Practices of Conversion in Southern Thai Counterinsurgency

Ruth Streicher (Free University of Berlin)

The military-led drug rehabilitation camp ‘Yalannanbaru’ (The New Path) is one of the most successful projects launched as part of a comprehensive military counterinsurgency programme in Thailand’s conflict-ridden Malay-Muslim provinces. This field-research based exploration of the camp is guided by a theoretical reading that approaches counterinsurgency techniques as cultural practices of state formation. It will shed light on the interplay between religion and state in southern Thai counterinsurgency from two angles. On the one hand, it will expose the Buddhist undercurrents of a counterinsurgency practice designed to foster subjective attachments to the Thai nation-state. On the other, it will highlight how Muslim religion is constructed to re-educate young Malay-Muslim men. Based on this analysis, counterinsurgency techniques employed at the camp are revealed as pedagogic practices aimed to convert young Malay-Muslim men into both, modern Muslims and good Thai citizens.

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