By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Dec 4 2006 (IPS)

A month after he launched a peace offensive to win the hearts of the country’s Malay-Muslim minority in the south, Thailand’s military-appointed Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont faces a backlash that questions Bangkok’s authority in that region.

The closure of nearly 1,000 schools in the provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat out of fear of being attacked by Malay-Muslim militants marks a new low in the Thai state’s ability to protect local communities since the current cycle of violence erupted in January 2004.

‘’This is unprecedented. The security forces needed to protect the schools are clearly not enough,’ Panitan Wattanayagorn, a national security expert at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, told IPS. ‘’The militants are attacking the schools to make a point that the government cannot provide security.”

This mark of no confidence in Thailand’s security apparatus – despite the presence of some 30,000 heavily armed troops and auxiliary forces – was made in the last week of November by the teachers unions in the three southern provinces close to the Thai-Malay border. They called for the closure of the schools, the majority of which are located in remote, rural communities, near rubber plantations, paddy fields or hills with thick forest cover.

‘’We want the government to make plans to solve the problems in the deep south; just talking about peace and reconciliation will not end the violence,” Sanya Suwanpho, president of the Yala Teachers Federation was quoted as having told Monday’s ‘The Nation’ newspaper.

The attacks by the Malay-Muslim insurgents began soon after the new school term began on Nov. 1, including killing five teachers and burning down over 12 schools. One that stood out for its brutality was the killing of 48-year-old teacher Non Chaisuwan by armed militants. He was shot and burned to death in the presence of teachers and students in his schools at Pattani’s Sai Buri district.

The regular attacks on schools and teachers over the nearly three years of violence has even seen the military arming teachers with weapons. In July, following a wave of attacks, which led to 100 schools closing in Narathiwat, the military started to train 1,000 teachers to fire handguns. In 2005, over 300 teachers had been trained to use a weapon.

On Nov. 2 Surayud made his first visit to the south since being appointed prime minister by a military junta that came into power following the Sept. 19 coup, which deposed twice-elected premier Thaksin Shinawatra. He began his peace overtures by apologising for the past atrocities committed by the Thai state against the Malay-Muslims, who make up nearly 80 percent of the population in that region.

He followed that up with a pledge to permit space for Islam’s Sharia laws. Another olive branch came in the form of a promise to set up special economic zones in the south, whose three provinces in predominantly Buddhist Thailand are among the 20 poorest in the country. In Narathiwat, 34 percent of the nearly 700,000 inhabitatnts live below the poverty line.

Yet, the Malay-Muslim militants returned that gesture with a spike in violence that worsened as November drew to a close. Besides targeting schools, the attacks on Buddhist monks in Narathiwat compelled them to stop the traditional practice of seeking alms in the morning and forced some 200 Buddhist villagers to flee their homes in Yala on account of strikes by the militants.

The pattern of these attacks – aimed at driving away Buddhist residents from the area – is not winning the militants any sympathy among the international human rights groups. The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) recently accused the insurgents of ‘’terrorising the population and preventing children from enjoying their right to education.”

Malay-Muslim civilians have not been spared, either, from the bombs and bullets unleashed by the insurgents, according to a study by researchers at the Prince of Songkhla University, in Pattani. Of the 1,730 deaths that have occurred between January 2004 and August 2006, the majority, 924, have been Muslim civilians, teachers, village headmen and bureaucrats killed by the militants, the study reveals. The death toll among the Buddhists amount to 679, it adds.

Analysts studying this conflict are not surprised by the people and institutions being targeted, since schools have been a regular battleground in this clash between Malay-Muslim militants and the Thai state going back decades. ‘’Burning schools have been a feature of this insurgency since the 1960s. Attacks on teachers arose in the 1980s,” Francesca Lawe-Davies, South-east Asia analyst for the International Crisis Group (ICG), said in a telephone interview from Jakarta.

The Malay-Muslims have viewed schools as ‘’symbols of the Thai state’s assimilation policy going back to the education act in 1921,” added Lawe-Davies of the Brussles-based think tank. ‘’Schools have always been at the centre of this conflict because it is one of identity and assimilation.”

The Malay-Muslims – who speak a different language, the Malay-dialect Yawi, practice a different religion, Islam, and have a different history going back centuries associated with the Malay kingdom of Pattani – have always stood out in contrast to Thailand’s majority, who speak Thai, practice Buddhism and have their unique history.

Bangkok deepened this divide with policies aimed to force the Malay-Muslims to give up their own identity for Thai, since the three provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat had become part of Thailand after Siam, as the country was then called, annexed these provinces from the Muslim kingdom of Pattani in 1902.

Thailand’s military dictator Phibun Songkran, who came to power in the late 1930s, typified this attitude that has, in some cases, shown little sign of changing. Under him, the Malay language was banned in government offices, the Muslims had to take on Thai names and Malay-Muslim children had to ‘’bow before (Buddha statues) as a patriotic act,” states the ICG.

Muslim academics in the south have little hope of the violence abating – even after Surayud’s gestures – since the attacks on the schools suggest that the new breed of Malay militants are determined to fight the same battle for separation that was pursued by a previous generation of Malay insurgents beginning in the 1960s.

‘’They (the militants) have been preparing for a long time and they will go on. They believe that by shutting down schools and driving villagers from some parts, they have an area under their influence,” Worawit Baru, professor of Malay studies at Prince of Songkhla University, told IPS. ‘’They are getting more fierce.”

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