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[BaronTT]

ASIA HAND

Why Thailand's reds beat a retreat

By Shawn W Crispin

 

BANGKOK - After nearly two months of debilitating and often violent street protests, Thailand's United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD) protest group has broadly accepted Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's reconciliation road map, including a proposed November 14 general election date and independent probes into recent protest-related violence and deaths.

 

The tentative truce represents a significant climbdown for the UDD, which had earlier called for an immediate dissolution of parliament and new polls and angled to control a crucial upcoming military reshuffle. Many feared a promised government crackdown

 

 

 

on the UDD's protest site in central Bangkok could have sparked a wider conflict, one that potentially pitted police and military aligned with the UDD against government-controlled forces.

 

UDD co-leaders had repeatedly threatened "civil war" if the government used force against its protesters, and officials claimed the protest group had stockpiled war weapons and that "terrorists" were in their midst. As the two sides edge back from the precipice, international pressure, information-sharing and mediation were all instrumental in the still tentative peace.

 

International mediators worked feverishly behind the scenes when the crisis threatened to spiral into wider civil strife, including the specter of an urban-style insurgency. It's unclear what role, if any, a Swedish parliamentarian who facilitated previous talks and maintains close contacts with self-exiled former premier and UDD chief patron, Thaksin Shinawatra, played in the pact.

 

People familiar with one behind-the-scenes channel suggest talks were recently held in a Southeast Asian country that included Thaksin and a senior government representative. That would seemingly explain Abhisit's sudden willingness to consider an amnesty for over 200 banned politicians, most formerly in Thaksin's camp, and amendment to a constitutional article covering election fraud that has dissolved two Thaksin-aligned political parties and now threatens his own Democrat party.

 

While much is yet to be agreed, including whether UDD co-leaders will be given amnesty on terrorism charges, the fact that Thaksin has publicly approved the framework indicates it's a done deal, say people familiar with the process. UDD spokesman Sean Boonracong told Asia Times Online that the group's leaders were "afraid that if they didn't negotiate we would be looked at by diplomats and international media as too stubborn".

 

The image-conscious UDD had effectively portrayed its red-garbed protest to international media as a non-violent, pro-democracy movement pitted against an elite-backed government. The protest group's behind-the-scenes spindoctors also successfully forwarded the storyline that its protesters were pitched in a class struggle against double standards that favor the rich over the poor. Television-friendly English-language signage on the main protest stage read simply: "Peaceful protest, no terrorist."

 

That messaging overlooked the fact that the UDD's protest commenced barely a fortnight after the Supreme Court ruled to confiscate US$1.4 billion worth of Thaksin's personal assets on corruption and abuse-of-power charges related to his six-year tenure. With the contours of an elite settlement emerging, including a possible mass amnesty for recent deaths and destruction, Thailand's now fading street fight is even more clearly viewed as an elite power struggle rather than an organically sprung grassroots pro-democracy movement.

 

Hardened tactics

Several strategic missteps and turning international opinion undermined Thaksin's and the UDD's negotiating position vis-a-vis the government. Some view the UDD raid on a royally affiliated Bangkok hospital that motivated doctors to evacuate patients as a turning point. But as the UDD's rhetoric and tactics intensified, many Western diplomats already felt that the UDD and its proxies had abandoned their claim to non-violence and adopted violent means to push their agenda.

 

Those perceptions were largely informed by the April 10 violence, when heavily armed black-clad assailants threw grenades and opened fire on government troops who returned fire onto the red-shirt-wearing crowd. At least 26 people were killed, including six soldiers, and over 800 injured in the armed melee.

 

Because of the murky circumstances surrounding the violence, international reaction to the killings has been muted. Abhisit's government has escaped censure by maintaining that soldiers fired live ammunition only in self-defense, though one Bangkok-based diplomat says that officials have been reluctant to release CCTV footage of the armed exchanges they have in their possession.

 

The UDD has countered by claiming it had no association with the shadowy and clearly well-trained assailants, whom they claim arrived only after troops opened fire on their unarmed protesters. Boonracong told ATol that the men in black were "clearly military" and that "we don't know them, but we thank them".

 

On April 26, UDD co-leader Arisman Pongruangrong played grainy video footage to reporters and protesters that purportedly showed one of the black-clad assailants moving freely behind army lines, insinuating that they were government plants to discredit the UDD. The figure highlighted in the video, however, was dressed in yellow, not black.

 

Those denials and misrepresentations have strengthened certain diplomatic suspicions that the UDD maintains an unacknowledged paramilitary wing, likely organized and commanded by retired and active security forces who have professed their loyalty to Thaksin. The diplomats believe that the paramilitary element is likely behind much of the mysterious violence that has coincided with the protests, including a bombing campaign across the national capital.

 

UDD co-leader Jaran Dittapichai told ATol two hours after the April 22 grenade attacks on the Silom Road financial district that killed one and injured over 90 that the military staged the attacks to justify a coup and crackdown. Reporters on the scene, however, recorded UDD supporters cheering when ambulances arrived at a nearby hospital with pro-government protesters wounded in the attacks.

 

Charged accusations

The US Embassy in a statement urged the UDD to condemn the grenade attacks - which they hadn't done from their protest stage - while calling on the government to exercise restraint. US officials have met with UDD co-leaders, including Veera Musikapong and Jaran, during the protests to impress on them Washington's perception that the UDD has provoked much of the violence, including the events of April 10.

 

UDD spokesman Boonracong said that a US official had "incredible details" of recent violence that he believed was gathered by the "CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] and other on-the-ground informants". He said that US officials claimed that the UDD had rigged compressed gas tanks to be used as bombs and stockpiled automatic weapons in nearby buildings - claims Boonracong characterized as "total bunk".

 

"The [uS] ambassador has apparently made up his mind that we have become an army and not a peaceful movement," said Boonracong, adding: "the US Embassy is not as neutral as they say they are." ATol observed and spoke with one US Embassy official who meticulously videotaped the UDD's march to smear blood at Abhisit's personal residence on March 17.

 

Significantly, the US's accusations mirror many of the government's claims, and raise questions about how much support the US and other Western intelligence agencies have lent Abhisit and the military in helping to unravel the UDD's complicated underground networks, financial flows and command structures - including what role, if any, Thaksin has played in recent violent events.

 

Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban said before the UDD's protests began in mid-March that he had received intelligence from the US warning of possible sabotage at the protests. The information, he said, was gleaned from tapped telephone conversations between the Dubai-based Thaksin and his Thailand-situated allies. The US Embassy has neither confirmed nor denied Suthep's claims.

 

One international mediator with close ties to the government claims that Western intelligence agencies provided "signals, communications and money movement intelligence" about the UDD to the government. That could explain government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn's unelaborated claims that he had received information about irregular cash flows into Thailand from the Middle East coinciding with the start of the UDD's rallies.

Abhisit made similar claims during an interview with foreign journalists, saying the government had monitored "lots of money flows". He said the government now had a clearer picture of the UDD's "second and third tier" networks and the connections between people who ordered and perpetuated recent violence.

 

Some diplomats have focused on a phone-in speech Thaksin made before the April 10 events in which he told UDD protesters to prepare for "sacrifices". After that night's fatal armed exchanges, Thaksin assumed a low profile and in limited comments to the press said that the UDD protests had "gone beyond him". Abhisit said he would not speculate on Thaksin's motives for apparently going to ground after the violence.

 

In a phone call this week to his allied opposition Puea Thai party, Thaksin said he favored Abhisit's roadmap provided that all parties forgot the past, forgave one another and looked to the future, according to local press reports. At the same time, he indicated he had retained the services of an international law firm, Amsterdam & Peroff, to "return democracy to Thailand".

 

Bangkok-based diplomats believe that it is more likely Thaksin is already preparing legal defense strategies should the reconciliation roadmap falter and the government attempt to extend its terrorism charges leveled against nine UDD co-leaders to Thaksin as the group's perceived chief financier and strategic mastermind.

 

The UDD had earlier worked assiduously to win US sympathies for its self-styled democratic cause. After US officials criticized the UDD for violently disrupting last year's Asian summit meeting at Pattaya, UDD representatives followed up by making presentations to US ambassador Eric John to demonstrate that government politicians also played a role in the chaos.

 

UDD representatives were known to have developed close ties with certain Bangkok-based US diplomats, winning invitations to certain embassy social events and private dinners. Many in pro-government circles were peeved last year when ambassador John's wife dined in public at the Four Seasons hotel with Thaksin's former wife and business partner, Pojaman Pombejra.

 

That warming trend cooled in March when the UDD rallied briefly in front of the US Embassy, demanding an explanation about Suthep's intelligence claims of planned sabotage. In an apparent bid to counter US criticism and divide international opinion, Thaksin ordered the UDD to make a symbolic march to the United Nations building in Bangkok to request UN peacekeeper protection for its protest site.

 

The UDD made a similar call for sympathy last week at the European Commission's Bangkok offices. It all points to a concerted and monied UDD effort to win over international opinion, a strategy the UDD's violent tactics have undermined. And while it is clear to most observers that both sides should share responsibility for the recent deaths and losses, it seems that a double-standards enforcing amnesty is the only sure way to keep the peace.

 

Shawn W Crispin is Asia Times Online's Southeast Asia Editor.

 

(Copyright 2010 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

 

 

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/LE08Ae02.html

[LizardKing]

Saw that. Excellent article. Calls it the way it is IMHO. No sugar coating.

[Flashermac]

<< He said that US officials claimed that the UDD had rigged compressed gas tanks to be used as bombs and stockpiled automatic weapons in nearby buildings - claims Boonracong characterized as "total bunk". >>

 

 

This is supposedly why the reds refused to abandon their stronghold at the entrance to Lumpini Park ... where the weapons were kept.

 

 

p.s. Shawn Crispin has worked in Thailand for many years. He is one of two journalists arrested on orders of Takky for lese majeste over a short report in FEER.

 

 

[BaronTT]

Agreed.

 

The behind-the-scenes background info is very interesting, especially the back-room discussions and also the intel that the US has.

 

That could also explain why Thaksin went quiet after April 10. The US had taped conversations of his involvement, and then someone let him know. Maybe the US or Thai government.

[Flashermac]

I remember the red shirt leaders ranting about the US "spying" on Takky.