By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Jan 15 2008 (IPS)

The twin attacks mounted by suspected insurgents in Thailand’s restive southern provinces this week offer a stark warning to the country’s next government of the unresolved conflict that it will soon inherit.

The deadlier strike was on Monday in a remote part of Narathiwat, one of the three provinces close to the Thai-Malaysian border. Eight soldiers on morning patrol were killed when a bomb hidden on the road exploded and hit the truck they were travelling in. The attackers also opened fire on the soldiers, and beheaded one, military officials said.

On Tuesday, the suspected Malay-Muslim rebels targeted civilians in Yala, another of the three provinces that is home to Thailand’s Malay-Muslim minority. Over 35 people were injured, at least 10 critically, when a bomb strapped to a motorcycle went off shortly after dawn in a busy market in Yala town, according to the Thai media.

The attacks are part of a cycle of violence, pitting the Thai military and police against the rebels, that now enters its fifth year. Over 2,800 people have been killed since an army camp was attacked in January 2004. A majority of the victims have been Muslims.

Predominantly Buddhist Thailand’s prime minister at the time the violence erupted was Thaksin Shinawatra. He was blamed by local and foreign critics for fuelling the conflict by advocating harsh measures, including passing an emergency decree, which grants wide powers to the troops to act with impunity.

But in September 2006, Thaksin was forced out of power by the military in the country’s 18th coup. And the junta-appointed government struck a more conciliatory note early on, apologising to the Malay-Muslims, who make up the majority in the southern provinces, for the past excesses by the troops. However, such words made little headway among the Muslims, since it was not translated into a more visible hearts-and-minds operation by the troops.

‘’The military has succeeded in penetrating the militants’ network and has been able to ensure that the urban areas in the south are better protected,’’ says Panitan Wattanayagorn, a national security expert at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University. ‘’There have been less coordinated strikes by the militants and even the public rallies that the militants had instigated before have stopped.’’

Even the rate of killings in the south reflects this shift, he added in an interview. ‘’The death toll has dropped from an average of three killing per day to 1.8. This is because of the new military operations that were introduced last year.’’

Less impressive, however, is the military’s record of winning the sympathy of the local Malay-Muslim population. The reports of abuse and the climate of fear appear to be no different to the atmosphere that prevailed when Thaksin was in power.

‘’The military has failed on the political front in trying to secure the support of the people,’’ Sunai Phasuk, Thailand researcher for the global rights lobby Human Rights Watch, told IPS. ‘’The Muslims don’t see the soldiers as protectors, but as abusers. This is how it was before the coup also.’’

In fact, some Muslims have told local human rights monitors that the ‘’south now is worse than it was under Thaksin.’’ This charge has been shaped by continued arrest and alleged torture of Malay-Muslim youth by the military to get information on rebel networks in the villages and towns of the region. ‘’There is a lot of tension between the Muslim community and the army,’’ said one human rights activist currently in the south.

Reports of shadowy Buddhist vigilante groups and death squads linked to the state operating in the three provinces, the third of which is Pattani, has added to this Muslim fear. Typical was the 2007 attack on a Malay-Muslim village, where the attackers, dressed in a dark uniform, arrived in a pickup truck and then opened fire with assault rifles and flung grenades at a group of young men seated near a mosque. Five teenagers were killed.

Such violence, while the junta has been in power, has only helped to widen the gap between the local Buddhist and Muslim communities. ‘’The distrust has increased between the Muslim and the non-Muslim communities and people feel more vulnerable to visit areas that they used to before,’’ says Worawit Baru, professor of Malay studies at the Prince of Songkhla University in Pattani.

‘’The solution to this problem has to be a political one, where civilians are given a role to shape local politics and for the military to follow,’’ he told IPS from Pattani, the third of the southern provinces. ‘’It is hard to solve this problem if it is only seen as needing a military solution, which was the case last year.’’

The current round of violence is rooted in a conflict going back many decades, after the three southern provinces, which were once part of the kingdom of Pattani, were annexed in 1902 by Siam, as Thailand was the known. The Malay-Muslims accused the heavily centralised Thai administration, based in Bangkok, of cultural, linguistic and economic discrimination.

Malay-Muslim separatist movements emerged in the 1960s and remained active through the 1980s as they battled Thai troops to create an independent state of Pattani. The Pattani United Liberation Organisation (PULO) was among the rebel groups.

But unlike the previous generation of rebels, who appeared to be more secular and nationalistic in their mission, the current Malay-Muslim militancy is marked by more religious zeal. Leaflets distributed by the shadowy rebels convey this tone, with Malay-Muslim civilians being urged to help cleanse the area of non-believers.

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