Thailand Changing Approach to Muslim Militants

Finally, someone opens the can of whoop ass. I am a big believer in fighting fire with fire. To many muslims in to many places sit back and blame all the bad muslims for the violence. The claims of being intimidated into silence although common are simply bullshit. Passive support is still support. If there really are moderates in Thailand here is your chance, get off your asses and join the military crack down that is fixing to end the islamonazis rampage in southern Thailand. Be part of the problem or part of the solution. The time for talk appears to be over and now its time to pick a side. Pick your century muslims 21st or 7th?

By Thomas Fuller, New York Times News Service published on 5/27/2007
Bangkok, Thailand — Frustrated by their inability to pacify a Muslim insurgency and concerned about rising impatience toward their rule, Thailand’s generals have named a former commando and self-described assassin as their top security adviser.
The appointment this month of the adviser, Pallop Pinmanee, a retired general notorious for his harsh tactics but admired for his survival instincts, appears to be a signal from the military-backed government that its conciliatory approach toward Muslim insurgents in southern Thailand will change.
And recent statements from Pallop and other government leaders herald a repressive turn toward dealing with political dissent as well.
“The way to solve the problem in the south is to get the people on your side,” Pallop said in an interview this week. But if the violence continues, the military should carry out “search and destroy” missions against the insurgents, he said. “If we cannot make them surrender, then we have no choice — we have to destroy them.”
He said that Gen. Sonthi Boonyaratglin, who led the September coup that overthrew Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and brought the junta to power, asked him to be an adviser during a round of golf in March. The men once served together in a special warfare unit.
Pallop, who turned 71 on Friday, speaks about his days as an army-appointed assassin in a casual, matter-of-fact tone and offers little to dispel his tough-guy reputation. He was the leader of what he called the “killer team,” a secret seven-man army unit in 1970 that carried out extrajudicial killings. “The assignment was to kill the leaders of Communist groups all over Thailand,” he said.
Pallop said he was also a guerrilla mercenary for the Central Intelligence Agency along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the 1960s.
But he is perhaps best known for his decision to raid the Krue Se mosque in southern Thailand in 2004, a move that left 32 insurgents dead. The raid helped reignite the centuries-old conflict between Thai Buddhists and ethnic Malay Muslims, and the insurgency has led to about 2,000 deaths in the past three years.
“Diplomacy is not his strong point,” Thitinan Pongsudhirak, director of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University, said of Pallop. “His expertise is to kill people and deal with things by force.”
It is too early to tell how influential Pallop will be in the government. But amid rumors of countercoups and maneuvering by Thaksin’s allies, the generals seem to have calculated that they needed his skills. Pallop has been involved in three military coups and is alleged to have once plotted to assassinate an army commander.
“When things get hairy, you get Pallop on your side,” Thitinan said. “He knows how to fight back.”
Pallop began his job on May 3 at the Internal Security Operations Command, a military agency created under another name in the 1960s to fight Communists in the country. Returning to the security agency was a rehabilitation for Pallop, who until last August was its deputy director. He was fired when Thaksin accused Pallop of plotting to assassinate him.
Pallop ridiculed the idea at the time, saying, “If I had done it, I guarantee that the prime minister would not have survived.”
Now, he says he is using the agency’s network of 700,000 volunteers around the country to gather intelligence on opponents to the generals’ rule.
“They are our eyes around the country,” he said.
On Tuesday, Pallop plans to meet with a junta critic, Veera Musikapong, who has led demonstrations and is sympathetic to Thaksin.
“To get the tiger cub you have to go to the tiger’s cave,” Pallop said, adding that he would warn Veera that protesting against the junta risked destabilizing Thailand further.
If this approach does not work, he said, the junta will have to consider emergency rule to stop protests by what he calls “mobs.”
“We are trying to avoid this because it would mean a lot of violence and fighting,” he said.
The Thai constitutional court is scheduled to decide Wednesday whether Thaksin’s party and the leading opposition party should be disbanded for fraud, a ruling that could further unsettle a country yearning for a return to normal.
Opposition to the ruling generals has mounted in recent months as discussions on a new constitution have dragged on and the situation in the south has deteriorated.
After seizing power in September, the junta vowed to take a soft approach to the southern insurgency in contrast to Thaksin’s hard-line stance. Last November, Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont issued a far-reaching public apology on behalf of the Thai state for what he called flawed government policies toward local Malay Muslims.
But this and other olive branches failed to stem the daily killings of civilians — rubber tappers, municipal workers and teachers chief among them.
Pallop says he can beat insurgents at their own game because that is a game he played — in 1966 and 1967 when he led guerrilla units in attacks against North Vietnamese traveling the Ho Chi Minh Trail. “The strategy of hit-and-run I know very well,” he said.
Pallop refused to say exactly how many people suspected of being Communists he and his six fellow assassins killed in 1970.
“Many, many,” he said. But he lamented one rebel who got away: Payom Chulanont, a Thai army officer who defected to the Communist Party of Thailand and estranged himself from his family, including his son, the current military-appointed prime minister, Surayud.
“We almost got him,” Pallop said dryly.
He did not want to name the people he killed because it would upset too many of the surviving relatives, he said.
Pallop appeared relaxed in the interview and said he had stayed alive this long because he was careful. His colleagues seem more concerned. Aides carried into his office a birthday present from a fellow general in the Thai army: a bulletproof vest.

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