Even as the World Watched IV: Peaceful, or Pistol?

12 July 2010
Chiang Mai, Thailand

During the Thailand fighting in May, the rain of media mixed with the dust of politics, creating mud that left honest people feeling bogged down.  People desiring clarity slogged knee deep, then waist deep, and it kept coming.

My reports avoided politics largely because I do not understand Thai politics.  There can be value in this, just as a Korean, for instance, can come to the United States and observe from a “here and now” perspective and, quite possibly—if he sticks to what he sees and not what people tell him to see—render a more accurate observation from a riot.  The “mouths of babes” are not restricted to children.

For many Americans, Asia is a murky, mysterious place inhabited by primitive people and repressive governments.  We see what we expect to see.  Mixing that with muddy journalism, many people at home in America seemed to think the Thai government was slaughtering helpless protesters in Bangkok.  This was untrue.

Many people—and even some journalists who were present—espoused that protesters were unarmed.  Some clearly were armed and to miss this would be egregious journalistic malpractice.  If a medical doctor missed something so big, a lawsuit might be the least of his problems; he’d probably lose his license to practice.

This story ran in Thailand:

CNN, BBC fully deserve criticism
By Dave Sherman

Special to The Nation

Dan Rivers' assertion that CNN's coverage of the crackdown on the red-shirt protest was "impartial" ("CNN, BBC correspondents defend coverage", The Nation, June 12) is simply untrue. The misinformation, generalisations and biases seen on CNN and BBC cannot be easily excused, especially because these reports brought the story of Thailand's conflict to the world - and the story the world saw was not the story of what actually happened.

The point is not that CNN didn't report that some of the red shirts were armed or show those armed men to the viewers. This they did. Where CNN and Rivers failed is in properly explaining the context of what was happening during the May 14-19 crackdown - and without proper context, understanding the story becomes impossible.

When Dan Rivers reported on May 14 that soldiers were firing on protesters, whom Rivers repeatedly insisted were unarmed, he was misinforming his viewers. He was omitting the fact that the soldiers were firing defensively on men who had been attacking them all morning with makeshift weapons, guns and grenades after the Army tried to secure a perimeter around the protest zone. Rivers did not mention that such red-shirt assaults were part of a long-standing pattern of militancy. The red shirts had been attacking legal authorities and civilians for weeks - invading Parliament and Thaicom, beating and killing military officials, fatally attacking peaceful anti-red-shirt demonstrators in Silom, and storming Chulalongkorn Hospital, forcing it to evacuate its patients.

CNN, BBC fully deserve criticism

Insurgencies are like animals, and veterinarians deal with many sorts of animals.  Polar bears are different from kangaroos are different from dogs, and every sort of dog has different qualities and issues.  A highly experienced and equally determined veterinarian could probably spend a year explaining differences between cats and dogs, then switch hats a spend years explaining similarities.  The same is true with insurgencies.  Each is very different and similar.

Today, the insurgency in greater Thailand is in a pediatric stage.  It’s still in a condition that it’s small enough and sufficiently in control that an observer can make out the parts.  If a war matures, it will grow long hair; it will become wild and confusing to everyone.  (The Islamic issue in the deep south is far more mature but also limited.)

In Thailand, there are main morphological influence features that are still easy to discern.  Various powerful influence groups exist within Thailand and the latest Bangkok confrontation brought certain actors onto the stage: most visible were the Red Shirts and the government.  Less visible but crucially important were outside actors, which includes ex Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and agitators under his employ or influence.

The agitators definitely existed.  I saw and photographed some of them.

Luckily, there is zero tribal influence and religion is more spectator than participant here, and in any case is ointment not fuel.

Many observers—including many journalists—seemed to view this simplistically as a “Red Shirt” uprising where the peaceful poor were fighting for justice and equality, yet in reality this is a platypus.  If there be a symbol that best describes the insurgencies I have seen, that symbol might be the Platypus, or a Mr. Potato Head.  The Platypus, Mr. Potato Head, and insurgencies worldwide seem to be made out of spare parts.

The Men in Black seemed to have snapped themselves onto Red Shirts.  Here some agitators are setting tires ablaze just before bullets start flying.

Overlooking Red camp near Lumpini Park, Bangkok.

Inside Red shirtless camp.

Just outside Red camp.

Inside Red camp at a temple where children were brought.  An impartial observer likely would say they were using children as human shields.

During some light fighting.

Massages were available inside the Red Shirt camp and the Army was allowing food and other supplies inside.  The camp had generators and portable toilets.  At one point, before I arrived, Red Shirts stormed a hospital and undermined a substantial part of their support base.

The government and Red Shirts seemed to be playing chess, and the government’s strategy seemed to avoid a push for a decisive win, while playing smart to minimize mistakes to capitalize on Red Shirt missteps.  The Reds seemed more emotional.  Many protestors were living on the streets for many weeks, and so seemed more apt to blunder, though others live and work in Bangkok and were known to join the protests after work.  The government took pressure from some Thais who thought the Army should take a tough line and eject the protesters from the crucial business center, which amounts to Times Square in New York, but what I saw was a government who was—at great expense and also risk—wearing down the numbers of protesters.  Slowly, slowly, more protesters were turning home, shrinking what might have been tens of thousands to what might now be five thousand.  The numbers of protestors was a contentious, subjective subject.  As with the so-called “Million Man March” in America, interests were vested.  Some would have downgraded it to the “The Thousand Guys Get Together” while others would have inflated it to the “Billion Man Revolution.”

Most of the protestors were poor and nobody was keeping the secret that they were being paid to stay.  Some are believed to have earned more to protest than they could earn by going home.  You could see food trucks roll up, and people would line up to eat without paying, and so it was impossible, at least for me, to discern who was there for ideological reasons versus, perhaps, just a temporary job as a paid protestor or maybe something in between.  Out on the streets, in the protest camp, were industrial-sized generators, similar to what our people use in Iraq and Afghanistan, running the Red Shirt fans, lights and televisions out on the streets.  It was commonly reported that the people were living rough, and compared to my hotel they certainly were, but compared to the way many of our troops live in Afghanistan, the Reds were living easy with foot massages available just next to the ice-cold Red Bull, and the popcorn-cooking lady, and the beer vendor, and they were in the middle of Bangkok and the Army allowed them to freely come and go.

Interestingly, whereas tourism—amounting to about 10% of the economy—was gutted, Prime Minister Abhisit would later tell me that the overall economy continued to grow.  Many articles published in international business publications lent support to PM Abhisit’s words.  And so the apparent plan to bleed the Thai government was not working in the broad sense.

During mid-May, as the protests were reaching climax, the government seemed to be moving wisely.  Though people losing money were angry, on a holistic national level, most people would forget the huge sums of money lost, especially given that the damage on the whole was not sinking Thailand, though many businesses—probably many thousands reliant on tourism—were bleeding bright red.  Still, bleeding cash does not make for dramatic photos or journalism; bleeding cash never grabs the eyes like real blood.  Whereas probably thousands of businesses were going bankrupt, they died quietly, while every human death would be magnified a hundred times and dragged through the streets for decades.  There was a classic leadership dilemma.  For someone who apparently had not fought a major counterinsurgency—or perhaps due to some sharp and bloody “feedback” after government mistakes fighting the separatist insurgency in the south—Prime Minister Abhisit seemed to be making decisions that even General David Petraeus might have acknowledged as masterful.

The government seemed to be playing a shrewd, long strategy and their short game mostly revolved around not allowing themselves to be baited out, preferring to bleed more cash than blood, which seemed to frustrate the remaining Red Shirts, whose leadership was trying to instigate violence, while circumventing rational thought with highly charged, emotional messages.  The “man behind the curtain” clearly understands that an arsonist only needs to succeed once, but for the life of him he had not been able to provoke Thailand into civil war.  He was throwing matches hoping to start a fire, while Abhisit mostly shot back with water.

Inside the Red camp politics were thick—after all, this was politics in red ink in every sense.  Much of the propaganda was in English, though few of the Reds spoke English.  The Reds were doing a better job of conveying their message, and this was strangely similar to Iraq and ever increasingly in Afghanistan.  The Reds seemed to be winning English-speaking media ground for several reasons. (I later met with top government press officials and suspicions were confirmed.)  These reasons were similar to what we saw in particular with Iraq.

1)    The Reds had more media “mass.”  As we see in Afghanistan now, ANYBODY can get out the Taliban message, but only the Coalition can get out the Coalition message.  To be clear—I have friends who are Red Shirts and am not comparing them to Taliban.  My Red Shirt friends are peaceful and we talk and have dinner often and have travelled around Thailand together over the last couple years.  This comparison is one of insurgent to government, not of Reds to Taliban.  Bottom line: Communications are excellent in Thailand and techno-savvy is common.  With cell phones, Internet, and venues such as Facebook and Twitter, information flies faster than bullets, and in total the Reds have more mass.

2)    Despite having more mass, the Reds have less media inertia.  We see this in Afghanistan where the Taliban often can run circles around us.

3)    Western media tends to have bias for underdogs, and especially so in areas where we suspect the governments of being overly corrupt or forceful.  In other words, we have a built-in media bias and this is likely due more to experience than some natural propensity.

In regard to the United States and United Kingdom, despite having highly trained, career media officers in our militaries who spend enormous amounts of money hiring outside consultants, our opponents and enemies often overwhelm us with mass, outrun us, and outmaneuver us with experimentation.  They evolve quicker.  After talking for hours over a couple different days with Thai media specialists, the parallels with the U.S./U.K. were clear.  In short, the Thai government will be held to a far higher standard, while the media bias will severely punish their mistakes while tending to overlook transgressions from the underdog.

And so the government was wise to keep its inevitable mistakes to a minimum.  They will be punished for every mistake and misrepresentation, while Red Shirt mistakes and flagrant propaganda will seem to evaporate into thin air.

Another “secret weapon” (if accidental) was that the Red Shirt protestors, being Thai to begin with, were very polite and friendly.  This is normal Thai.  However, when the Reds saw a camera, suddenly you were treated extra special.  One could sense “Stockholm Syndrome” setting in among some of the journalists, but not so much among others.  Though Thaksin hired public relations experts and there were talking points about dictatorship and democracy, the biggest secret weapon was Red Shirts just being friendly.  It’s difficult to write bad words against sincerely friendly, peaceful people.  The Men in Black are a different story.

The undeniable reality is that most of the Reds are peaceful.  But this is a platypus, and part of this animal is poison.  (Male platypuses actually are venomous.)  The violent agitators are energetic and clearly were using terrorism with their bombs, firearms, and arson.  I am suspicious of people who spend effort claiming they are not terrorists.

This man was giving a speech under the “PEACEFUL PROTESTORS NOT TERRORISTS” banner, while wearing a breaker advertising the Beretta 92FS pistol. U.S. forces likely would recognize this as the pistol they are issued.  This man was talking in front of the cameras.  What message was he trying to convey?  Peaceful, or Pistol?  The message was clear: GUN.

Day and night speeches echoed through loudspeakers spread up and down the streets of the protest area.  I do not speak Thai and so the specific messages were mostly lost on me though I used translators at times.  None of the western journalists I spoke with could speak Thai.  The violence and heavy emotions coming from the speakers at night was as unmistakable as thunder.  There were other unmistakable parts that seemed to fall through the cracks.

Inside Red camp a man shows a shotshell of the type used by the Army.

It is widely accepted, and I believe to be true, that billionaire and ousted Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was funding the protests—or at least was majorly contributing to the funding—which from simple observation must have cost tens of millions of dollars.  Though I have read thick stacks of articles and talked with seemingly endless numbers of people, ranging from farmers to political elite, to foreigners who have lived here for years or even decades, the political intrigues provide endless speculative fancy, though nobody in any camp: yellow, red, government, “neutral,” doubts that Thaksin is in the middle of these troubles.

Missing from analysis but jumping out to me on Day 1 (actually several years ago in Thailand) were echoes of communism among the Reds.  Having spent some years in communist or formerly communist countries, the signs are clear, such as when you walk into an old house and smell rats, cats, or bats.  Once your nose is tuned to the smell, it will leap out despite that someone else might say you are imagining things.   Some journalists sensed the communist smell, while others missed it or would not entertain the thought.

There also seems to be a clear desire to overthrow the Monarchy, despite that the King has done a great deal for Thailand and is a man of peace.  From an outsider’s perspective, it would seem that the loss of the King of Thailand would be a huge loss for Thailand, and would also be a significant loss of a friend of the United States.  The King has been a major cause for social progress, such as in promulgating religious tolerance.  In Washington, I spoke at length with General (ret.) Barry McCaffrey—a former American “Drug Czar”—about the opium problem in Afghanistan.  General (ret.) McCaffrey lamented that one of the problems the international community faces in Afghanistan is that it does not have someone like King Bhumibol of Thailand, who, according to General McCaffrey, said that growing opium is not Thai.  It’s immoral.  That, and tangible government action along with eradication and alternative crops, essentially vanquished the issue.  There is no such moral authority in Afghanistan (or nearly anywhere), matching that.

Unlike Iraq and Afghanistan, tribes and religion are not factors, nor are Warlords, though some will say “mafias” or patronage networks play a major part.  Unlike in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Philippines where ethnicities are factors leading to serious killing, ethnicity and racism are crucial factors in Thailand but have not led to the recent bone-crushing seen elsewhere.  Racism is a deep and seriously exacerbating problem in Thailand and plays into the scheme of the Thai platypus.  A retired U.S. Special Forces soldier living in Thailand said to me, “Race is a monstrous factor here.”

Slingshots against guns comprised much of the skewed narrative.  A photographer could easily caption this photo, “Courageous resistance uses slingshots to take on heavily armed Thai Army.”  There is truth because that is exactly what he was doing—respect for his courage—and this makes for a heroic narrative that places the journalist in a romantic position.  In reality, some of these guys had heavy weapons and would commit massive arson against even small shop owners who had no more money or power than a hardworking farmer.

The scene was great for dramatic photography, and the more we trump up the danger, the more heroic correspondents become.  Which wasn’t hard to do this time; it was no-kidding dangerous.

Helicopters seldom flew.

Mostly desolate streets.

These soldiers were moving with purpose.  The heavy protest had been going on for about two months but I could recognize that look on soldiers.  Something was about to happen and so I published that it was about to go down, and some days later it did.

The Reds watched.

The Army watched.

The media watched and the people watched the media.

And then the finale on 19 May 2010.

Red Shirt barricades burned.  The Thai Army killed, arrested or dispersed the protests.  In total, about 90 people were killed over the many weeks—including civilians and soldiers apparently hit by protestors—and about 1,900 were wounded.

Protesters set nearly 40 buildings ablaze, while some journalists continued to espouse that they were peaceful.

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