The NRC also proposed the creation of three new bodies: the Peaceful Strategic Administrative Centre for Southern Border Provinces (PSAC), the Southern Border Provinces Area Development Council and the Fund for Healing and Reconciliation.

The proposed PSAC is quite similar to the Southern Border Provinces Administrative Centre dissolved by Thaksin in 2002. It would be a multilateral policy-making agency, comprising military officers and civil servants, that is also expected to harmonise tactical and strategic measures in military operations and efforts to strengthen communities in the region. The agency is to be advised by a committee of which one-third of the members must be local representatives.

The NRC suggested that the government draw up and enact the Peaceful Reconciliation in the Southern Border Provinces Act to create the PSAC and the other two proposed agencies.

Based on the assumption that violence in the South is caused largely by local discontent over government neglect of economic and social development, painful historical memories, fear of losing their Malay identity, and injustice, the NRC mapped out a range of measures aimed specifically to reassure Thai Muslims of Malay descent and preserve their cultural uniqueness and way of life. These include specific programmes to implement land reform and resource management, and create employment. On the social front, the government is being asked to increase the efficiency of the judicial system to ensure justice for all and to enhance the partial enforcement of Islamic family law.

To promote cultural diversity, the NRC proposed amending laws governing the administration of Islamic bodies, wider use of the local Malay dialect as a second language in schools and government offices, along with a reform of curricula to harmonise between mainstream Thai history and the locals' history of the former Pattani Sultanate.

All these proposals are valid topics for rational discussion among policymakers, residents of the southernmost provinces and all Thais.

But all these issues must be considered in the context of Thailand as a unitary state in which citizens, regardless of their ethnicity or religion, enjoy the same rights and freedom under the Constitution and are subject to equal treatment under the law.

It must be made clear that empowerment of Thai Muslims in the deep South need not come at the expense of their cultural identity. The question of southern Muslims involves a complex set of political, social and economic problems, with strong religio-ethnic overtones.

To understand why Muslim-Malay Thais are different from other religious or ethnic groups - including other Thai Muslims - that have been successfully integrated into a harmonious whole, one must look at the geographical and demographic factors that set them apart. These include the high concentration of Muslim-Malay Thais living in clannish communities in Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat. Their overwhelming majority tends to reinforce their cultural identity and enables them to withstand pressure to conform to Thai norms, including using the Thai language. Complicating matters, past attempts by the government to force them to accept a narrow definition of "Thainess" at the expense of their Malay identity have alienated them further.

But Muslim-Malay Thais in the South must realise that proficiency in the Thai language is a prerequisite for fuller participation in the democratic process and for more effective citizenship. As much as southern Muslims seek understanding from the mainstream Thai society, they should also learn to open up and begin to look at themselves as part of a big family consisting of diverse ethnicities, customs and ways of life. Any reconciliation process is a two-way street and must start with learning more about one another in order to build mutual trust.