The southern provinces of Pattani, Narathiwat, Yala and Songkhla, today the centre of a Muslim uprising, comprised an autonomous Malay Muslim sultanate until they were annexed by Thailand in 1902. This large swathe of southern Thailand has been a hotbed of tension ever since with sporadic unrest and uprisings against the mainly Buddhist north, culminating in a bloody insurgency which erupted in 2004 and has continued to this day, claiming an estimated 3,900 lives. Successive Thai governments have failed to deal with the problem, mostly employing strong-arm tactics to keep the region under control, but without examining the underlying causes of the insurgency.
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva Failed to Quell the Insurgency
When Abhisit Vejjajiva assumed the Premiership in 2008 he pledged to find a political solution to the separatist movement, however he has increasingly adopted the stance of his predecessors, repeatedly renewing the state of emergency across the region and thereby affording wide-ranging powers and immunity from prosecution to government security forces operating there. Mr Abhisit has also presided over an increase in the number of government-armed, Buddhist-dominated civilian militias, whose presence has only served to inflame tensions in the region.
The Premier has repeatedly talked of the need to deal with the grievances of Thailand’s ethnic Malay population, but has failed to produce a policy that differs radically from that of his predecessors. A joint visit to the region with the Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak in mid-December was a step in the right direction however, and also demonstrates an improvement in relations between the two countries.
The Armed Groups Involved in Thailand’s Southern Insurgency
It is not possible to find reliable information on the number of anti-government insurgents operating within the region - estimates vary wildly from several thousand up to tens of thousands - and whereas the Thai government understandably downplays the size of the opposition groups, the fighters themselves have every interest in inflating their numbers.
Most of the groups involved are small, shadowy organisations with unclear command structures, which claim responsibility for a single attack and then quickly disappear back into obscurity. The most visible insurgency group is the Pattani United Liberation Organisation (PULO), which has made attempts recently to incorporate other, smaller groups into its structure, thereby presenting a more unified front to the separatist movement.
Militant Attacks Adversely Affect Thai-Malay Relations
The majority of attacks by these militant groups are small-scale in nature and do not lead to a headline-grabbing number of casualties, with roadside bombings a common feature of their campaign. There are exceptions to this, and on several occasions insurgents have executed coordinated bombings of linked targets across the region, notably in 2006 when 22 banks were bombed in a single day across Yala province.
The attacks have fostered deep mistrust between the Thai and Malaysian governments, with the former frequently employing inflammatory rhetoric against the latter, including openly accusing Malaysia of allowing insurgents to pass back and forth across its border with impunity. The joint visit by Abhisit and Najib to the region as well as planned Malaysian investment both hint at a warming of relations between the two countries, but if the attacks continue unabated in spite of this then their shaky friendship will be sorely tested before too long.
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