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| Southeast Asia |
| Thai royals may help to end insurgency |
| 2006-03-27 |
| Wadeng Puteh, a 90-year-old Muslim farmer, vividly remembers trudging home from the fields, water buffalo in tow, and bumping into the king of Thailand. From that encounter many evenings ago, a friendship followed. “I worry about the king's health. I miss him every day,” Wadeng says, his wizened face sparkling with smiles as he relates how he once traveled 650 miles from his village of Balot to Bangkok to visit King Bhumibol Adulyadej when he was hospitalized. In a region where Muslim insurgents wage a bloody struggle for autonomy and even moderates are sharply critical of the government in Bangkok, such sentiments are surprisingly common. The monarch and his family have earned – the hard way and over decades – the trust of many Muslims in the country's three southernmost provinces, where more than 1,300 people have been slain over the past two years. Wadeng feels the royal effect every day in the improved crops he grows, thanks to the king's projects to reduce soil acidity and improve irrigation. Significantly, among the almost daily shootings, bombings and arson which routinely target government institutions, the rebels have left the numerous royal projects largely untouched. Bhumibol's conciliatory style is also welcome here. He has warned that Thailand could “fall into ruin” if the violence festers, and has urged Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to take a “gentle approach.” Thaksin is accused of escalating the bloodshed with heavy-handed tactics. In 2004 security forces stormed a mosque, killing 107 lightly armed militants, and later that year 85 suspected rebels died, most of them of suffocation, after being stuffed into army trucks. Both incidents were condemned by Muslims worldwide. “The Crown has made the south one of its top priorities,” says Zachary Abuza, who teaches at Simmons College in Boston and is an expert on the region's Islamic insurgencies. “The royal family did a lot in stemming past rebellions and they see themselves as having a role now.” At 78, Bhumibol has been on the throne for 60 years, making him the world's longest-reigning monarch. He's too old to make trips to the south, but his advisers are here often. His wife, Queen Sirikit, spent 45 days here last year and has made an emotional appeal to the rebels: “You don't have to shoot anyone, but show the (government) that you are dissatisfied, that there is harassment of the people who are poor...” Little is likely to change, experts say, in part because Thaksin is preoccupied with allegations of corruption and abuse of power that have provoked almost daily demonstrations in the capital demanding his ouster. That leaves the king as “the essential pillar,” says Nidir Waba, deputy head of the south's Islamic Council. “Many Thai Buddhists say that we Muslims are not real Thais, but the king has been able to gather up Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, Hindus under one umbrella,” he says. The king, a Buddhist like most in Thailand, seems himself as constitutionally the protector of all religions. He has few real powers, and instead has gathered moral standing by initiating hundreds of anti-poverty projects. Driving his own vehicle, sometimes on foot, and armed with nitty-gritty knowledge of development work, Bhumibol would travel deep into the countryside, leaving behind a fish pond here, a cow herd there, a fertile patch of farmland in a previously parched area. On such trips, taken year after year starting in the 1970s, he forged face-to-face bonds with thousands of southerners, and an older generation still cherishes such memories. But younger Muslims “are rather indifferent to our projects no matter how poor they are,” the queen's military aide, Gen. Napol Boonthap, told reporters recently. Simmons College's Abuza says that the hard-core insurgents, imbued with radical Islamic ideology, are unlikely to lay down their arms before a Buddhist king, but that the royals can do much to alleviate grievances. “I feel that the queen is like my second mother,” says Asi Phandao, a Muslim widow with five children, whose policeman husband was gunned down by rebels. The 45-year-old woman is among 150 Buddhist and Muslim families, all victims of the violence, who were compensated by the queen with free land, houses, fields and vocational training. “Here we call him 'Rajo Kito' – Our King,” said Je Ma Uma, 65. Bhumibol has met all nine of his children since first coming to donate a substantial sum and two palace carpets to renovate the mosque at Khao Tanjong village in the province of Narathiwat. The royals have also started a ceramics factory, woodcarving and batik-making, provided free medical care, paid for the education of poor children and joined up with a Japanese firm to build a dam to stop seawater from encroaching on village fields. Almost every year, one of the king's daughters, Princess Sirindhorn, comes for a feast, sitting on the meeting hall floor to pray, chat and eat with villagers. Klom Theprom, a 55-year-old Buddhist farmer, recalls how the king came in the 1970s to tackle the problem of acidic soil, after which he could grow coconuts, lemons and rice. “I think the king can solve the problem in the south far better than the government,” Klom said. “He has the knowledge and wisdom to do it.” |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |