In the South, the media, too, must think outside the box

Don Pathan
Pattani

Just recently a couple of dozen reporters based in the three southernmost provinces came together in Pattani, along with senior members of the Thai Journalists' Association, to brainstorm on the ongoing violence in the restive region and how to better cover it.

Top security officials were invited to make their case, particularly over how they perceived the media's coverage of the conflict in the region. Naturally, they asked that their side of the story be heard and that the media be more sympathetic to the challenges confronting them. According to these officials, the media has a role to play in reconciling the differences between the people of the Malay-speaking, Muslim-majority South and the rest of the country. The reporters agreed.

What they couldn't agree on was who, if anybody, should have a monopoly on defining what constitutes reconciliation - or in this case, reconciliatory news stories.

Like any government, the current administration and its bureaucratic machines claim that they have the facts. And because they have the monopoly on these facts, they are the ones who, supposedly, know what's best for the country. And so they issue official lines to the media to be presented to the public. What bothered many journalists was how these facts have been presented. They made it clear that the authorities must share the burden, but essentially agreed that it was part of their responsibility to present accurate and well-rounded stories.

But still, the question remains: should anybody have a monopoly on shaping the context of the story? For too long, the way the deep South was understood had been shaped by the state. For the officials, the answer is clear-cut and simple: the country is facing a new generation of Malay-Muslim militants who embrace a false teaching of Islam and are taught a wrong version of history - the version that says the Malay-speaking South has always been a part of Thailand, even before the world came up with this relatively new notion called the "nation-state".

Moreover, one should not deviate from this notion because, in doing so, one would be accused of adding to the problem instead of being part of the solution. What the state didn't say was that a new can of worms would be opened and they would be left to clean up the mess.

Reporters at the workshop admitted that being too close to the official line had taken its toll on them and they were concerned about their safety. Many said they had alienated their audience, particularly the Malay Muslims, who make up about 80 per cent of the people in the three southernmost provinces. Some even experienced verbal abuse from Muslims, who see them as a government mouthpiece.

It would be different, of course, if the Malay-Muslim public trusted the state. For years, the question of the legitimacy of the Thai state in the historical Malay-speaking homeland has loomed over the region. Since this wave of violence erupted in January 2004, more than 3,000 people have been killed.

According to the journalists, one way to get around this - to not be perceived as a mouthpiece of the state - is to call a spade a spade. Specifically, they asked that editors in Bangkok do less in terms of "sexing up" their stories and instead permit more human-interest stories. For most problems, acknowledging shortcomings is the first step toward a solution. Whether Thai journalists can think outside the box and withstand the wrath of state officials, on the other hand, remains to be seen.

Unlike conflicts elsewhere, there is no message from the insurgents. While the region is not short of critics, all agree that news reporting on the South would be elevated to a higher plane if the opposing forces designated their own spokesmen. But this won't happen anytime soon. Southern Thailand is not Aceh at its worst or Mindanao in its current predicament. One can't just pick up the phone and get the "other side of the story".

Because of the ongoing violence, Thailand's South is the most studied region in the country. For the most part, narratives on the region are presented essentially as sub-narratives of Thailand as a whole. The Thai media have been reluctant to acknowledge that a disturbing portion of the southern population have not come to terms with the country's notion of nation-state - because in doing so, they risk being seen as sympathetic to the people who, in the words of the state, have been misled by the false teaching of history and who embrace the wrong brand of Islam.

The challenge, it seems, is not just for the state to come up with a more realistic explanation as to why generation after generation question the legitimacy of the Thai state in the deep South. The media, too, must learn to think outside the box.

Lessons from the southern insurgency not learned

Published on March 20, 2008 -

Last May in Yala, then Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont told a press conference that he had received "positive feedback" from separatist groups over the idea of establishing some sort of "dialogue".

But he warned that more work had to be done before permanent peace in the Malay-speaking deep South could be achieved.

Kasturi Mahkota, foreign-affairs chief of the Patani United Liberation Organisation (Pulo), immediately welcomed Surayud's statement. He called it a "positive gesture".

But on Tuesday in Bangkok, Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej, ruled out the idea of negotiating with the separatists. Local media gave Samak's statement a great deal of coverage but failed to provide a proper context to this sticky issue.

For as long as anybody can remember, Thai security officials have been going to the Middle East, Europe and neighbouring countries to talk to the leaders of long-standing separatist groups, including the Patani United Liberation Organisation (Pulo), Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) and Barisan Islam Pembebasan (BIPP).

However, the outcomes of these off-and-on chats have failed to have any affect on policy because they are carried out in an ad-hoc manner. They just want to sound out the separatists rather then work towards achieving something more constructive.

"Of course, they all say they are representatives of the Thai government," said one exiled leader who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Samak said most government agencies disagree with direct negotiations. However, he was tight-lipped about the secret meetings between the two sides while insisting that the government was not going to sit down with the separatists on an equal basis.

Jolted by the weekend car bombs in Pattani and Yala, Samak had to sound uncompromising in public. The veteran politician knows he is dealing with an issue that cannot be easily translated into a quick political victory. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why the premier and his interior chief, Chalerm Yoobamrung, have been side-stepping the issue.

The problem with the Thai security top brass is that, after years of talking to the separatists, their attitude has not changed. They see themselves as "negotiating with bandits" rather than being in a "dialogue with fellow citizens" - people who embrace a different political ideology, as the communist insurgents did two decades ago.

The only thing that successive Thai administrations have agreed upon is that the issue should not be internationalised. In other words, no foreign governments or international organisations should be involved in mediating the talks or be allowed to snoop around the deep South, where allegations of gross human rights violations and questionable security practices are rife. Thailand looks at East Timor and Aceh and tells itself that this is not what it wants.

The problem with the Thai generals is that they think like Thai politicians. They all want the violence to end under their watch. Never mind that the problem is deeply rooted in history and shaped by mistrust and the resistance of southern Muslims to Thailand's policy of assimilation.

Another problem is that the old guard - older members of the separatist groups - don't and, in most cases, can't control the new generation of militants on the ground. Locally known as juwae, the new generation of insurgents do not necessarily identify with the old guard, and they engage in the kind of brutality unheard of by the previous generation. They are organised in cell clusters but have the capacity to coordinate attacks - 100 targets at a time - throughout the region.

Even after years of being on the receiving end of this battle, the government is still unable to fine-tune a number of important initiatives. At a recent Thai Journalists' Association seminar in Pattani, the provincial Task Force commander, Major General Thawatchai Samutsakorn, said the "government can't tell me what they [insurgents] will get if they surrender".

Often, a suspect who surrenders is paraded in front of the media, unable to speak freely, while top officials tell the public how the suspect has come to his senses after being misled by some false religious teaching and distorted history.

And afterwards, when released, the "reformed" militant becomes a target of his former comrades.

Nearly 3,000 people have been killed in the insurgency since it began in January 2004.

Insurgents make it clear there is no neutral ground

Don Pathan
Pattani

It was dubbed "Rick's Cafe" by one foreign diplomat, in reference to the hangout in the movie Casablanca, neutral turf where all World War II warring factions cautiously mingled, trying to figure out their opponent's next move.

But whatever "neutrality" the CS Pattani Hotel had in the past ended on Saturday evening, as the violence in this restive region took its toll on the hotel, one of the most important commercial establishments in the deep South.

For much of the past five years, this hotel was the venue for some of the fiercest debates among top government officials, local elites, Muslim clerics, human-rights activists and local politicians.

They all came to sip tea and chat with acquaintances at the terrace restaurant next to the very spot where a car armed with three fire-extinguisher canisters, each filled with 10 kilograms of explosive materials, was parked.

Given the high-profile nature of CS Pattani, not to mention the unprecedented nature of the car-bomb attack, it was somewhat odd that Cabinet ministers remained tight-lipped throughout the weekend.

Two bombs exploded simultaneously on that unforgettable night, killing two and injuring about 15 others. But a third bomb, found about 30 metres away from where the car was parked, was a dud.

The blast tore up a row of vehicles parked in front of the hotel and shattered all the windows on the front side of this eight-floor hotel, as well as those of two rows of nearby shop houses.

Besides putting an end to the longstanding notion of the CS Pattani as a violence-free zone, the use of a car bomb against this soft target was an indication that the violence in this restive region has crossed a new threshold.

Earlier in the day, a similar incident took place in front of a Yala public school when a bomb, also hidden in a vehicle, exploded mid-afternoon, killing the driver who was said to have been a key bomb-maker for a militant cell in the province.

While many were stunned at the loss of the last safe haven in this restive region, Pattani Task Force commander, Maj-General Thawatchai Samutsakorn, said he had serious doubts as to whether the use of car bombs would become a major component in the militants' fight against the Thai state.

Sunai Phasuk, of Human Rights Watch, sees Saturday's attack as a blunt statement by militants after 10 months of being on the receiving end of the military's shakedown, which has forced some cells to go under and has put some militants on the run.

The controversial shakedown campaign, kicked off in July 2007, has consisted of blind sweeps of remote villages withup to 100 individuals taken in for questioning. Individuals deemed to be in the "high-risk" category have been sent to military boot camps under the guise of "job training" and "counselling".

On the ground, allegations of torture, wrongful arrest, and target killings were piling up towards the end of the term of the military-installed government, which was replaced by the current administration.

But while the blind sweeps succeeded in halting roadside bombings, especially in the more highly contested areas in Yala and Narathiwat, where the suspects behind Saturday's operation were based, top security brass didn't predict how the insurgents would make their comeback.

The car bomb at the CS Pattani Hotel, Sunai said, was more than just a way of telling the security apparatus that they were back.

"They are sending a spine-chilling message across the region that the separatist fighters are striking back, and that no one and nowhere is safe," Sunai said.

Separatist militants in Thailand's southern border provinces are not known for respecting universal principles prohibiting attacks on civilians and civilian targets. Such a radical and brutal ideology feeds on ongoing abuses and injustice committed by Thai security forces in their counterinsurgency operations, Sunai said.

"But nothing can justify human-rights violations. The fight for freedom or acts of retribution against state-sponsored abuses does not give these militants justification to shoot, or blow up civilians like this. This is madness, not a liberation war," Sunai added.

But Thawatchai warned against overrating Saturday's operation, saying it appeared to be the work of one particular cell and added that there is nothing to suggest that other cells would follow suit or that they would have the means to do so.

He also pointed to their blunders - the fact that the third canister didn't go off, and the premature detonation of the car bomb in Yala, which ended up taking the operative's life.

Unlike the previous generation of separatist fighters who camped out in remote pockets along the hills near the Thai-Malaysian border, today's militants, often referred to as "juwae", or fighter, by local residents, are organised in cells or clusters of cells with a high degree of coordination. This enables them to carry out simultaneous attacks across this historically contested region where about 80 per cent of the inhabitants are Muslims of Malay ethnicity.

Thawatchai thinks local residents would be less sympathetic to the juwae's fight if their bombs continue to go off in areas popular among Muslims, such as the CS Pattani.

Indeed, killing Muslims suspected of spying for the Thai state is one thing; a powerful bomb that sees no racial or ethnic lines is another. Two men died from Saturday's blast at the CS Pattani. One was a Muslim security guard and the second a Thai Buddhist cook.

Pornthip means well, but she misunderstands the south

Don Pathan
The Nation

Khunying Dr Pornthip Rojanasunand was visibly upset when she appeared
on television to talk about the recent tragedy that ended in the death
of several of her staff.

Some of her most dedicated people lost their lives when an army
helicopter went down in Banang Sata district, a highly contested area
where clashes between Thai security forces and Malay Muslim insurgents
take place on a regular basis.

In line with her old self, Pornthip took a pot shot at the police,
whom she accused of being uncooperative with her forensic department.
But she didn't leave the airwaves without slamming the local Malay
Muslims, whom she accused of being ungrateful to the Thai state.

Pornthip told her interviewer claims by some state officials of making
headway in winning the hearts and minds of the local Malay Muslims in
Thailand's southernmost provinces was untrue.

She pointed to the recent train attack by a group of at least six
gunmen who shot and killed four security officials. Pornthip said none
of the passengers - most if not all were local Malays - made no effort
to give the officials any information about the presence of the
militants who were disguised as soldiers when they jumped on the
train.

The hundreds of roadside bombs of recent years, said Pornthip, were
planted under the very noses of the local residents. And yet, no one
ever comes forward.

Like typical bureaucrats assigned to the Malay-speaking South,
Pornthip feels the "Thai Muslim" residents have failed to live up to
their responsibility as citizens.

Coming to terms with knowing that Malay Muslims could do more but
won't has been extremely difficult for many Thai officials who see
themselves as doing good deeds for their fellow citizens.

It has been difficult for them because, like Pornthip, they cannot see
that the ongoing violence in the deep South is much more than a
problem of law and order.

It is a conflict - one that has pitted the Malay (not Thai) Muslims
insurgents against what they see as illegitimate foreign troops, and
that the local Muslim community is stuck between the two sides.

They may or may not agree with the insurgents' brutal methods but they
are not going to stick their neck out to help representatives of a
state they don't trust.

And if they do stick their neck out for whatever reason, can the state
guarantee their safety and protection from the insurgents?

The militants have shown they have no qualms about killing fellow
Malay Muslims if they are considered a legitimate target. In fact,
most of the victims of the daily drive-by killings - not taking into
account the ambush of military conveys - are ethnic Malays. All are
card-carrying Thai citizens.

Unless people like Pornthip come to terms with the fact that, in the
eyes of the local Malay residents, the three southernmost provinces
are occupied territory, the state cannot expect to make any meaningful
progress towards solving the problems in the deep South.

There are many officials like Pornthip who go down south with good
intentions. But good intentions are not a policy.

Moreover, communication and information strategies of the state have
been geared towards domestic consumption. Desperately trying to
illustrate they are on the right track, officials unabashedly, every
week or so, announce that a "key leader" has been arrested, or that a
"major breakthrough" has been achieved.

There is this need to tell the public that this or that victim was
shot dead because he was an informant.

If the vicious attacks over this past week are any indication, it is
that the capacity of the insurgents is still very much intact and they
are at liberty to pick and choose their targets.

Hope for the southern poor

Things looking up in place that missed out on Thaksin handouts 

Don Pathan
Ban Ayamu, Narathiwat

Ibrahim Arong and his wife Faiza have four children and no home to call their own. They tap rubber in this highland area where Communist insurgents and Malay separatists used to roam some two decades ago. The couple makes about Bt200 a day - after the owner takes his cut.

Their eldest daughter was just sent to Narathiwat where she is living with a relative while taking a one-year nursing assistance course.

"They said the tuition is free and that employment is guaranteed upon graduation," said Faiza, trying hard to put on a positive face amid great uncertainties about their future.

The family will have to do without one helping hand, but said it's a risk worth taking if they want to get out of this cycle of poverty. As it is, the couple don't have much. A small, run-down wooden hut with a shabby roof is pretty much all they have - and that's sitting on somebody else's property.

The difficulties facing Ibrahim and Faiza are not unique. In fact, there are many families like them - poor, landless, working hard to make ends meet - and hoping that their children will have a better life.

But the people in Ban Ayamu are different. What it lacks in material assets, the community makes up in spirit.

About three years ago, with the help of Hama Mayunu, a member of a non-governmental organisation from Narathiwat that deals with community development, together with a local imam, Mohammed Muyeedin Karee, about 150 households of this highland community decided to come together and pool their money and resources.

What started off as a small cattle fund soon evolved into a pool of cash that enabled people like Ibrahim and Faiza to use it. They withdrew Bt3,000 for their daughter's uniform at the nursing school.

A small grant from a Kuwaiti non-governmental organisation helped build a mosque and a community centre that has been used as a kind of a town hall for local residents to come together.

Less than a kilometre from the mosque is 40 rai of land that will be divided up for 40 landless families. Couples like Ibrahim and Faiza are high on the waiting list and are likely to be the first family to move there when the logistics are in place, said imam Muyeedin.

The community is currently negotiating with the Community Organisation Development Institute (Codi), a government-funded private agency, to provide a 15-year interest free loan that would be managed collectively by the residents.

"Historically, assistance from the government tends to be in the form of give-aways and not much in the form of capacity-building at the local level," Hama said. "But our project is different. We believe the villagers can and should manage their own affairs."

During the Thaksin Administration, community development schemes were mainly quick cash thrown at villages. The initiatives were popular in the rural areas and succeeded in securing votes for the Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai Party. But little came in the form of productivity as the money went on personal use.

Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise, but villagers at Ban Ayamu missed out on Thaksin's million-baht and other populist schemes as they didn't have legal status as none of the residents have land titles - even though most have been here for more than two decades.

Besides missing out on Thaksin's easy money, the daily violence in the three southernmost provinces has brought them closer together, said Muyeedin. The community also linked up with other communities in the same predicament. One such community, Kalae Tapae, a congested coastal fishing port in Narathiwat has been trying for years to secure land deeds from the government.

Residents here say their plight and demands for necessities such as clean water had been long overlooked until two years ago, when they formed a community organisation that began to attract the attention of local politicians, as well as Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont who visited the place in late August.

Hama said local politicians have been trying to tap into the network of such communities for support.

But the community is keeping them at bay because no one wants their hands tied with a political commitment, said Muydeein, the de facto leader who never seems to run out of ideas, especially for young men whom he sees as being vulnerable as they struggle to find their place in the local society.

If it's not the social ills, said Muydeein, then it's the insurgency.

But Saheh Salaemae, 22, who just walked in with a bag of ice and soda for this month's meeting, offers a glimpse of hope.

"This is our chairman of the village fund," Muyeedin said. "Give a young man that kind of responsibility and he will grow up real quick."

Don Pathan
The Nation

'Pushing people towards the insurgents'

By DON PATHAN

For the past three months or so, members of the Thai Army and Royal Thai Police have been carrying out raids on various pockets of communities in the Muslim-majority South to hunt down a new generation of Malay insurgents accused of being behind the violence in the region.

Scores of people, at times over 100 in a single outing, have been rounded up during each of these raids. The detainees include suspected insurgents and their sympathisers, neighbours, and friends, and sometimes they appear to be innocent bystanders.

The Army said the move is part of the military's strategy to weed out the insurgents from the rest of the villagers. They call it "separating the fish from the water", supposedly, a tactic employed during the height of the communist insurgency.

The detainees are taken to an Army camp in Pattani where authorities check their names against a list of suspected insurgents.

Those who have arrest warrants outstanding are kept behind bars, while those considered to be "high risk" are sent to military-run boot camps where they go through a four-month course aimed at making them good citizens.

Besides coming together in formation to sing the national anthem and pick up a new skill, they will also listen to Muslim clerics who will tell them that they should not be thinking about taking up arms against the state to liberate their historic homeland known as "Patani".

Family members are permitted to make routine visits, but no one seems to know exactly what goes on inside these camps when the visitors are gone. About 200 are being held in various camps in the upper South.

Thai officials defended the approach, saying "high-risk" individuals should not be left alone in remote villages where hardcore insurgents have all the time in the world to incite them into becoming militants, said one senior official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

While the suspected militants and "high-risk" individuals are under detention, government officials and rangers are sent in to try to win the people over to their side.

But given the rangers' reputation for being trigger happy, using these government militias to win hearts and minds may not exactly be a wise move.

"They slap us in the face and then they turn around and pat us on the back," said Bang Seng, a villager from Narathiwat's Sungai Padi district who was detained in one of the raids. He asked that his real name and village not be identified.

Across the street from his house is a friend who was also taken in and kept in detention for more than two weeks before being released.

"We didn't know what our rights were and none of us dared to ask. They confiscated my butcher knives and I was so afraid they were going to throw some charges against me for having them," he said.

More than 40 in all were rounded up on that dreadful morning from this particular village but less than half of them were released after more than two weeks of detention. The rest, supposedly those deemed by authorities as being too "high-risk", were sent to military camps in provinces in the upper South. They are expected to be released by the end of October.

"It's a way of us reasserting the state's authority and showing the militants what we can do," said a senior officer at the Fourth Army Area.

According to villagers, the Army did exactly just that - flexed their military might as more than 200 soldiers and rangers surrounded the village and entered their homes one by one.

All were taken in on the same military vehicle. For three days, all would be interrogated one by one - some more than others, especially those in their 20s.

"The first night was the worst," said a man in his sixties.

"No one in my cell could sleep. We were just too scared. Nobody knew what was going to happen," said Bae Mah, 60.

Twice a day the detainees are instructed to line up in formation to sing the Thai national anthem.

"We older guys couldn't speak much Thai so we just mumbled the words, rightly and wrongly, to go with the tune," he said.

Bae Mah said he wasn't sure what the authorities were trying to achieve by forcing him to sing a song in a language he didn't understand. For him, such official ceremony was the stuff of television. He never thought it was applicable to him until he was detained.

A big breath of fresh air came on the fourth day when family members were permitted to visit the detainees.

"I cried when I saw my wife," said Bae Mah, who let out a giggle along with his wife who was sitting just behind him.

Locals here say their fear of the security forces is not unfounded. Indeed, talks of extra-judicial killings and abductions are ripe in just about every community here, while memories of the Tak Bai massacre - when at least 79 young Malay-Muslim men died from suffocation while being transported on the back of military trucks - have yet to subside in the minds of many.

"Don't they know that if we were insurgents we wouldn't be sticking around to be taken in?" asked Bang Seng.

"They keep telling us that we must love the country in which we live. But what they are doing is actually pushing the people further away and possibly towards the insurgents," he said.


------------------------------------------------------------------------

Part II: Locals cling to hopes of a solution in South
By DON PATHAN

For the battered military and its Army-installed government, the ongoing raids and the mass arrests, not to mention the "indoctrination" process in the deep South, were meant to rattle the cages of the insurgents just as much as for domestic consumption.

Bang Seng (not his real name), a villager from Narathiwat's Sungai Padi district who was detained in one of the raids, thinks the officials were just out to reach certain quotas - like the drug war during the Thaksin years when the body count became some sort of a benchmark. But this time round, it's the number of people they put in boot camps, he explained.

"They got this scanner that is supposed to detect bomb-making materials but they try to pass it off as some sort of a lie-detector machine," Bang Seng said.

Indeed, with an eye set on cementing their place in Thai politics following the coup last September, the military has been hard up for success stories.

Up until the shakedown two months ago, Thai soldiers were largely doing police work - rushing to crime scenes where forensic police collected physical evidence with the hope that it would lead to something meaningful.

Patrols don't seem to be well coordinated, as suggested by the slow arrival of reinforcements following gunfights, while checkpoints are hardly manned, suggesting the absence of a security grid.

But while roadside bombings around Yala may have ceased these past two months, direct, as well as simultaneous attacks, are being carried out outside of the areas targeted for raids.

It may not be Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation where convoys would have to be escorted by helicopter gun-ships, but the high number of simultaneous attacks has a tendency to jolt the nerves of political and security leaders.

Moreover, few officials here are willing to say that this is the result of a "balloon effect" - a squeeze in one area causing another location to blow up - as this would discredit the so-called headway they have made with these raids.

But coming to terms with reality has never been a strong trait of the Thai military. Violence in the region emerged in late 2001 but it was not until the January 2004 raid on an army battalion that the government finally admitted that a new generation of Malay-Muslim separatists had emerged. The political underpinnings of the raid were just too much for the Bangkok government to continue to dismiss the militants as "sparrow bandits".

But, as they try to change the minds of the young Malays, conceivably Thai military officials could be digging their own graves. No one in their right mind would actually believe that two to four months of indoctrination in an Army boot camp would change the minds of these young men.

Secondly, because of the organic and secretive nature of this generation of militants, there are concerns among some intelligence officials that the government's latest tactics could be providing the insurgents with a needed forum - in this case an Army camp - to come together and strengthen their network.

Strangely, the Army is billing these mass arrests over the past two months as an olive branch it is extending to the community. Turn your back on the insurgents - or better yet, turn them in - and we all can live in peace, the Malays of Patani are often told.

For the better part of the past 100 years, the Malays of Patani were told that they must appreciate all that the Thai state has given them and that they must learn to embrace the values that define Thailand's nation-state. They have also been told that they need to learn to be obedient.

But Malays here say the state's attitude towards them is not only racist, but it comes at the expense of their cultural identity, which they see as being inseparable from Islam.

Although they detest the ethnocentric nature of Thailand's nation-state ideology, locals here said it doesn't necessary mean that they want to separate from the Kingdom.

The high turnout for the general election, including the recent referendum on the constitution, suggested that the Malays here still have hope that somehow the system will come through for them.

But six years later there is nothing to indicate that the violence will end any time soon. "We are just buying time until a political solution comes up," said one senior Thai general who worked on policy concerning the restive region.

Over the years none of the so-called "breakthroughs" have failed to change the course of the insurgency as militants continue to put up a nasty fight.

Once in a while the troops stumble upon a small cache of weapons, as in the case of a hot pursuit that led to the Islam Burapha boarding school. But this small cache that belonged to about six or seven teachers was enough for the authorities to declare a major success. A sign of desperation, one might say, but after years of being on the receiving end, a handful of contraband could seem like a big bag of gold.

Some in the Fourth Army Area actually believe that sooner or later this ongoing shakedown will lead to mass surrender, thus, making concessions with the old guard irrelevant. Apparently, they didn't say anything about Malay separatism, an idea that has refused to go away even after more than 100 years of direct rule by the Thai state.

Don Pathan is The Nation's regional news editor. This is the concluding part of his report on the deep South. The first report was published yesterday.

Crisis in south rooted in ethnic Malay identity

Govt's charm offensive may be winning support abroad, but it won't end bloodshed in region 

Don Pathan
The Nation

Not long after Thai soldiers and police stacked hundreds of unarmed Muslim demonstrators on the back of military transport trucks - suffocating 78 of them in the process - the Thai Foreign Ministry went through their rolodex's looking for Muslim organisations.

The aftermath of the Tak Bai tragedy generated all kinds of fears and concerns.

Besides the possibility of a diplomatic fallout with Islamic countries over the death of 78 unarmed demonstrators, many were worried the incident would change the course of the insurgency in the deep South, turning local grievances into a struggle for Islamic causes. But nearly three years later, the banner is still very much Malay nationalism.

Prior to the Tak Bai incident, the then Thaksin Shinawatra administration didn't give much thought about generating political capital from international Islamic organisations or institutions.

But like most organisations, foreign or local, an institution is only as good as what you churn out of it. The previous government of Chuan Leekpai succeeded in securing a "permanent observer" seat in the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC). In doing so it dashed the hopes of separatist movements such as the Patani United Liberation Organisation (Pulo) or Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) from using it as a launching pad to attack Thailand.

As part of its effort to get the Muslim countries off its back, Bangkok launched a charm offensive. Diplomatic old hands and Muslim VIPs were dispatched to the Middle East and to OIC meetings.

There were some difficult moments, however. The OIC rattled the government's cage on more than one occasion, issuing some strong statements in 2005 over Thailand's handling of the far South.

After more than two years of diplomatic offensive, Thailand has succeeded in obtaining some breathing space.

But Bangkok also made some concessions. In a joint press statement in May 2007, the Foreign Ministry had to acknowledge the OIC's desire for "prompt and effective investigation of any allegation of human rights abuses". It also said that "long-term solutions to the problem in the South should entail granting the people of the region greater responsibility in governing effectively their local affairs".

Although no one knows what this will translate to in real terms, diplomatically speaking, the language of the joint statement suggested that the tricky topic of structural or administrative reform could be on the table in the future.

But while its charm offensive gives Thai officials some breathing space in the international arena, back in the deep South, the government's campaign to win hearts and minds is being clipped by reports and allegations of targeted killings and heavy handed measures.

Moreover, Muslims in the restive South, as well as those living exile, said Bangkok has been barking up the wrong tree with its insistence on playing the Islamic card.

The problem in the restive region is not about Islam; it is deep rooted in the ethnic Malays' refusal to embrace the pillars and values that define Thailand's nation-state building, they insist.

But Thai officials continue to ignore the complexity of the long-standing problem of assimilation and the question of identity the ethnic Malays face.

Oversimplifying the problems in the deep South tends to turn many Muslims off, particularly those who would like to work with the state but are disgusted by the government's futile policies.

Although it has put off many Muslims around the country, the government continues with its search for a model Muslim citizen, or "moderate", as the government likes to say, for others to emulate.

One big problem for Bangkok is that the model isn't catching on - no one wants to be seen as a "Muslim Uncle Tom".