BANGKOK | He boasts of killing 20 Thai communists and fondly recalls working with the CIA, but he denies charges that he leads a death squad that has engaged in bombings and shootings to help the anti-government Red Shirt protesters bring downtown Bangkok to a halt.
Maj. Gen. 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 the streets.
“Every morning at 4 a.m., I inspect all these barricades,” he 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.”
Gen. Khattiya, 58, has enjoyed a place of prominence in the Red Shirts’ nearly two-month standoff with authorities, serving alternately as the protesters’ strategist, spokesman, coach and inspiration. A best-selling author and TV personality, he has been a member of an often brutal paramilitary force that includes current and former troops loyal to him.
He is wanted for questioning about a death squad known as “Ronin Warriors,” a mysterious group of Red Shirt supporters whom the government blames for grenade attacks on military and public targets. The Warriors’ name is the Japanese term for a samurai without a master.
Wearing a camouflage military uniform and canteen, Gen. Khattiya denied any link to the Ronin Warriors.
But his frequent warnings of grenade attacks — just before they occur — has 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 that of many officers in Thailand’s coup-minded army.
He snarled his insult-laden warnings at a time when the government and military were licking their wounds, after the army’s failure to crush the Reds’ occupation of Bangkok’s streets on April 10, which resulted in 25 deaths and 900 people injured. Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva last week said he will dissolve parliament and allow elections in November, an apparent bow to the Red Shirts’ pro-democratic demands.
In the April 10 clashes between government forces and Red Shirts, Gen. Khattiya said, a Ronin Warriors’ M-79 grenade assault killed several senior military officers and forced the army’s retreat.
The Ronin Warriors opened fire after a rival death squad, the hooded “Men in Black,” 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 day.
Partly because of the Ronin Warriors’ willingness to help the Reds fight back, the military has been unable or unwilling to use force again to end the Red Shirts’ occupation of Bangkok’s streets, which began on March 12.
The Ronin Warriors can protect the Red Shirts behind the barricades, Gen. Khattiya said.
“I think they can, because the government’s soldiers are wearing helmets and bulletproof vests, and very tight clothing, and they will get very hot and suffer heatstroke,” 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 that 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.’”
However, Thailand’s demonstrators “have assault rifles, M-79 bombs and hand grenades. You don’t need anything more than these for close combat like this,” he said. “The Ronin and the enemy army have the same capability. It is a matter of tactics now.”
Gen. Khattiya also attracts listeners because he says things that are designed to disgust and outrage.
“It is the thought process of homosexuals, using tanks and armor against the population,” he said, laughing while describing a street battle on the evening of 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 Gen. Anupong Paojinda, the army commander in chief, reassigned him to teach aerobics in 2008, Gen. Khattiya announced: “I have prepared one dance. It’s called ’The Throwing a Hand Grenade Dance.’”
Due to retire in 2011, he was “suspended” Jan. 14 by Gen. Anupong for violations. The next day, a rocket-propelled M-79 grenade exploded in Gen. Anupong’s office.
“Khattiya’s predictions always turn out to be true,” 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,” Gen. Khattiya said during the interview. “I only want to fight with peaceful means.”
He was previously part of the Rangers paramilitary force. “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 said. “They were Thai communists, killed in a tactical conflict, an ambush,” which he led in northern Thailand near the border with communist Laos in 1976.
Cursing, he demanded the arrests of Mr. Abhisit, Gen. Anupong and others because “the government shot the citizens” on April 10.
On nationwide TV, Mr. Abhisit publicly named Gen. 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.”
Some speculate that Gen. Khattiya is using the Reds so a cabal of right-wing military officers and retirees can seize power.
Police jailed him for a couple of days in March on charges of weapons possession and helping a criminal suspect escape.
His website, www.sae-dang.com, is officially blocked in Thailand, but his books are best-sellers and he occasionally appears on TV talk shows.
The major general is friendly with Thaksin Shinawatra, a former billionaire prime minister who was toppled in a 2006 military coup. Mr. Thaksin is an international fugitive dodging a two-year jail sentence for corruption.
“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,” he said.
“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 Mr. Thaksin is one of the Reds’ top leaders.
Other Red leaders distanced themselves from Gen. Khattiya, fearing his violent image.
In turn, he 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.
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