The article by Nepali monk published in Nepali Times.
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http://www.nepalnews.com/ntimes/issue227/religion_2.htm A Buddhist path to peace A Nepali monk in Thailand speaks of lessons from there in resolving the insurgency
Bhikku Sugandha
I left Nepal to study Buddhism in Thailand as a 15-year-old novice monk
in 1975. At that time Thailand was at a similar state of development as
present-day Nepal. South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia had fallen to the
communists within a few days of each other. The 'Domino Theory'
predicted that Thailand would be next. I was residing at a royal
monastery under the patronage of the present Supreme Patriarch of
Thailand. He was quite influential and The King and Queen, many top Thai
generals and senior members of the national government would visit him
for advice and inspiration. I had become fluent in Thai and so gained an
insider's understanding of the seriousness of the situation. The
military and the government were not as concerned with the communists in
neighbouring countries as they were with the communists and sympathisers
within Thailand.
Many brilliant Thai university students had fled to the jungles in
northeastern Thailand to support a domestic Thai Maoist guerrilla force.
Their weaponry was supplied from outside as was their training. But the
villages in the 'pink' parts of the northeast gladly supplied food and
other requirements to the rebels. They were an ominous threat precisely
because they had local support.
They declared many parts of Thailand 'red' where it would be very
dangerous for civil servants or governmental staff to go. The Thai
military often engaged the militants in bloody firefights. I often
followed my teacher to the red zone trying to help villagers who were
secretly sympathetic to the communists. We were threatened and on one
occasion, a bomb was detonated on the route where my teacher passed
after visiting a monastery.
My senior colleague, a British Buddhist monk, Ajarn Brahm, who was in
Thailand during 1970s, has written in his book, Opening the Door of Your
Heart and other Buddhist Tales of Happiness, how the Thai government
addressed the Maoist problem. Brahm says the Thai military and
government took a three-pronged strategy:
1 Restraint: The military did not attack the communist bases, though
every soldier knew where they were.
2 Forgiveness: Throughout this dangerous period, there was an
unconditional amnesty in place.
3 Solving the root problem: New roads being built and old roads being
paved in the region. The King of Thailand personally supervised and paid
for the construction of many hundreds of small reservoirs with connected
irrigation schemes, allowing the poor farmers of the northeast to grow a
second crop of rice each year. Electricity reached the remotest of
hamlets and with it came a school and a clinic.
A Thai government soldier on patrol in the jungle told me once: "We
don't need to shoot the communists. They are fellow Thais. When I meet
them coming down from the mountains or going to the village for supplies
and we all know who they are, I just show them my new wristwatch, or let
them listen to a Thai song on my new radio then they give up being a
communist."
Thai Communists began their insurgency because they were so angry with
their government that they were ready to give up their young lives. But
restraint on the part of the government helped to prevent their anger
from becoming worse. Forgiveness, through an amnesty, gave them a safe
and honourable way out. Solving the problem, through development, made
the poor villagers prosperous. The villagers saw no need to support the
communists anymore: they were content with the government they already
had. And the communists themselves began to doubt what they were doing,
living in such hardship in the mountain jungles.
By the early 1980s, there were hardly any insurgents left, so the
communist leaders also gave themselves up. They were not punished but
offered important positions in the Thai civil service. Why waste the
resource of such courageous and committed young men?
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