Can a Civil War Happen in Thailand?
by the Siam Intelligence Unit (www.siamintelligence.com)
Original Article at: http://www.deepsouthwatch.org/node/765
[The original article was probably written during the Samak Sundaravej or Somchai Wongsawasdi government, when the PPP was still in power, but in the translator's opinion, much of the content is still relevent, perhaps (unfortunately) ever-increasingly so. - bkkboy06]
As the political conflict is reacing its peak, it is certain that every Thai person wishes to know when and how these events will come to an end.
While some may deem that the conflict is now at its highest point and that this crisis will soon be resolved before the nation's recovery from damages, whether in term of life, properties, and reputation in the world stage, will begin and Thailand will be back to normal once again, others deem that the current conflict is more complex than it appears and will not end easily. There may be occasional truce, but eventually the society in which people are clearly divided into two poles will develop into a large-scale "civil war" in the long run.
Generally, the term "civil war" refers to a war which occurred within the boundary of only one state, which is different from conventional warfares which are inter-state wars. A civil war is a war in which people within the same country come to arms to slaughter each other with the goal of taking state power or driving policies according to their own needs. The damage of a civil war tends to be serious, both in terms of deaths as well as enormous economic damage. A country that undergoes a civil war requires a long term to heal before being able to return and be competitive in the global market once again.
Research by Paul Collier, former Head of Research of World Bank (current a Professor of Economics at Oxford University), and Anke Hoeffler, Professor of Economics at Oxford University and an expert on civil wars, investigated the causes of civil wars in the modern world and found that the party which defied state power would start a civil war when it deemed that the benefits to be gained after the war was won would be higher than the costs in becoming the resistance and rebels, plus economic costs during the war.
Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler investigated how their 4 "economic costs" in their hypothesis would cause civil wars by making comparisons with past civil wars. The 4 costs were:
- Average per-capita income of the people in the country before the war
- Amount of natural resources in the country before the war
- Population in the country before the war
- Racial divisions in the country
The study found that the first 3 factors significantly affect the occurrence of civil wars in one way or another. However, a surprising result was observed on the last factor. Historically, it was believed that the greater heterogeneity of the people in the country, the greater likelihood of civil wars. However, this study found that countries with great heterogeneity had an equal chance of undergoing a civil war comparing to countries that were less racial differences.
Both Collier and Hoeffler further investigated and found that the scenario in which a civil war was most likely to occur was when people in the country were clearly divided into 2 sides (whether by race, religion, or ideology) and both sides were equal in size or number. It would be easier for such polarized societies to undergo civil wars than societies that were divided into many small factions or societies where people in the entire country belonged to the same ethnic group.
Thailand had undergone modern civil wars according to Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler's definition on 2 occasions. The first war was in 1933 between the "Khana Rath" (People's Party) Government, who were in favor of western-style democracy, and the Bovoradej Rebels, who wished to change the country back to absolute monarchy. The second war was the war between the military-led Royal Thai Government and the Communist Party of Thailand after the 6 October 1976 incident onwards. The former war was a struggle that was limited only between the elites who were in control of the military, whereas the latter one had a much greater impact on the people as it was driven by students who fled into the jungle after the 6 October incident and peasant forces in the provinces, making negotiation or absolute victory more difficult and the war was more prolonged.
The conflict which was the origin of the war usually consisted of many causes, but the main cause was the conflict in ideology, way-of-life, or belief, which might be the consequece of conflict in ethnicity (such as the Tamil-Singhalese ethnicities in Sri Lanka), religion (Islam-Hindu in Indian Kashmir) or political ideology (such as the democracy-communist conflicts in many countries during the Cold War). Historically, people living in such countries already would have confrontations or hatred a priori. Once these people were affected by economic hardship (e.g. drought, inadequate food, hardships) or short-term event with high social impact (e.g. coup d'etat, dissolution of parliament, assassination, terrorism, or sabortage), the original conflict would develop into a full-scale civil war rapidly. Examples of countries with on-going conflict and subsequent development into a civil war after economic problem included Ivory Coast (2002-2004), Sudan (2003-Present), and Rwanda (1990-1994).
Civil wars tended to be more prolonged thn other forms of internal conflicts such as demonstrations, protests, or formation of social change movements. The study found that the average length of civil wars before World War II was approximately 1.5 years, while post-WWII civil wars were more severe and lasted much longer at 4 years on average. Civil wars in some countries lasted for more than 20 years with intermittent truce but with prevailing conflict in the overall picture, such as the Angolan Civil War which lasted as long as 28 years (1974-2002) or the Mozambique Civil War which wasted 25 years (1977-2002).
Damages from civil wars could be considered as extremely grave, particularly if a country already possessed ethnic hatred. The Congolese Civil War took place over only 5 years but resulted in as many as 5.4 milllion deaths, the highest casualty since World War II. Another example that is really close to Thailand is the Cambodian Civil War between the pro-communist Khmer Rouge and the USA-backed democratic government. The mentioned War lasted 8 years (1967-1975) and although the war ended with the victory of the Khmer Rouge, as many as 600,00 people's lives were sacrified and more than 1 milllion were wounded.
A civil war that remains embedded due to cruelty could be no other than the Rwandan Civil War of 1990-1993, which was a war between armed militias and did not cause such great damage. However, not long after the seize-fire, in 1994 the hatred between the two sides after the Civil War caused instigation by various media among the Hutu tribe, who were greater in number and were long oppressed, to anihilate the Tutsi tribe, who were the elite minority. The genocide resulted in as many as 1 million deaths in less than one year.
Economic consequences were much harder to estimate. In the Congolese Civil War, the International Court of Justice ruled that the rebels, backed by the Ugandan government, lost the cause and would have to pay compensation worth 10 billion US dollars (400 billion Thai Bahts), while the civil war in Ireland, which was a short war between 1922-1933, caused an estimated damage of approximately 50 million pound sterling (4 billion Thai Bahts). Furthermore, there were also damages in term of natural resources, human resources, loss of opportunities, extinction of endangered wild animals, migrant problems, and many others.
Will a Civil War Happen in Thailand?
Civil wars are normally caused by long-accumulated ideological conflict and quick solutions cannot be found. As for the current events in Thailand, there are clashes between globalized capitalistic ideals led by the People Power Party (PPP) government and the traditional ideologies led by the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), which fall under the category of ideological conflicts, similar to the clashes of religious or political ideologies in other countries as previously cited.
When Collier and Hoeffler's ideas are considered, it could be seen that the numbers of supporters of the PPP government and the PAD members are roughly equal and no side has a significantly higher number than the opponent, which creates a very high risk for large-scale civil war, aside from limited confrontations from supporters of both sides which can be seen, such as the events in Udon Thani or at Vibhavadi Rd, Soi 3.
However, the majority of the people in Thai society still remains non-partison, thus the society is still not completely polarized. There is still the middle party which loves peace and does not wish to join either side, of whom the PAD and the government are aware and are trying to draw as many members of this middle party as possible to join their side. If this middle party still clings on to themselves and does not join either side, the risk of occurrence of a civil war may be reduced.
In case that a civil war actually happens, there is a high possibility that the war could last for many years, with occasional truce by negotiations for temporary seize-fire, but the conflict in the overall picture would still remain and would be ready to flare up at any time if there are changes in the event, such as party dissolution or assassination of the leader of either side.
One of the measures which can be immediately taken to stop a civil war, or at least mitigate its level of violence, is to stop the broadcast and distrbution of the media which incites and instigates hatred in the society. Otherwise, a civil war which may happen in the Thai society in the future may also include genocide of the opposing side, such as what has previously happened in Rwanda.
References
-BBC (2006) "What makes a civil war, BBC. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4902708.stm
-Collier, Paul and Anke Hoeffler (1998) "On economic causes of civil war," Oxford Economic Papers 50, 563-573. http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/collier98economic.html
-Home made atlas of the world 2008 (2008) "Wars in the 2000s". http://www.homemade-atlas.org/thestate
-Wikipedia. List of Civil Wars, Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civil_wars
-World Bank, The Economics of Civil War, Crime and Violence http://econ.worldbank.org