By Richard W. Baker, special assistant to the president and an Indonesia specialist at the East-West Center. Before coming to the East-West Center, Baker served as a U.S. Foreign Service officer for 20 years .
HONOLULU (July 19) -- This past weekend brought good news and bad news about regional insurgencies in Southeast Asia. The good news came from Helsinki, where after years of on-again off-again negotiations and many false starts and failures, the Indonesian government and negotiators for the Free Aceh Movement (GAM in Indonesian) appear to have reached a solid peace agreement. GAM has been waging a violent secessionist rebellion in the northernmost province of Sumatra since 1976 that has claimed an estimated 15,000 lives - mostly from army operations that have produced numerous claims of human rights violations but also from brutality against local residents by the rebels.
The darker report came from Thailand, where in response to an insurgent attack on the southern provincial capital of Yala on July 14 (in which the attackers blew the power lines and then struck multiple targets in the city) the cabinet voted increased emergency powers to Prime Minister Thaksin. Nearly 900 people have been killed in southern Thailand since the latest surge of violence began in early 2004, in a conflict that has seen beheadings, assassinations of civilians and bombings by the insurgents as well as heavy-handed actions by the security forces.
The roots of both insurgencies go back a century, and both date to the forcible inclusion of once-independent kingdoms into larger entities - the Dutch East Indies in the case of Aceh and the Kingdom of Thailand in the case of the three southern provinces bordering Malaysia. Both areas also share a staunch Islamic faith. Aceh, once referred to as the "front porch of Mecca," is the Indonesian territory closest to the Arabian birthplace of Islam and has long been renowned for its piety. Southern Thailand's population is overwhelmingly (75 percent) Islamic. One noteworthy difference, however, is that Indonesia's mainstream population is also predominantly Muslim (85 percent), while Thailand is a Buddhist kingdom and thus the southern Muslims see themselves as a religious (and ethnic/linguistic) minority.
Two other distinctions have more topical significance. The first is that the Aceh independence movement has rejected overtures by Islamic terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah, while there is a good deal of evidence of external involvement in the current round of violence in southern Thailand.
Second, Aceh was devastated by the December 26 tsunami, losing some 130,000 people and leading to a major inflow of humanitarian assistance. The tsunami had several effects on the conflict: It provided a powerful and catalyzing shock; it produced a focus on common goals of relief, recovery and reconstruction; and it brought increased international attention and willingness to provide assistance if security conditions allowed. Although the Phuket area of Thailand's southern peninsula was also heavily damaged by the tsunami, this region lies north of the Islamic provinces, which suffered very little if any losses. So the tsunami had no catalyzing effect on that struggle.
The key to the agreement initialed by the Aceh negotiators on July 16 (to be signed on August 15) was a fundamental and to this point elusive political compromise: The rebels abandoned their demand for independence, and the government agreed to allow the Acehnese to participate in politics as a regional political force. (This requires changing Indonesia's national law, which requires that parties be organized on a nationwide basis.) A military truce is to be monitored by international observers. While many hurdles remain in implementation, and previous agreements have foundered in this stage, there seems to be genuine support and optimism on both sides for peace.
In Thailand negotiations themselves remain elusive. There are no clear leadership figures among the insurgents with whom the Thai authorities might negotiate, and Prime Minister Thaksin does not appear interested in pursuing this path. Instead the new emergency powers promise even more determined pursuit of a security approach to put down the insurgency. This strategy is widely considered counterproductive (as was the Indonesian military strategy in Aceh), and has included the arming of local Buddhist recruits over recent months, which risks fueling a self-perpetuating campaign of revenge and vendetta.
The most obvious alternative approach in southern Thailand would be a sustained campaign to assuage the grievances of the southern Muslims over their relative economic deprivation and lack of government assistance. Such a course is widely supported both within Thailand and internationally, but in practice would be difficult to conduct in the face of the ongoing terror campaign now being waged by the insurgents. And it must also be noted that the central government in recent years has made a concerted (if not always sustained or adequate) effort to channel infrastructure funding and other development programs to the south, which did not head off the resumed violence.
One basic lesson from these two conflicts, both in the same geographic neighborhood and both involving Islamic insurgents, should be clear. Despite similarities, each of these conflicts is unique, with distinctive origins, context and dynamics. The parties in Aceh seem finally to have found a formula; sadly, the parties in southern Thailand aren't even talking yet.
Richard Baker can be reached at (808)944-7371, email at: bakerr@eastwestcenter.org or view his page at:
http://www.eastwestcenter.org/about-dy-detail.asp?staff_ID=42