Internal Security Operations Command

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Abhisit Vejjajiva , Prime Minister of Thailand, at an ISOC meeting (2011)

The Internal Security Operations Command ( ISOC ; Thai กอง อำนวย การ รักษา ความ มั่นคง ภายใน ราช อาณาจักร , RTGS Kong Amnuaikan Raksa Khwam Mankhong Phainai Ratcha-anachak , abbreviated กอ. รม น. ; In German Command for Internal Security Operations , literally “Management Department for Protection of the internal stability of the kingdom ”) is a unit of the Thai armed forces . The unit is deployed inside and also performs intelligence and police tasks there . It fights Muslim insurgents especially in the south of the country . The unit reports to the Thai Prime Minister.

After the 2006 coup, the ISOC was upgraded and rebuilt to an agency similar to the United States Department of Homeland Security . The core of the ISOC consists of a force of 5,000 to 6,000 who lead and train around 500,000 “internal security volunteers” and tens of thousands of informants. The ISOC is subordinate to other units of the Thai military in the south of the country. The unit also deals with white-collar crime and the fight against corruption. It is a strong pillar of the Thai military government and , according to the political scientist Puangthong Pawakapan , part of a " deep state ".

history

1962-1973

The earliest forerunner of the ISOC was the Central Security Command (CSC) founded in 1962 during the reign of Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat . However, this proved to be ineffective and was replaced by the Communist Suppression Operations Command , CSOC for short , in 1965, during the military dictatorship of Thanom Kittikachorn and Praphas Charusathien . This was initiated by the United States , whose most important ally in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War was Thailand. The then US ambassador to Thailand, Graham Martin, and the CIA , the foreign intelligence service , were significantly involved. The latter financed, advised and trained the operational command. The task of the CSOC was to fight communist insurgents, especially in the impoverished north-east and south of the country, but also other socialists, leftists and dissidents in general. The CSOC used both military and ideological means ( psychological warfare ).

General Saiyud Kerdphol, Head of ISOC (1974)

Serious human rights violations and mass executions of alleged communist rebels occurred. For example, at the end of 1972, CSOC officers were involved in the "Red Keg killings" in the southern Thai province of Phatthalung. Between 200 and 3000 - actual or supposed - sympathizers of the KPT were burned alive in large oil drums, some of them alive. This massacre was probably ordered by the CSOC. The ISOC also destroyed valuable virgin forests in order to hit the rebel retreats. At the height of the uprising, up to 2 million members of the village and rural militias were subordinate to the CSOC. The CSOC was unable to intervene in the unrest of 1973 , which led to the overthrow of the military government, as the Army Commander-in-Chief, General Krit Sivara, prevented this by threatening to fight the CSOC units stationed in Lopburi with his own troops.

1973-2001

ISOC Colonel Sudsai Hasdin, alleged initiator of the "Red Buffalo" (1974)

After the fall of Thanom and Praphat, the CSOC was not abolished, but renamed in 1974 and given its current name. Even the civil prime ministers of the short democratic phase up to 1976 were conservative royalists and considered it necessary to combat the communist threat. During this time, the ISOC set up extreme right-wing groups such as the secret society Nawaphon and the paramilitary Red Buffalo (Krathing Daeng) . These fought not only against communist insurgents, but also against politically active students, farmers, trade unionists and democratic politicians. Nawaphon and red buffalo played a crucial role in the Thammasat University massacre in October 1976 .

On March 26, 1977, the ISOC headquarters was occupied by the retired General Chalard Hiranyasiri and 300 soldiers from the 9th Army Division (supported by the Thai " Young Turks "). General Aroon Thawathasin was killed. The coup attempt failed and Chalard Hiranyasiri was sentenced to death and executed. After the uprising of the Communist Party of Thailand was successfully suppressed in the 1980s, things calmed down around the special unit. But it was not dissolved.

2001-2006

The Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra (2001-06) changed the governance structure of the ISOC in 2002 with his order No. 158/2545 in order to place it more under civilian control and to reduce military influence. The command was placed under the office of the Prime Minister . The respective head of government was consequently qua office director of the ISOC. He was able to appoint a deputy prime minister as a further director (Thaksin appointed his deputy and interior minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh ), as well as deputy and assistant directors at will. In doing so, he considered civil officials (State Secretary in the Ministry of the Interior, General Director of the Office for Provincial Administration) as well as the military (Chief of the Supreme Staff of the Armed Forces, Supreme Commander of the three armed forces) and the General Director of the Police. The General Secretary of the ISOC was the Army Chief of Staff. In addition, Thaksin ordered a downsizing of the ISOC while increasing efficiency. In fact, this reform only slightly reduced military dominance.

In the period that followed, the ISOC was increasingly deployed in the south of the country to suppress the uprising by Muslim-Malay separatists that began to escalate in early 2004 . The ISOC played a leading role in establishing the Southern Border Provinces Peacebuilding Command in March 2004. The ISOC General Pallop Pinmanee ordered the storming of the Krue-Se Mosque in Pattani on April 28, 2004, contrary to the orders of Vice Prime Minister Chavalit , in which 32 young insurgents died. During the government crisis of 2005-06 , General Pallop was one of Thaksin's critics and sided with the People's Alliance for Democracy ("yellow shirts"), which called for the Prime Minister to be disempowered. In August 2006, police arrested the general's driver, Lieutenant Thawatchai Klinchanain, near the Prime Minister's home with a working bomb in the trunk of his car. Thaksin suspected General Pallop to have been involved in the attack, which he denied. Nevertheless, Thaksin immediately dismissed him as head of ISOC.

Since 2006

After the military coup against Thaksin in September 2006 , the powers of the ISOC under the coup leader Sonthi Boonyaratglin and the transitional government he set up under the retired general and privy councilor Surayud Chulanont were considerably expanded and institutionalized. The ISOC has since served the military and royalist establishment and undermines the power and legitimacy of the Thaksin camp as well as political parties and representative democracy in general. Just three days before elections were held at the end of 2007 (which the Thaksin-affiliated Party of People's Power won), the National Legislative Assembly, which was still set up by the military junta, passed a new law on internal security that came into force in 2008. This cemented the military dominance in the ISOC. The respective prime minister is still the director of the command, but the deputy director must always be the commanding officer of the army and the general secretary of the ISOC the chief of staff of the army.

Even in normal times, the ISOC was given extensive powers: It is supposed to observe, investigate and evaluate security-relevant situations and propose appropriate plans and recommendations for action to the cabinet. If the cabinet agrees, all authorities are obliged to implement them under the supervision and participation of the ISOC. In addition, the operational command was given the legal mandate to promote public awareness of the defense of “nation, religion and monarchy” and the participation of citizens in solving problems of national security and order. For this purpose it makes use of the work of mass organizations. The ISOC's powers are even greater in crisis situations. Then it has to do everything to "prevent, suppress, stop, inhibit, alleviate and resolve" the respective situation. During and after the protests and unrest of the Thaksin-supporting “red shirts” in 2009 and 2010, the ISOC coordinated measures to suppress this mass movement.

This development continued and intensified after the military coup in 2014 , through which the army chief Prayut Chan-o-cha made himself prime minister and thus also ISOC director, as well as the new constitution of 2017 .

In January 2016, the non-governmental organizations Cross Cultural Foundation and Duay Jai (Hearty Support) Group accused the ISOC of 54 cases of alleged torture in the 4th Army Region, which is responsible for southern Thailand. An ISOC officer then brought charges against the activists for defamation and violation of the computer crime law .

structure

The director of the ISOC is the respective prime minister, the deputy director is the commander in chief of the Thai army. Until 2008 there were also four assistant directors: the two assistants to the army chief, the state secretary in the interior ministry and the general director of the police. These posts were eliminated with the 2008 Internal Security Act. The respective Chief of Staff of the Army is also the Secretary General of the ISOC.

Until 2008, the chief of staff was responsible for both the logistics center and the operations center. The latter was in turn divided into the areas of intelligence, center for civil affairs, center for military reservists and center for operations in the field.

Since 2008, the ISOC has been divided into six offices and six coordination centers: Political and Security Strategy Office, News Office, Personnel Office, Office for Mass Affairs and General Information, General Administration, Budget and Finance; Coordination centers for illegal drugs, illegal immigration, terrorism and cross-border crime, special security issues, specialties, development projects of the king.

literature

  • Puangthong R. Pawakapan: The Central Role of Thailand's Internal Security Operations Command in the Post-Counterinsurgency Period (=  Trends in Southeast Asia . No. 17 ). ISEAS Publishing, Singapore 2017 ( edu.sg [PDF; accessed September 10, 2018]).

Individual evidence

  1. Dieter Bauer: The uprising of the "water buffalo". The red shirt opposition in the military dictatorship of Thailand. In: Deutschlandfunk Kultur , broadcast Das Feature , April 12, 2011.
  2. Imminent imprisonment for reports of torture. Amnesty International, June 21, 2016.
  3. ^ John Funston: Southern Thailand. The Dynamics of Conflict. East-West Center, Washington (DC) 2008, p. 25.
  4. Kornchanok Raksaseri: Isoc power boost not political. In: Bangkok Post. January 8, 2018, accessed August 26, 2018 .
  5. Puangthong R. Pawakapan: The Central Role of Thailand's Internal Security Operations Command in the Post-counterinsurgency Period. 2017, pp. 1–2.
  6. Puangthong R. Pawakapan: The Central Role of Thailand's Internal Security Operations Command in the Post-counterinsurgency Period. 2017, pp. 7–8.
  7. a b Tyrell Haberkorn: In Plain Sight. Impunity and Human Rights in Thailand. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison (WI) / London 2018, p. 137.
  8. ^ Sulak Sivaraksa : Death of Democracy - Power Cliques in the Struggle for Existence. In: Die Zeit , No. 15/1977, April 8, 1977.
  9. Chai-Anan Samudavanija, Kusuma Snitwongse, Suchit Bunbongkarn: From Armed Suppression to Political Offensive. Attitudinal Transformation of Thai Military Officers Since 1976. Institute of Security and International Studies, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok 1990, p. 99.
  10. ^ Tyrell Haberkorn: Getting Away with Murder in Thailand. State Violence and Impunity in Phatthalung. In: N. Ganesan, Sung Chull Kim: State Violence in East Asia. University Press of Kentucky, Lexington (KY) 2013, pp. 185–207, at p. 186.
  11. Matthew Zipple: Thailand's Red Drum Murders Through to Analysis of Declassified Documents . In: Southeast Review of Asian Studies . tape 36 , 2014, p. 91–111 , on p. 91 ( uky.edu [PDF]).
  12. Jularat Damrongviteetham: Narratives of the "Red Barrel" Incident. Collective and Individual Memories in Lamsin, Southern Thailand. In: Kah Seng Loh u. a .: Oral History in Southeast Asia. Memories and Fragments. Palgrave Macmillan, New York / Basingstoke (Hampshire) 2013, pp. 101–118, on p. 101.
  13. Chris Baker , Pasuk Phongpaichit: A History of Thailand. 3rd edition, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne 2014, p. 183.
  14. Puangthong R. Pawakapan: The Central Role of Thailand's Internal Security Operations Command in the Post-counterinsurgency Period. 2017, p. 8.
  15. Puangthong R. Pawakapan: The Central Role of Thailand's Internal Security Operations Command in the Post-counterinsurgency Period. 2017, p. 16.
  16. Puangthong R. Pawakapan: The Central Role of Thailand's Internal Security Operations Command in the Post-counterinsurgency Period. 2017, p. 3.
  17. Loyal troops crush rebellion. In: Nicholas Grossman (ed.): Chronicle of Thailand. Headline News since 1946. Edition Didier Millet, Singapore 2009, p. 216.
  18. Puangthong R. Pawakapan: The Central Role of Thailand's Internal Security Operations Command in the Post-counterinsurgency Period. 2017, p. 21.
  19. ^ John Funston: Southern Thailand. The Dynamics of Conflict. East-West Center, Washington (DC) 2008, p. 25.
  20. ^ John Funston: Southern Thailand. The Dynamics of Conflict. East-West Center, Washington (DC) 2008, p. 3.
  21. Police defuse bomb near home of Thai prime minister. In: CBC World News. August 24, 2006, accessed September 10, 2018 .
  22. Police in Thailand have found a fake bomb near the residence of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. In: BBC News. August 28, 2006. Retrieved August 26, 2018 .
  23. a b Puangthong R. Pawakapan: The Central Role of Thailand's Internal Security Operations Command in the Post-counterinsurgency Period. 2017, pp. 22-23.
  24. Puangthong R. Pawakapan: The Central Role of Thailand's Internal Security Operations Command in the Post-counterinsurgency Period. 2017, p. 23.
  25. Dieter Bauer: The uprising of the "water buffalo". The red shirt opposition in the military dictatorship of Thailand. Deutschlandfunk, broadcast on Background Culture , April 12, 2011.
  26. Torture allegations. Amnesty International, February 16, 2017.
  27. Puangthong R. Pawakapan: The Central Role of Thailand's Internal Security Operations Command in the Post-counterinsurgency Period. 2017, p. 9.
  28. Puangthong R. Pawakapan: The Central Role of Thailand's Internal Security Operations Command in the Post-counterinsurgency Period. 2017, p. 24.