Since early January, Royal Thai Army (RTA) planners have prepared new
plans to defend Thailand against potential attacks from Cambodia, a move that
threatens to rekindle tensions along the two countries' contested border.
The plan, drawn up by the RTA's
2nd Army Region and formally approved in April, represents a significant
departure from previous Thai strategic footings vis-a-vis Cambodia and involves
the immediate commitment of large regular army combat units along the border.
The new plan is highly unusual
for the RTA and could be perceived as provocative given the lack of any
immediate and realistic military threat from Cambodia. It would also seem to
contradict the policy of the Yingluck Shinawatra administration, which has
worked to ease tensions with Cambodia over a disputed land claim at the Preah
Vihear temple that spiked during the previous Abhisit Vejjajiva-led government.
The last time that Thailand faced
a threat of conventional invasion was in early 1979, when units of the
Vietnamese army arrived on the Thai border after overthrowing Cambodia's Khmer
Rouge government. There was an initial brief period of panic that the
battle-hardened Vietnamese might continue into Thailand. Those concerns faded,
however, when it became apparent that Vietnam was bogged down in Cambodia and
China offered support in the event that the Vietnamese crossed into Thai
territory.
Thai concerns for their border
consequently revolved around deterring and then dealing with shallow,
relatively small scale, Vietnamese incursions. The RTA soon developed a system
to deal with this threat, which relied first on the use of proxy forces acting
as buffers, including the various Cambodian resistance groups that operated
along the Thai-Cambodian border. These groups were sometimes supported by Thai
Special Forces.
As a second line of defense on
the Thai side of the border, the RTA eventually came to rely on lightly-armed
paramilitary units of the Thai Border Patrol Police and the army's own force of
rangers, or thahan phran. Not to be confused with the elite US Army fighting
force, Thai rangers were badly trained, paid cannon fodder largely recruited
from the poor populations. Only as a last resort were regular RTA combat units
committed to the sporadic border fighting - and they did not always fare well.
The new 2nd Army plan is a
complete departure from this security configuration and is notably not part of
an army-wide general improvement in training. It is built around the entire
regular 6th Infantry Division, headquartered in Surin in the country's
northeastern region, and has been reconfigured as the "Suranaree Task
Force" in line with the plan.
The task force is scheduled to
deploy up against the border with its full complement of heavy weapons and
artillery. The selection of positions to be occupied by the various subordinate
task forces was based on extensive intelligence, including the use of
commercially available satellite imagery of both sides of the border, to assess
the terrain.
Costly defensive positions have
been prepared for the task force, including deeply dug-in bunkers and
individual fighting positions with overhead cover. Buried communications cables
have been laid between command posts to mitigate the risk of having their radio
transmissions intercepted by the enemy.
Experienced foreign military
attaches who have visited the positions have reported that they are very
professionally laid out and built. Many details that distinguish between units
seriously preparing for combat, including clearing fields of fire and preparing
range cards for weapons, from those just going through the motions, were also
observed by the envoys. This is in marked contrast to past configurations when
such details were often neglected by Thai units on the Cambodian and Lao
borders.
Provocative position
The Thai army is not noted for
the realism of its training or professional attention to detail, making these
preparations all the more noteworthy. There is speculation the sophisticated
preparations are a reflection of the influence of division commander Major
General Chalit Meekkukda, a highly respected officer and experienced troop
leader. Chalit has decided that these positions will be manned on a scheduled
rotation by major elements of the task force, with other elements on alert
fully ready to deploy.
Two other aspects of the
planning, however, indicate a strong influence from the highest levels of the
RTA, and again demonstrate the unusual nature of the deployments. The 2nd Army
headquarters recently held a one week command post exercise (CPX) in the town
of Korat to test the new plan using a computer simulation to help evaluate the
results of a Cambodian invasion of Thailand's northeastern region. Several Thai
army officers who participated in the CPX reported that the plan seemed to be
professionally devised and capable of success.
More unusual for the RTA, the CPX
was unexpectedly followed up by the announcement of a series of classified and
very demanding surprise alerts and deployments of major combat units to the
border. Expected to commence sometime in the next two weeks, the quick reaction
battalions of the task force will receive no-notice alert orders to move south
and reinforce front line positions, which for the purpose of the exercise will
simulate observing Cambodian preparations for an attack on Thailand.
Following the arrival of the
alert battalions in their forward areas, supporting artillery units will
conduct live fire exercises from pre-registered locations. Should Cambodian
army forces respond militarily to all this activity, senior Thai army officers
told the authors that the RTA will be prepared to respond immediately and
aggressively. A second series of these alert exercises is tentatively scheduled
for this November.
The same senior Thai officers did
not provide a motive for taking such an intensive, expensive, and, if fully
implemented, potentially provocative course, aside from the observation that it
appeared to be the brainchild of RTA commander General Prayuth Chan-Ocha. The
military exercise also seems to be at odds with the foreign policy of
Thailand's civilian Peua Thai party-led government, headed by premier Yingluck.
Yingluck's elder brother,
self-exiled former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, is widely regarded as the
real power behind her government. Thaksin is known to maintain close ties to
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and bilateral relations have improved
substantially since Yingluck took office.
The Thai Armed Forces
Headquarters (formerly known as the Supreme Command, a joint organization
separate from the RTA) under the ASEAN Defense Ministers' Program recently
conducted a joint humanitarian assistance and disaster relief exercise in Hua
Hin, Thailand in which Cambodia was a participant. In late August, Thai and
Cambodian officials held discussions on how to jointly combat drug trafficking,
goods smuggling and forest encroachment in border areas.
Those bilateral meetings have
helped to ratchet down tensions. The two countries' competing sovereign claims
over border territory located near the ancient Khmer temple of Preah Vihear has
sparked several rounds of military confrontations in recent years, resulting in
deaths on both sides of the border.
These clashes were mostly
low-level and insignificant compared to the level of force now being prepared
by the RTA for border areas. While the RTA is duty-bound to prepare defense
plans to protect national territory, conducting live-fire artillery exercises
in border areas, particularly during a time of relative peace, will be hard to
justify on any reasonable grounds.
Prayuth and his royalist
supporters were successful in galvanizing a nationalist backlash against
Cambodia among the rural population of the northeast in the 2010 standoff near
Preah Vihear. Significantly, the geographical area is a major power base for
the RTA's main political opponent, former premier Thaksin, who was overthrown
in a 2006 military coup and maintains strong political influence from abroad.
Some now wonder whether Prayuth
has ordered the 2nd Army to implement this new defense plan and stage exercises
to provoke a Cambodian response that would allow the RTA to portray itself as
the primary defender of Thai sovereignty. It is not immediately clear that the
plan is a reaction to Thaksin's influence over the annual military reshuffle of
top command posts, which comes into effect on October 1.
Thailand is divided into four
army regions: the 1st Army in Central Thailand including Bangkok, the 2nd Army
in the Northeast, the 3rd Army in the North, which oversees much of the Myanmar
border, and 4th Army in the South, where authorities are fighting a stubborn
Muslim insurgency.
RTA Army Region commanders have
traditionally enjoyed a large degree of autonomy. This autonomy refers to more
than just a lack of civilian control over the RTA's internal affairs, but in
the case of Army Regions has historically involved a great deal of influence
over the foreign policy that Thailand pursues with neighboring countries. In
certain instances, that autonomy has been independent to some degree of
oversight from the RTA's headquarters in Bangkok.
Whatever the motive, there are
clear dangers to the RTA's new plans for the Thai-Cambodian border. While the
most potentially provocative aspects of the RTA's new defense planning have yet
to be carried out, RTA officers are proceeding as if they will be soon, with
all the attendant risks to peace and stability.
John Cole and Steve Sciacchitano
Asia Times
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