Published on April 26, 2008 - Published on April 26, 2008

Besides coming to Malaysia at a time when Malaysian Premier Abdullah
Badawi was preoccupied with his own political future, Prime Minister
Samak Sundaravej's quest to make some headway concerning the
violence-plagued southernmost provinces, not to mention his abrasive
character, has rubbed the Malaysians the wrong way.

Kuala Lumpur was given a jolt on Monday, when Pol Lt-General
Wichianchot Sukchotrat told a press conference Samak would ask for the
extradition of two suspected insurgents now residing in Malaysia.

Out of consideration for Samak's visit, Kuala Lumpur officials kept
their cool instead of opting for microphone diplomacy.

"The [Malaysian] police would have to investigate and decide if they
had done anything that was considered a crime in both countries before
they could be extradited," Malaysian Home Minister Syed Hamid Albar
told reporters.

A Malaysian source said Kuala Lumpur had been given the names of five
suspected insurgents, not two as reported, whom Thailand would like to
have extradited to face charges of treason.

What irked the Malaysians most was the fact that one of the five
wanted suspects was a senior figure living in exile who had met with
top Thai government officials - then-secretary-general of the National
Security Council General Winai Pathiyakul and former director of the
Armed Forces Security Centre General Vaipot Srinual - in several
rounds of talks between November 2005 and February 2006.

The now-defunct Langkawi Process was organised by former Malaysian
prime minister Mahathir Mohammed. The process resulted in a list of
recommendations delivered to the Thai government and signed by
long-standing separatist groups. Then-prime minister Thaksin
Shinawatra did not give it the time of day, while the hard-line
Barisan Revolusi Nasional Coordinate boycotted the process entirely. A
similar request was made in Phuket during a summit between Thaksin and
Abdullah in October 2004, three weeks before the Tak Bai massacre.
Thaksin quietly handed 18 names to his Malaysian counterpart.

Three months later, after some heated exchanges with Kuala Lumpur
following the Tak Bai massacre and having come to loggerheads with
Muslim leaders at an Asean Summit in Vientiane, not to mention the
fact that Badawi would not follow through on the 18 names, Thaksin
opted for microphone diplomacy and publicly announced he would ask
Malaysia to extradite suspected insurgent Chae Kumae Kuteh. Kuala
Lumpur hit back hard, and Thai-Malaysian relations went into a
tailspin.

Chae was reportedly detained in Malaysia under the draconian Internal
Security Act, possibly to avoid embarrassment with the Thais, as his
name was floating around security and intelligence circles.

It is somewhat impossible to think diplomatic tussles between the
countries can be avoided when one considers their geographical
proximity to one another.

Besides sharing a common border, the majority of Thailand's
southernmost provinces are populated by ethnic Malays who have a
history of resisting the Thai state's policy of assimilation. They see
it as coming at the expense of their religion and identity. People
living along the common border have relatives on both sides. For many,
the political border was a legacy of colonial times and a hindrance to
the movement of local residents.

Just over a decade ago, as members of long-standing separatist groups
put down their arms in return for amnesty, a significant number of the
Pattani-Malay insurgents resettled in Malaysia. Like the separatists
in Aceh, they were permitted to stay as long as they did not put the
government of Malaysia in an unwanted spotlight. In other words, no
public statements, and all inquiries must be made through the
Malaysian authorities.

Every now and then, a few "bad apples" have slipped through the cracks
and broken their silence or in some cases returned to the armed
struggle. And since the new generation of insurgents has firmly
established a foothold in Thailand's deep South, it has been tempting
for some members of the old guard to get back into the action. Thai
security forces, who have a reputation for everything except good
intelligence work, think they know who these "bad apples" are; hence,
the 18 names handed over during Thaksin's time and the five suspects
named more recently.

For Malaysia, the idea of sending the wrong man to the gallows is
unthinkable. There is a high degree of sympathy for the predicament of
Malays in southern Thailand among the Malaysian population and civil
servants. Many think the Thai state has gone too far in trying to
force Malays to assimilate. And so when a sticky issue like
extradition surfaces in the public arena, the debate always centres on
what kind of evidence the Thai authorities have. Making matters more
difficult for the Malaysian state is the fact that many of these
wanted individuals hold Malaysian citizenship.

But Thai-Malaysian relations in the deep South are based on much more
than extradition and allegations of turning a blind eye. At the heart
of these difficult relations is the lack of a consensus among Thai
officials as to how significant a role Thailand is prepared to afford
Malaysia in what it continues to insist is a domestic affair. Malaysia
has shown a tendency to take up the role of mediator between the old
guard and Thai officials, but Bangkok insists taking the role of
"facilitator" is as far as Kuala Lumpur can go.

Late last year in Saudi Arabia, Malaysian officials organised a
gathering of Pattani-Malay exiles with the expectation that Thai
representatives would attend.

Thailand snubbed the function, thinking the Kuala Lumpur government
had gone overboard with the initiative. Needless to say, there is a
lack of clarity between the two sides as to what constitutes
"facilitation", "mediation" or outright "interference".

This lack of clarity, along with diplomatic faux pas as seen in the
abrasive style of Samak and Thaksin, will continue to get in the way
of bilateral cooperation between the two countries.

Don Pathan
The Nation