GRADO DE INCAPACIDAD FUNCIONAL Definición

On the Thai side of the customary border checkpoints, the state was represented by Thailand’s paramilitary border guards called thahan phran. The term literally means

‘hunter soldiers’ but is usually translated as Rangers (Ball 2004). This paramilitary force was established as part of the Royal Thai Army in 1978 with the purpose of fighting the insurgency by the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT) in the Northeast.

After the Vietnamese invasion in Cambodia in 1978, thahan phran were sent to protect the Thai-Cambodian border and control refugee camps. Since then the thahan phran have replaced the army in many areas including the Golden Triangle. They generally act as a front-line force in Thailand’s more troubled border areas.

In terms of recruitment, the initial idea was to employ civilians from areas around communist strongholds, give them weapons training, supply them with weapons and then send them back to their villages to fight against communist insurgents (Ball 2004:

9). Many recruits were convicted criminals who were paroled upon becoming Rangers.

Some were civilians drawn from existing organisations such as the Village Scouts.

Other recruits were enticed by the promise that they would receive land while others wanted simply to show their devotion to their country. By the end of 1981, there were 13,000 thahan phran in 160 companies, which decreased to 10,600 Rangers in 2004 (Ball 2004).

The Rangers in my research area belonged to the 21^st regiment of Loei, which has ten companies. The company in my research area covered seven duty stations and at the time of my research was 70-80 men strong. Thahan phran are easy to spot due to their conspicuous black uniforms, the insignia of a bat on their vest and the phrase rau su (we fight) on their sleeve (Image 8). They often carry their M-16 rifles around with them while patrolling the area. One Ranger regularly carried his rifle around with him even while clad in civilian clothes. The duty stations in my research area included customary border checkpoints as well as the company headquarters. A group of 5-6 Rangers was stationed at each customary border checkpoint. Individual Rangers would usually change duty stations every 2-3 months, although in some cases they would stay up to several years. Over the course of my research, I would therefore sometimes get to know an individual Ranger at one customary border checkpoint and encounter the same Ranger as he worked at another checkpoint a few months later. One of the Rangers suspected that the objective of this rotation system was to prevent them from “getting involved too much and also to not get bored”.

Image 8: Uniform of thahan phran at customary border checkpoint (Source: Author)

Getting involved and socialising with the local population was often inevitable though.

The vast majority of Rangers I met in my research area were from Loei province and

some of their homes and families were located merely 20km away from their duty station. Many of them would use one of their family’s motorbikes to drive around their duty area and to visit their family during their days off. As a paramilitary organisation within the Royal Thai Army, Rangers have the same working pattern as army soldiers, working 30 days in a row and then receiving 8 days of leave. The Rangers in my research area usually went home to visit their families during this period. They knew the local area well and spoke the local dialect. This allowed them to easily communicate with the local villagers from both sides of the border and become easily embedded in the area of their duty station, although this varied according to an individual’s personality as well (Chapter 5).

This social embeddedness was reinforced as Rangers were often engaged in “worldly activities” (Ball 2004: 6). They could be seen growing vegetables and visiting local markets in both their uniforms and civilian clothes. At several of the customary border checkpoints in my research area, Rangers kept animals including Labrador dogs and songbirds⁵⁶. While most of the Rangers resided in a shared house at their duty station, one of the Rangers I met was renting his own house across from the border checkpoint and staying there together with his wife and daughter. After he had worked at the same duty station for two years, his wife and daughter decided to move there as well. When I started my research, the Ranger’s wife had just opened a noodle shop in front of their home and their daughter had just started going to school in the local village. In fact, after a few months I was regularly having lunch at the Rangers’ wife’s noodle shop, visiting the Ranger and his colleagues at their duty station and teaching his daughter English during my voluntary English classes at the local school.

The Ranger’s embeddedness in the local community stands in contrast to reports from other border areas where Rangers have become known and even feared for their involvement in political corruption and human rights violations (Ball 2004). The height of such atrocities was in the 1980s when Rangers were newly recruited to fight communist insurgents. More recently, Rangers have been criticised for their incompetence and brutality during their operations in Southern Thailand, which have

56 In fact, training songbirds has recently become a more popular activity in the Northeast of Thailand and a few other villagers were raising such songbirds and training them to sing at competitions. Having originated in Southern Thailand, these competitions are now also held in Northeastern Thai cities such as Udon Thani and Loei. While there is no monetary prize at the competition itself, winning birds can be worth several hundred thousand baht (see also Anderson 2005). At the border to Laos, the birds are usually bought off a villager on the Lao side who catches them in the forest for around 100 baht.

increased since 2002. International Crisis Group reports on incidents of torture, rape and extrajudicial killings carried out by Rangers against Muslim civilians in the South (ICG 2007). The report also mentions some of the reasons why the military prefers to deploy Rangers to troubled areas instead of commissioned soldiers, which include Rangers’

knowledge of the local areas and their local social networks but also the fact that their labour is cheaper.

In fact, during one of my first interviews with a Ranger in my research area, he said that Rangers receive an initial salary of 8,000 baht a month, which then increases over time.

Despite their low salary, Rangers are considered part of the military and therefore have a high social status, which is even higher than that of teachers (Ball 2004: 3). Within the military, however, they have a lower status than commissioned soldiers who not only receive a higher wage but also require higher educational levels upon entry. In fact, an army soldier who was helping out on a temporary basis at one of the customary border checkpoints had been made head of the duty station immediately upon arrival.

Furthermore, quite a few of my informants mentioned that they had tried to enter the army. It was only after they failed that they applied to become Rangers instead. As one Ranger explained: “I come from a border village, just 30km from here. I finished school after Mor 6 (12^th grade) but then I did not want to work. I did not enjoy farming or working in the fields. I also did not want to work in a company. So I lived with my parents until I was 23 and then applied to become a soldier in Udon Thani. But I failed the test. So I went to Dansai [thahan phran headquarters in Loei province], applied to become a Ranger and I passed.” This particular Ranger was clearly enjoying his occupation as he could often be seen socialising with the boat operators at the customary border checkpoint, sitting and eating with them in their hut and singing Isan folklore songs with them.

Another difference between Rangers and commissioned army soldiers is their initial training period. Most of the Rangers I interviewed had been a Ranger for 20-30 years.

They had become Rangers during the height of the communist insurgency and said they had been attracted by the opportunity to fight for their country. According to their statements, the initial training period was only one month and then one additional month each subsequent year. This is even less than the 45 days mentioned by Ball in his insightful work on the thahan phran (2004). Indeed, the consequences of such minimalist training and induction was reflected by a discussion I had with a Ranger who

had just finished his training and was newly stationed in my research area. He was from Mueang Loei. When I spoke to him he was convinced that there were two Thai-Lao Friendship Bridges in the area. He explained that one Bridge could be reached when travelling on the road to the right of the customary border checkpoint and the other Bridge could be reached when travelling on the road to the left. In reality, both roads led to the same Bridge.

The differences in-between individual Rangers, their knowledge, attitudes and actions within the various units throughout Thailand have resulted in a reputation ranging from

“an elite-screening force guarding borders to a bunch of armed thugs in black uniforms”

(Ball 2004: xv). But the Rangers’ attitudes and actions are also dependent on the location and level of conflict around their duty station. Many of my interlocutors had been stationed in Southern Thailand and more recently along the Thai-Cambodian border to assist in the conflict around the Preah Vihar temple. One Ranger had been directly involved in the fighting there. While I interviewed him inside the boat operators’ hut at one of the customary border checkpoints the boat operators listened in awe as he described how he had to find protection in bunkers while both sides exchanged fire for several days. He proudly showed us his scars from the bullets that hit his arm during the shooting. When I asked him how the Thai-Cambodian border was different from the border here, he responded: “The situation here is extremely peaceful…there is nothing here…it is very easy to live here”. Other Rangers mentioned a constant threat of malaria along the Thai-Cambodian border and that they had needed local translators to speak to the local Khmer population. All of the Rangers I spoke to preferred to work in the duty station where they were now and one of them clearly stated the advantages: “Well, I have my own home nearby so it is very convenient for me here. If I have the choice, I will always choose to work here.”

The level of conflict in the border areas where Rangers are stationed also has an effect on the kind of work they engage in on a daily basis. According to one of the Rangers’

supervisors in my research area, their main objective was to protect (bongan) the villages and people along the border. He said that on a day-to-day basis, Rangers were mostly occupied with searching for smugglers of drug, cars and motorbikes. They patrolled the border by car, on foot or on the river by boat. At customary border checkpoints, Rangers were responsible for checking border-crossers, their documents and the goods they carried across. There were no official meetings or joint trainings

between Rangers and Lao authorities although the supervisors of each side of the checkpoints did communicate with each other by phone to discuss current matters.

Rangers could also be seen at the Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge where they provided security and searched arrivals from Laos for drugs and other illegal products. During the time of my research, Rangers were using a metal device with a long antenna when searching people for drugs at the Bridge as well as at customary border checkpoints (Image 9). Apparently, the antenna moves and points to wherever drugs are located.

While this drug detecting device (GT200) and its effectiveness has recently come under international scrutiny (Saksith 2013), it still presents a visible manifestation of state/military power in the border area.

Image 9: Thahan phran with drug detecting device (GT200) at Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge (Source: Author)

With regard to their duty of patrolling the border for illegal trading activities, Rangers in my research area seemed to define “smugglers” (khon laklob) merely as those who transport motorcycles, cars and other high value goods across the river rather than consumer products and food. When referring to local villagers’ cross-border trade of consumer products, the Rangers often mentioned to me in informal interviews how they

“give way” (anulom) to such practices as long as no drugs are involved. I will elaborate

and analyse this situation in Chapter 6. As I will argue, the local embeddedness of Rangers and their social relationships to the local population is part of what facilitates this kind of small-scale cross-border trade. This embeddedness in the local community was reinforced by the Rangers’ additional responsibilities of helping the community during floods and fires as well as with tasks like harvesting rice, building houses and providing for security during festivals.

Another paramilitary organisation that was stationed in my research area was the Or Sor (Volunteer Defence Corps). Despite the vast and increasing number of paramilitary organisations that exist in Thailand (see Ball and Mathieson 2007: 23), the paramilitary organisations working in my research area were limited to Rangers and VDC. The latter could be seen working mostly at the Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge and at checkpoints along the road. Due to their rather inconspicuous uniforms in light brown/grey, which they didn’t always wear, the Or Sor were not as easy to spot as Rangers. They were, furthermore, not part of the Royal Thai Army but deployed by the Ministry of Interior (MoI). While they are also in charge of maintaining security along Thailand’s border areas and assist the Rangers in doing so, their duties were much broader and included doing “anything and everything for provincial and district officials” (Ball and Mathieson 2007: 109).

There were approximately 60 Or Sor who were stationed in my research area, 10 of which were working at the Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge. At the Bridge the Or Sor assisted the thahan phran but as they were not affiliated with the military, they were entitled to cross over the Bridge and exchange information with Lao officials about any instances along the border. In fact, the head of a local Or Sor group was known among villagers as the coordinator between the Thai and Lao districts of that area. In one of my personal conversations with this Or Sor, he explained that he set up conferences and meetings between the Thai and Lao provincial governors and district officials on a regular basis. For example, when Thai authorities arrested a Lao citizen it was the Or Sor who would deal with Lao authorities in arranging for the Lao citizen’s deportation.

The Or Sor who was also the coordinator between the Thai and Lao border districts had many cousins on the Lao side. At the time of my research, he went to Laos almost every day to either visit his relatives or to discuss issues with Lao authorities. He possessed a special officer’s ID card that allowed him to travel across the border freely. During none

of my visits did he make any remarks about Laos or its state officials that implied fear or anxiety. He had joined the Or Sor three years after the communist takeover and knew about all that had been going on along this part of the border since then. His lack of anxiety with regard to the Lao state with what a higher-ranking Ranger explained to me:

“Those people who don’t have any relatives or friends on the Lao side are scared of the Lao side since they don’t know anyone there. Those who have relatives and friends there go often and are not scared at all”. This confirms the findings I presented in Chapter 3 where I explained that those female traders who did not cross the border had many negative preconceptions about the Lao state.

While Or Sor went to Laos more regularly, a few Rangers had also been to Laos before.

When stationed at customary border checkpoints they occasionally crossed the border to socialise with the Lao officials on the other side or to attend village festivals. The supervisor at one of the checkpoints who was a commissioned army soldier, for example, had been to the other side of the checkpoint to celebrate with his Lao counterpart during the local village festival. Other Rangers sometimes visited the Lao traders and villagers they got to know during their everyday work at the checkpoints. In fact, it is important to note that the relationship of Rangers with Thai and Lao boat operators as well as with local border-crossers was much closer than that between Rangers and Lao authorities. As one of the Rangers expressed it: “We [the Rangers and border villagers] take care of each other (tulae kan)”.