Spiralling insurgency in the deep south: Thailand’s unseen road to ethnic conflict management

Abstract

This chapter looks at how the on-going ethnic conflict in southern Thailand has been handled by the conflicting parties, i.e., the national government and Patani Malay insurgents. The major challenge for the management of this conflict is that the long-standing security structure which used to absorb and contain violence effectively in the deep South was dismantled by the administration of Thaksin Shinawatra. Since then, the successive governments have been tied down in coping with the chaotic crisis and spiralling violence in the southern region that have continued to date on top of another and larger crisis of national political polarisation, while not much attention has been paid to dissolving the fundamental incompatibilities of the conflict, which can be summarised as the contention between “peace and stability” and “peace, freedom, and recognized sovereignty”. Even if the parties to conflict squarely tackle the incompatibilities, it appears to be quite difficult for them to reach a mutually acceptable solution, as the Thai establishment has consistently ruled out the “autonomy option” by sticking to their Thaification tenets. The conflict has been internationalised to a considerably degree, but an international solution to the internationalised conflict does not seem to come by easily.