This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 03 BANGKOK 000926 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DOD FOR USD(P) EDELMAN AND ASD RODMAN FROM AMBASSADOR BOYCE 
STATE FOR S/CT CRUMPTON AND EAP A/S HILL 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/15/2016 
TAGS: PGOV PREL TH POL MIL
SUBJECT: U.S.-THAI MILITARY COOPERATION IN THE CONTEXT OF 
SOUTHERN VIOLENCE 
 
Classified By: Ambassador Ralph L. Boyce. Reason 1.4 (a and d) 
 
¶1.  (S)  Eric and Peter:  My country team continues to 
explore ways to improve our military cooperation with 
Thailand in order to address the violence in the South here. 
I know these are issues that are important to you.  I'd like 
to share my views with you and suggest ways we can help the 
Thai.  I recently met with Hank Crumpton and believe we 
should seek his input too.  I see three basic ways to focus 
our military cooperation strategy: 
 
--1) Improve the professional and operational skills of the 
Royal Thai Armed Forces, especially the Thai Army; 
--2) Help the Thai break down stovepipes between the Thai 
military, police forces, and civilian agencies; 
--3) Do everything we can to ensure the Thai respect 
international human rights norms as they counter the violence. 
 
However, in order to successfully implement such a strategy, 
it is important to clearly understand the roots of the 
violence in southern Thailand which make this situation very 
different from the southern Philippines and Indonesia. 
 
THIS IS ETHNIC, NOT RELIGIOUS 
 
¶2.  (S)  At its core, the violence in southern Thailand 
arises primarily from ethnic rather than religious tension. 
Unlike in other parts of Thailand where Muslims speak Thai 
and are linguistically and culturally linked to their 
Buddhist neighbors, Muslims in southern Thailand speak a 
different language, have different customs, and resent being 
treated as second class citizens.  They are proud of their 
distinct -- fundamentally Malay -- heritage.  The unrest can 
be traced back to 1902 when Britain and Siam drew a border 
between the once-independent sultanate of Pattani and British 
Malaya -- thereby separating ethnic Malays in what is now 
southern Thailand from their kinsmen in what is now northern 
Malaysia.  This is not a new issue for the Thai. 
 
¶3.  (S)  Unrest in the South has smoldered on and off for 
over a hundred years.  It will likely continue to simmer for 
years to come.  However, unlike the Philippines and 
Indonesia, where the security forces cannot operate in large 
areas of those countries, the RTG controls all of southern 
Thailand.  There are roughly 45,000 security forces (police 
and military) deployed in an area smaller than Connecticut. 
Most importantly, unlike the Philippines -- which seeks U.S. 
direct involvement in and around Mindanao -- the RTG does not 
want U.S. troops or trainers working in the South.  I can't 
underscore this point too much -- Prime Minister Thaksin and 
his Government do not want us to operate in the South. 
 
DO NO HARM 
 
¶4.  (S)  Right now, southern separatists direct their anger 
at the government in Bangkok, not at the United States.  A 
U.S. presence or perception of U.S. involvement in the South 
could redirect that anger towards us and link it to the 
international jihadist movement -- a link that is currently 
absent.  Likewise, we are working hard to avoid feeding 
rampant, outlandish speculation that we are somehow fomenting 
the violence in the South in order to justify building 
permanent bases -- a very sensitive issue in Thailand.  We do 
not want to jeopardize our access to key military facilities 
in Thailand like Utapao Naval Air Station.  Utapao was 
invaluable during Operation Unified Assistance and allows us 
to quickly ferry materiel from the Pacific to the Persian 
Gulf. 
 
¶5. (S)  We must ensure that any offers of assistance or 
training pass the "location and label" test.  Put simply, we 
should ensure that U.S. personnel are kept away from the far 
South and we need to make sure that we do not label any 
assistance or training as directly linked to the southern 
situation. 
 
WHAT THAI POLICY IS AND WHAT THEY HAVE DONE 
 
¶6.  (S)   The RTG's CT effort in the South has been plagued 
by Thaksin repeatedly changing his policies and lead 
agencies.  Shortly after taking power, Thaksin decided to 
dissolve the joint civilian-police-military Task Force which 
since the 1980s had successfully contained the 
separatist-related violence.  The loss of that coordinating 
body increased the natural propensity of the Thai bureaucracy 
to stovepipe information and not cooperate operationally. 
The problems caused by this lack of coordination have been 
compounded by the constant shifting of both the civilian and 
military leadership responsible for the South.  In addition, 
Thaksin has often set unrealistic deadlines for his deputies 
to "solve" the southern problem and has been inconsistent in 
his policy statements, creating a situation where the 
operational leadership has a weak mandate and lack of 
strategic focus.  Now, he finally appears settled on Army 
CINC GEN Sonthi Boonyaratklin (who is a Muslim with a Special 
Forces Background) as his chief military representative. 
Sonthi recently assured me that the Army had rebuilt its 
intelligence and political network in the South, which is a 
good sign.  Nonetheless, Thaksin himself retains a tight hold 
on policy decisions in the South and there is little 
guarantee that he couldn't switch course again in response to 
an actual or perceived setback.  But irrespective of which 
agency has the titular lead in the South, implementation of 
the CT effort will remain a joint effort among the Army, 
Police, and civilian officials and thus will require improved 
coordination and elimination of crippling stovepipes among 
agencies. 
WHAT ARE THE GAPS?  A) MILITARY SKILLS 
 
¶7.  (S)  As mentioned above, I see three areas ripe for 
improving our work with the armed forces.  First, making the 
Thai military more capable.  Our current military assistance 
program, using Joint/Combined Exercise Training (JCET) funds, 
is good but could be expanded.  If funds and trainers were 
available, we could augment our JCET program and improve Thai 
facilities for training.  Existing efforts include: 
 
--JCETs programs focused on enhancing general CT 
capabilities, counter-insurgency operations, civil affairs 
and psychological operations, and information warfare. Since 
FY04 over 2500 Thai soldiers from 50 different units have 
been trained in counter-insurgency by U.S. Special Forces. 
 
--Building a National Training Facility (NTF).  We have 
worked with the Thai for over a year to develop an NTF that 
can serve as a world-class training facility.  Such a site 
could not only help hone CT skills and provide human rights 
training, but is a key tool to improve peace keeping skills 
for soldiers in the region under the Global Peace Operations 
Initiative (GPOI).  We have been cobbling funds together to 
make the NTF a center of excellence and could use more. 
 
--PSYOPS.  We presently support a U.S. Military Information 
Support Team (MIST) unit from Ft. Bragg attached to the Thai 
Army.  This team will likely be augmented by an experienced 
Civil Affairs planner within the next month or so who will 
assist with campaign planning and product support to counter 
ideological support to terrorism.  I think it is worth 
exploring doing more in this area -- including creating 
training material aimed at soldiers rotating to the South to 
make them more sensitive to local customs and religious 
beliefs.  That being said, it is critical that the Thai 
military be in control.  Under the current arrangement, the 
MIST Unit works out of Thai Army Special Warfare HQ in 
Lopburi north of Bangkok, nowhere near the South, under the 
explicit direction of GEN Sonthi, the Thai Army Commander. 
 
B) POOR COORDINATION WITH THE POLICE FORCES 
 
¶8.  (S)  The area most ripe for exploration is improving 
coordination between the Thai military and the Thai Police. 
There is a glaring lack of public confidence in the justice 
system here -- creating an atmosphere ripe for human rights 
abuses.  Thai police are generally not as professional as the 
military and there is little coordination between the two 
institutions.  Recently, we began to explore what steps we 
can take to break down these barriers.  One obvious example 
is to invite a few key Thai police to U.S.-sponsored military 
training courses and to invite key Thai military officers to 
U.S.-sponsored police training courses.  Other possibilities 
worth exploring include: 
 
--Expanding DOJ's International Criminal Investigative 
Assistance Training Program (ICITAP).  ICITAP has years of 
experience in Indonesia, Colombia and elsewhere in providing 
fundamental skills to police and prosecutors that allow them 
to conduct investigations and prosecute cases under the rule 
of law.  Helping train police in crime scene preservation and 
forensic techniques and instilling in them an understanding 
of the prosecutorial process could reduce the risk of 
extra-judicial killings.  Expanding key courses to include 
military participation could enhance cooperation between the 
military and police. 
 
--Doing more work on IEDs.  DOD, DOJ and Intelligence 
agencies have all recently sponsored training courses for the 
Thai aimed at detecting and mitigating the risk posed by 
IEDs.  In the future, we should explore mixing the student 
make up for these courses to break down the walls between the 
military and the police. 
--Working more closely with ILEA Bangkok.  Although ILEA has 
its limitations, I'd like to see the Thai military included 
in more ILEA courses.  We've initiated discussions with DOJ 
and INL about this. 
 
C)  A LACK OF HUMAN RIGHTS AWARENESS 
 
¶9.  (S)  I urge all senior U.S. officials visiting Thailand 
to ask the Thai to conform with international norms while 
working in the South and warn them what might happen to 
important programs like IMET should they resort to 
extra-judicial means.  You and I know this is not an idle 
threat.  If funding could be found, we could expand our human 
rights training for the Thai military.  Existing efforts 
include: 
-- Regular human rights courses as part of JCET.  Since 2004, 
JCET programs have included more comprehensive human rights 
training before the trained unit deploys to the South.  This 
training has been conducted jointly by U.S. and Thai Special 
Forces. 
 
--Advanced courses.  In response to the October 2004 Tak Bai 
incident in which 80 Southern Muslims died after a 
demonstration while in police custody, we worked with the 
Defense Institute of International Legal Studies (DIILS) to 
set up a more thorough human rights training program for Thai 
enlisted troops as well as mid-level and senior officers.  We 
could expand this program should funding be available. 
 
--Improving military police skills.  We are planning to use 
State Department GWOT funds to be administered by U.S. 
Marines to pay for non-lethal weapons for Thai troops in the 
hope of avoiding major human rights violations. 
 
IN CLOSING 
 
¶10.  (S)  The Thai are looking for more intelligence 
cooperation.  We share as much intel as we can with them and 
are doing myriad things to make them more capable.  I think 
they have some unrealistic hopes that there is a technical 
silver bullet that will solve their problems (e.g., UAVs). 
 
¶11.  (S)  There is no clear endgame to this 100-year-old 
insurgency.  Given our recent experience in nearby countries, 
I think we need to craft a strategy that is realistic, 
effective, and sustainable -- and limits our direct 
involvement.  I look forward to hearing your reaction and 
stand ready to assist as you move forward. 
 
Sincerely, 
Skip 
BOYCE