The Strange Thai Insurgents Who Like Sorcery and Get High on Cough Syrup
The Pattani rebellion has been raging in Thailand for years -- but what
drives these militants?
Jonah Blank May 7 2013, 12:30 PM ET
Krue Se Mosque is just outside the city of Pattani on the shoulder of
Highway 42, so nondescript you could breeze by without noticing. A
bullet-riddled sign bears the notation, "Tourism Authority of Thailand," but
nobody coming here is a tourist. Any visitor is told --first with glances,
soon in stronger terms -- to keep his sojourn brief.
Before a cool April dawn in 2004, a hundred machete-armed guerrillas
launched simultaneous attacks on eleven police and army posts, then took
refuge in the mosque. Some were high on a brew of cough syrup, Coca-Cola,
and a narcotic plant called kratom. Some were motorcycle-riding "pilgrim
bandits," half hajji and half Hell's Angel. Most wore amulets that they
believed made them invisible to their enemies, or capable of teleportation,
or invulnerable to any type of weaponry. The talismans proved no match for
the Thai army's machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades. The blood has
been washed from the courtyard stones, but the bullet-holes in the sign at
the mosque's portal remain defiantly unfilled to this day.
Over 5,300 people have been killed since 2004: for a population of only
1.8 million, a rate of carnage nearly double that of Afghanistan.
Welcome to the Pattani revolt: one of the world's longest-running
insurgencies, and certainly among its most bizarre. The ravaged provinces of
Thailand's Deep South lie less than 400 miles from the holiday-makers'
utopia of Phuket, but for reasons that remain shrouded in mystery, the world
of the bombs and the world of the beaches might as well be on different
continents.
The violence had simmered for decades before flaring into full blaze at Krue
Se. Over 5,300 people have been killed since 2004: for a population of only
1.8 million, a rate of carnage nearly double that of Afghanistan. The
insurgents, Muslims in an overwhelmingly Buddhist nation, use the fiery
rhetoric of jihad. But the rebels are motivated by identity rather than
theology, and even this motivation is hazy: they're driven less by what they
are than by what they are not. They use Islamist language, but they're
mystical Sufis rather than by-the-book Salafists; they're united by Malay
language and culture, but they have no desire for unification with their
cousins right across the border in Malaysia; they don't see themselves as
belonging to Thai society, but they have no clear picture of where-- or even
in which era-- they might want to belong.
They have been courted by terrorist groups ranging from Al Qaeda to
Hezbollah to Indonesia's Jemaah Islamiyah. The rebels have sent them all
packing. This leaves intelligence officials of several countries baffled,
because the day that the Pattani militants link up with a transnational
outfit, "we're all" (as one Western operative says bluntly) "in a world of
hurt."
I have looked at this issue through a variety of lenses. I am an
anthropologist by background, but have also worked as a journalist and a
government official. Over the past five years I have made eight reporting
trips to Thailand and Malaysia, visiting each of the core provinces
(Pattani, Narathiwat, Yala), as well as the affected districts of Songkhla
and the Malaysian border state of Kelantan. I have interviewed militants in
the field, security officials, exiled rebel leaders, and ordinary citizens
just trying to get by. If the conflict can be summed up in three letters,
they would be "WTF?"
The story of the Pattani uprising is one of blood and magic, of outrageous
characters living in the 21th century but simultaneously in the 16th. It is
a tale of a revolutionary movement with an impenetrable cell structure
seeking the restoration of a long-dead sultanate, in the name of an ethnic
identity that none of its champions can convincingly describe. It reveals a
great deal about radical Islam -- or perhaps nothing whatsoever. Most of
all, it is a cautionary lesson for anyone claiming to understand such grand
notions as "Islamist terrorism" or "globalized jihad," whether in Palestine,
Dagestan, or Boston: If all politics is local, perhaps all insurgency is as
well.
***
Both the government and the rebels commit unspeakable deeds. Live bodies are
stacked like cordwood in police vans and emerge hours later as corpses.
Schoolteachers and clerks are publicly beheaded. An imam was tortured to
death over the course of days, displayed in a makeshift cage. A
saffron-robed monk was blown to pieces. An informer was crucified, hands and
feet nailed into the street, and soldiers didn't even bother to cast lots
for his clothing.
Most young men in the Deep South know someone who's been killed, crippled,
or arrested. Nearly all have been humiliated by authorities, often on a
daily basis. What separates the 10,000 juwae -- the young fighters who form
the backbone of the insurgency -- from the rest of their angry, alienated
peers? A soda bottle, perhaps, and a headband.
The soda-bottle contains a narcotic brew based on the kratom, a leaf that
grows wild throughout the region. Traditionally, it is taken with tea to
mask its bitter taste. Today, the mixer is typically Coca-Cola, or
sometimes, strawberry Fanta. The effect of kratom is similar to that of
ya-ba or methamphetamine, and it has long been popular with construction
workers, long-haul truckers, and anyone else with a professional need for
periods of hyper-alert insomnia.
The new insurgents lacked identifiable leaders, issued no press
statements, and didn't seem to have any structure whatsoever. The old ones
had scrupulously avoided civilian targets, but the new ones didn't seem to
care.
The juwae do not need to be sleepless and paranoid, so they balance the
stimulant of kratom with the depressant of codeine. The beverage they favor
was initially called "4 x 100," with the first numeral representing the
number of ingredients (kratom, cough syrup, cola, and a fourth element
varying by the brewer's taste) and the second (like so much else in the
insurgency) bearing no clear meaning at all. The number of additional
ingredients has spiraled, so the cocktail of rebellion is now known as "8 x
100." The foundation is still kratom, codeine and soda, but these are
supplemented by meth, crushed mosquito coil, tungsten from the inside of
light bulbs, and dried bird excrement. Some of the hardest-core militants
boast of lacing their beverage with ash from a human corpse.
Why on earth would anyone drink this? Why would anyone get high on it every
day until he has been drained of all capacity for rational thought? Some say
it is bravado, others claim sorcery. But perhaps, tautologically, the second
question answers the first.
The headband, meanwhile, is inscribed with Quranic verses and blessed by any
of several hundred charismatic clerics. It could just as easy be a slip of
cloth tied around a wrist, or an amulet worn around the neck. Some juwae
favor a bath in holy water. Orthodox Muslims shun such displays as
superstition, but the line between folk practice and rank heresy is often
hazy.
The Krue Se massacre merely softened, rather than utterly discredited,
belief in the efficacy of talismans. Sunai Phasuk, a skeptical observer (and
resident expert on the South at the Thailand office of Human Rights Watch)
says his militant friends have tried to prove the potency of their amulets
by live demonstrations: they've hacked at each other with machetes before
his doubting eyes, yet -- protected by their spells -- they've remained
unscathed. He feels there must be some sort of trick but cannot explain what
he says he's witnessed.
The most celebrated purveyor of talismans is an imam named Ismail Rayalong,
a.k.a. Ustad Soh. He lives underground in Malaysia but crosses into Thailand
at will: According to his followers, he evades capture by his ability to fly
through the air or melt into the scenery or cause bullets to turn to dust
upon contact with his skin. It was his acolytes, protected by his amulets,
who were gunned down at Krue Se. This might appear to void the warranty on
his magic, but Ustad Soh is still seen as the region's most powerful
sorcerer. His followers are called the Brotherhood of Divine Judgment, and
under his direction they seek invulnerability by drinking holy water or
working themselves into a trance by reciting secret mantras.
Whatever the supernatural efficacy of the talismans, there is no question
that they work magically well in bringing terror: people who dismiss the
spiritual power of the charms have no doubts about the ruthlessness of the
youths who carry them. Juwae on motorbikes flash their amulets to the guards
at police checkpoints and are waved through.
"When you see a kid with one of these cloths tied around his wrist," warns
Sunai, "run."
***
The insurgency is a tightly controlled, rigidly hierarchical organization
structured on classical Maoist guerrilla precepts. Or perhaps it's a
completely anarchic, utterly decentralized grassroots movement, with no
organized command structure whatsoever. In truth, it probably used to be one
thing and has morphed into another. Also in truth, nobody -- not the Thai
authorities, not Western intelligence services, not the population of the
Deep South, and maybe not even the insurgents themselves -- actually knows.
There is no unifying symbol of Pattani heritage, no towering historical
figure, no single geographical site, nothing that provides a true
rallying-point.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the rebellion was led by a few groups operating in
ways familiar to any student of guerrilla warfare: they hid out in the
jungle, launched hit-and-run attacks on uniformed security forces, received
support from like-minded governments and diaspora communities, and spouted
the rhetoric of anti-imperialist struggle. A widely feared field commander
with whom I had a surreptitious meeting in Yala last year told me that he'd
wept at the death of Muammar Qaddafi: the Pattani rebel still had fond
memories of embracing the Libyan leader at a desert training camp three
decades earlier. The major outfits back then were PULO (the Pattani United
Liberation Organization, which is still quite alive and arguably relevant)
and BRN (the Barisan Revolusi Nasional, which is still quite relevant, but
only arguably still alive). In the 1980s and 1990s, a combination of softer
approaches from Thailand and a crackdown by Malaysia sent PULO into exile
and BRN deep underground.
After lying dormant for about a decade, the insurgency began to reemerge in
2001. A shooting here, a bombing there -- at first it seemed to be the
death-shivers of a 20th-century throwback. But the young guns, the juwae,
were not like their elders. They had no identifiable leaders, they issued no
press statements, they didn't seem to have any structure whatsoever. The old
ones had scrupulously avoided civilian targets, but the new ones didn't seem
to care. The older generation had discipline, a recognized chain of command,
a set of leaders with whom you could sit down and do business; but kids
these days -- who can figure them out?
"There is no single great insurgency," says Grisada Boonrach, governor of
Songkhla and former governor of Yala. "There are a multitude of tiny
insurgencies." Grisada has a reputation for thinking seriously about the
unrest and doing a better job of addressing popular grievances than perhaps
any other administrator. A local leader might be respected in his own
village, Grisada says, but utterly powerless in the neighboring one. This
makes life difficult for rebel and governor alike. There is nobody to
orchestrate a truly effective insurgency -- but also nobody with whom the
government can cut a deal.
If the footsoldiers don't take their marching orders from the exiles of PULO
or the unidentifiable (and possibly nonexistent) leaders of BRN-C, who do
they follow? I've interviewed two pemimpin (field commanders), one on the
ground in Yala and one in the capital of a nearby country; both presented a
picture of an almost anarchic movement, very similar to that described by
Governor Grisada. There is no Pattani Che Guevara. The public faces of the
insurgency are those of religious leaders who are said to provide
inspiration but not direction.
One such cleric stands above the rest, a tiny man with enormous power. He
has a bounty on his head of 10 million baht ($325,000), but he is not
accused of any act of violence (he is wanted for treason, a far more
nebulous charge). His name is Sapae-ing Basoe, and he is known throughout
the Deep South simply as "The Headmaster." It is an accurate nickname: He
founded the Thamma Witthaya Islamic School, an academy that educates up to
6,000 students at any time. But his diminutive physical stature, advanced
age (he's now in his early 70s), and rumored supernatural abilities have
caused members of Thai intelligence to give him another nickname: Yoda.
In the years prior to his withdrawal from the public eye, he earned
widespread reverence by preaching in the pool-halls where aimless roughnecks
congregate and never hesitating to back up his sermons with a smack to the
head. Yoda was famous for loitering outside the whorehouses of Yala and
berating any of his students whom he saw emerging; the burly bouncers did
not dare intervene, for they knew that anyone who challenged the tiny cleric
had a way of quickly ended up in a ditch.
Yoda has never given an interview, and refuses even to speak with a
non-Pattani. He is said to be living in Malaysia, or Indonesia, or perhaps
deep underground in Thailand. The "Wanted" poster displayed after his flight
shows a man with a trim gray soul-patch and a black Malay cap. Unlike his
nick-namesake, he is not bald, his face is unlined, and his skin has no hint
of green. But his pointed ears are slightly out-turned, and taper into
distinctly elfin tips.
***
At the heart of the insurgency, even when viewed through a haze of kratom
and mysticism, even when compounded by question of who actually can speak
for (let alone direct) the cause, is a question of identity.
A young man rigs a bomb to his motorbike's gas-tank and parks it by the
food-stalls outside the police station. He lies in wait, machete in hand,
for the teacher who'd forced him to learn his masters' history rather than
his own.
Inhabitants of the Deep South view themselves as heirs to the Pattani
Sultanate, which once encompassed much of the narrow chicken-neck now
comprising southern Thailand and northern Malaysia. The historical identity
of the region is so strong that the insurgents regard as alien even Thai
Muslims whose native tongue is not Pattani Malay (this includes Gen. Sonthi
Boonyaratglin, the commander-in-chief of the Thai army and leader of the
military-backed government during one of my visits). But the precise nature
of Pattani identity is illusive. As Zakee Pitakumpol, a baby-faced professor
at a local university put it, "My Buddhist friends just think of me as a
Muslim. My Pattani friends say my family is from Songkhla, so I'm Thai. To
be honest, I don't know what I am."
What does Pattani identity consist of? Zakee, like everyone else I have
asked, has no clear answer. There is no unifying symbol of Pattani heritage,
no towering historical figure, no single geographical site, nothing that
provides a true rallying-point. When pressed, Zakee (like almost everyone
else) comes back to language: To be Pattani, you must speak the Pattani
dialect of Malay as your native tongue, and write it in the Yawi script.
Don Pathan, a resident of Yala, spends a lot of time with people who care
about Pattani identity quite a bit. He is a key intermediary between Yoda
and the outside world. Like Yoda himself, he is Pattani by marriage --
Malay, interestingly, is something one can become. When he is asked to
convey a message to Yoda, he says, "I sip tea with guys in towns beyond any
cellphone coverage, beneath signs that say, 'Welcome to the liberated zone.'
The kids put their pistols on table, and then we talk." Messages relayed, in
both directions, tend to be terse and infrequent. When it comes to Pattani
identity, however, most of the gun-toting kids struggle for answers:
"They're tired of having to prove themselves, of being asked 'Are you really
Thai?' They have no clear answer, so they start shooting."
***
If a single week's carnage in the Deep South were ever shifted to the
tourist beaches, the financial and political toll would be incalculable. One
of the great mysteries of the conflict is why it has not spread. According
to PULO's spokesman Col. Kasturi (whom I met in a nearby country, in a hotel
room whose ashtrays overflowed with cigarette butts and whose trash-cans
overflowed with the prickly red skins of rambutans), the conflict has been
limited to the traditional boundaries of the Pattani sultanate by intent:
"We have no wish to attack outsiders," he says. "We could easily do so if we
wished." An alternate possibility is that the game is rigged: Rebels are
believed to use neighboring tourist-friendly provinces to hide from police,
launder money, and run a variety of low-key, low-risk fundraising
operations. As one Westerner involved in security put it, "You don't shoot
where you eat."
The distance from local problem to universal nightmare can vanish without
warning: In Boston, that interval was as brief as twelve seconds. Awareness
of the Pattani insurgency in Western governments today is limited to a tiny
number of intelligence analysts and Southeast Asia hands. Among those few,
there is a shared attitude of wary unease: We don't have the resources to
figure out what's really going on, and we don't think it's hooked up with a
global terrorist group -- yet . But any morning we may turn on the news and
suddenly find that all our assumptions were disastrously wrong.
On the face of it, the rebellion seems to have everything to do with
militant Islam. The fighters often call themselves mujahadeen, say they're
waging jihad, and refer to the Thai as kafir (unbelievers). A typical line
of graffiti seen in the South reads, "Destruction of infidels and traitors
is a religious duty." Occasionally, militants stop a vehicle and force all
passengers to recite the salat; those unable to do so face a beating, or far
worse. Even in operational terms it is possible to see linkages: the
Indonesia-based Al Qaeda affiliate Jemaah Islamiyah planned its 2002 Bali
bombings partly from safe-houses in Bangkok, and one of its top operatives
(Ridwan Issamuddin, a.k.a. Hambali) was captured in Thailand the following
year.
Analysts and intelligence officials of several nations scratch their heads
at the inability of global extremist groups to lure the militants of the
Thai south into their family. But the Pattani insurgency, in its very
aloofness, may offer lessons to anyone seeking an elusive Unified Theory of
Jihadism. For the Pattani rebels, as for so many others who use religion as
a rallying cry, Islam is a symbol more than a set of beliefs. If that
weren't the case, how could this uprising be permeated by such thoroughly
un-Islamic practices as sorcery, narco-trafficking, butchery of innocents,
and Coca-Cola cannibalism?
It adds up to a language, and an ethnicity: but ones not so different from
those right across the border.
Also: rage at the killing and repression: but admission, also, that the
kratom-fueled, talisman-draped juwae have dished out at least as much as
they've received.
Then there's the vague sense of historical loss: but the nostalgia is for a
nation that died long before virtually any of the region's inhabitants had
even been born.
A deeply-felt pang of alienation, of constant humiliation, of being a
second-class citizen in one's own country. But awareness that the struggle
has no resonance across the border, that this tainted soil is the only place
one could ever truly call home.
So a young man rigs a bomb to his motorbike's gas-tank and parks it by the
food-stalls outside the police station. He lies in wait, machete in hand,
for the teacher who'd forced him to learn his masters' history rather than
his own.
He is a fighter for Islam, in a way that confounds outsiders but makes
perfect sense to him. The Pattani youth's faith is not about a sacred
scripture in a language he cannot understand, or a set of doctrines that no
ustad in his village ever preached, or a worldwide community knitting
together all Muslims into a single umma--a concept that has exactly the same
meaninglessness for him as other abstractions like nation, race or humanity.
His Islam has never been about any of this. It has been about something far
more basic, and far less complicated: To be Pattani is to be Muslim.
Everything that he is, is Pattani. Therefore, everything that he is, is
Muslim.
This gut-definition sparks eye-rolls from madrassa scholars, wagged fingers
from Wahhabi ideologues, and shrugs of incomprehension from intelligence
analysts at Langley. But if the youth from southern Thailand had the words
to converse with a counterpart from Kandahar, or Srinagar, or perhaps
Chechnya by way of Cambridge Ringe and Latin High school, he might receive a
quiet nod of sublime comprehension.
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