In a well-organised campaign of protests and demonstrations in the early part of 2007, Buddhist monks and organisations pressed for Thailand's new constitution to proclaim Buddhism as the country's national religion.Footnote ² Yet the above quotation predated this campaign by almost 18 months: it was part of a 20-point declaration issued by the Pattani Sangha Council in response to the violent October 2005 attack on Wat Phromprasit in Panare, Pattani. The national religion campaign of 2007 reflected a growing sense that Buddhism – the religion of more than 90 per cent of the Thai population – was under threat from a resurgent and militant Islam concentrated in the south. The recent rise of Buddhist chauvinism in Thailand illustrates the shortcomings of earlier claims that Thai Buddhism is essentially inclusivist and tolerant — in short, that it constitutes a ‘civil religion’.

To demonstrate the growing implausibility of the ‘civil religion’ perspective, this article reviews a number of issues relating to the politics of Buddhist identity in Thailand's southern border provinces, which have been the site of renewed violent conflict since January 2004, claiming more than 2,000 lives.Footnote ³ Issues addressed include the militarisation of Buddhist temples, the formation of Buddhist militias, and the arming of the region's Buddhist population. Following the Wat Phromprasit incident, prominent monks in the three provinces launched public attacks on the stance of the National Reconciliation Commission, a body created by the Thaksin government to propose a peaceful solution to the southern crisis. These interventions by senior monks were apparently prompted by past and present senior military chiefs, but also testified to deep misgivings in wider Buddhist society. Underlying the abbots' uncompromising statements lay widespread Buddhist fears that they could ultimately be ‘swallowed’ by Muslim neighbours and driven from their land. Drawing on a period of extended fieldwork based at Prince of Songkhla University (PSU), Pattani,Footnote ⁴ the article uses interview materials and other texts to explore the fears and aspirations of the region's Buddhist community.

Thai Buddhist studies are too often pervaded by a set of simplistic and rarely challenged assumptions: Buddhism is a peaceful religion, Thailand is a tolerant country guided by the exercise of metta (loving-kindness) and characterised by religious freedom, while Thai Buddhists enjoy harmonious relations with people of other religions. Charles Keyes has been at the forefront of these claims. Indeed, he presses the idea of Thai Buddhism as a ‘civil Buddhism’ so far that he even characterises top-down interventions in the sangha carried out by the Thai monarchy as ‘revolutionary’ and progressive in intent.Footnote ⁵ In his keynote address to the 1999 International Conference on Thai Studies, Keyes actually compared Thailand's ‘civil religion’ with that of the United States, and drew parallels between the Thai term, ‘satsana’ (religion), and the ubiquity of the word ‘God’ in American public discourse.Footnote ⁶ In doing so, he glossed over the Thai state's suppression of dissident Buddhist movements, and ignored the ways in which Islam and other religions were subordinated to the demands of a Buddhist hegemony. Trying to obscure the distinction between a civic and ethnonationalist understanding of religion and identity is a highly misleading enterprise. As Jerry Muller argues:

Scholars who suggest that Thai Buddhist ethno-nationalism has somehow quietly transformed itself into a harmless civic religion are engaging in some very wishful thinking indeed. Enraptured by the great philosopher-monk Buddhadasa's distinctive but potentially subversive liberal universalism, Donald Swearer similarly presents Thai state Buddhism as a benign ‘civil religion of the centre’, which he contrasts with the ‘new movements on the periphery’.Footnote ⁸ Both Keyes and Swearer adopt a romanticised view of Thai religion, and skate over ample evidence of the ways in which Thailand's Buddhist institutions refuse to tolerate diversity, and view other religions with ill-concealed wariness.Footnote ⁹ At bottom, they imply that because movements such as Santi Asoke and Wat Thammakaya still exist, there is de facto freedom of religion in Thailand. Yet comparisons between Thai religion and American religion are dangerously misleading; while the legitimacy of the American state is based on a set of ideas enshrined in the constitution and a bill of rights, in Thailand state legitimacy derives from a set of national myths organised around the shibboleth ‘nation, religion, king’. Religion in Thailand is national, particularist, and deeply uncivil. Robb Stewart's provocative assertion that ‘Freedom of religion does not exist in Thailand’ has yet to be convincingly refuted.Footnote ¹⁰

As Suwanna Satha-Anand has recently argued, there has been a shrinking space for tolerance in Thai Buddhism, especially in its relations with Islam and Christianity. Muslims have become increasingly threatening in the eyes of conservative Buddhists, who look askance even at such minor changes as the provision of Muslim prayer facilities at Bangkok's main railway station.Footnote ¹¹ Anti-Muslim sentiment amongst Thai Buddhists is growing, and the conflict in the south is sparking a heightened sense of Buddhist chauvinism both locally and nationally. Evidence of widespread anti-Muslim sentiments can be readily found on popular Thai language internet bulletin boards such as panthip.com.Footnote ¹² Buddhist temples and monks are becoming a central element in the struggle against Malay Muslim militants in the southern border provinces. On the ground, there is very little communication between Buddhist and Muslim clerics, let alone any sense of a shared desire to normalise the situation and to avert further violence. Clerics from both religions have been targeted in the conflict, and the Thai state – led by the Queen – has initiated moves further to militarise the Buddhist community through the creation of armed militias.Footnote ¹³

As a majority group within Thailand as a whole, but a minority (roughly 20 per cent) of roughly 300,000 people in the southern border provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat, Buddhists find themselves in both a privileged and a threatened position. Buddhists hold a disproportionate degree of economic and administrative power in the southern border provinces – they control most businesses, and hold most senior bureaucratic positions – yet are also becoming increasingly marginalised by an assertive Malay Muslim community. In the historically Malay southern border region, there has long been considerable resentment against Thai rule, which was only formally established in 1909. Violent movements with ‘separatist’ aspirations emerged regularly during the twentieth century, but an uneasy peace had been created in the region since the early 1980s, which saw a de facto social compact between Malay Muslim elites and the Thai state. However, Malay resentment grew during the heavy-handed administration of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra (2001–06), which coincided with the emergence of a revitalised militant movement that actively targeted Buddhists, both government officials and civilians. Between January 2004 and July 2007, nearly half of those killed in political violence in the border region were Buddhist, though Buddhists constituted only around 20 per cent of the population.Footnote ¹⁴ Though only a small minority of Malay Muslims were actively engaged in violent struggle, a larger proportion gave some tacit support to the movement, rejecting the Buddhist-dominated Thai state, for example, by removing their children from government schools. Some Buddhists have quit the area (estimates range between 35,000 and 100,000), while others with nowhere to go – especially the more impoverished rural dwellers – are feeling increasingly encircled. In certain areas, southern Buddhists are arming and training themselves in preparation for what they fear might become a real battle for future survival.

A series of attacks on Buddhist monks and civilians lie behind such fears, beginning with the murder of a 64-year-old monk in Bacho, Narathiwat on 22 January 2004, and the killing of two monks and a 13-year-old novice in Yala two days later. These attacks served as a trigger for the rise of more militant Buddhist sentiments towards Muslims. A psychological turning point was reached with the 16 October 2005 attack on Wat Phromprasit in Pattani, during which an elderly monk and two temple boys were killed. Although only a tiny number of monks had actually been attacked, the Wat Phromprasit incident was taken as signalling the onset of a systematic militant policy of targeting Buddhist religious institutions, and triggered a wave of reactions on the part of the Buddhist community in the southern border provinces.Footnote ¹⁵ These reactions ranged from the creation of armed militias, to protests against the policies of the Thaksin government. Attitudes among the Buddhist community were further hardened by unprovoked attacks on civilians. At the Narathiwat village of Kuching Rupa on 19 May 2006, two female Buddhist teachers were taken hostage in a room at the village nursery and beaten with sticks; one teacher, Khru Juling Pongkunmul, went into a coma and eventually died in January 2007.Footnote ¹⁶ The Khru Juling case evoked a great outpouring of national grief, tinged with growing overtones of Buddhist chauvinism.Footnote ¹⁷ A March 2007 attack on a minibus in Yala province produced even more intense reactions: eight Buddhist passengers were shot through the head in broad daylight, in an incident that triggered demonstrations across the country.Footnote ¹⁸ After the van attack, the Queen was quoted as saying: ‘We have to help people there to survive. If they need to be trained, train them. If they need to be armed, arm them.’Footnote ¹⁹ When a young Buddhist woman was shot and burned alive in Yala the following month, 300 outraged local Buddhists paraded her charred body around the town and carried it to the provincial hall, where army commander and coup leader General Sonthi Boonyaratglin (himself a Muslim) was forced to view the corpse.

Muslims could swallow Buddhists: Minority fears

In November 2005, while visiting friends in Bangkok, I was passed a copy of a DVD then circulating among upper-middle-class Thai Buddhists. Entitled ‘Muslims swallow Buddhists’, the DVD featured a monk giving a lengthy oration on the subject of Muslim-Buddhist relations in Thailand.Footnote ²⁰ The sermon began rather mildly, but gradually assumed an increasingly alarmist tone. The monk argued that separatism in the south was a hellish doctrine, as illustrated by terrible incidents such as the attack on a temple that killed monks and temple boys.Footnote ²¹ This attack was a violent action against Buddhism, yet in the 2,500 year history of the Buddhist religion, there had never been any violence in Buddhism and no killing on behalf of the Buddha. Ironically, roles had now been reversed in the southern provinces: whereas in the past soldiers had sought amulets from monks to protect them, now monks needed to have soldiers with them for their own protection during the morning alms round.Footnote ²² For all the talk of ‘rule of law’ and ‘reconciliation’, ‘they’ did not care about such ideas, and only valued the use of force. The King and Queen were extremely worried about the situation, and the Queen had created a ‘widows’ village' to accommodate those who had lost their husbands in the violence.

The monk had been told by military officers that the situation in the south was growing very serious: the separatists planned first to eliminate monks and temples, then make the region a forbidden area for Buddhists, who would be driven out of their homes and forced to move to other parts of the country. Eventually the south would be like Afghanistan, where huge ancient Buddha images had been blown up. The aim of the movement was to occupy not just the three provinces, but the whole country. It was essential that Buddhist land be protected so that the phaendin (Thai land and country) would not be divided. The strategy of the separatists was to rule the whole country using their religious laws. Muslims were now moving to many parts of the north and Isan and setting up surau and mosques everywhere, which would soon be as ubiquitous as Buddhist temples. He declared: ‘I don't talk about this without evidence, but I heard it from many respected senior people who told me the same message and they are quite worried about the problem.’

The speaker painted a picture of Thailand 20 years hence, transformed through political changes. The three pillars of nation, religion and monarchy would be weaker. The nation consisted of land and human resources, but these people would occupy the land by buying it. Land was being bought up all over the north and Isan on the pretext of planting rubber trees, which were now appearing everywhere. But the real purpose was to occupy the land legally first, so that their people could be moved in later. The next stage of the plan was to make their religious law into common law. He claimed that while the Supreme Patriarch was only the head of around 350,000 monks, the Chularajamontri was the head of a much larger community of 3–4 million Muslims. The monk referred to a 1997 law requiring provinces to set up provincial councils, which could be used to manipulate the budget and get whatever they wanted.Footnote ²³

The speaker went on to complain about the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC),Footnote ²⁴ which he asserted had scored a notable ‘own goal’: some members had argued that the three provinces actually belonged to Malaysia, while the Thais had only come later to the area from China. He declared that Thailand was suffering from enfeebled national institutions: the monarchy was growing weaker as the King and Queen grew older, and the religious institution was also weakening. There were an estimated 6,000 abandoned temples,Footnote ²⁵ and a declining number of monks and novices. Buddhists had actually failed to realise that they were being invaded; rather than accepting terrible incidents such as the murder of monks and of two marines, Buddhists and Buddhist institutions should start to speak out against what was happening, condemning these incidents and pointing out how they violated religious doctrines. Otherwise, opportunists would capitalise on public weariness with the violence to occupy territory, make demands and bargain, not just for control of the three provinces, but for the entire country. The aim of the movement was to turn the conflict into an international issue and bring in the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which had helped East Timor to gain independence:Footnote ²⁶

The sermon highlighted a number of recurrent themes in conservative Thai Buddhist discourse relating to the south. These included: an essentialised and idealised view of Thai Buddhism as peaceful, a reading that overlooked structural and other violence used to maintain the Thai state; a visceral fear and mistrust of Islam; and anxiety about the future of Thailand, inseparable from overtly expressed fears about the post-succession monarchy. Other key themes included the important role played by the Queen in boosting Buddhist morale in the region, a deep suspicion of the National Reconciliation Commission, and a parallel mistrust of the provincial Islamic councils and the Chularajamontri. Underlying this mistrust were fears concerning the institutionalisation of Islamic law; apprehension concerning long-term demographic spread and growth of Muslim populations; and fears about Muslim land ownership – real or imagined – in other parts of Thailand. In addition, many conservative Buddhists were dubious about the mediating role of international organisations, especially the OIC, and a deep-rooted belief that a referendum on the south could be a prelude to the division of the Thai nation. These themes together pointed to declining tolerance towards Islam on the part of Buddhists.

The DVD was passed to me along with a CD-Rom containing a number of documents, slide sets and PowerPoint presentations: one PowerPoint was about royally sponsored programmes to support and defend the Buddhist community in the south (complete with some horrific pictures of beheadings),Footnote ²⁸ while another featured a graphic presentation of photographs showing the attack on Wat Phromprasit, including images of the bodies of the victims. Taken together, these visual texts constituted a highly emotional call for action, a call being heeded at the highest levels of Bangkok Buddhist society. The texts clearly illustrated the degree to which Buddhist ‘tolerance’ was beginning to unravel in the face of perceived threats from a resurgent and aggressive Islam.

Leaflets and anonymous messages

In the southern Thai conflict, formal and public statements form only one element of the popular discourse about the ongoing violence. Equally salient is the informal discourse to be found in anonymous messages, often posted on village notice boards, thrown over garden walls, left in markets, or passed from hand to hand. Many of these messages explicitly allude to the religious divide between Muslims and Buddhists. Some of the messages appear to come from anti-state militants or their sympathisers, while others resemble ‘black’ propaganda distributed by state officials. In some cases, militants may be distributing ‘pro-Buddhist’ leaflets which are actually intended to inflame communal tensions and provoke violent reactions from the Buddhist community.

Warning leaflets are among the most common variety: some are left at the sites of violent incidents, while others urge local Buddhists to leave the area. One leaflet read simply:

Another, addressed to a principal, read:

Another, left at the site of a shooting incident in Yarang, read simply:

Leaflets purporting to come from the Buddhist side were typically much more long-winded, containing catalogues of complaints against the Muslim community and its leadership. One particularly interesting leaflet called upon Buddhists to boycott trade with Muslims:

Leaflets such as this cannot be taken as literal statements of the views of ordinary Buddhists in the southern border provinces, but they were carefully crafted to provoke emotional reactions: the sentiments expressed here would resonate with large numbers of people, and testify to the deep-seated anxieties of the minority community. Themes that emerge include the untrustworthiness of both local and national politicians, fears that Muslim employees and customers could be supporting militant activity, and the notion that only the Queen and the military could be trusted to defend Buddhists in the region. According to the leaflets, the only effective response to the continuing violence was the kind of hard-line security tactics employed at Tak Bai. Such leaflets, some possibly written by military intelligence officers, aimed to strengthen the determination of local Buddhists to resist violence caused by Muslims. In fact, however, these leaflets also created a heightened sense of paranoia, thereby playing into the hands of groups intent on terrorising Buddhist populations. A subtext of such leaflets was an attempt to discredit prevailing norms about the importance of mutual tolerance between the two major religious communities of the region, and to foster an alternative discourse based on enmity and fear.

Buddhist temples and Thai territory

Buddhist temples in the southern border provinces represent enclaves of Thailand's majority religion, outposts of ‘nation, religion and king’ that need to be defended from physical, religious, ethnic, cultural and political incursions by the Malay Muslims who comprise most of the area's population. Each functioning temple is a visible assertion of the Thai Buddhist state's continuing suzerainty over this rebellious region. For this reason, the Thai state has invested considerable moral and military capital in securing Buddhist temples for symbolic reasons. In practice, however, the definition of a ‘functioning temple’ has to be modified and adapted to the security context of the southern border. In a normal Thai Buddhist temple, there is an intimate relationship between the monks who reside there and the immediately surrounding community; monks perform a daily alms-round, walking around their own community to receive donations of food. Villagers who provide this food typically visit their local temple regularly, and receive religious services from the monks in a de facto exchange. However, in the southern border provinces the performance of the alms round is often impossible – at one point in November 2006, some Narathiwat monks suspended the practice completelyFootnote ³⁶ – or it takes place only with the backing of armed military guards. Monks are often transported by their minders to carry out alms-rounds at some distance from their actual temples, so breaking the connection between temple and community. Many Buddhist temples in the southern border provinces exist only nominally: monks are imported from elsewhere, alms are collected at a distance, and there may be no real interaction between monks and the mainly Muslim villagers whose homes adjoin the temple. Even a senior royal aide acknowledged the scale of the problem:

The example of one southern temple nicely illustrates the point.Footnote ³⁹ The monks at Wat Ban LekFootnote ⁴⁰ had no communication at all with the surrounding community, which was 100 per cent Muslim; when they performed their alms round each morning, they were taken by soldiers to a nearby Buddhist area about 3 kilometres away. A team of 12 soldiers provided round-the-clock security for the monks; this was not far from another temple where a serious militant attack has taken place. Previously, the temple had only two or three monks, but when I visited there were seven, their ranks boosted by volunteer ordainees from outside the area. The abbot confirmed that these volunteer monks came from Lopburi,Footnote ⁴¹ but when I pressed him as to whether any of them were soldiers, he told me he had never asked them. Wat Ban Lek dated back to the Ayudhaya period and had a couple of very fine old buildings; however, after the remaining Buddhists left the locality, the temple was abandoned around the early 1980s. The temple grounds had become an area where local Muslim villagers grazed their animals. The current abbot had been appointed in 1998, with a mission to re-establish the temple in order to ensure that this land remained a Buddhist area. Yet his life there was extremely fragile; the temple had very few visitors.

Wat Ban Lek was an interesting example of how a temple can exist without a surrounding Buddhist community; the abbot explained that there were only two temples like this in the province. He had reclaimed the temple himself from Muslim encroachment, encouraged by a neighbouring abbot who was his mentor. The reclamation of Wat Ban Lek was a highly political act: when I suggested to him that temples with no Buddhist communities simply might have to be abandoned, or converted to other uses, he could not accept the idea. This abbot had clearly adopted the preservation of this Buddhist enclave within a Muslim community as a personal life mission, and was being strongly supported by the military. Without a commitment by the nearby community and the state, this temple could not continue to function. Even so, its activities were largely symbolic, since it had no real parishioners.

Wat Ban Yai, another isolated temple in the region, was also guarded round the clock by a contingent of soldiers. Only a single monk – the elderly abbot – was in residence. When asked their function, the NCO in charge of the 12 soldiers based at the temple explained that protecting the abbot was their primary task. The abbot was too infirm to conduct an alms round himself, and his food came from the alms collected by monks from neighbouring temples. A local middle-aged woman whose family had been victims of the violence had been hired to assist the abbot. As at Wat Ban Lek, elaborate mechanisms had been established to ensure that an essentially non-viable temple could continue to have a symbolic existence. However, Wat Ban Yai had far larger numbers of visitors than Wat Ban Lek, since the abbot was well known for producing much-valued amulets, and was skilled in de-hexing: removing spells cast by others. The abbot was still in great demand among Muslims as well as Buddhists for his de-hexing services, activities attesting to syncretic modes of religious activity, in which local Buddhists and Muslims had overlapping traditions and beliefs. Such shared religious and community space had now diminished, and Buddhists and Muslims in the area no longer attended one another's festivals, or exchanged much more than cursory greetings.

Wat Ban Lek and Wat Ban Yai were extreme examples of the plight of Buddhist temples and their associated communities in the region. Such temples had ceased to function as religious centres in any normal sense; largely stripped of civil dimensions, they existed primarily as symbolic outposts of a hollowed-out and de-legitimised Thai state, their continuing existence only secured through military force.

Temples and security

While few temples were as dependent on the military as Wat Ban Lek and Wat Ban Yai, many Buddhist temples were used as improvised army camps, housing troops who were performing duties such as escorting teachers to and from school, patrolling adjoining Muslim areas, and protecting the monks at the temples — including during their mornings alms rounds. At a farewell party for troops who had been based at one Narathiwat temple for a year, a Buddhist community leader declared that people would be very sorry to see the soldiers depart because they had become a familiar sight around the village — even though they had never really spoken to them.Footnote ⁴² In recent months, local people had been largely excluded from the temple, which had become primarily an improvised army base housing more than a hundred soldiers. One Pattani abbot was very dubious about the security value of housing soldiers in his temple – sometimes more than two hundred at a time – and refused to travel with a military escort.Footnote ⁴³ He explained that many of the soldiers and monks were on bad terms.

Phra Paisal Visalo, a Chaiyaphum-based peace activist monk and NRC member, argued that it was not really appropriate to allow soldiers with guns into temples, and noted that some abbots did not permit armed men to enter their grounds, since they believed this could make the temple more vulnerable to attack. However, there had been little protest against the policy of assigning troops to temples, in view of the difficult security situation. He was concerned that matters might escalate, however, and felt that monks should not take defensive steps such as wearing bullet-proof vests.Footnote ⁴⁴ Phra Paisal argued that although Buddhism was actually a non-violent religion, relatively few Buddhist monks clearly understood non-violent approaches. Paisal's point was confirmed during my interview with one abbot, who lamented that it was no longer possible for the security forces simply to eliminate ‘bad guys’ who caused problems in the community, which they used to do regularly. He was quite clear that a return to a policy of selective extra-judicial killing would be the best option to address the worsening violence.Footnote ⁴⁵

After 2004, there had been a drive to encourage soldiers from other parts of Thailand to ordain as monks in southern temples: a batch of 75 soldier-monks (phra thahan) were ordained at one Pattani temple in 2005, then assigned to various temples around the province, in a project supported by the Queen.Footnote ⁴⁶ It was a longstanding tradition for government officials – including those serving in the military – to be granted periods of leave during which they could ordain as monks. But the practice of ordaining serving soldiers in the southern border region produced a backlash, increasing the likelihood that monks would be targeted for attack by militants. In theory, soldiers ceased to perform any military duties once they ordained, but local practices varied. One abbot claimed that some phra thahan actually carried guns in their shoulder bags while out on their alms rounds.Footnote ⁴⁷ He was highly critical of the government's security strategy, arguing that large troop deployments were completely ineffective in ameliorating the southern conflict. During 2006, there was a policy shift away from basing troops in Buddhist temples, which Muslim Army Commander Sonthi Boonyaratkalin viewed as a one-sided posture that was likely further to alienate local people. Soldiers were now often based in smaller units posted at more neutral locations, but many remained stationed inside Buddhist temples. The intimate connections between the security forces and the sangha demonstrated that Thai Buddhism was far from civil; it was not even essentially civilian, but an additional arm of the security state. By militarising Buddhism, the authorities arguably risked exposing monks, temples and civilians to further attacks; at the very least, they further reinforced the equation between nation, religion and Buddhism which alienated many Malay Muslims from Thai rule.

Local Buddhist militias

Security for temples was not provided only by full-time soldiers and police officers, but also by local militias. Crucial among these was Or Ror Bor, which operated in Buddhist communities and came under the patronage of the Queen.Footnote ⁴⁸ A senior royal aide-de-camp, General Naphol Boontap, played a key role in establishing this programme and training the volunteers.Footnote ⁴⁹Or Ror Bor drew inspiration from a controversial speech made by the Queen on 16 November 2004, in which she had called upon the 300,000 Buddhists in the southern border provinces to learn how to shoot — adding that she herself would learn to shoot without wearing her glasses.Footnote ⁵⁰ Volunteers were generally better equipped and organised than the more widespread Chor Ror Bor,Footnote ⁵¹ and more highly motivated. Or Ror Bor was also quite well funded: the 46 volunteers in one Pattani scheme received 100 baht for every shift they worked, and eight people were on duty each night, operating in two shifts. Around 30 of them had their own guns, and 20 had been trained to shoot by rangers. Whereas Chor Ror Bor was rather vague in focus, Or Ror Bor was clearly organised to defend Buddhists from Muslim assailants, and security teams were often based in temples. Volunteers worked alongside soldiers and police officers, and constituted a de facto paramilitary force. In the face of criticism that village defence projects exacerbated tensions between Buddhists and Muslims, General Naphol gave a press conference in July 2005:Footnote ⁵²

General Naphol's statement illustrated the pressures placed on rural Buddhists: they had been instructed by the Queen, no less, to remain where they were and to defend themselves at all costs. The assertion that local Buddhists had been born where they were currently living was a problematic one; while many did have deep roots in their localities, some Buddhists in the southern border provinces had migrated there quite recently, as indeed had many Muslims. During the 1960s, the National Economic and Social Development Board sought to boost the Buddhist population of the region through schemes to encourage migration into the area.Footnote ⁵³ In districts such as Bannang Sata in Yala, development projects had led to large-scale movements of population. To complicate matters further, land originally allocated to Buddhists from the upper south in the 1970s had later been sold, often to Buddhists from Pattani or other nearby areas.Footnote ⁵⁴

While the creation of Or Ror Bor was on one level an extremely logical development on the part of a threatened minority community, organising militias along communal lines was also replete with dangers. For some prominent figures in the southern Buddhist community, Or Ror Bor was just a small step in the important direction of preparing for the day when Malay Muslim militants would attempt to drive Buddhists out of their homes en masse. Huge numbers of local Buddhists had bought guns. One district officer did a roaring trade in gun permits; he had a collection of gun catalogues in his office, and would take orders for the weapons at the same time as he issued the licences. A low-ranking government official and shooting instructor who had trained dozens of local Buddhists on a firing range never actually carried a gun,Footnote ⁵⁵ believing that possessing a gun could actually put an individual in greater danger. But every single Buddhist in this rural community knew how to shoot. According to this informant, the purpose of training local Buddhists to shoot was not so that they could protect themselves while travelling to and from work, as popular understandings suggested. Rather, weapons training formed part of the preparations for a future civil war, during which Buddhists might need to defend their communities from large-scale attacks and attempts at ethnic cleansing. The villagers had discussed among themselves how they would defend the community to the last house. The violence had brought Buddhist villagers closer together because of their sense of a shared threat.

During our interview, the shooting instructor pointed to Muslims taking a motorcycle shortcut along a nearby road, and explained that some locals favoured creating their own checkpoint here to keep Muslims out of the Buddhist area, especially after dark.Footnote ⁵⁶ The two communities already enjoyed substantial de facto separation: Buddhists did not send their children to schools – even government schools – in Muslim areas, and vice versa. One local high school which formerly had 1,000 pupils now had less than 200 students. This resulted from Muslim parents moving their children to private Islamic schools, and from local Buddhist parents sending their children to better and safer high schools, either government or private, in the nearby town. The older practices whereby members of the two communities would attend one another's festivals and religious ceremonies had now greatly declined, as had other forms of communication and trade. Only two Muslim traders still visited local Buddhist communities, while no Buddhist now dared play their wares in adjoining Muslim areas. Inter-religious marriage, never practised by more than 2 to 3 per cent of the local population was now extremely rare. Resentment against Muslims was strongest among less educated Buddhist villagers, many of whom harboured intensely negative feelings.

During 2007, informal Buddhist militias became more and more widespread. A senior Yala police officer, Colonel Phitak Iadkaew, was the leading figure behind a movement called ‘Ruam Thai’, which by mid-year had trained some 6,000 members in security awareness and the use of weapons.Footnote ⁵⁷Ruam Thai had established 23 groups across the three provinces and from parts of Songkhla.Footnote ⁵⁸ While the movement operated from a private rented house and received no formal government support, Ruam Thai was clearly condoned and abetted by elements of the Thai state. Allegations that Ruam Thai members were taking part in anti-Muslim vigilante attacks led to an abortive move by the regional police commander to transfer Phitak out of the area in June 2007. Even more alarming was the apparent growth of clandestine Buddhist militias not operating under the umbrella of formal organisations such as Ruam Thai. An informant involved in such a militia explained:

In some areas, there had already been concerted attempts to drive out Buddhist villagers. This was especially true in the Bannang Sata and Than To areas of Yala;Footnote ⁶⁰ following a spate of leaflets and violent incidents, in November 2006, some 227 villagers from two adjoining communities in the area fled their homes and took refuge in a temple in Yala town. While some 33 villagers later returned to their homes, most of the others had no intention of doing so. One of the returnees explained that for Buddhists to abandon their homes would be to abandon part of the land of the Thai nation (phaendin), and could ultimately lead to the map of Thailand being changed.Footnote ⁶¹ Some Buddhists were willing to make the brave, arguably foolhardy decision to stay in high-risk areas, partly for the sake of a passionately held nationalist ideology. Other villagers who had remained in the area expressed growing anxieties about their predicament when I visited them a few months later; some were ready to leave if the Thai government would offer them compensation and help them to resettle elsewhere.Footnote ⁶²

The potential dangers of arming Buddhist militias were clearly illustrated on 9 April 2007, when a group of village defence volunteers opened fire on a group in Ban Pakdi, Bannang Sata, Yala, killing four Muslim students who were returning from the funeral of a local politician killed earlier that day.Footnote ⁶³ The defence volunteers had apparently been attacked with sticks and rocks by funeral goers, who blamed the Thai authorities for the death. Incorporating ordinary citizens into the defence forces could have alarming consequences, leading to further violence and escalating tensions on the ground.Footnote ⁶⁴

While from the outside it might appear that Buddhists were receiving preferential treatment from the state – through measures such as basing army units at temples – rural Buddhists in the three provinces felt largely ignored by the authorities, whom they believed were preoccupied with trying to placate the more vocal and aggressive Muslim majority. Nevertheless, not all Buddhists shared the dark, even apocalyptic views of the interviewees cited here. When one of my most outspoken informants took me to meet a group of his friends, explaining to them that he had been filling me in on their preparations for civil war, another prominent local Buddhist responded ‘Oh, it's not to that point yet.’Footnote ⁶⁵ In one small Narathiwat town, I met a Chinese woman in her eighties whose family had been living and trading in the town since the nineteenth century. Her children had insisted that she move to Bangkok with them following the outbreak of violence in 2004, but after eight months she had returned to Narathiwat, where she continued to sit in the entrance to her shophouse, spending each day chatting to passers-by.Footnote ⁶⁶

As one prominent Sino-Thai businessman in another part of Narathiwat explained, the key to making a good living was maintaining good relations with local Muslims, who comprised the great majority of both the customers and employees for Chinese-owned businesses.Footnote ⁶⁷ Indeed, the category of ‘Buddhist’ needed to be unpacked; typically, government officials and villagers who identified themselves as ‘Thai’ were much more likely to feel alienated from the Muslim community than their Sino-Thai, business-oriented counterparts. Similarly, urban Buddhists who lived alongside Muslims in relatively integrated provincial towns were much more tolerant than rural Buddhists, who typically felt ‘surrounded’ and outnumbered by Muslim neighbours.

Monks and the National Reconciliation Commission

The National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) was established by the Thaksin government in March 2005, under the chairmanship of the respected former Prime Minister Anand Panyarachun. The Commission's brief was to investigate the conflict in the south and make recommendations for alleviating it. Anand was given complete discretion to select the 50 members of the NRC, and he invited a number of prominent southern Muslims to join the Commission, including the heads of the Islamic Councils in the three provinces. He did not, however, invite any of their Buddhist counterparts, the chief monks of the southern provinces. Only two Buddhist monks joined the NRC: Phra Paisal Visalo, a nationally prominent peace activist and Isan-based abbot; and Phra Khru Dhammadharanipala Jotako, the abbot of Wat Thoongkoi, Pattani, who had been born in Nakhorn Si Thammarat and was a long-time advocate of inter-faith dialogue in the south. Anand's decision not to include the chief monks of the southern provinces was entirely understandable, since some of these individuals were highly inimical to ideas of conflict resolution and reconciliation — but their exclusion opened up the NRC to criticism that the body was excessively pro-Muslim.

Such complaints surfaced on 20 October 2005, four days after the Wat Phromprasit attacks. Phra Maha Thawin Khemkaro, chief monk of Pattani province and the abbot of Wat Lak Muang, organised a declaration by the provincial monastic council containing detailed 20 proposals concerning the southern violence, for consideration by the government. The points in the declaration had something of the character of a random wish list, ranging from a demand for all temples in the three provinces to be provided with secure gates,Footnote ⁶⁸ to a request that the government establish a Buddhist university in Pattani.Footnote ⁶⁹ In a subsequent interview elaborating on the declaration, he called for the NRC to be abolished because it was taking sides with the terrorists and exacerbating religious differences.Footnote ⁷⁰ When asked whether this declaration might encourage division between Buddhists and Muslims, he replied that the two communities had already been divided for a long time. He attributed the growing problems to weak leadership and lack of government action, and argued that any organisation set up to address the southern issue should be composed of local people or those with experience of working in the region. Phra Maha Thawin perhaps revealed something of his real agenda when he also remarked that General Panlop Pinmanee and General Kitti Rattanachaya – both well known for their hardline views on the conflict – should be given a role in addressing the problems in the south.Footnote ⁷¹

The interview with the chief Pattani monk quickly became headline news in the Bangkok press, and other comments followed. A group of Mahanikai monks explicitly criticised the lack of representation for local monks on the NRC, and asked how the Commission could reach an informed and balanced view when it included so many Muslims and outsiders.Footnote ⁷² One local monk, Phra Chaiyut Chotiwoangso from Wat Buraphuram in Pattani, complained that the authorities often convened meetings of ‘religious leaders’ to which only Muslims were invited. He was later quoted as saying that Buddhists were now being treated as second class citizens by Muslims in the three provinces, and some monks had left the areas, leaving the remaining monks unable to conduct Buddhist activities properly.Footnote ⁷³ He argued that it was now time for monks in the three border provinces to get involved in politics, since they had kept quiet for a long time, with no results. Phra Khru Sankarm Somjai of Wat Prachumthara in Narathiwat questioned just who the NRC was working for, and pointed out that monks had been forced to change the way they performed their religious duties. In the past they often used Muslim-owned vehicles, but now had to be taken everywhere by Buddhists, make sure they returned to their temples early, and think carefully about the routes they took when travelling.

In response to this chorus of criticism, Anand and other NRC members visited Phra Maha Thawin on 11 November 2005, to listen to his views and assure him of their sympathy and sincerity. Somewhat to their surprise, they found that the senior monk's main complaints were actually directed at the government rather than the NRC.Footnote ⁷⁴ The NRC also visited Wat Phromprasit on 13 November; Anand and other senior commissioners talked to the abbot, other local abbots, and to a gathering of Buddhist villagers. On 19 February 2006, the NRC visited another Buddhist temple in Narathiwat, and the following day hosted an inter-faith dialogue meeting between senior Muslim clerics and local monks. Yet despite these gestures, hostility to the NRC remained widespread among the monastic and lay Buddhist communities in the Southern border provinces. One abbot involved in the preparations for the February 2006 meeting criticised the event as meaningless, and the NRC as ineffective. At the meeting, religious leaders from both sides had agreed to control their disciples, but Muslim leaders had not kept their side of the bargain:

Anusart Suwanmongkol, a Sino-Thai hotelier who topped the polls in Pattani's April 2006 Senate election, acknowledged that expressing support for the NRC was not a vote-winner with local Buddhists: fortunately he had not been invited to join the Commission, membership of which might have cost him dearly in the Senate race. He certainly had no enthusiasm for raising the issue of the report in parliament:

For the most part, the NRC was regarded by Buddhists in the south as selling out their interests to the Muslim majority, part of a broader process of marginalisation. Only the Queen, Panlop, Kitti and a few other outspoken conservative Thai nationalists were seen as consistently sympathetic regarding Buddhist fears and concerns.

NRC member Phra Paisal was sceptical about the 20 point ‘anti-NRC’ declaration of 20 October 2005, saying that the declaration had been agreed by a show of hands, and only about five of the 20 points had been debated and agreed by the provincial sangha council members.Footnote ⁷⁷ The outcome was emotional rather than rational. Another well-informed figure pointed out that very few of the senior monks in Pattani actually signed the declaration, Footnote ⁷⁸ which was organised by two or three prominent figures in the monastic community, including Phra Maha Charat of Wat Chang Hai.Footnote ⁷⁹ He believed the declaration had actually been orchestrated by a group of conservative military figures, including former Fourth Army Commander Phisan Wattananongkiri, and some of General Panlop's subordinates. They had tried to use the monastic order as a means of discrediting the current military leadership of army chief Sonthi and Fourth Army Commander Ongkorn Thongprasom, who were committed to a ‘softly-softly’ approach to the southern conflict. In other words, the declaration had little to do with the NRC, and much more to do with internal power struggles between hard-line and liberal factions inside the army. The overlap between the monastic order and Thailand's state security structures was clearly illustrated by the somewhat spurious ‘NRC’ controversy, which nevertheless illustrated some real anxieties on the part of southern Buddhists.