For a country that has done so well for so long in navigating the treacherous waters of international life, Thailand's luck may have run out with the bomb attack on the Erawan shrine in central Bangkok on Aug 17.
While Thailand is known as a haven and transit point for all kinds of mischief and outright crime, it has not been a direct target. The Erawan bomb blast that killed 20 and injured 130 has changed all that. What the Thai authorities must do now is to toughen law enforcement and intelligence gathering, promote public alertness and recalibrate Thailand's foreign policy posture to ensure a better balance where statecraft intersects with transitional crime.
As ongoing investigations over the Erawan shrine bombing yield more suspects and clues, the evidence gathered appears to point to an opaque transnational crime network that involves the smuggling of Uighurs, who are essentially Chinese-Muslim dissidents of Turkic extraction from China's Xinjiang region. The discovery of dozens of fake Turkish passports at an apartment inhabited by a key suspect suggests an organised, illicit migration business that is common in this country. Similar illegal migrant operations reportedly exist for other suppressed ethnic groups, such as those from Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia. Even North Koreans traversed a trodden getaway path to Thailand for eventual sanctuary in South Korea.
These human smuggling and migration businesses thrive locally because of Thailand's permissive and hospitable society and easy living, propped up by poor and often corrupt law enforcement. For the most part, Thailand is a temporary drop-off point and a marketplace of sorts for shady transnational transactions. It has been more of a passageway than a direct target and destination. Sometimes people elsewhere arrive with the aim of harming other non-Thai people who are here. Foreigners do not come to harm the Thai people on a systematic basis. Only the Thais have been harming themselves with their protracted political polarisation.
In the Erawan blast, Thais and other nationalities were direct targets of the attack. More and more investigative roads lead to the Thai government's deportation of 109 Uighurs to China in July. The Uighur connection and the Thai government's diplomatic miscalculation may well be denied in Bangkok's official quarters but the mounting evidence indicates that an aggrieved ring of Uighurs and their sympathisers exacted the revenge bombing.
As much as the government wants to deny the Uighur explanation, police investigators are insistent that this was not an act of terrorism because such an admission would adversely affect Thailand's vibrant tourist industry. Both are misplaced.
We need to confront the issue squarely to steer Thailand's way ahead. In the past, Thailand got away with it. A series of terrorist attempts on Thai soil have been foiled by good fortune. For example, in March 1994, a truck full of explosives destined for the Israeli embassy was immobilised because it clashed with a local motorcycle. And in 2012, a terrorist bomb plan by a team of Iranians against Israeli targets came unstuck because of a premature explosion. Somehow luck was on Thailand's side but this may be no longer the case.
Based on available evidence, it is difficult not to conclude that the Erawan bombing was an Uighur-connected terrorist operation designed to kill and maim and to take revenge against a Thai government policy and diplomatic manoeuvre.
At this stage, Thailand needs to rethink its default status as a haven and transit for illicit transnational crimes. It needs to curb these criminal networks in a sustained fashion and send the message that the authorities mean business and that the future will be different from the past. Having allowed transitional crimes to fester for so long is partly responsible for the Erawan blast.
More important, Thai statecraft has to be recalibrated. We now know that China will squeeze concessions from Thailand when the Thai government is weak abroad. After the latest military coup, Thailand's military government went head over heels for Beijing's recognition and support in the face of criticism from leading democratic countries that included Japan, Indonesia and the Philippines, apart from the usual Western voices. We saw that the financing terms of China's support for rail development in Thailand were comparatively stiff, with higher-than-normal interest rates and shorter grace and repayment periods. The Chinese government also extracted other concessions, such as the Uighur deportation.
Bangkok will always be, and will always want to be, close to Beijing. China is the superpower giant in the neighbourhood, and Thailand resides in its backyard of mainland Southeast Asia. The Bangkok-Beijing axis harks back centuries, with only a Cold War blip in its timeline. But now is a time to reconsider Thai nuances towards China. With a straight face, Thai diplomacy should insist that business is usual. At the same time, Thailand needs to lean more on other major powers outside Beijing's orbit, especially Japan, South Korea and India.
While it is a matter of degree, it is evident now that Thailand's military government went too far for China's diplomatic succour. The Erawan shrine bombing may be the heftiest foreign policy cost of Thailand's latest coup.
Thai authorities will need to toe a fine line. Now is a good time to quietly ask the Chinese authorities about the verifiable fate of those 109 Uighurs, who were taken away with black hoods over their heads, each flanked by a Chinese security guard. At the same time, Thailand must go after all the culprits and perpetrators of the Erawan blast and bring them to justice. The message should be like it has always been through imperialist times and world wars. Thailand does not want to be an enemy of anyone, and we will not be forced to choose between sworn enemies.
Thitinan Pongsudhirak is associate professor and director of the Institute of Security and International Studies, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University.