Political Islam and Violence in Indonesia

Greg Fealy
Asian Studies Review; Sep 2009; 33, 3; Academic Research Library
pg. 405

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Conspiracy of silence: The insurgency in southern Thailand

Joseph Chinyong Liow a
a
S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

First published on: 06 October 2009

To cite this Article Liow, Joseph Chinyong(2009) 'Conspiracy of silence: The insurgency in southern Thailand', Dynamics
of Asymmetric Conflict, 2: 2, 131 — 134, First published on: 06 October 2009 (iFirst)
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 Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict 131

are reproduced in various localities and how the peace movement engages with that
would have strengthened her argument. Her review of the history of Sri Lankan civil
society and the organizations that she studies in detail – the National Peace Council,
the Centre for Performing Arts, and a cluster of organizations of victimized soldiers
and their families – are thorough, but as a result she emphasizes civil society and
their activities more strongly than the people and the processes they try to influence.
The two books have been overtaken by developments on the ground, but their
relevance carries on into the present. The dramatic shift in the configuration of
power heralds a new era for Sri Lanka. Rather than peace and quiet, however, war to
peace transitions tend to release additional anxieties and tensions, so-called ‘‘spoiler’’
violence and inflated expectations that are hard to meet. Orjuela’s diagnosis of the
peace movement has only become more severe. The lack of political space, the
cosmopolitan content of its message, and the problems of receiving foreign aid can
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only be expected to become more problematic. With the alleged collapse of the
LTTE, a political power vacuum has emerged in Tamil society, but it is more likely
to be filled by state-sponsored Tamil paramilitaries like Karuna, Pillayan and
Devenanda than by independent civil society organizations. Bandarage, on the other
hand, sees much of her plea met. The revolution in the global political economy she
proposes may not be on the cards, but within Sri Lanka we witness the victory of the
unitary state she vehemently defends. Rather than power sharing or some form of
autonomy on the basis of ethnicity, she applauds democratic politics as the adequate
moderator of ethnonationalism. Her plea thus favours the powers that be and
bolsters the present government strategy of military victory and consolidation of
political domination. How such a strategy, let alone the long track record of
majoritarian rule, alienation of minority groups, and continued human rights
abuses, will dilute ethnonationalism and promote a sustainable peace remains a big
question, however.

Bart Klem
University of Zurich, Zurich
Switzerland
klem@geo.uzh.ch
Ó 2009, Bart Klem

Transnational jihadi groups and the southern Thai insurgency

Conspiracy of silence: The insurgency in southern Thailand, by Zachary Abuza.
Washington, DC: United States Institute for Peace Press, 2009, 172 pp. US$14.95
(paperback), ISBN 978-1-60127-002-3

Going by titles alone, Zachary Abuza’s latest book – on the violence in Thailand’s
restive southern provinces – is arguably the most provocative to have been published
in recent times on the topic. Conspiracy of silence raises the specter of intrigue and
subterfuge. Rather than the organic, decentralized insurgency that many see,
Abuza’s title compels the reader to ask a host of pertinent questions. Why is there a
conspiracy? Who or what is behind it? What is conspiratorial about it? If Abuza
indeed intended to address these questions, then Conspiracy of silence would have
 132 Reviews

opened an important new agenda of inquiry into the protracted conflict in southern
Thailand and made a major contribution to extant knowledge.
As it turns out, however, the book is really far less ambitious than its title
suggests. While there are noteworthy chapters on the glaring mistakes in Thai
counterinsurgency operations as well as the escalation of the conflict, it quickly
becomes clear that Abuza’s preoccupation, by far, is with transnational terrorist
involvement, and specifically, Al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), in southern
Thailand. To be sure, this is a legitimate concern. Umar Patek and Dulmatin, for
example, were JI members who, according to the International Crisis Group, had
expressed interest in extending support to the southern Thai insurgents. Yet while
Conspiracy of silence asks important questions, it lacks the rigorous, structured, and
empirically grounded analytical framework necessary to point readers in the right
direction to answers. Conspiracy of silence piques curiosity with some extravagant
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claims, but does not follow through with much-needed supporting evidence. This
invariably leads to questions regarding the train of thought behind the construction
of the argument. For instance, Abuza identifies a previously unknown organization,
Jemaah Salafi, as a major organizational ally of JI based in southern Thailand.
Given the potential significance of such a revelation, it is troubling to note that no
information is provided indicating how Abuza came to know of the existence of this
organization.
The deeper one gets into the book, the murkier the picture gets. Abuza makes big
play of the purported discursive shift, according to him, from ‘‘Pattani liberation’’ to
‘‘Islamist Jihadism’’ (p. 141). But no evidence is mustered to substantiate this claim.
In any case, conceptually speaking, the two need not necessarily be antithetical given
that in the lexicon of social science Islamism often relates to political activity and
objectives couched in religious language, and hence ‘‘Islamist Jihadism’’ can be
construed as a means to attaining the end of the liberation of Pattani. Indeed, this is
exactly how the insurgents themselves reconcile piety and politics. Furthermore,
while Abuza is right to note that the violence is increasingly manifesting religious
overtones, the same cannot be said of his claim that insurgents bent on imposing ‘‘a
very hard-line Salafism’’ and ‘‘Wahhabite norms’’ drive the conflict (p. 4). If so, how
does one explain the attacks of 28 April 2004 – among the worst seen in the last five
years – that possessed all the trademarks of militant Sufi mysticism? Likewise, how is
it that Salafi-Wahhabi clerics like Ismail Lutfi have been outspoken in publicly
condemning the violence perpetrated by the insurgents? Indeed, Lutfi had published
an entire treatise against the use of violence in the name of Islam (the book was
published in Thai, Arabic, Malay, and Jawi), and has established a peace studies
center in his Yala Islamic University.
Moreover, as a commentator on the southern Thai conflict, Abuza must
surely have read Berjihad di Pattani – the jihadi booklet found on the bodies of
militants killed in the April 2004 attacks – and realized that claims, which he
cites, that the document was noteworthy for ‘‘the paucity of references to the
liberation of the south’’ were simply wrong. Abuza talks at length about the firm
ties that Ismail Lutfi, the respected Saudi-trained cleric, enjoys with JI and the
insurgents, and how ‘‘Lutfi also encouraged JI to support the insurgency in the
south’’ (p. 51). According to Abuza’s portrait of Lutfi, the latter appears to be
someone who exercises substantial influence within both the JI structure and the
southern Thai insurgency. Yet, there is a glaring, and somewhat confusing,
conundrum here: if Abuza is right that Lutfi’s supporters number in the ‘‘tens of
 Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict 133

thousands’’, it is puzzling why his influence and leverage over local insurgents, on
the one hand, and his commitment and links to JI, on the other hand, have not
translated into the establishment of a major JI presence in the south. In fact,
upon closer reading, it is quite unclear where Lutfi fits in Abuza’s overall
construction of JI presence and activity in southern Thailand. In one instance,
Abuza claims that ‘‘although many of the regional security services describe Lutfi
as a leading member of JI, there is no evidence to support this assertion,’’ only to
contradict himself later by suggesting that ‘‘despite evidence linking Lutfi to JI . . .
the Thai government has refused to move against him.’’ Is there or isn’t there
evidence that Lutfi is a JI member? If there is, where, and what, is it?
Contradictions become starker the deeper one is drawn into Abuza’s JI-southern
Thai insurgency web. At one point, Abuza categorically claims that ‘‘JI share
similar goals and values with the Thai militants’’ (pp. 147–148). Yet he later
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writes: ‘‘Perhaps the real reason that JI and the Thai groups have not formally
linked up is that they operate at cross-purposes. Specifically, JI believes in
waging war against the ‘far enemy’ . . . while the Thai groups believe in focusing
on the ‘near enemy’ . . . and have decried the nihilistic violence of al Qaeda’’
(p. 159).
The epistemological shortcomings of Conspiracy of silence are at least in part
related to its questionable research methodology. Abuza relies solely on English
language sources, and has no access to Thai, Malay, or Jawi literature. Moreover,
a close look at Abuza’s footnotes reveals the fact that ‘‘fieldwork’’ for this book
amounted to interviews with security officials primarily in Bangkok. There is a
discernible dearth of any attempt to speak with leaders and people in the local
community, or with the old generation of separatists who have in recent years
emerged in the public domain to articulate the cause and who have thrust
themselves back into the fray (here, I am thinking of recent work by the
International Crisis Group, Duncan McCargo, Don Pathan, Sunai Pasuk, and
Peter Chalk). The nature of the ‘‘fieldwork’’ undertaken in this book is
problematic on at least three counts:

(1) to rely solely on security and intelligence agencies for primary source material
is, at best, standing on empirically lopsided ground;
(2) over-reliance on information provided by security and intelligence agencies is
particularly disturbing since the same actors have been derided by none other
than Abuza himself for, in his own words, ‘‘intelligence failure’’ and ‘‘poor
intelligence’’ leading to their ‘‘poor grasp’’ of the problem confronting them;
(3) ultimately, without talking to the ‘‘other side’’ when there are opportunities
to do so, it is impossible to construct a balanced narrative and make policy
prescriptions.

Abuza also tends to downplay with broad brushstrokes the contributions of

others who have written about the conflict. For example, his claim that ‘‘many
commentators dismiss the insurgency for that very reason, arguing that they [the
militants] are a bunch of nihilistic teenagers, bent on creating havoc’’ (p. 5) is
intriguing, considering that, aside from Nidhi Aeusrivongse, who writes of the
southern Thai violence as a ‘‘millenarian revolt,’’ no other serious commentator has
dismissed the violence in this fashion (indeed, even Nidhi’s interpretation is far more
sophisticated than that).
 134 Reviews

Typifying the genre of research from which it comes, Conspiracy of silence

concludes its discussion on transnational terrorist links with the warning that ‘‘it is
only a matter of time before Thailand attracts the interest of the broader jihadist
community.’’ Yet, no conditions are set through which this claim can be rigorously
tested and falsified, and this indeterminate assertion buckles very quickly under the
weight of rigorous social scientific scrutiny. In fact, the more interesting and pertinent
question is why, after more than five years and, according to Abuza, numerous
attempts by external parties, haven’t elements from the broader jihadist community
managed to gain a foothold in southern Thailand? After all, if Abuza is right, a not
insignificant amount of attention and resources has already been expended on the
insurgency in Thailand’s southern border provinces from all imaginable transnational
sources – from Al Qaeda and JI to the Rohingya Solidarity Organization and the
Malaysian-based KMM, to the Bangladeshi HUJI-B and Pakistani madrasahs.
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In conclusion, Conspiracy of silence makes for an interesting read, and its careful
cataloguing of escalating trends of violence and counterinsurgency failures is
thoughtful and considered. And to be fair, Abuza’s concern for JI activity is
legitimate given evidence that the regional terrorist organization had cast an eye
towards Thailand’s southern border provinces, and that JI members have surfaced in
the region. Yet, it is precisely because of the reality of this threat that the author has
to be judicious in his construction of transnational links and networks. In this
regard, it is unfortunate that what is of value in Conspiracy of silence is quickly
overshadowed by Abuza’s over-enthusiasm in constructing a narrative of transna-
tional jihad that includes, if not centers on, Thailand’s restive southern border
provinces. Yet, without the all-important evidence and analytical framework to test
and back up his claims, we are no closer at the end of the book than we were at the
beginning to the answers regarding the nature, objectives, and identity of those
behind the purported ‘‘conspiracy’’ driving conflict in southern Thailand. What we
are left with is a sense that the assertions made in Conspiracy of silence, while
provocative, are, at the end of the day, but claims built on sand.

Joseph Chinyong Liow

S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies,
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
iscyliow@ntu.edu.sg
Ó 2009, Joseph Chingong Liow

The black box of Blue Helmets

UN peacekeeping in civil wars, by Lise Morjé Howard. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008, 416 pp. US$34 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-521-70767-1

Does peacekeeping work? Shaping belligerents’ choices after civil war, by Virginia
Page Fortna. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008, 232 pp. US$24.95
(paperback), ISBN 978-0-691-13671-4

The persistence of civil wars over the past 20 years raises a crucial question of world
order: can United Nations (UN) peacekeeping forces assist in ushering in an end to
armed conflict and consolidating a stable democratic government? In short, do the