Thaksin’s Red Shirt army lacks effective direction

Faced with the sudden realization that only 1 in 10 of the people they hoped for actually showed up in Bangkok, Thaksin and his Red Shirt army are facing the reality that their effort is about to fail. Short of violence there is little they can do to bring about the self serving change they want.

It seems the problem started when they started to believe their own grossly exaggerated hype about 1 million people marching against Prime Minister Abhisit and his government. Their grand plans seems to also have been betrayed by the Thai Achilles heel of not thinking things out to conclusion before acting. As a result all the Thai government must do is wait the Red Shirts out as time and logistics are against them.

After simply being told a resounding ‘NO!’ by Abhisit that he was not about to dissolve parliament, the Red Shirts returned to their base camp from the military barracks they marched to. But all is not as it appears, the underlying reason is logistics and not caving in to Abhisit. The Red Shirts have set up only one place in Bangkok that can support the mass mob that did gather. Toilets, food and water play a significant roll in what can be done. Marching 100,000 people across town left them with non of the supporting essentials forcing a retreat after being on remote location for little more than 1 hour.

This forced an emergency think tank and a symbolic pacifier for the mob of collecting blood to be poured at the government house. This is only a time buying effort as Abhisit’s western education has left him for the most part immune to any Thai superstitions that may apply.

So getting back to how logistics will play a roll in the outcome, it is clear they did not plan beyond the concept of choking Bangkok. It most certainly would be an effective tool with red ants crawling all over the city. But if that tactic was deployed it would only last 1 day at best.

The Red Shirts will not be immune from their own poison. By choking Bangkok they also choke themselves of re-supplying trucks. Because of their violent nature any place they went in any smaller mobs would be greeted by shuttered shops. This would be a natural instinctive reaction of people as their survival instinct would kick in. So simply the Red Shirts must bring their own supplies if they are leaving the main nest, and there has been no indication of 100,000 backpacks  at the main nest to deploy with the people. So marching around the hottest city in the world in the middle of summer without supplies quickly causes the Lo Bat signal to be displayed thus ending the outing.

If the violence option is chosen it must be in a single location where the supplies are and that tactically places Abhisit at an advantage as a repeat of the April 2009 riots unfolds. The logistics factor also caused the April riots to end at the nest because the remote riots also ran out of supplies at places like the Victory Monument a day or 2 before.

Tactically this leaves only one option for the Red Shirts and that is a full head on coup like charge taking the high ground by capturing government buildings. That tactic must be deployed and completed in a few hours or less to avoid government counter measures and running out of supplies.


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