Sama-ae Thanam looked thoughtful when asked what he had pondered the most during all the years he spent in prison. The former senior member of the Patani United Liberation Organisation (Pulo), who was released from prison last month, said, “Of course, I cannot deny thinking about my personal life.
‘I’m an ordinary person now’: Former separatist Sama-ae Thanam conducts prayers at his home in Pattani.
“But I was also thinking about the ongoing situation. For 18 years, many innocent people have died.”
Sitting in his home in Thanam village in the southern province of Pattani, he said it was unclear who is behind the current violence. “No one takes any responsibility. Some say it’s the authorities. Some say the insurgents.
“But there are no leaflets [to claim credit from any insurgent group], are there?” He looked to his son-in-law for assurance and the younger man nodded in approval.
Mr Sama-ae, 63, still has many things to catch up on after being released from jail on July 17, which was Eid al-Fitr, the day that marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. He spent more than 17 years in prison. His crime was joining a group that took up arms against the government in a bid to separate the Muslim-dominant region in the three southernmost provinces.
Today, Mr Sama-ae has given up violence. After gaining his freedom, he said he is determined to contribute to the peace-building process by taking part in government projects to create employment for young people in the region.
NEUTRAL TERRITORY
Talking about promoting peace may sound ironic from the former leader of an insurgent group who was tried and convicted of treason. However, the theatre of violence in his day was mostly in remote rural areas, where Pulo fighters engaged in gunfights with authorities.
A security officer told Spectrum, “At that time, the authorities knew who was who in the insurgent groups. We even visited them from time to time.”
He was referring to a secret channel of communication where field commanders from both sides could meet in neutral territory. These places include cities in the Middle East and neighbouring countries.
These days, the theatre of violence is no longer remote hilltops but towns and cities where innocent people are sometimes targeted and also become collateral damage. More than 6,500 people have been killed since the wave of insurgency violence started in January 2004.
While Pulo is still trying to liberate parts of the South, the focus has shifted to the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), the group authorities claim controls the vast majority of combatants on the ground today. Without the secret communication channel of old, combined with the fact the clandestine BRN leadership does not have a public face, atrocities often go unclaimed.
THE LIBYAN CONNECTION
When Spectrum spoke to him, Mr Sama-ae was traditionally dressed in a white shirt with a black pattern and wore a taqiyah, or Muslim cap. He carried beads used in Islamic prayer and talked in soft-spoken Thai, even though he seemed more comfortable speaking Malay, the dominant language in the three southern border provinces.
Mr Sama-ae’s house stands out a little in his neighbourhood. The two-storey orange building is larger than any of the nearby houses. Chairs and a table were arranged under a canopy in front of the house for waiting guests. Mr Sama-ae lives with his family — his wife, children, a son-in-law and a grandson. The rest of his children are in Malaysia, where his family runs restaurants.
While it is well known that Mr Sama-ae played a prominent role in Pulo during the violence that stretched from the late 1960s and ended in the early 1990s, he chose his words carefully when speaking about his past. He often referred to his role as political in nature.
“I am no longer part of Pulo or any group. I am an ordinary person now,” he said.
His old alias of “Haji Ismail Gaddafi” referred to both him and the movement’s connection to the Middle East, where many of the Pulo leaders were trained and once lived.
Mr Sama-ae said he adopted the name after he spent six months in Libya in the 1980s, but he denied getting military training there. He said he went there for a political education based on the concepts of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who embraced socialism and nationalism like many other authoritarian regimes in the region.
“I did not talk to Muammar Gaddafi personally, but I did talk to his assistants,” Mr Sama-ae recalled.
Mr Sama-ae said Gaddafi talked about how socialism would provide justice to society. However, “I was not convinced that the concept would be applicable to the deep southern provinces in Thailand”, he said. He explained that people in the far South are generally religious. Most of the people in Arab countries in the post-colonial era were socialists and secular by nature.
However, when he returned to Thailand people called him by the alias “Gaddafi”. “I was only 25 then, and Muammar Gaddafi was a leader when he was about 26-27,” he said.
He is more widely known as Sama-ae Thanam — it is common to put a person’s home town as their informal last name in the South. Mr Sama-ae’s name on his Thai ID card is Ma-ae Sa-a.
Like other Arab countries back in the 1970s and ’80s, Libya was providing political support and military training for a number of Muslim separatist groups, including the Moros from Mindanao in the Philippines and the Acehanese in Indonesia.
During the 1990s, Bangkok launched a diplomatic offensive and convinced many Middle Eastern countries to stop supporting the Muslim separatists in Thailand’s South.
In 1998, with the help of Muslim countries in Asean, Thailand was granted the status of “Permanent Observer” by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, and in the process stopped the diplomatic support from countries that groups like Pulo and BRN were hoping for.
A WELL-TRAVELLED MAN
Mr Sama-ae said he joined Pulo when he was about 21 after having travelled to Saudi Arabia when he was 19. “I thought that if I joined Pulo, my relatives would be able to continue their studies in the Middle East.”
In the late 1960s Pulo established political ties with a number of Muslim countries in the Middle East and continued an armed insurgency through the 1970s and ’80s that only ended in the early 1990s after a blanket amnesty programme by the Thai government.
Mr Sama-ae said he did not receive a formal education except for attending a pondok, or Islamic religious school.
At that time, children in the southern border provinces rarely had any opportunities to study overseas.
Mr Sama-ae said he did not study overseas, but managed to send his relatives to study abroad. But he has been to many countries, and spent six years in Saudi Arabia and 10 years in Malaysia. He has also been to Israel, Syria, Pakistan, Iran, Singapore and around the Middle East.
Mr Sama-ae did not say how he climbed to the top of the Pulo separatist group.
Over the years he was charged with various crimes in Thailand, including extortion and being a member of a triad gang.
In those days, Pulo members sought protection money from rubber planters and local businesses. The payments were considered to be “revolutionary taxes”.
Such practices continue today, but questions remain as to whether the locals provide the money willingly or are forced to by the movement.
Pulo fought the authorities partly because of their feelings of injustice. Violent incidents often took place in remote areas and Pulo members were known for their expertise in making improvised explosive devices.
During his trial, one of Mr Sama-ae’s colleagues, who was arrested in the same operation, was asked to demonstrate how to assemble explosive devices, which he did with a fair degree of skill, according to a court report.
A security officer who knew Mr Sama-ae said, “The context is different from today when the violence targets innocent people in the city with the aim of feeding hatred between people from different religions.”
Pulo’s combatants operated along the Thai-Malaysian border.
Mr Sama-ae and other leaders were charged with many crimes, including involvement in triad activities and criminal associations. But it was the treason charge that put him behind bars for so long.
TESTING THE FRIENDSHIP?
In the early 1990s, Mr Sama-ae was directly involved in talks through one of the secret communication channels. He acted as a coordinator between the Thai government and insurgent groups.
He said he helped arrange for meetings between Thai officers and Pulo secretary-general Tengku Bira Kotanila in the early 1990s. At that time, Lt Gen Kitti Ratanachaya was the Commander of the 4th Army Region.
He said the meetings took place twice, in Egypt and Syria.
At the time there was an attempt to broker a peace process.
After a previous wave of armed insurgency finished in the early 1990s, many of the leaders remained in exile and had taken up citizenship in Malaysia, Indonesia and Europe. Combatants in the field also came down from their jungle base camps and returned to their villages to continue their lives.
In 1998, Mr Sama-ae was detained by Malaysian authorities and secretly handed over to Thai police. Others captured in the same operation were Haji Abdul Rahman Bazo, Abdul Rahman Haji Yala and Haji Da’oud Thanam, who is not related to Mr Sama-ae. They shared a name because they came from the same village.
Mr Sama-ae said he was surprised when he was captured because he had already tried to facilitate peace talks between Thai authorities and other Pulo leaders. But his role as a “peace talks coordinator” did not secure him safety or a comfortable life in exile.
A diplomatic source said the handover of Mr Sama-ae was to test the newfound friendship between then prime minister Chuan Leekpai and the Malaysian premier at the time, Mahathir bin Mohamad.
Another source linked Malaysia’s handover of Mr Sama-ae to the handover to Malaysia of an al-Arqam sect leader by Thai authorities. Al-Arqam was a Malaysian-based Islamic religious sect which was banned by the government.
Mr Sama-ae was immediately locked up in a Thai prison without bail. In 2002 the Criminal Court found him and the others guilty of involvement in separatist insurgencies, stockpiling weapons and criminal association.
The four appealed, but the Supreme Court, years later, upheld the ruling.
LETTERS AND IDEAS
During the trial, Mr Sama-ae was represented by a group of lawyers which included Somchai Neelapaijit, the Thai Muslim lawyer who disappeared in 2004.
“I learned of his disappearance in jail. I was sad,” Mr Sama-ae said, describing Somchai as a “good person; that is hard to find”.
“Somchai did not accept money. He said he did his work for Allah.”
In the first six months when he was detained at Bangkok Remand Prison, Mr Sama-ae wrote a letter to prime minister Chuan, via Maj Gen Sanan Kachornprasart, who was then the interior minister. Mr Sama-ae said the letter asked the premier to give him “a chance to get out of jail”.
The letter also outlined a six-point strategy to solve problems in the southern border provinces, covering economic and social issues as well as justice and education.
“If I was convicted, there would be a problem because I was the facilitator for the Thai government,” he said, implying that his arrest would set a bad precedent for future dialogue between Thai authorities and leaders of separate movements.
An analyst said the secret handover of Mr Sama-ae created a great deal of mistrust between the separatist movements and governments of both sides.
Mr Chuan did not release Mr Sama-ae, but he sent National Security Council officials to ask Mr Sama-ae to explain the details of the strategies he wrote about. The Chuan government, however, did not have a chance to pursue the peace process because the Democrat Party lost the general election to Thaksin Shinawatra’s Thai Rak Thai Party months later.
When Thaksin became prime minister, Mr Sama-ae wrote a letter to him outlining his proposed strategies again, including the development of the well-being of people in the border provinces and the establishment of a halal food centre.
One month later, Thaksin sent a representative to visit Mr Sama-ae who conveyed the message that Thaksin agreed with the idea of setting up a halal food outlet to ensure goods were in line with Islamic dietary principles and requirements.
Mr Sama-ae boasted that a couple of years after that meeting a halal food centre was set up in Sai Buri in Pattani province.
Mr Sama-ae served time in four prisons — Bangkok Remand Prison, Bang Kwang Central Prison in Nonthaburi as well as facilities in Songkhla and Yala. He said he managed to observe daily Muslim prayers in every prison.
Life in prison was reasonably normal, he said. He saw prisoners from Pakistan, Bangladesh, China, Singapore, Indonesia, the Middle East, Malaysia and Nigeria at the Bangkok Remand Prison. The situation at other prisons was similar.
“Seventy percent of prisoners are convicted on drug related charges. The government has to fix this problem,” he said.
NEW MISSION
Mr Sama-ae said he was released because he had been a good prisoner and stressed it followed rules and regulations.
Special consideration is given to prisoners who are over 60, he said.
Abdul Rohman Bazo, who was captured in the same operation, was released earlier partly because he was aged more than 70.
Haji Da’oud Thanam is still in jail. He is yet to turn 60.
Abdul Rahman Haji Yala, meanwhile, is still in jail because he identified himself as Malaysian and not Thai during the trial, said a source. Mr Sama-ae has asked the government to release his colleagues.
“I want the government to give them a chance, doing whatever they can in their capacity under the regulations to [help] people who have been convicted. When I was released, not only was I happy, but Muslims [in the region] have been grateful.”
SOLVING THE PROBLEMS
Mr Sama-ae said his new mission is to help improve the quality of people’s well-being by working on four projects. They are goat breeding, cow breeding, farming and the possibility of growing dates in the south of Thailand.
“Arab countries have desert, but they can grow dates. When I was in prison, I was told that the central region can grow dates. They can fetch a good price of about 500 baht [per kilogramme]. If we can grow them here, in the next couple of years or five to six years, we won’t have to go to the Middle East.
“Now not only Muslims eat dates, but others can eat them because they are delicious. Dates can be an ingredient for som tam.
“I am confident that if everyone has a job, lives well and their children can study [the conflict will be resolved].”
Mr Sama-ae said employment is the fundamental factor in solving the conflicts in the deep South, in addition to other issues like justice and education to promote social mobility.
“If young people don’t have jobs, what will they do?” he asked.
He said he has talked to villagers and people in the community about working on projects based on a cooperative format.
He added the projects don’t have to be limited to Pattani, but could be extended to five southern provinces.
Security analysts said Mr Sama-ae might not be as powerful as he once was, but added he is unlikely to enjoy a quiet and isolated life any time soon as authorities continue to seek his advice about how to resolve the southern conflict.
Mr Sama-ae also said in addition to economic issues, the government should assure justice was being served and show sincerity.
Knowledgeable people need to be brought into the process, he added.
“They should discuss what the movements want and what the government wants,” he said.
Mr Sama-ae said he was invited to join the peace talks between the Thai government and representatives of the insurgent group alliance, called the Majlis Amanah Rakyat Patani, or Mara Patani, in Kuala Lumpur last week, but he turned down the invitation.
He said he felt it was not the right time for him and decided to stay on the sidelines to observe how the process unfolds.
“I fully support the talks to create peace in the region," he said.
"Every side wants to see peace. We have seen the damage for a long time.”
secret handover: Above, former Pulo leaders Da’oud Thanam, Rahman Bazo and Sama-ae Thanam arrive at court to hear their appeal verdict. Sama-ae, right, was released from prison last month.
family man: Sama-ae Thanam, centre, with members of his family at their Pattani home. The rest of his children run restaurants in Malaysia.
‘Every side wants peace’: Sama-ae Thanam conducts prayers with his sons and son-in-law.