leaflets found from time to time, but it is not clear if they are printed by the murderers (note I do not use the word jihadists) or by other people trying to take advantage of the situation, and of course the government does not publicize their contents.
My question all along has been, if this is a separatist group, why aren’t they trying to gain support of the public by publicizing their cause? If they are conducting a jihad, why aren’t they trying to gain support of the public by publicizing their cause?