Buddhist Warfare

by Michael Jerryson

  Many abbots in safer areas stress that they did not ask the state for protection; they say that the military is at the monastery due to governmental concerns. Early one evening just before the Chinese New Year, an abbot and I were sitting in front of his quarters. It had just finished raining, and the abbot was smoking a cigarette while relaxing on his front step. He explained to me:

  This monastery is not in danger; it is not in any dangerous scenario. The monastery didn’t ask for soldiers, but the government sent them. The monastery has never called for soldiers to be here. But the government felt worried, afraid that the monastery will be destroyed. I’m afraid if I go outside the monastery. But I think in the monastery there is nothing [to be afraid of ].57

  His monastery had over twenty soldiers patrolling its perimeters, with fortified stations at every entrance. The abbot’s position on the violence changed considerably after the Chinese New Year, however, when his monastery lost power for an hour and there was an arson attempt just a few kilometers away. Yet even during this period of heightened fear and tension, this abbot’s lack of appreciation for the soldiers differed greatly from that of abbots who live in more isolated areas with higher populations of Muslims and higher rates of murders and bombings.

  Some of the soldiers have gone outside of Thailand to work with soldiers from other countries. This international experience has provided them with a seasoned view of the violence in the southernmost provinces. Many of the soldiers I interviewed in the monastery have international work experience in areas such as Aceh during the recent conflict (2003–2005). A few fought in Vietnam during the U.S. war. They typically assist with the general upkeep of the monastery, sweeping the grounds and cleaning latrines. Although they make their homes in the monastery, they keep their personal habits private within their quarters. Because of their respectful and helpful nature, as well as the long-term protection they bring, some abbots and monks have built bunkers and living quarters in their monasteries. While monks generally prefer soldiers to police, they are less enthusiastic about the military commanders, who dispatch the soldiers into the area and yet situate themselves outside the sphere of violence. As I sat at a monastery with an abbot underneath his pavilion, accompanied by four members of the laity, the abbot—with much bitterness in his voice—relayed the following:

  The military sent the soldiers here, but didn’t provide them with a place to stay, so they have to sleep under the pavilions with the dogs and ants. Because of this, I built a shelter for them. The military officers are really bad. They call themselves men of honor but they sit in air-conditioned rooms while their privates, who have to follow orders, are sent to sleep with mosquitoes and ants. Military officers sent soldiers down here so these officers should care for their welfare. An officer came to check in on the situation once, but he left even before his driver came back from [the] toilet! Didn’t even walk around to see where the soldiers slept, how they were living, or what they eat. He just came and left.58

  As the violence increases, there is more interaction between soldiers and monks within monasteries. This is especially true in monasteries in more remote locations that have a higher percentage of Muslims living in the village. The shared isolation of monks and soldiers sometimes encourages the sharing of resources, and the two groups exchange information about locals in the surrounding area.

  Police are gathered from different provinces throughout Thailand and live at monasteries in southern Thailand from six months to a year. A majority of the national police who are stationed in the southernmost provinces are originally from central and northeastern Thailand; consequently, they have little experience with or knowledge of the Thais living in the southern provinces. And unlike the soldiers, very few possess any international experience. The police rotate on and off duty within the monastery, which allows them days or nights to relax and drink. Within the monastery, the conduct of the police contrasts sharply with the conduct of the soldiers. Soldiers generally keep to themselves and maintain strict vigilance while living in the monastery. One reason for the monks’ preference for soldiers became apparent at one monastery where I was staying. Policemen had created an outdoor kitchen in which to prepare and eat their food and consume alcohol. This was just meters behind the novices’ quarters. After dinner, the police concluded the evening with a few hours of drinking whiskey and soda beneath the abbot’s pavilion. This police behavior has resulted in empty whiskey bottles overflowing trash cans within the monk’s quarters.

  The transgressive act of drinking intoxicants within a monastery is not the only action worth noting. In December 2006, I asked five policemen on duty in a monastery if the police living there make merit (tham bun). A policeman in his mid-thirties gestured around at the barracks and to his fellow policemen, who were armed with M-16s; he responded: “Yes, we do. Actually, what we do right now is merit as well.”59 The very act of protecting the monks and the monastery, a duty inherent in national police and soldiers’ responsibilities, also has become a means of making merit. This encapsulation of merit making within military duties is another consequence of the collusion of state and Thai Buddhist elements.

  The state’s appropriation of Buddhist sites has altered the monastery’s spatial significance in southern Thailand. Under the banner of a strident nationalism, monasteries serve as home bases for the military; in exchange for this form of nationalism, the monasteries have lost some of their sacrality. Today, if one were to visit multiple monasteries in an area—a common act for Thai Buddhists on pilgrimage—locals might consider those visits to be indicative of military communication rather than religious devotion. This change in the spatial significance of monasteries has had an impact on their patronage; Buddhist monks report that local Muslim officials in the three southernmost provinces try to avoid contact with the monastery as much as possible. Ahn Mahwich, a former secretary to the Pattani sangha leader who has been a monk for over twenty years, explained that currently a trip to a monastery is viewed by many Muslims as a sin:

  Muslims have said many times it is a sin to come to the monastery. … An Islamic village leader, who has to sign a paper when someone dies, complains that when someone dies he has to come to the monastery and get the thing signed, because it is a sin to come to the monastery.60

  Ahn Mahwich is the second highest-ranking monk at Wat Chang Hai. According to him, the monastery has become a profane space for many Malay Muslims in the southernmost provinces. For the Islamic village leader, entering a monastery meant entering a space of impurity, a distinction of the Durkheimian profane as opposed to sacred space. The association of coming to a monastery with the commission of a sin, while not universally recognized, demonstrates a growing public reconsideration of what coming to a monastery signifies and what such an action signifies for group identifications.

  Local Malays’ newfound negative attitudes regarding monasteries heighten the significance of visiting a monastery. Entering a monastery may imply more than simply a visit; it could indicate one’s adherence to Buddhism. As there is no specific ritual or official declaration for conversion to Thai Buddhism, the very public and regular performance of visiting monasteries (and making merit) becomes an identity-making or identity-reaffirming exercise.61 This emerging perception contrasts with local views prior to the institution of martial law. Before 2004, visiting a monastery held fewer implications, and Buddhist identity was largely denoted in two ways: by participating in specific merit-making exercises and, one could argue, eating pork (which is still a very powerful religious signifier, as Muslims do not eat pork).

  The new significance of visiting a monastery arises out of the violently charged environment and the Thai state’s militarization of the monasteries. While the militarization of Thai Buddhist monasteries is not unique within Buddhist traditions, it is still important to assess its social implications in light of the twenty-first-century context.62 As a safety precaution, religious practices and ceremonies at southern monasteries have either declined or stopped al
together since martial law was imposed. In areas outside of capital districts, funeral rites—which used to occur in the afternoon or night—are now held during the day. In addition, the regular practice of morning alms has ceased throughout the most dangerous areas. At these monasteries, monks rarely go outside their compounds. One sixty-six-year-old monk, seated at a bench outside his quarters, explained:

  I want to go out and meet people, give them blessings, all that and more. However, they forbid it because it is dangerous. … I listen and obey my abbot and the government, so I don’t go out.63

  The absence of monks going in and out of monasteries further accentuates the presence of the military, which can regularly be seen entering and leaving the monasteries to perform checks around the area. Soldiers and police use the monastery as military headquarters and implement and develop military intelligence while sequestered in monastery buildings. For instance, at several monasteries, abbots showed me detailed reports of the villagers in their communities. The reports described areas that should be heavily watched and included pages of information on local suspects. The reports are a compilation of information shared between the monks and the military and specify which of the local people are (1) arrested (thk hap lo), (2) on the run (lop n), and (3) those whose identities are still undetermined (yang mai smt phist sp ta bukhkhon dai). Military intelligence does not necessarily impact the public’s perception of a monastery, but it does illustrate the level at which monks and military collaborate and how the monastery functions as a military headquarters in southern villages.

  While these documents are private, military practices in a monastery are not. If locals walk past the entrance of a monastery, instead of seeing monks performing daily chores, they see fully armed, uniformed military standing guard day and night. These habits and practices, according to Pierre Bourdieu, shape the significance of the space and have an important effect on the surrounding Thai community. Monks have become less visible as the military has become more visible. The stationing of soldiers and police at monasteries together with their military habits transform the monastery into a military space. As this happens, the problematic relations between Buddhists and Muslims in the southernmost provinces are exacerbated.

  The 228 Buddhist refugees who stay at Wat Nirotsangkatham see the monastery as a safer space than their villages. According to the refugees, their villages are over 95 percent Muslim. They say that murders occur almost daily in their villages. While I was visiting them at the monastery, there was a funeral for a man from a neighboring village. The sister of the deceased told me that in her village everyone is a target—from the elderly to two-year-old children. She is a farmer and, like the refugees, considers her village no longer safe. Part of the refugees’ decision to come to Wat Nirotsangkatham is due to the recent conversion of southern monastic compounds into military compounds. Buddhist villagers stay inside the protective perimeters of the monastery and leave as seldom as possible—only to buy food. Unfortunately, perceiving a monastery as a sanctuary from violence does not distinguish it from the violence; rather, it highlights the monastery’s role and preferential treatment by the state within a violent climate.

  Southern Thai monasteries have assumed defensive functions for the Buddhist laity living in the surrounding areas. Much of this change developed due to physical changes made to the monasteries, i.e., barracks, wire, and blockades positioned at the entrances. Another factor that has converted the public’s perception is the change in the occupants they see entering and exiting the monasteries. Instead of the monasteries acting as bases for monks, from which they leave for their morning alms, they are now acting as bases for the military as they leave for their daily rounds.

  Since 2005 in the three southernmost provinces, there have been more Muslims murdered than Buddhists. Yet, despite all of the fortifications at the monasteries, not one Muslim uses a monastery as a place of refuge. Living under martial law, monasteries in southern Thailand have clearly become an exclusive military space for Thai and Thai Chinese Buddhists.

  Conclusion

  As stated earlier, the focus of this chapter has been the militarization of Thai Buddhism in southern Thailand. Buddhist monks and monasteries have been and continue to be targets for violence in the southernmost provinces. This started in 2002, with a bomb threat at Wat Chang Hai in Khokpo, Pattani province. In many ways, this attack represented the nascent policy of targeting monks and monasteries. In a phone interview during the summer of 2004, a high-ranking monk explained the motivation behind the attack on this particular monastery:

  People attacked Wat Chang Hai in order to destroy the morale of the Buddhist people. Because people believe that Wat Chang Hai is sacred and since [it is] sacred, bombing it might decrease the degree of sacredness; people might lose their belief in the monastery.64

  The militarization of monasteries clearly enhances the protection for some monasteries and their monks. Unfortunately, the state’s militarization of monasteries also heightens the association of Thai Buddhism with the state. In light of the martial law initiated in 2004 and the current violence in these southernmost provinces, this militarization raises a monastery’s political value and exacerbates local Muslim contestation.

  Another state action that has led to the militarization of Thai Buddhism comes in the form of the military monk. While militarizing monasteries has resulted in increasing the political value of monasteries, it has simultaneously led some Muslims to identify monasteries as taboo spaces. Unlike the very visible militarization of monasteries, however, the militarization of monks is a covert exercise; fortunately, it has yet to produce a similar result in how Muslims view monks. Nevertheless, military monks embody the nexus that links the militant state to Thai Buddhist principles. This has the dangerous potential of further politicizing the situation and incurring Muslim derision of southern monks.

  While working undercover in monasteries as ordinary monks, military monks fulfill obligations to both the Thai sangha and the state. Their roles are not publicized; at times, their roles are not even disclosed to the very monks who ordain them. Violence in southern Thailand is saturated in secrecy: anonymous militant agents, unspoken grievances, and victims from both sides who often go unnamed. From this blend of secrecy and violence, another form of secret arises: a communal secret. Some Buddhists living and working alongside military monks are aware of military monks’ identities but choose not to publicize them. Their decision to protect the secrecy of military monks may be an indirect result of the religious angst many feel concerning the presence of military monks within the monasteries.

  In the current Thai milieu and the current understanding of Buddhist doctrine, there is virtually no public support that advocates military monks. This lack of overt support derives from Buddhist interdictions dating back to the time of the Buddha. One of the earliest canonical sources prohibiting military ordination derives from a time when soldiers could deliberately avoid their military duties by entering the sangha. Ironically, the current circumstances are inverted, resulting in the near-opposite reaction. Hand-picked Buddhist soldiers who wish to perform their duties can now receive a salary, weapons, and admittance into the Thai sangha. The contradictions embodied in the military monk engender a secret that, if publicly disclosed, would most likely yield intense reactions from Thai Buddhists and the local Malay Muslims.

  Before 2004, an attack on a southern monk represented an attack on a victim—a pacifist operating outside of the violence. Unfortunately, this representation is changing in southern Thailand. One clear example of this is Phra Eks’s monastery, which is now a fortified and heavily guarded military base. Police living inside his monastery collaborate with the abbot and monks. Another example is Phra Eks himself, a soldier doubling as an ordinary monk. These components are powerful influences on the local community. As Buddhist spaces and monks become closely associated with the military and its functions, they increase the religious divide between Buddhists and Muslims.

  Prior
to the imposition of martial law, some Buddhist and Muslim locals believed that their local strife was the result of an ethno-economic divide between Thai Chinese and Thai Malays. However, with the government’s implementation of martial law, the conflict has been exacerbated and polarized into one of religious division. Anthropologist Amporn Mardent, who works with Muslim women in Pattani province, notes how local Malays discerned an increasing amount of distrust and suspicion between Buddhists and Muslims.65 The militarization of monasteries affects the way Buddhists and Muslims feel about each other and about themselves. Some southern monks still see their monasteries as fortresses of moral integrity. As if embodying the growing socioreligious divide, one abbot stood on a hill overlooking his monastery and pointed to the wire fence surrounding his territory. To him, the space was divided into religious borders—and it was his monastery’s perimeter that demarcated the religious space in the community—where Thai Buddhism ended and “Islam” (tislam) began.