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| Group photo marking the end of the high-level official meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Feb. 2004. |
Don Pathan
Prachatai English
Throughout the night of August 22–23, separatist combatants carried out attacks on 51 targets across the restive far South, in the provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat.
A week later, the final count stood at 79 attacks, with Songkhla appearing in the revised tally. All fingers pointed to the Barisan Revolusi Nasional Melayu Patani (BRN), the long-standing separatist movement that controls virtually all of the combatants on the ground.
As in previous cases, the BRN has neither confirmed nor denied its activities. The group does not have an explicit political branch to communicate with the public—not due to a lack of effort, but because Thailand deliberately avoids recognizing the political aspects of the conflict, fearing that doing so would further legitimize the BRN. Foreign parties who attempt, formally or informally, to engage the BRN have faced stern warnings from Bangkok. Despite this, since 2013, Thailand has sent officials to meet with BRN representatives not for official “negotiations,” but rather for “discussions.”
Because the BRN lacks a visible political wing to speak to the public, the Thai state largely controls the narrative. This might seem like it would make the government’s counterinsurgency messaging straightforward, but that has not been the case. Security officials have struggled to persuade both the local people in the far South and international observers of their perspective, mainly due to limited sophistication and communication abilities within Thailand’s security agencies and policy circles.
On the evening of August 22, amid the coordinated wave of arson and bombing attacks by separatist insurgents, an army helicopter was flying around Narathiwat’s Chanae District, allegedly firing at 2 young men, one of whom, Solae Doloh, 21, took a bullet to the stomach. An eyewitness provided the same account to local and foreign media. The Army denied shooting at the two young men but would not release the helicopter’s gun-camera footage, despite repeated calls from Parliament.
But this isn’t really a story about ballistics or one contested night. It’s a story about a trust account that’s been overdrawn for more than two decades, and a government that keeps making withdrawals from it in the same clumsy way. The net effect is a government that keeps choosing the posture of a party defending its institution over the posture of a party trying to be believed by a sceptical public — which, twenty years and one Tak Bai massacre later, is exactly the wrong instinct if the goal is actually to move the peace process forward.
It is received as the latest instance of a script the community has seen before: Royal Thai Army (RTA) dismisses allegations, official inquiry goes nowhere, nobody is ever held accountable. One doesn’t need to believe this specific denial is a lie to understand why residents assume it is. The prior is doing the work, not the evidence.
The BRN, in the absence of a political wing and a sound communication strategy, lets their violence speak for it. As Assoc Prof Srisompob Jitpiromsri, Director of Deep South Watch, puts it, insurgency violence is a form of communicative action. Even BRN officials on the negotiating team acknowledge that the absence of a platform for negotiation creates an atmosphere in which combatants feel freer to act on their own initiative. They were referring to the absence of the terms of reference (TOR) for the Temporary Reduction of Violence — an issue that has been on the table since former Thailand spy chief Thanut Suvarnananda took over the position as the government’s chief negotiator. The meetings also touched upon a number of progressive items — amnesty for detainees, greater space for Patani Malay cultural identity and historical narrative, and power-sharing between the region and Bangkok. The two sides were hoping the TOR would be completed in time for the September 2026 high-level official meeting.
But RTA generals, humiliated by the July 22 shooting deaths of five paramilitary rangers, threw a monkey wrench into the process: they halted the TOR process until the BRN could explain why, just as negotiations were moving along, combatants had carried out an attack like the July 22 incident.
Reading the demand as a face-saving move, the BRN never offered an explanation. Instead, its combatants launched the coordinated attacks of August 22–23, jolting the security apparatus even more. The movement has also insisted that any reduction of violence — and any eventual ceasefire — must involve an international monitoring team working alongside local civil society organizations on the ground.
The dilemma this creates is nerve-wracking: delaying the talks to “punish” the BRN only means more attacks, since there is nothing left to restrain the combatants. At a minimum, a signed TOR on the reduction of violence would give the conflict some degree of predictability.
Deputy Prime Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow, who chairs the Special Representatives Committee on the Southern Border Provinces, conceded that the assessment and the response fell short despite the warning from intelligence. That admission, however candid, turned a security incident into a political liability; it became a specific failure to point to, rather than the usual generalized complaint about an intractable conflict.
A long and bloody road ahead
Part of the face-saving narrative includes a sexed-up claim that there is some serious infighting within the BRN, that its military wing is hitting Thailand hard to discredit its own political leaders and negotiators. A BRN officer dismissed this, saying the attacks have more to do with the fact that the BRN marks August as the month of “merdeka,” when countries across the Malay Archipelago -- Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia -- commemorate their independence.
This is not to say the combatants are indifferent to what is being discussed at the negotiating table. BRN combatants effectively operate on autopilot: the political wing does not order attacks; militant cells decide among themselves what to hit and when. There have been times when combatants went beyond the unwritten ground rules and struck soft targets — as in the aftermath of the assassination of a key militant leader, Abdulroning Lateh, in April 2025, although the RTA denied responsibility for his death.
Artef Sohko, President of The Patani, a political action group that frequently serves as an intermediary between Thai state agencies and the rebel movements, said BRN combatants were angered by tough talk from RTA generals, including incoming National Security Council Secretary-General Gen. Chaiyapruek Duangprapat, who vowed to hunt down BRN insurgents wherever they are hiding.
Artef said the attacks were not aimed at running up a body count; rather, the sheer size and scope of the operation was meant to discredit the Thai security agencies.
Trying to get back on track
In recent interviews, Thanut indicated that discussions may resume in October. Others are pushing for talks to move up to September — though this depends on Malaysia appointing a new facilitator in time. Informed sources say the next facilitator could well be another army general.
Observers of the conflict say Thanut is banking on two pieces of legislation — the Local Government Act and the Minority Rights Act — to form the basis for satisfying BRN’s demand for greater recognition of its people and historical narrative.
Progressive ideas, such as making Malay a “working” language alongside “official” Thai, and implementing bilingual education for children in the far South whose mother tongue is Malay, were floated back in 2005 by the now-defunct National Reconciliation Commission (NRC). None of the NRC’s suggestions were taken up by the Thaksin Shinawatra government of the time; his all-or-nothing approach only dug a deeper hole for efforts to resolve the conflict.
But resuming talks with the BRN is not the only challenge facing Thanut. The spy chief will also have to manage Thai generals who have never liked the idea of negotiating with the BRN, believing it unnecessarily legitimizes the separatist movement.
These generals believe that if they could talk to the BRN’s military leaders directly, they could bring the conflict to an end. No one knows what concessions, if any, the RTA is willing to make. For now, the RTA is working a secret track with Indonesia’s Jusuf Kalla, hoping the former Indonesian Vice President can open a channel of communication with the BRN’s military wing. The RTA also sought help from a Malaysian think tank as they tried to conjure up a separate track to reach BRN military leaders.
The RTA doesn’t seem to grasp that, in line with international best practice, it cannot pick and choose who it wants to talk to — it has to talk to whoever the BRN sends.
Don Pathan is a security analyst focusing on conflict in Myanmar/Burma and insurgency in Thailand’s far South.
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