Conspiracy, Politics, and a Disorderly Border

Conspiracy, Politics, and a Disorderly Border PDF Author: Marc Askew
Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
ISBN: 9812304649
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 114

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Book Description
Examines a number of themes underlying the struggle to identify the character and causes of the violence engulfing southern Thailand's border provinces since 2004. This book addresses the prominence of a number of conspiracy theories claiming that killings and bombings have been engineered, in whole or in part, by vested interest groups.

Conspiracy, Politics, and a Disorderly Border

Conspiracy, Politics, and a Disorderly Border PDF Author: Marc Askew
Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
ISBN: 9812304649
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 114

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Book Description
Examines a number of themes underlying the struggle to identify the character and causes of the violence engulfing southern Thailand's border provinces since 2004. This book addresses the prominence of a number of conspiracy theories claiming that killings and bombings have been engineered, in whole or in part, by vested interest groups.

The Internationalization of Internal Conflicts

The Internationalization of Internal Conflicts PDF Author: Amy L. Freedman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134904282
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Internal security crises, from environmental disaster, extreme poverty and deprivation, armed conflicts, or ethnic or religious conflict, provide sites of opportunity for those seeking to internationalize conflicts. Domestic conflicts in Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia have started as internal problems, but have taken on regional and international dimensions as parties to the conflict within the country and sympathetic external forces have joined forces with each other for mutual gain. This book examines the international dimension to internal conflicts and asks: under what conditions do domestic conflicts become opportunities for regional or global actors to become involved? Why have some countries been able to successfully deal with this problem while others have not? Who are the actors who seek to internationalize conflicts? Why and with what means do they become involved and how do their agendas get internalized/localized? Cases include: the separatist movements in the Philippines, Southern Thailand, Aceh (Indonesia); and the civil wars in Rwanda/Congo, and Sierra Leone/Liberia, Lebanon, and Iraq. This book finds that a combination of greater democratization internally, coupled with constructive outside mediation efforts, can produce conditions necessary to prevent conflicts from escalating or diffusing, and can facilitate peace-building. Several chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Asian Security.

Autonomy and Armed Separatism in South and Southeast Asia

Autonomy and Armed Separatism in South and Southeast Asia PDF Author: Michelle Ann Miller
Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
ISBN: 9814379972
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Armed separatist insurgencies have created a real dilemma for many national governments of how much freedom to grant aggrieved minorities without releasing territorial sovereignty over the nation-state. This book examines different approaches that have been taken by seven states in South and Southeast Asia to try and resolve this dilemma through various offers of autonomy. Providing new insights into the conditions under which autonomy arrangements exacerbate or alleviate the problem of armed separatism, this comprehensive book includes in-depth analysis of the circumstances that lead men and women to take up arms in an effort to remove themselves from the state's borders by creating their own independent polity.

Promoting Conflict or Peace through Identity

Promoting Conflict or Peace through Identity PDF Author: Nikki R. Slocum-Bradley
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317074777
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Developing a solid basis for future research and training, this illuminating volume facilitates peace and mutual understanding between people by addressing a root cause of social conflicts: identity constructions. The volume encompasses eight revealing empirical case studies from regions throughout the world, conducted by experts from diverse disciplinary backgrounds. Each case study examines how identities are being constructed and used in the region, how these identities are related to borders and in what ways identity constructions foment peace or conflict. The volume summarizes insights gleaned from these studies and formulates an analytical framework for understanding the role of identity constructions in conflict or peace.

Tearing Apart the Land

Tearing Apart the Land PDF Author: Duncan McCargo
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501702912
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Since January 2004, a violent separatist insurgency has raged in southern Thailand, resulting in more than three thousand deaths. Though largely unnoticed outside Southeast Asia, the rebellion in Pattani and neighboring provinces and the Thai government's harsh crackdown have resulted in a full-scale crisis. Tearing Apart the Land by Duncan McCargo, one of the world's leading scholars of contemporary Thai politics, is the first fieldwork-based book about this conflict. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of the region, hundreds of interviews conducted during a year's research in the troubled area, and unpublished Thai-language sources that range from anonymous leaflets to confessions extracted by Thai security forces, McCargo locates the roots of the conflict in the context of the troubled power relations between Bangkok and the Muslim-majority "deep South."McCargo describes how Bangkok tried to establish legitimacy by co-opting local religious and political elites. This successful strategy was upset when Thaksin Shinawatra became prime minister in 2001 and set out to reorganize power in the region. Before Thaksin was overthrown in a 2006 military coup, his repressive policies had exposed the precariousness of the Bangkok government's influence. A rejuvenated militant movement had emerged, invoking Islamic rhetoric to challenge the authority of local leaders obedient to Bangkok.For readers interested in contemporary Southeast Asia, insurgency and counterinsurgency, Islam, politics, and questions of political violence, Tearing Apart the Land is a powerful account of the changing nature of Islam on the Malay peninsula, the legitimacy of the central Thai government and the failures of its security policy, the composition of the militant movement, and the conflict's disastrous impact on daily life in the deep South. Carefully distinguishing the uprising in southern Thailand from other Muslim rebellions, McCargo suggests that the conflict can be ended only if a more participatory mode of governance is adopted in the region.

"Good Coup" Gone Bad

Author: Pavin Chachavalpongpun
Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
ISBN: 9814459607
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
What did the 2006 military coup show us? It demonstrated that the crux of the Thai crisis is far more serious and much wider in scope than had previously been thought. The monarchy is surely not a victim in the protracted conflict, but the root cause and continuing factor that has eroded Thai politics. The coup set in motion more prejudicial uses of the lèse-majesté law, and in the process, has led to more political prisoners. It has also shredded the military into several segments, turning generals into desperate royalists who continue to live off the monarchy in order to survive. Issues of violence in the Thai south and the Thai-Cambodian dispute became greatly intensified in the age of militarized politics. The coup also produced unique colour-coded politics and created crises of legitimacy. This book is a collection of essays that reflect developments in Thai politics in the post-coup period.

Fixing Fractured Nations

Fixing Fractured Nations PDF Author: R. Wirsing
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230281273
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
Asia's rising power and wealth offer its many oppressed ethnic minorities hope for greater political freedom and an end to violence. But the reality of this hope is cast into doubt by acute separatist conflict. This book provides fresh and factual assessments of separatist struggles and prospects for conflict resolution in eight countries of Asia.

Islam, Education, and Reform in Southern Thailand

Islam, Education, and Reform in Southern Thailand PDF Author: Joseph Chinyong Liow
Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
ISBN: 9812309543
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
"This is a remarkable piece of scholarship that illuminates general and specific tendencies in Islamic education in South Thailand. Armed with an enormous amount of rich empirical detail and an elegant writing style, the author debunks the simplistic Orientalist conceptions of Wahhabi and Salafi influences on Islamic education in South Thailand. This work will be a state-of-the-art source for understanding the role of Islam and the ongoing conflict in this troubled region of Southeast Asia. The book is significant for those scholars who are attempting to understand Muslim communities in Southeast Asia, and also for those who want deep insights into Islamic education and its influence in any area of the Islamic world." - Raymond Scupin, Professor of Anthropology and International Studies Lindenwood University, USA "Few books address the sensitive issue of Islamic education with empathy as well as critical distance as Joseph C. Liow's Islam, Education, and Reform in Southern Thailand. He examines global networks of religious learning within a local Thai as well as regional Asian context by brilliantly revealing the intersections between religion, politics and modernity in an accessible and illuminating manner. Traditional educational institutions rarely receive such sensitive and balanced treatment. Liow's book is a tour de force and mandatory reading for policy-makers, academics and all of those interested in current affairs." - Ebrahim Moosa, Associate Professor of Islamic Studies, Department of Religion, Associate Director, Duke Islamic Studies Center (DISC), Duke University, USA "Islam, Education, and Reform in Southern Thailand is Joseph Chinyong Liow's critical attempt to map out the reflexive questioning, locations of authority, dynamics and contestations within the Muslim community over what constitutes Islamic knowledge and education. Through the optics of Islamic education in Southern Thailand, Liow manages to brilliantly portray the ways in which Muslim minority negotiate their lives in the local context of violence and the global context of crisis of modernity." - Chaiwat Satha-Anand, Senior Research Scholar, Thailand Research Fund, Author of The Life of this World: Negotiated Muslim Lives in Thai Society

Ghosts of the Past in Southern Thailand

Ghosts of the Past in Southern Thailand PDF Author: Anthony Reid
Publisher: NUS Press
ISBN: 9971696355
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
At the heart of the on-going armed conflict in southern Thailand is a fundamental disagreement about the history of relations between the Patani Malays and the Thai kingdom. While the Thai royalist-nationalist version of history regards Patani as part of that kingdom "since time immemorial," Patani Malay nationalists look back to a golden age when the Sultanate of Patani was an independent, prosperous trading state and a renowned center for Islamic education and scholarship in Southeast Asia — a time before it was defeated, broken up, and brought under the control of the Thai state. While still influential, in recent years these diametrically opposed views of the past have begun to make way for more nuanced and varied interpretations. Patani scholars, intellectuals and students now explore their history more freely and confidently than in the past, while the once-rigid Thai nationalist narrative is open to more pluralistic interpretations. There is growing interaction and dialogue between historians writing in Thai, Malay and English, and engagement with sources and scholarship in other languages, including Chinese and Arabic. In The Ghosts of the Past in Southern Thailand, 13 scholars who have worked on this sensitive region evaluate the current state of current historical writing about the Patani Malays of southern Thailand. The essays in this book demonstrate that an understanding of the conflict must take into account the historical dimensions of relations between Patani and the Thai kingdom, and the ongoing influence of these perceptions on Thai state officials, militants, and the local population.

Southern Thailand

Southern Thailand PDF Author: N. John Funston
Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
ISBN: 9812308873
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 96

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Book Description
This monograph examines the tragic conflict in Thailand's southern Muslim-majority provinces near the border with Malaysia. Although the conflict has attracted wide national and international interest, no agreement exists on the cause of the resumption of violence in an area that had remained free of major conflict for two decades. This monograph critically examines explanations for the conflict and traces its evolution from the early 1990s to the beginning of the Samak government in 2008. The study points to a wide variety of factors that were important in the resumption of the conflict, with policies of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra being critical in determining the timing and intensity of the violence. These conditions include: (1) the resumption of an age-old conflict between Malay Muslims from Pattani, Yala, and Narithiwat Provinces against a discriminatory central government; (2) entrenched problems of criminality in an area far from the capital and with a porous border with Malaysia; (3) the disbanding of important conflict resolution institutions by former Prime Minister Thaksin, who then gave priority to hard line (sometimes extrajudicial) security policies; (4) growing Islamic religiosity, influenced by regional reform movements and international developments, including the example of extremist movements such as Jemaah Islamiyah; and (5) the growth of southern insurgent movements--which have never issued public demands and whose real leaders remain unknown. In this complex setting, no resolution to the violence appears likely in the near future, as Thaksin's main policies have been retained since the September 2006 coup that ousted his government.