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Published on August 24, 2007

Bang Seng (not his real name), a villager from Narathiwat's Sungai Padi district who was detained in one of the raids, thinks the officials were just out to reach certain quotas - like the drug war during the Thaksin years when the body count became some sort of a benchmark. But this time round, it's the number of people they put in boot camps, he explained.

"They got this scanner that is supposed to detect bomb-making materials but they try to pass it off as some sort of a lie-detector machine," Bang Seng said.

Indeed, with an eye set on cementing their place in Thai politics following the coup last September, the military has been hard up for success stories.

Up until the shakedown two months ago, Thai soldiers were largely doing police work - rushing to crime scenes where forensic police collected physical evidence with the hope that it would lead to something meaningful.

Patrols don't seem to be well coordinated, as suggested by the slow arrival of reinforcements following gunfights, while checkpoints are hardly manned, suggesting the absence of a security grid.

But while roadside bombings around Yala may have ceased these past two months, direct, as well as simultaneous attacks, are being carried out outside of the areas targeted for raids.

It may not be Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation where convoys would have to be escorted by helicopter gun-ships, but the high number of simultaneous attacks has a tendency to jolt the nerves of political and security leaders.

Moreover, few officials here are willing to say that this is the result of a "balloon effect" - a squeeze in one area causing another location to blow up - as this would discredit the so-called headway they have made with these raids.

But coming to terms with reality has never been a strong trait of the Thai military. Violence in the region emerged in late 2001 but it was not until the January 2004 raid on an army battalion that the government finally admitted that a new generation of Malay-Muslim separatists had emerged. The political underpinnings of the raid were just too much for the Bangkok government to continue to dismiss the militants as "sparrow bandits".

But, as they try to change the minds of the young Malays, conceivably Thai military officials could be digging their own graves. No one in their right mind would actually believe that two to four months of indoctrination in an Army boot camp would change the minds of these young men.

Secondly, because of the organic and secretive nature of this generation of militants, there are concerns among some intelligence officials that the government's latest tactics could be providing the insurgents with a needed forum - in this case an Army camp - to come together and strengthen their network.

Strangely, the Army is billing these mass arrests over the past two months as an olive branch it is extending to the community. Turn your back on the insurgents - or better yet, turn them in - and we all can live in peace, the Malays of Patani are often told.

For the better part of the past 100 years, the Malays of Patani were told that they must appreciate all that the Thai state has given them and that they must learn to embrace the values that define Thailand's nation-state. They have also been told that they need to learn to be obedient.

But Malays here say the state's attitude towards them is not only racist, but it comes at the expense of their cultural identity, which they see as being inseparable from Islam.

Although they detest the ethnocentric nature of Thailand's nation-state ideology, locals here said it doesn't necessary mean that they want to separate from the Kingdom.

The high turnout for the general election, including the recent referendum on the constitution, suggested that the Malays here still have hope that somehow the system will come through for them.

But six years later there is nothing to indicate that the violence will end any time soon. "We are just buying time until a political solution comes up," said one senior Thai general who worked on policy concerning the restive region.

Over the years none of the so-called "breakthroughs" have failed to change the course of the insurgency as militants continue to put up a nasty fight.

Once in a while the troops stumble upon a small cache of weapons, as in the case of a hot pursuit that led to the Islam Burapha boarding school. But this small cache that belonged to about six or seven teachers was enough for the authorities to declare a major success. A sign of desperation, one might say, but after years of being on the receiving end, a handful of contraband could seem like a big bag of gold.

Some in the Fourth Army Area actually believe that sooner or later this ongoing shakedown will lead to mass surrender, thus, making concessions with the old guard irrelevant. Apparently, they didn't say anything about Malay separatism, an idea that has refused to go away even after more than 100 years of direct rule by the Thai state.

Don Pathan is The Nation's regional news editor. This is the concluding part of his report on the deep South. The first report was published yesterday.

Don Pathan

The Nation

Yala