A brooding danger

The Straits Times, March 1, 2007


SOUTHERN Thailand's brooding insurgency is in danger of becoming a habit that Thais living outside the conflict zone could become inured to. The signs are troubling.

Last week, in Yala province, unknown groups thought to be independence agitators firebombed the nation's largest rubber storehouse, besides carrying out the more common random killings of individuals. Some experts think the militants are widening their campaign to strike at economic interests.

Judgment is best reserved.

But if urban commerce, goods deliveries and hotels are systematically targeted next, it would take the anarchy to a ruinous new level.

Southern Thailand would no longer be a functional economy, exacerbated as it is by the flight of non-Muslim Thais. It could end up a gangrenous rump of the kingdom.

Malaysia, itself facing Islamic obscurantism, will have reason to feel insecure with seething masses of malcontents living next door. It gives some pause that southern Thai militants have thus far kept their harassment largely to two fronts - the school system and the Buddhist monkhood, symbols of forced assimilation and deculturalisation, respectively, to the south's Muslim majority. But for how long?

Successive governments have been unable to find the right formula to redress the grievances of the Muslims, and the more virulent militancy has been the result.

The response of two senior junta figures to the Yala incidents - its deputy head Gen Saprang Kalayanamitr and Defence Minister Boonrawd Somtas - was to warn Bangkok residents that the militants could bring their campaign of violence to the capital.

Mr Boonrawd then reversed himself, suggesting dissidents allied with the previous government could instigate trouble. The military government has not yet solved the mystery of the New Year's Eve bomb attacks in Bangkok, which it said were not the work of southern militants but, possibly, sympathisers of the deposed premier Thaksin Shinawatra.

Whichever, it would be a grave turn if the junta's assessment of a widening anarchy turns out to be correct. Mr Thaksin has been condemned for using brutal force to have the Muslim south conform to his ideals of nationhood.

The junta has wisely tried the more appropriate approach of conciliation. This was signalled by a visit Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont made to the south last November. He apologised for the military excesses of the past, he has made religious concessions and offered to set up economic zones to bring investment and jobs into the region.

Yet by many accounts, the violence has been worse than in Mr Thaksin's period of infamy. The Thai nation ought to be concerned.