Monday, January 20, 2014

Life During Wartime

Yesterday, as I spent the afternoon sitting in the park reading a book, a grenade was lobbed by an
unknown party into a crowd of protesters at the Victory Monument, a few minutes' walk down the
street, injuring 30
It's a cliche to say that in times of war, one should li!e life as normal, so as to not "let the terrorists
win" #nd there's truth there$$ after all, we run countless risks in our ordinary li!es without thinking it,
and besides, we need to li!e our li!es regardless
%!er the past week or so, the streets ha!e turned into ghostly, empty passageways leading to the loci of
mass protest sites, barricaded by piles of tires and guarded by militants wearing bandannas and
armbands co!ered in slogans &he tension has been there
'ut when the additional threat of unknown and unknowable !iolence, committed by unknown parties
who seem tied to neither camp in the current political fracas, the tension turns to fear, and that spot on
(atchawithee (oad becomes blackened dread
&errorists, it's typically argued, use the methods of terror to project their !oice #nd a good )oucauldian
would also say that it's a claim of biopower, the use of dead bodies for political means 'ut what often
seems ignored is the spatial dimension, the way the acti!e group crudely hacks out a piece of
landscape It's not for themsel!es, it's not claimed territory
#nd when the terror itself is not claimed, there is no !oice &he bomb site is pure threat, a scar across
the face of the city
It has been suspected that the leaders of the protest and their well$placed supporters among &hailand's
commercial and aristocratic elite are using (eichstag tactics to le!y public opinion, or to force a
military takeo!er of the go!ernment 'ut there is no e!idence for this, and I doubt any will arise #nd
as for the go!ernment's forces, they ha!e no interest in creating chaos$$ the police are being held back,
and all they want is their electoral !ictory in a few weeks' time
'ut it's this unknowability that reflects the polygonal nature of the &hai body politic &he international
media, along with the more partisan members of the local media, depict a simplistic picture of two
groups, red and yellow, in fa!or of Yingluck *hinawatra's +heu &hai go!ernment and the legacy of the
&haksin go!ernment before her !ersus those against them 'ut you ha!e a broad range, including red
shirts who ha!e been disappointed by Yingluck's tenure and by the self$righteous populist hucksters in
the +heu &hai party, swaths of the +,(- group led by *uthep &haugsuban who find *uthep himself to
be ungainly and corrupt, the hardcore supporters at either end, the former supporters of *uthep who are
bothered by his increasingly unbending and anti$democratic demands, the hardline monarchists with
their hateful phobias of modernity and egalitarianism, and you ha!e the !ast body of &hais who are
alienated by the whole damn thing .ow compound this with the machine politics of the &hai
parliament in which in!isible lines of patronage and clientelism dominate, with cli/ues led by thuggish
big men, old alliances formed in boys' boarding schools and military college graduating classes and
century$old -hinese immigrant business alliances and common lines of descent from illustrious
ancestors
&his big something, so much messier and more disparate than the 01$hour news cycle is willing to
admit, creates a situation where it becomes entirely unsurprising that some cabal somewhere, meeting
in the soft$lit halls of power, is willing to hand a few thousand baht to some poor peasant or out$of$
work builder to lunge a bomb into a crowd on a bright *unday afternoon
#nd I know I am still the outsider to it all, the youthful foreigner who only half understands the signs
and speeches in their original language
'ut the notion of an outsider's perspecti!e ha!ing any !alue at all seems to be at present roundly
dismissed Yes, the media perspecti!e has been shoddy 'ut the +,(- has been accusing any journalist
who asks hardball /uestions, or, for that matter, /uestions the wisdom of ousting a democratically
elected go!ernment, as being a Yingluck supporter 2eep in mind these are the same people who tried
to commandeer the media and force them to only broadcast the news from their perspecti!e a month
ago, and who lack any apparent sense of irony
'ut the thing is, when outsiders are told they cannot understand an issue because of their nationality,
rather than taking this a stern rebuke, they tend to be reminded of the rants of Vladimir +utin and #riel
*haron, of the apologists for workers' rights abuses in ,ubai and *ingapore, and if we're to be a bit
melodramatic, of the darkest moments of 00th -entury 3urope
#s I walk to work, I'm haunted by two specters4 that of the authoritarianism that threatens to strangle
me, and that of the terrorism that threatens to bleed me out in the street
#nd that authoritarianism and that terrorism are united in their opacity I'm li!ing in a city that seems to
be blanketed in a hea!y fog of disinformation and !iolence In a bit of jargon that 5eorge %rwell would
ha!e been proud of, a military spokesman, when asked about the tanks being held in 'angkok,
answered that "the matter will be further e6plained on a later date"
7hen will it be resol!ed8 &he go!ernment has set an election date$$ knowing full well they can e6pect
a !ictory$$ for the 0nd of )ebruary, but maybe that will be delayed &he +,(- refuses to negotiate,
demanding an people's council 9read4 junta:, and the more e6treme members of his camp are suggesting
scare tactics like shutting down all air control in &hailand I'm reminded of the little boy who refuses to
share his toy, and when asked to, simply smashes it against the wall
)or now, all I see in the future is awfulness 3!en in the scenario I want to happen$$ a peaceable
election$$ we will in all likelihood, see high emotions and ineffectual go!ernance &he reforms needed
will be difficult to pass and e!en more difficult to implement ,emocracy can flourish in &hailand, but
until then, I sleep in a war ;one