On guard at Bangkok's frontlines
By Richard S Ehrlich
BANGKOK - He boasts of killing 20 Thai communists and fondly recalls working
with the United States Central Intelligence Agency, but denies suspicions that
he leads a death squad that is involved in bombings and shootings to help the
red-shirt United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship protest group cripple
Bangkok.
Major General Khattiya "Seh Daeng" Sawatdiphol is one of the biggest reasons
the government and military are afraid to attack the red shirts' barricades and
clear them from Bangkok's streets.
"Every morning at 4am, I inspect all these barricades," Khattiya said in Thai
during an interview next to barriers built with bamboo
spikes, rubber tires, rags, flammable oil, concrete blocks and razor wire.
"Every day I go out and do a reconnaissance. I do a tactical show of force."
He is wanted for questioning about a mysterious alleged death squad known as
"Ronin Warriors". The government and military blame them for several recent
killings stemming from dozens of unsolved M-79 grenade attacks on banks,
electric pylons, army positions, an airport fuel depot, government offices and
a crowd of people on Silom Road one evening near the red shirts' barricades.
Wearing a camouflage military uniform and canteen, Khattiya denied any link to
the Ronin Warriors. But his frequent warnings of grenade attacks - right before
they occur - have raised suspicions.
In February, he boasted of training hundreds of former Ranger paramilitary
troops to protect the Reds. "If the state clamps down on us, we have to defend
ourselves. We and our red shirt brothers may need to resort to weapons," he
told reporters at the time.
When he discusses military tactics, people on all sides listen because his
combat experience outweighs many officers in Thailand's coup-minded army. His
snarling, insult-laden warnings come at a time when the government and military
are licking their wounds after the army's disastrous failure to crush the reds'
occupation of Bangkok's streets on April 10, which resulted in 25 deaths and
900 injured.
Khattiya said a Ronin Warriors' M-79 grenade assault killed several senior
military officers during those clashes, forcing the army's retreat. The Ronin
Warriors opened fire after a rival, hooded "men in black" death squad aided the
government's side and killed civilians, he said.
"The Ronin Warriors help the red shirts because the government shoots the
people," he said during the interview. "The men in black come from the
government."
No one has independently confirmed all the facts of who killed whom that night.
Partly due to the Ronin Warriors' willingness to help the reds fight back, the
military is unable or unwilling to use force to end the red shirts' occupation
of Bangkok's streets, which began on March 12.
The Ronin Warriors could protect the red shirts behind the barricades, Khattiya
said.
"I think they can, because the government's soldiers are wearing helmets and
bullet-proof vests, and very tight clothing, and they will get very hot and
suffer heat stroke" during their assault, he said. "There is no way for the
army to dig a fortified position here on these streets. The army will be
standing out as targets."
The Ronin have an advantage in urban warfare against the army, he said,
pointing at the nearby security forces.
"Here there is a lot of concrete, and all these places where the Ronin can hide
behind," he said, gesturing at several tall buildings, including shops,
restaurants, offices, a hotel and a hospital.
A publicized rift between the army and police also makes the military
vulnerable.
"If the army uses war weapons, the police at the front will turn around against
the army, because the police are with the reds. In that event, the Ronin will
have an advantage."
He could not, however, guarantee the Ronin would appear in time to rescue the
reds.
"The reds have to hang on until the Ronin come to help. If the Ronin don't
come, it is over. It is like the movie Braveheart." Thailand's Ronin
Warriors use the name to honor stealthy Japanese ninjas. Thailand's
version has “assault rifles, M-79 bombs and hand grenades. You don't need
anything more than these for close combat like this. The Ronin and the enemy
army have the same capability. It is a matter of tactics now."
Another reason Khattiya attracts listeners is because he says things designed
to disgust and outrage.
"It is the thought process of homosexuals, using tanks and armor against the
population," he said, laughing wildly while describing the evening street
battle on April 10.
"The tactics you are supposed to use are to fight early in the morning, or
during daylight hours, not at night. But the army acts with homosexual
emotions."
When army commander-in-chief General Anupong Paojinda reassigned him to teach
aerobics in 2008, Khattiya announced: "I have prepared one dance. It's called
'The Throwing a Hand Grenade Dance'."
Born in 1951, and due to retire in 2011, he is an "army specialist" but was
"suspended" on January 14 by Anupong for alleged violations. The next day, a
rocket-propelled M-79 grenade exploded in Anupong's office.
"Khattiya's predictions always turn out to be true," a government spokesman,
Buranat Samutrak, said in January.
"Everybody thinks that I am the Ronin leader, the samurai. I deny. I
deny. I am not a Ronin," Khattiya said during the interview. "I only want to
fight with peaceful means."
Cursing, he demanded the arrests of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, Deputy
Prime Minister for Security Affairs Suthep Thaugsuban, Anupong, and others
because "the government shot the citizens" on April 10.
Khattiya was once a Ranger, an often brutal paramilitary force that includes
current and former troops loyal to him.
"A true soldier like me was never promoted to the position I should be. I
helped kill 20 people, 20 enemies, and I was wounded." He says they were Thai
communists, “killed in a tactical conflict, an ambush” that he led in northern
Thailand near the border with communist Laos in 1976.
Some speculate Khattiya is using the reds so a cabal of rightwing military
officers and retirees can seize power. Police jailed him for a couple of days
in March for alleged weapons possession and helping a criminal suspect escape.
On nationwide TV, Abhisit publicly named Khattiya for the first time on April
25 and said without elaborating: "Everything is connected. All names like Seh
Daeng [Khattiya]" and others were "not cases of coincidence".
His website, www.sae-dang.com, is officially blocked in Thailand but his books
are bestsellers and he occasionally appears on TV talk shows. The major general
is friendly with Thaksin Shinawatra, the former billionaire prime minister who
was toppled in a 2006 military coup. Thaksin is an international fugitive
dodging a two-year jail sentence for corruption. He is close to the reds
shirts.
"On March 9, I was in Dubai and saw Thaksin and spoke with him, and [on May 3],
I spoke on the telephone with him. I explained to Thaksin how the army
committed murder on April 10, and how they are now bringing tanks and will do
it again. I told him now we have to fight. They will shoot women and children.
I also described the barricades here." because Thaksin is one of the reds' top
leaders.
Other red leaders have distanced themselves from Khattiya, fearing his image is
too violent. In turn, he has condemned them for recently retracting a barricade
from a hospital.
"The red leadership don't agree with me, and they lost all this land by moving
the barricades," he said, pointing at an unblocked street in front of
Chulalongkorn Hospital.
The reds were denounced as thugs when some of them stormed the hospital on
April 29 to search for army snipers, and left without finding any.
"There were soldiers inside," Khattiya insisted. "The red leaders are assuming
the posture of retreating, but the red citizens are not. People said the red
shirts were becoming stronger than Thaksin. Now the red shirts are going over
the heads of the red leaders. They are scared their leaders will give up."
He said Thaksin told him on the telephone: "'Don't let a lot of people die. I
don't want a lot of deaths. You have to hold back the army.'
"Thaksin has no idea about the tactics of fighting. But he's a nice guy."
Khattiya is also fond of America, which he has visited several times, including
when his daughter recently graduated from George Washington University in
Washington DC, he said.
"Earlier, I took General Vang Pao, from the Hmong resistance, to America."
Vang Pao was an infamous leader of the CIA's failed "secret war" in Laos up
until 1975, when communists achieved victory alongside communists in Cambodia
and Vietnam against the Americans.
Khattiya said he helped smuggle Vang Pao across Thailand into Malaysia. "I
stayed with him in a safe house. I took Vang Pao out to Penang, and sent him to
America. I also did fundraising with Vang Pao in America, for the
anti-communist effort," during the past few decades.
Vang Pao was arrested in 2007 and charged with trying to purchase an
anti-aircraft Stinger missile and other weapons in California, and was jailed
for several months before being released and acquitted, though others in his
group were sent to trial.
"I have a history of working with the CIA as well," Khattiya said, referring to
US and Thai efforts to kill Communist Party of Thailand suspects during the
1970s.
Khattiya said he had a message for US President Barack Obama: "This government
is murdering people. Bring the United Nations in, because it is going to be
like Pol Pot, Mussolini and Hitler."
Richard S Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based journalist from San Francisco,
California. He has reported news from Asia since 1978 and is co-author of the
non-fiction book of investigative journalism, Hello My Big Big Honey!
Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews. His website is
www.asia-correspondent.110mb.com.
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No one has independently confirmed all the facts of who killed whom that night.
