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Published on August 24, 2007

The Thai Army is planning to send nearly 100 of its troops to take part in a joint exercise with the Indian military in the country's eastern state of Jharkhand. Army officials are hoping to gain some valuable experience from their Indian counterparts who have for the better part of three decades faced nearly 40 militant outfits in the country's northeast region. The move is part of an agreement signed in June in India during Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont's visit. The two countries agreed to work together towards strengthening security cooperation and counter-terrorism efforts.

New Delhi is looking to expand its defence ties and improve its level of maritime cooperation bilaterally with countries in the Asia-Pacific Region.

Bangkok meanwhile stands to learn a thing or two, such as how the Indian army put its security grid in place in its insurgency plagued north-east region.

The security grid regulates the deployment of security forces and ensures operational coordination between them.

On the policy front, perhaps the Thai side will be interested in understanding the extent of the security mandate that the respective regional command has over its area.

In Thailand, the government has gone through several rounds of rearranging its organisational structure to strengthen its security network in the deep South.

But after more than three years of constant bloodshed, inter-agency rivalries and behind-the-scenes bickering are still rife in the region, where all parties, civilians and military officials, need to put their heads together and work towards a common goal.

The problem with the Thai Army is that it is in over its heads and they don't seem to realise it.

They want to have both the carrot and the stick in their hands - pulling people out of their villages and putting them into boot camps that are supposed to turn them into "better citizens", while at the same time extending an olive branch in the form of economic and development incentives.

Perhaps its best that they stick to what they are supposed to be doing - such as properly manning checkpoints and bringing all of them under one effective communication network, conducting proper patrols with adequate backup forces so that security units that come under ambush or roadside attacks don't have to wait up to an hour before reinforcements arrive.

Army officials have been quick to declare success with its ongoing raids in remote villages, as they point to the few confiscated items they have come across that would hold water in any decent court of law, and insisting their boot camps, which include counselling and job training, will produce good citizens out of the Malays in the border region.

With their half-baked moral authority and self-proclaimed deep knowledge on every topic under the sun, too often the country's top brass try to be everything to everybody. Perhaps it is time for them to think outside the box and let sociologists and anthropologists have a crack at this problem.

For the past three years, the government has overwhelmingly relied on the military to impose peace. The paradox of elected local governments, like the Tambon Administrative Organisations, is that they have to rely on the military to enforce democracy. In some ways this has exacerbated the nature of conflicts, as it produces a negative interface between the military and the civil society in the region.

 A joint training exercise with the Indians may give a handful of soldiers some idea as to how they keep the Kashmir region under a tight security noose despite the vicious insurgency and terrorism taking place there, which the Thais may or may not want to apply to the Muslim-majority South. But essentially, all of us need to understand that the grievances in the three southernmost provinces are local in nature and that the solution is within our reach. The question is, do we have the will to make the necessary changes to make reconciliation possible?