Uneasy Military Encounters: The Imperial Politics of Counterinsurgency in Southern Thailand by Ruth Streicher

Author:Ruth Streicher [Streicher, Ruth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Political Science, World, Anthropology, Cultural & Social, Asian, Gender Studies
ISBN: 9781501751356
Google: tCDGDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 50550937
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2020-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

Rape, Resistance, and the Silencing of Women

One topic, in particular, revealed the limits to my open and friendly reception by the military. Whenever I attempted to inquire about the official number of soldiers who had committed acts of sexual harassment toward local women, I would get no reply from military informants. Neither my written request to the southern military administration nor my efforts to use unofficial channels was successful. In an interview, the Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC) spokesperson admitted that the military had experienced problems with soldiers who had begun relationships with southern women—even a member of his own team had been sent back home after he had been caught with a woman in the Old Market of Yala. Yet the spokesperson denied that there had been any cases of harassment or rape, and he accused the insurgent movement and students at the Prince of Songkhla University in Pattani of spreading “rape rumors,” which he described as “pure lies.” Toward the end of the interview, he switched on the air conditioning, and I offered to close the door to increase the cooling effect. Yet he declined: “Why do you want to close the door? Leave it open so that people can see that there’s nothing happening between you and me!”15 The issue of sexual violation, which has haunted the counterinsurgency mission in southern Thailand, surfaced in this encounter in an objectifying and paternalistic joke.

Accusations of rape in the southern Thai conflict are so sensitive for counterinsurgents precisely because they threaten the hierarchy of masculinities that undergirds the imperial formation.16 Besides the notion of the benevolent father invoked by General Anupong, the idea of the gentleman has significantly shaped the discourse of disciplined soldiering in the Thai context. Both of these models imply sexual restraint (as a mark of either fatherly protection or gentlemanly character, respectively). Both also markedly contrast with stereotypes of southern Muslim men as libidinous and abusive—the intruder in Anupong’s gloss—that operate within a larger Orientalist framing of Islam as inherently misogynistic. The Islamic family law in the southern provinces has, moreover, helped to institutionalize this sexualized distinction. For many soldiers, the official licensing of polygynous marriages confirmed the inferiority of the Islamic tradition in the South and resulted in an ever-increasing number of children—too many to be educated properly.17

In this setting, the military attempted to strictly police the sexual behavior of its soldiers. Thus, although there were sixteen official rules of engagement for the military in the southern provinces, which were printed on a pocket-size laminated plastic card small enough for soldiers to carry around while on duty, most soldiers only highlighted military concerns about women and drugs.18 Soldier P., for example, qualified his account of teasing women at checkpoints when asked about these guidelines: “Rules? Yes, there are two big issues. Two things that are really strictly prohibited. The first thing is this issue of affairs with women. To put it very simply, it’s strictly forbidden to go and talk and meet them. I mean,

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