Thailand: Will It Be Civil War?

May 17 2010, 4:50 PM ET | Comment

Outside of academic circles and op-ed pages, however, this scenario has been largely regarded as hysterical. The silliness seemed to peak last month when charitable groups attempted showings of "Hotel Rwanda" in Bangkok on huge outdoor screens -- a cautionary tale for Thais consumed with class hatred.

But now, the Thai capital looks, smells, and sounds like war. Rifle fire crackles throughout the day. On back alleys, protesters vowing to end the "rule of elites" concoct molotov cocktails from spent bottles of Red Bull.

As I write this, pyres demarcating nighttime conflict zones light up glass skyscrapers with a hellish glow. And for the second consecutive night, explosions rumble outside my balcony's sliding glass door.

Bangkok is 10 weeks and more than 60 deaths into a stand-off between the military-backed government and a faction of self-proclaimed "commoners" -- the Red Shirts -- that insists the ruling party must fall.

In recent days, the army has resorted to picking off protesters (the top brass calls them "terrorists") with sniper rifles from afar. But the Red Shirts have defended their encampment: two-square miles of Bangkok's priciest real estate, fortified with concertina wire and bamboo staves.

As Bangkok slips further into chaos, it's unclear if even the Red Shirt guiding statesmen can turn back the legions of Thai men (and some women) wading into near suicidal combat.

"We must accept death," said Pichet Taweesin, a 40-year-old day laborer tending a flaming wall of truck tires. Nearby, teenagers snapped cell phone photos of their friends, striking hooligan poses while gripping homemade gas bombs.

"No one here wants to become a victim," he said. "But I've seen dead bodies of my brothers and sisters in the movement every day. I'm not afraid to die." In another 45 minutes, the crowd we stood in would scramble for cover as rifle bullets pecked at the asphalt.

The army, in testing the protesters' promises to "fight to the death," has drawn thousands of Pichets to these urban front lines. That so many within the Red Shirt camp are compelled to extremism, however, is a partly monster of the movement's own creation.

Broadly speaking, the Red Shirts are a loose assemblage encompassing the disgruntled laboring classes, new-money Thais with an anti-establishment grudge and, as many in the Thai media allege, poor Thais paid about $13 a day to rally.

The guiding leadership -- parliamentarians, aging activists and celebrities -- often invoke the language of non-violent, civil disobedience. But the movement has also tolerated a militant streak, personified by a renegade army major general -- Khattiya "Seh Daeng" Sawisdipol -- who flouted superiors and ordered his personal militia to protect protesters with force.

Khattiya died on May 17, days after taking a sniper's bullet to the temple in a killing the government disavows. His political martyrdom was one of the sparks igniting the street violence that's since engulfed Bangkok.

Khattiya's disciples' sense of invincibility was also fostered by the military itself, which for weeks allowed protesters to push the government around before responding with extreme force.

Since rallies began in mid-March, protesters have mobbed Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's offices and private residence, splattering his gates with their own blood in a ritual curse. They have climbed parliament's gates and yanked guns from security forces.

Even troops themselves fled a bloody raid last month after mysterious black-clad men with rifles -- linked to Seh Daeng by government spokesmen -- emerged and fired back. A throng of protesters later took troops hostage, seized dozens of assault rifles and dismantled six armed personnel carriers with tools and bare hands.

As this conflict has dragged on, sober voices inside the movement have grown noticeably quieter. One of the camp's most moderate statesman, Veera Musikapong, has not appeared in public for days. The Thai media has ruminated over a split within the Red Shirts that has left hardliners with more sway.

Remaining Red Shirt leaders, however, insist they are but slingshot-toting Davids, they say, ground down by Goliaths with power, influence and assault rifles.

But moderate Red Shirt supporters such as Prateep Ungsongtham Hata, a renowned slum activist, openly fret the movement is sliding towards a more shadowy, militant incarnation. By setting up a safe haven for less-daring protesters outside the conflict zone, she has attempted to lend a sense of orderly demonstration to the battles raging just a mile away.

"There are two ways out of this," Prateep explained, ducking into an empty guard shack. The windows were papered over with yesterday's newsprint to provide concealment from snipers.

"The government can stop the killing. The two sides can start chatting," she said. "But the government leaders will have to stop always pointing the finger at us and point it at themselves."

As for civil war?

"If the government keeps on killing," she said, "these people will go underground, basing themselves in the provinces. When you can't fight openly, you become unseen."

Prateep's eyes settled on a newspaper, pasted over the window and illuminated by sunlight. In the lead photo, blood pooled beneath the head of a protester shot dead the day before.

"Honestly, I'm very depressed," she said. "I never thought it would come to this."

Source : theatlantic.com

READ MORE - Thailand: Will It Be Civil War?

Thailand: Will It Be Civil War?

May 17 2010, 4:50 PM ET | Comment

Outside of academic circles and op-ed pages, however, this scenario has been largely regarded as hysterical. The silliness seemed to peak last month when charitable groups attempted showings of "Hotel Rwanda" in Bangkok on huge outdoor screens -- a cautionary tale for Thais consumed with class hatred.

But now, the Thai capital looks, smells, and sounds like war. Rifle fire crackles throughout the day. On back alleys, protesters vowing to end the "rule of elites" concoct molotov cocktails from spent bottles of Red Bull.

As I write this, pyres demarcating nighttime conflict zones light up glass skyscrapers with a hellish glow. And for the second consecutive night, explosions rumble outside my balcony's sliding glass door.

Bangkok is 10 weeks and more than 60 deaths into a stand-off between the military-backed government and a faction of self-proclaimed "commoners" -- the Red Shirts -- that insists the ruling party must fall.

In recent days, the army has resorted to picking off protesters (the top brass calls them "terrorists") with sniper rifles from afar. But the Red Shirts have defended their encampment: two-square miles of Bangkok's priciest real estate, fortified with concertina wire and bamboo staves.

As Bangkok slips further into chaos, it's unclear if even the Red Shirt guiding statesmen can turn back the legions of Thai men (and some women) wading into near suicidal combat.

"We must accept death," said Pichet Taweesin, a 40-year-old day laborer tending a flaming wall of truck tires. Nearby, teenagers snapped cell phone photos of their friends, striking hooligan poses while gripping homemade gas bombs.

"No one here wants to become a victim," he said. "But I've seen dead bodies of my brothers and sisters in the movement every day. I'm not afraid to die." In another 45 minutes, the crowd we stood in would scramble for cover as rifle bullets pecked at the asphalt.

The army, in testing the protesters' promises to "fight to the death," has drawn thousands of Pichets to these urban front lines. That so many within the Red Shirt camp are compelled to extremism, however, is a partly monster of the movement's own creation.

Broadly speaking, the Red Shirts are a loose assemblage encompassing the disgruntled laboring classes, new-money Thais with an anti-establishment grudge and, as many in the Thai media allege, poor Thais paid about $13 a day to rally.

The guiding leadership -- parliamentarians, aging activists and celebrities -- often invoke the language of non-violent, civil disobedience. But the movement has also tolerated a militant streak, personified by a renegade army major general -- Khattiya "Seh Daeng" Sawisdipol -- who flouted superiors and ordered his personal militia to protect protesters with force.

Khattiya died on May 17, days after taking a sniper's bullet to the temple in a killing the government disavows. His political martyrdom was one of the sparks igniting the street violence that's since engulfed Bangkok.

Khattiya's disciples' sense of invincibility was also fostered by the military itself, which for weeks allowed protesters to push the government around before responding with extreme force.

Since rallies began in mid-March, protesters have mobbed Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's offices and private residence, splattering his gates with their own blood in a ritual curse. They have climbed parliament's gates and yanked guns from security forces.

Even troops themselves fled a bloody raid last month after mysterious black-clad men with rifles -- linked to Seh Daeng by government spokesmen -- emerged and fired back. A throng of protesters later took troops hostage, seized dozens of assault rifles and dismantled six armed personnel carriers with tools and bare hands.

As this conflict has dragged on, sober voices inside the movement have grown noticeably quieter. One of the camp's most moderate statesman, Veera Musikapong, has not appeared in public for days. The Thai media has ruminated over a split within the Red Shirts that has left hardliners with more sway.

Remaining Red Shirt leaders, however, insist they are but slingshot-toting Davids, they say, ground down by Goliaths with power, influence and assault rifles.

But moderate Red Shirt supporters such as Prateep Ungsongtham Hata, a renowned slum activist, openly fret the movement is sliding towards a more shadowy, militant incarnation. By setting up a safe haven for less-daring protesters outside the conflict zone, she has attempted to lend a sense of orderly demonstration to the battles raging just a mile away.

"There are two ways out of this," Prateep explained, ducking into an empty guard shack. The windows were papered over with yesterday's newsprint to provide concealment from snipers.

"The government can stop the killing. The two sides can start chatting," she said. "But the government leaders will have to stop always pointing the finger at us and point it at themselves."

As for civil war?

"If the government keeps on killing," she said, "these people will go underground, basing themselves in the provinces. When you can't fight openly, you become unseen."

Prateep's eyes settled on a newspaper, pasted over the window and illuminated by sunlight. In the lead photo, blood pooled beneath the head of a protester shot dead the day before.

"Honestly, I'm very depressed," she said. "I never thought it would come to this."

Source : theatlantic.com

READ MORE - Thailand: Will It Be Civil War?

Hmong Refugees Live in Fear in Laos and Thailand

By William Lloyd George / Chiang Mai Saturday, Jul. 24, 2010

Recently U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Laos Foreign Minister Thongloun Sisoulith met in Washington for the highest-level talks between the two countries since the end of the Vietnam War. For the U.S., the meeting was part of a strategy to re-engage with Asia, while Laos hoped the D.C. visit would boost trade. After years of frosty relations following America's carpet-bombing of Laos in the 1960s and '70s, the meeting was overall a symbolic break from the past.

Improved relations with the U.S. would surely benefit most citizens of Laos — though not everyone is so upbeat about the possibility. Meeting TIME at a secret location in Thailand, a Laotian Hmong refugee who recently escaped a repatriation camp in Laos says the Washington exchange will do nothing to help thousands of Hmong still being persecuted in Laos. "They are only talking about imports and exports, not how to help Hmong people who once supported America," said Pao Chang using an alias for security.

During the Vietnam War, the CIA enlisted more than 60,000 Hmong from the Royal Lao Army to form a secret army to disrupt Communist supply lines and rescue American pilots. Fierce mercenaries, the Hmong acted as an effective counter to North Vietnam's growing support base in Laos. When the Communists won and the CIA left, a handful of senior Hmong were flown out, but the majority that remained faced Communist retribution for siding with America. The Pathet Lao publicly announced they would wipe out the Hmong and attacks intensified. Some Hmong groups fled deep into the jungle — where more than 3,000 continue to live to this day — the rest fled to Thailand seeking asylum, where they remained until recently.

On Dec. 28, 2009, Pao Chang and more than 4,000 other Hmong asylum seekers in Thailand were rounded up by local Thai authorities and forcibly sent back to Laos. "We based these actions on our immigration law, which considers them to be illegal migrants, so they were dealt with accordingly," Panitan Wattanayagorn, spokesman for the Thai prime minister, told TIME. Only six years earlier, Thai authorities had helped resettle 14,000 Hmong refugees in the U.S. The Thai about-face on its Hmong population sparked an international furor, with countries including America and Australia condemning Thailand for refusing to protect the minority group. Although Thailand never signed the United Nations Convention on Refugees, the U.N. was outraged the government had involuntarily sent back refugees. "To proceed would not only endanger the protection of the refugees, but set a very grave international example," said the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, at the time.

Even more troubling for the United Nations were the 158 Hmong refugees being held in the Nong Kai immigration detention center, who had been granted refugee status and invited to resettle by America, Netherlands, Australia and Canada. "We were ready to leave," said Pao Chang, showing his family's acceptance letter from a third country along with tickets for a flight out. "Then Thai authorities came to us on the day and just said, 'No, you can't go. We have an agreement with Laos that no Hmong are to leave Thailand.'" Asked for comment, Wattanayagorn said the move came only after "Laos had assured Thailand the returning Hmong would not face persecution."

Thailand's involvement in the U.S.'s "Secret War" in Cambodia and Laos is often overlooked. Allied with the U.S. against the Communists in Laos and Vietnam, the Thai military trained many of the senior Hmong leaders. Times have clearly changed. Thailand is now Laos's number one foreign investor, and according to Joe Davy, a Hmong advocate, deporting the Hmong is just another example of political fence-mending following years of border conflict. "The main reason Thailand sent them back was pressure from Laos, which has always accused Thailand of harboring elements of the Hmong resistance," Davy says.

After a series of multilateral meetings in December 2009, the Laotian government agreed that the 158 registered refugees could resettle elsewhere on the condition they spent 30 days in Laos. "They told us if we were still not happy in Laos, we could leave, but it was just a trick," says Pao Chang. A few days later, says Pao Chang, Thai soldiers forced him onto a bus and took him to Laos where authorities ordered him not to tell foreigners he wanted to leave. He says he was then sent to a repatriation camp, where armed guards — many of whom had fought against the rag-tag groups of Hmong fighters who remain in the jungle — had his family under 24-hour surveillance. Pao Chang says he was given a "flimsy house and a tiny plot of bad farmland." Says Pao Chang with tears in eyes: "The conditions were unbearable; there were no schools and only two nurses for thousands of people.

In order to ease the international community's concerns, the Laotian authorities organized two official visits for foreign diplomats. During one visit, Pao Chang says a senior commander gave him a script ordering him to tell diplomats he was being looked after and had no desire to move. Those who refused to abide by the script were denied day passes to leave the camps. After unknown assailants burned down camp farmland, Pao Chang decided he had to escape. "If I stayed, they eventually would have found a way to kill me," he says.

Pao Chang escaped the camp, traveling through Laos at night without identification and illegally crossed the Mekong River. Chang says, "If the authorities would have caught me, I would have been executed." Now in Thailand, the future of Pao Chang and other families who have followed remains unclear. He has papers from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) certifying his refugee status, but he has little faith they will protect them. "Last time I showed this paper to Thailand they hit me on the head," Pao Chang says.

Wattanayagorn says if they are caught, returning Hmong asylum seekers would be treated as illegal migrants and sent back to Laos — regardless of U.N. documents. According to Kraisak Choonhavan, MP of the Democrat Party, Thailand has never signed an international refugee treaty so it is not bound by UNHCR rules, but even Choonhavan didn't know why Thailand wasn't letting the Hmong families invited by third countries leave. "There is something strange going on here," he says.

source : www.time.com

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Kyrgyzstan: Not Washington's Crisis

By Doug Bandow on 6.17.10 @ 6:09AM
The scenes are sadly predictable. Ethnic conflict. Murdered innocents. Distressed refugees.

We have seen them all many times before around the world. But despite heart-felt pleas for Washington to do something, the Obama administration should keep the troops at home. The U.S. cannot afford another lengthy deployment in another distant and unstable client state.

Kyrgyzstan is one of the Central Asian Soviet republics that won independence when the Soviet Union dissolved. Kyrgyzstan's president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, was overthrown in a popular uprising in early April. Some 84 people died in the violence and Bakiyev first fled south, where he retained political support, before going into exile in Belarus.

Bakiyev was an opposition leader when he led a similar uprising against his authoritarian predecessor Askar Akayev, tagged the "tulip revolution." Unfortunately, the tulips soon wilted. A month before he was forced from office the State Department reported:

[R]estrictions on citizens' right to change their government; arbitrary killing, torture, and abuse by law enforcement officials; impunity; poor prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; lack of judicial independence; pressure on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and opposition leaders, including government harassment; pressure on independent media; government detention of assembly organizers; authorities' failure to protect refugees adequately; pervasive corruption.

Few in the West mourned Bakiyev's ouster, though both the Bush and Obama administrations had generally overlooked his flaws in return for access to Manas airbase. Some American defenders of the Afghanistan war spoke darkly of Russian involvement in his overthrow, but the Kyrgyz people had ample reason to dump him.

Since then hope built that the interim administration of Roza Otunbayeva would adopt liberal reforms. A new constitution was to be voted on later in June and a parliamentary election was supposed to take place under that constitution in October.

Now all bets are off. After the uprising there were a series of violent incidents across the country, many Kyrgyz versus Uzbek. Last week in Osh, Kyrgyzstan's second-largest city, the "violence escalated into more extensive fighting, burning, killing, and expulsions," according to journalist Vicken Cheterian.

Officially nearly 200 are dead and 1,600 injured, though unofficial estimates run higher. Uzbeks have been the principal victims, though Tartars and ethnic Russians also have been targeted. Some 80,000 or so people fled across the border into neighboring Uzbekistan before that government closed the border. Thousands more have been prevented from crossing.

The police have been unable to contain the violence; in fact, in some towns Uzbeks accused the security forces of joining in the killing. So the government has mobilized the army. Unfortunately, that force has received no training in dealing with civil strife and there is no guarantee that, if deployed, it would escape ethnic division as well. Mobilization, warned Paul Quinn-Judge of the International Crisis Group, "seems to be another indication that the interim government is running short on options."

The government in Bishkek appealed to the U.S. for military aid, including rubber bullets and by some accounts, denied by the American embassy in Bishkek, troops. Then the Kyrgyz authorities asked Russia for peacekeeping troops. Interim president Otunbayeva said: "we need the arrival of outside forces to calm the situation down." Ousted President Bakiyev seemed to agree, telling a press conference that international peacekeepers were necessary to "bring the situation back to normal."

Both Washington and Moscow said no. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called the atmosphere in Kyrgyzstan "intolerable" but referred the issue to members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, made up of seven former Soviet states. The initial CSTO answer was to offer "comprehensive assistance," including military equipment, but not troops. However, Russian Nikolai Patrushev said that the meeting "did not rule out the use of any means that the CSTO has at its potential, depending on how the situation evolves."

The drumbeat immediately started for intervention. For example, Human Rights Watch proposed a UN-sponsored force, which almost certainly would include U.S. troops.

James Collins and Matthew Rojansky of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace want a joint NATO, CSTO, and Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) force: "NATO and the U.S. must immediately engage with regional partners to help restore security." Moreover, "By holding out a hand not only to the Kyrgyz authorities, but to national regional partners, including the CSTO, and the OSCE, the United States and NATO can demonstrate the sincerity of their interest in regional security."

So far the Obama administration has said little. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley endorsed humanitarian assistance and said that "we seek a coordinated international response to the ongoing violence there."

However, the administration hasn't closed the door to military intervention. An unnamed administration official was quoted as saying: "if we get to the moment that unavoidably there has to be troops, we will be doing it in a cooperative way, not a zero-sum way. We'd like the international community to be fully invested and supportive if military intervention happens."

The question, of course, is why anyone in Washington would want to make such an investment.

The violence has at least temporarily ebbed, and Bishkek has withdrawn its request for foreign troops. But no one knows if this is the end of or merely a pause in the violence. Osh is now divided ethnically, as well-armed groups have fortified their respective enclaves. All the causes of the violent spasm remain.

Observers fear that the violence could spread to both Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Cheterian calls the stakes "very high, for the country and the region alike." Carnegie's Collins and Rojansky go so far as to claim that the recent events in Kyrgyzstan "pose a defining challenge for mutual security in the Eurasian region as a whole."

Yet the strife, though ugly, is little different from that which routinely breaks out in unstable, divided countries around the world. And there are many potential sparks for violence in the region: drug trafficking, gang disputes, the activity of Islamic militants, squabbles over land or water rights, resistance to other authoritarian regimes, and arbitrary boundaries dividing ethnic groups.

So far the fighting is contained in Kyrgyzstan. Uzbekistan has given no indication that it is inclined to intervene to aid Kyrgyzstan's Uzbeks, which could lead to efforts to create a "greater Uzbekistan." Chaos in Kyrgyzstan could aid Islamic extremists, but all of the region's governments have trained all of their many tools of repression on this movement.

The fighting would have to be truly exceptional to threaten the stability of nearby states. And even if their stability was at risk, that would be of only modest geopolitical interest to major nations, most notably China (which Kyrgyzstan borders), Russia, and the far more distant U.S.

Collins and Rojansky suggest that neither Russia nor the U.S. "can afford to allow the violence there to destroy the vulnerable Kyrgyz state or plunge the region into a wider ethnic war." Yet America's only interest, other than humanitarian, in this obviously vulnerable state is the use of Manas airbase for supplying Afghanistan.

In fact, Manas sits in the north, well away from the fighting. Moreover, Washington knows that the facility, in operation in 2002, is vulnerable to local and regional politics. Last year the Bakiyev government announced that it planned to close the facility after the Russians increased their aid; Bishkek reversed itself after the U.S. agreed to treble its rental payments. Although the interim government said it planned no changes, there are no guarantees for the future. Intervening to save the base would be penny-wise and pound-foolish, especially since the unexpected and unpredictable consequences of acting also could threaten access to Manas.

History and geography give Moscow a much greater interest in Kyrgyzstan. It was part of the Soviet Union, is located close to Russia today, and contains some 750,000 ethnic Russians. Yet despite fears that Moscow is intent on reasserting its authority over the former constituent parts of the Soviet Union, there appears to be no enthusiasm in Moscow for intervening. "This is the last thing that Russia wants to do, get involved in a civil war in a failed state," said Sergei Karaganov, head of the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy in Moscow. A long-term force commitment there also would drain funds from a military modernization program already clipped by lower energy prices.

Washington should stay out of Kyrgyzstan, whether or not Kyrgyzstan's government renews its request for foreign troops. If all that was needed was a temporary garrison to separate potential combatants, then other nations could provide the personnel. The U.S. military is very busy elsewhere.

Unfortunately, a passive occupation probably wouldn't be enough. It would be necessary to resolve numerous deep-seated divisions to prevent a recurrence of violence. And that's not something Washington likely could do. As Russian President Medvedev noted, "all the problems of Kyrgyzstan have internal roots."

Strife between Uzbek and Kyrgyz killed hundreds in 1990 and was only put down with Soviet troops. But abstract ethnic differences were not the only spark for violence. Both Kyrgyz and Uzbeks are largely Muslim and speak a mutually understood Turkic language. Alexander A. Cooley of Columbia dismisses the "narrative of long-simmering ethnic tension."

Kyrgyz tend to be nomads, many of whom lack property while Uzbeks were farmers who have moved into a wider variety of commercial activities. Kyrgyz resentment against the more economically successful Uzbeks is high.

These divisions have spilled over into the political sphere. Many Uzbeks complain of discrimination and are pushing for broader political and cultural rights. Some members of the interim government blame local Uzbek extremists, including leader Kadyrzhan Batyrov, for their inflammatory rhetoric.

Many Uzbeks helped oust Bakiyev, who had used Kyrgyz nationalism to build support. But Bakiyev retained particularly strong support in the south among ethnic Kyrgyz. The interim government accuses him of stoking the violence, which he denies, but there is evidence of his son's involvement, and Bishkek is seeking the latter's extradition from Great Britain.

In short, if Washington intervened, it would have to assume complex nation-building as well as peacekeeping duties. And there is nothing to suggest that its occupation would be short. More than a decade later the U.S. still has troops in Kosovo, which remains a failed state-wannabe. Iraq's future is very much in doubt and American forces remain on station. No one would point to the Karzai government in Afghanistan as a model for anything.

And some people would have the Obama administration now try to fix Kyrgyzstan?

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