Thread: Thailand History: Village Informers

The posts below are part of a US assessment of CSOC's training program for informants and civilian paramilitary (referred to as "strike force personnel") volunteers.

The Communist Suppression Operations command. CSOC, was founded in the mid '60s with the aid of the US government to combat communist insurgency in Thailand. CSOC was responsible for numerous atrocities during the 1960's and 1970's, including the red drums murders I posted on earlier. In the 1970's the name was changed to from CSOC to ISOC. They were responsible for bombings and assassinations throughout the country and organised death squads (in particular the village-based Red Gaur and the higher-level Navaporn) to deal with suspected subversives. They are also believed to be responsible for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of disappearances throughout the country.

Although it appeared that the power of ISOC was in decline during the late 1970's and 1980's over 400 soldiers attacked the residence of Prime Minister Kukrit Pramoj in 1987 when he accused ISOC of having been influenced bu communist sympathisers.

Privy Counsel member and former Prime Minister Prem Tinsuljonda was formerly Assistant Director of the ISOC.

Former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra attempted to reorganise ISOC and reduce its power. Shortly after this plan became public Lt Thawatchai Klinchana, driver to ISOC Deputy Director Panlop PInmanee was arrested in the vicinity of Thaksin's home. The car he was driving contained a fully assembled remote controlled bomb. According to the police this bomb consisted of 67 Kilograms of plastic explosive and would have had a blast radius of 1 kilometer.

Three people were arrested for conspiring to assainate Thakisn.

Shortly afterwards Thaskin was overthrown in the 2006 coup. Immediately following the coup General Sonthi Boonyaratglin appointed himself head of ISOC and gave ISOC sweeping new powers under the counsel for national reform. In particular ISOC was given control over the Department for Special Investigations, an organisation best described as Thailand's political police.

ISOC was given a reward (their word) of 83 million Baht for their services by the interim "civilian" government of General Surayud Chulanont in 2006.

One of their better known recent activities was to distribute thousands of Jathukam Ramathep amulets throughout the South of Thailand in an attempt to protect Buddhist villagers from insurgents.

Both ISOC and it's earlier incarnation CSOC relied and rely heavily on informers. Obviously there's no publicly available data on how informers are trained or used today but I thought the posts below ( a selection from the 232 page full report), although old and containing nothing startling, might be of interest to those interested in recent Thai history and the history and techniques of the groups that controlled and still control the country.