When General Sonthi Boonyaratkalin (also known as Abdullah), the first-ever Muslim head of the Thai army, seized power in a bloodless coup on September 19 (2006), news media around world became flooded with expert opinions and commentaries that there was a hope of peace in the insurgency-plagued Muslim provinces in Southern Thailand. Even the United States , which has been consistent in condemning any military coup in recent years, kept virtually quiet on the coup in Thailand . President Bush even nodded in agreement with the coup when he told the interim Thai Prime Minister during the recent APEC meeting that 'he understood the Thai Coup' [Nation Multimedia, Thailand - Nov 18, 2006].
The academicians have also taken a leading role in defending the coup. Following the coup, prominent academicians in Thailand wrote commentaries and made statements in Thai media praising the military takeover and expressing hope for peace in the South. In a September 26-28 Conference titled " Security Cooperation and Governance in Southeast Asia: Responding to Terrorism, Insurgency and Separatist Violence in Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines" – jointly hosted by Singapore's Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies and Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies – prominent experts and academicians, studying the Thailand insurgency, also expressed an emphatic hope for peace in Southern Thailand after the successful coup. Never have I seen such unqualified praise for a military-lead coup that replaces a democratically elected Government anywhere in the World.
In the midst of unprecedented support for this coup to replace a democratic government, what has surprised me most is the unfettered expression of hope by the famous experts and academicians that peace was on the way in the insurgency stricken provinces in Thailand. Given the experiences of Islamic insurgency and violence from Kashmir to Chechnya and from Mindanao to Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina spanning decades, it was utterly naïve of the experts to pin such high hopes that an unethical coup would usher in peace in Thailand.
Continue Reading: Naïve Experts' Misleading Views on Jihad in Southern Thailand