A fuming Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra vowed to hunt down the killers of two marines who were stabbed to death after being taken hostage by villagers in the deep South yesterday.

“We will not let the two die for nothing - the law must be law,” Thaksin said shortly after learning that the men had been killed.

“I have ordered all officials to implement the law to its fullest extent to track them [the killers] down.”

Thaksin launched an all-out military operation to bring the suspected insurgents and villagers responsible for the slayings to justice.

The killings came amid a desperate attempt by authorities to negotiate their release from Ban Tanyonglimo in the border province of Narathiwat.

The two marines killed were Sub-Lieutenant Vinai Nabut and Petty Officer Khamthon Thongeiat.

“They were brutally beaten to death with machetes and sticks while their hands and legs were tied up and they were gagged and blindfolded,” Fourth Army Region commander Lt-General Kwanchart Klaharn told a press conference.

Commandos were positioned to storm the village and rescue the marines, but hooded villagers took advantage of the absence of eyewitnesses when people gathered in the mosque for mid-day prayers to kill the men, he said.

On Tuesday night, hundreds of villagers seized the two marines and locked them in a small storage room next to the village mosque immediately following a shooting attack at a local teashop that left two people dead and four others wounded.

Some of the villagers had accused the two marines of being behind the shooting. But Kwanchart said the two servicemen were just passing by on their way to another incident when they decided to stop after hearing the shooting at the teashop. They vehicle may have broken down, he added.

Najmuddin Umar, a former Thai Rak Thai MP who accompanied Fourth Army deputy chief Maj-General Pichet Wisaichorn into Ban Tanyonglimo, said authorities were unable to establish a dialogue with villagers because they would not identify who would do the negotiating.

Pichet said he saw the two troopers from a distance and asked that they be given food and water.

He told reporters that villagers had demanded the government form a committee to investigate the teashop incident and allow foreign media to come to their village to document the situation there.

But by the time Malaysian reporters arrived on the scene in the middle of the afternoon, the two men had been executed.

Thaksin said the violence was instigated by insurgents who wanted to amplify the tension between Tanyonglimo villagers and the government.

Throughout the entire stand-off drama, hundreds of women - their faces wrapped in traditional headscarves - stood on a tiny bridge just metres away from heavily armed soldiers, as their children played nearby.

They blocked the entrance to the village for 18 hours. Yesterday morning they put up a large tent that was plastered with messages.

“Evil has spread since Thaksin’s party came to power. Ethnic Malay people have been cruelly killed by soldiers. They are the real terrorists,” one message read.

Another simply said: “It’s you, not us.’’

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ANALYSIS: Southern murders reflect lack of effective leadership

Published on September 22, 2005 - The murder yesterday of two security officers following a tense stand-off between government officials and Muslim villagers in Narathiwat’s Ban Tanyong Limo underscores the absence of a concerted plan and strategy required for such urgent situations.

The incident not only reflects a lack of decisive leadership and the degree of difficulty that state officials find themselves up against in this restive region, where the local communities have never really trusted government officials, but also serves as testimony that the worst may be yet to come.

Villagers expressed their distrust of the Thai press and preference for Malaysian coverage of the incident. It was not clear what the presence of the Malaysian press would have achieved. If anything, the incident reflects the mindset of the local villagers, who are telling the world that they trust neither the Thai authorities nor the so-called independent Thai media.

In the struggle against the ongoing violence in the South, a conventional strategy – large numbers of troops with heavy firepower controlling the situation on the ground – was adopted from day one.

Psychological operations aimed at discrediting the insurgents and winning the hearts and minds of the local populace have never amounted to much. If anything, yesterday’s stand-off was proof of that.

Unlike the demonstrations and mass protests of previous years, Muslim women and children have now been given a role for local residents to vent their anger against state agencies. They acted forcefully to block the entrance to Ban Tanyong Limo.

While the two Marines who were tied up in a pavilion may not have been connected with the Tuesday-night shooting incident at a village tea shop that killed two men and wounded four others, they certainly appeared to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It appears the villagers grabbed the first security officers they could find. Whether they really thought that would enhance their bargaining power with the state, from whom they demanded an immediate investigation – as well as the presence of Malaysian and other foreign journalists – will never really be known.

But the blockading of the village by hundreds of women and children, preventing the entrance of government officials and Thai journalists, was a statement in itself: we don’t trust the authorities and take your flunkies with you.

The incident was the second of its kind in less than a month. Three weeks ago, an imam in Ban Lahan village was gunned down. The incident provoked a similar angry stand-off, because villagers believed the cleric’s dying words that he had been shot by government officers.

But there have been ample warnings. As far back as three years ago, a group of Narathiwat villagers lynched two Border Patrol officers in broad daylight after a feisty stand-off. Many officials on the ground admitted at the time they feared a worsening situation, but political leaders in Bangkok did not pay the kind of attention needed to change local mindsets.

And so misunderstandings and mistrust still prevail today in the unruly South, where Muslim insurgents are trying to carve out a separate homeland for ethnic Malays, while local residents are stuck in the middle of the escalating strife.

Worse, since authorities are unable to contain the violence, conspiracy theories blaming state agencies for manufacturing the violence have become commonly accepted as fact. Although such a school of thought is nothing new, the government has never really seriously considered the need to understand local mentalities and attitudes towards the state.

That does not mean there have been no efforts to win hearts and minds. There have been plenty – the Thaksin Football League, the origami bird drop, the one-week “clinic” aimed at instilling a higher sense of patriotism.

But none appeared to hit the right spot. It was as if the authorities were acting just for the sake of acting.

What has clearly been lacking these past two years is any attempt to second-guess local reactions towards such government initiatives.

Not only did the government fail to anticipate public reactions, they ignored even the need to think things through and come up with possible scenarios.

Today, a full 20 months after scores of armed men raided an Army battalion in Narathiwat and made off with 300 automatic weapons, the insurgency in Thailand’s southernmost provinces has crossed a threshold.

The battle in the South will require much more than a conventional military approach. While the struggle may be physical on one level, it is more in the hearts and minds of the local population.

It is no longer an issue of geographical control, but rather one of mindsets – between the ethnic Malays of the deep South and the rest of the country. And if the insurgents have their way, the battle will evolve into Muslim versus non-Muslim.

Don Pathan,
Supalak Ganjanakhundee
The Nation