A PTT petrol station in Thailand’s far South was set on fire on 11 January 2026. (Photo from Royal Thai Army)
Don Pathan
Prachatai
Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, after chairing a security meeting in Songkhla on 17 February 2026, could not get his head around the fact that each year around Ramadan, separatist militants in the far South would step up their attacks in this historically contested region.
The visit occurred two days after suspected insurgents bombed seven sites in Narathiwat’s Rueso and Yi-ngo districts on 14-15 February. Earlier, arson attacks targeted 11 PTT petrol stations on 11 January.
A briefing from the security forces does not provide comprehensive insight into the conflict, nor will it address its underlying causes. Officials from the Fourth Army advised the PM that the surge during Ramadan was intended as a “symbolic” gesture, though they did not clarify the reasoning behind the insurgents' decision to utilize this sacred month for delivering a strong message.
For casual observers of the conflict, there is a tendency to link the spike to the religion of Islam. For local Muslims and for the combatants, the reason is all too clear – the 2004 Tak Bai massacre in which 85 unarmed young Malay Muslim men died at the hands of security officials – 75 from suffocation after they were stacked on the back of military transport trucks, and the other seven shot dead at the protest site. The incident took place during Ramadan.
Shortly before the 20-year statute of limitations expired in October 2024, a Narathiwat court indicted 14 former officials on charges including murder, but none were apprehended, resulting in the permanent dismissal of all charges.
Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra apologised for the Tak Bai massacre on 24 October 2024, just before the 20-year statute of limitations expired. The incident took place in 2004 during the administration of her father Thaksin Shinawatra.
Mistreatment of Patani Malay
Speaking to reporters after the security briefing in Songkhla, it was obvious that Anutin was ignorant of the tit-for-tat nature of the conflict. He said violence in the far south, regardless of the occasion, was to him “terrorism”.
He also echoed what he had just been told – that combatants crossed over from Malaysia to carry out attacks and retreated back before reinforcements could arrive. Anutin said he will ask Malaysia not to support the militants.
He went on to say that a Thai-Malaysian border fence, modelled on the Cambodian frontier barrier, is in the pipeline but details about specific locations will have to be worked out with regional officials.
When it comes to the conflict in Thailand’s far South, blaming Malaysia for the violence in the Muslim-majority southernmost border provinces is nothing new. The two sides went into a brief spitting match back when Thaksin Shinawatra was prime minister and quickly backed down once both sides recognised that the spitting contest was not helpful.
The problem with Thailand is that it doesn’t want to make any concessions to the Malays of Patani, much less the Barisan Revolusi Nasional Melayu Patani (BRN), the one longstanding separatist movement that controls virtually all of the militants on the ground.
Moreover, Thailand’s counter-insurgency (COIN) approach is no different from a typical military operation. It pays lip service to the idea of winning local hearts and minds. But in reality, mistrust between the two sides is as high as ever.
In fairness to Anutin, it should be noted that even Pita Limjaroenrat, the former leader of the progressive Move Forward Party, made an inaccurate statement during what was intended to be his victory address following the 2023 General Election. He asserted that the conflict in the far South was related to economic conditions and claimed that the military-led approach had exacerbated the situation. He was only partially right.
Many critics of the Thai military believe that violence stems from mistreatment of Patani Malays by Thai security officials.
The issue is not solely related to ill treatment of the Patani Malays by the Thai state, but rather centres on their aspirations for independence. Many perceive the Thai security forces as an occupying presence, which contributes to local support for BRN fighters. This support has been a significant factor in the ongoing persistence of the insurgency.
Villagers can engage and negotiate with the BRN in ways that outsiders cannot. When they feel the BRN has crossed the line, village elders, including civil society organisations (CSOs), can step in and remind the combatants of the need to embrace civility.
In the course of the off-and-on peace talks over the past two decades, the BRN has agreed to lower the bar and accept Thailand’s sovereignty and negotiate peace under the Thai Constitution in exchange for a form of “self-government” in which the local people can elect their own representatives to a regional parliament so they can pass their own laws, collect their own taxes and chart their own destiny.
At the high-level official meeting on 8 December 2025, the term “End State” was raised in the chairman’s statement. At the 6-8 January 2026, meeting of technical representatives, BRN equated “End State” to a “self-government” that consisted of a regional assembly mandated to draft its own laws and manage local affairs, including taxation, education, and power-sharing with the central government — and most controversially, the right to secede from the Thai state.
The Thai side, on the other hand, told the BRN that the most the government can give is a few seats at the Southern Border Provinces Administrative Centre (SBPAC), a multi-agency organization behind a number of pilot projects in this restive region. Needless to say, the meeting ended badly.
Two days later, BRN combatants carried out simultaneous attacks on 11 PTT petrol stations and their attached convenience stores across the region.
Anutin's Thailand-Malaysia wall won't work well
Anutin is not known for his intellect or for deep strategic thinking. He is riding high on the outcome of the recent general election in which his party won nearly 200 seats in a 500-strong Parliament.
His tough stance against Cambodia and his talk of building a wall along the Thailand-Cambodia border won him the 2026 general election. But the far South is different. For one thing, Thailand and Malaysia are on good terms. But Anutin’s hardline security policy could end up stalling the peace talks, deepening the conflict, and putting bilateral relations with Malaysia at risk.
"Anutin is essentially handing border management and security over to the military. The military mindset addresses problems tactically, but in terms of long-term strategy, building a wall means destroying the economic and cultural foundations of ordinary people on both sides of the border who share a common way of life," said Asmadee Bueheng, a Pattani-based writer and member of The Patani, a local civil society organization that often acts as an interlocutor between government security officials and the separatist militants.
“From the look of it, "Anutin is not seeking a political solution. He is seeking popularity from war and border conflicts on both fronts — Cambodia and Malaysia," Asmadee said.
The far South straddles a porous border, and the communities on both sides are Muslims who identify as Malay or Melayu. In many respects, it is one community divided by a political boundary. While the Malays on the Malaysian side have come to terms with their membership in Malaysia’s nation-state construct, the Malays on the Thai side are still negotiating their space. Insurgency violence is a form of negotiation, or more to the point, communicative action.
Most Thai security officials do not use the term “terrorism”, given how politically charged the word has become worldwide. But at the same time, most do not want to call it a conflict either, fearing that would legitimise the insurgency. And so the so-called peace talks have never evolved beyond a talking shop, refusing to engage with the substantive issues at the heart of the conflict.
Instead of blaming Malaysia, Thailand might consider the failure of its assimilation policies — which have been violently rejected by all of the Patani Malay separatist movements — and address the root causes of the conflict.
If Anutin is troubled by violence during Ramadan, he might consider finding a way to bring closure to the Tak Bai massacre. It doesn’t have to go through the court of law; it could be a political gesture.
Don Pathan is a Thailand-based security analyst specializing in the Myanmar/Burma conflict and the insurgency in Thailand's Malay-speaking South.
