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Published on November 13, 2007

Political parties running in the December 23 general election seem to have no problem coming up with grand-sounding policy platforms to try to persuade people to vote for them. But all of them apparently have great difficulty telling voters how they propose to deal with the escalating violence in the southernmost border provinces. So far, no party has come up with a coherent policy for the strife-torn deep South. We hear all of the familiar rhetoric about peace and stability and justice for all, and all sorts of reconciliatory gestures, but no party has been able to spell out exactly how they plan to achieve the elusive goal of peace.

There is still time between now and election day for all parties to spell out concrete measures on how the country is going to defeat the brutal insurgents, restore order and achieve permanent peace in the predominantly Muslim region, where more than 2,700 have been killed since January 2004.

We have heard of numerous initiatives purportedly aimed at winning the hearts and minds of local Muslim Thais of Malay descent, but little progress has been made so far in bridging the gap between the Malay-speaking region and the rest of the Kingdom.

It has been over 100 years since the Kingdom formally annexed the predominantly Muslim provinces, yet historical mistrust and old wounds continue to fester.

Thailand wants to see its Malay-Muslim citizens in the southernmost region assimilate and merge seamlessly into mainstream society, just as other Thais of many different ethnic backgrounds and religions have done. So officials continue to repeat the mantra of reconciliation while doing little else that could have some impact on bringing about a breakthrough that would lead to genuine peace.

The upcoming election is the time for all political parties and their candidates to think outside the box and come up with really interesting ideas and solutions.

For the sake of national unity, all political parties must put aside their differences as well as their selfish, narrowly defined interests, and put the country before everything else by working together to find a way to end the insurgency in the South, which has become Thailand's number one national security threat.

In the past, political leaders relied on often wrong-headed assumptions that led to simplistic peace overtures and the formulation of ineffective policies.

Ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra's plan to drop millions of paper cranes on the region, for example, got everybody in the country all hyped up and full of warm, fuzzy feelings. Many felt good about taking part in the goodwill gesture and hoped for the best. But due to ignorance and a lack of cultural sensitivity, this goodwill gesture had the opposite effect of that intended. Muslims perceived the matter in a totally different light. For them, the idea of birds charging from the sky is a sign of battle, noted in the Koran's book of Sura 105, in which God sends down "birds in flocks" upon the enemies of Muslims.

This absurd approach to the South didn't stop there. At a seminar last week, Public Health Ministry officials told the military to refrain from using doctors and nurses in remote public health offices as informants. The Public Healthy Ministry continues to be one of the few state agencies that still has good working relations with the Malay-Muslims in the South. Let's not destroy that bond of trust.

The military will now have to find new strategies and tactics that actually work and are sustainable to protect schoolteachers and the hundreds of elementary schools that remain open despite repeated violent attacks by from insurgents.

Hundreds of schools have been set ablaze, while scores of teachers have been killed since January 2004. Many teachers are now too afraid to go to work and others have already sought transfers elsewhere because they fear for their lives.

The military has gone back and forth between progress and setbacks in its attempts to suppress the insurgency and restore peace after nearly four years. A failure by political parties, particularly those that end up forming the next government, to set the right tone and come up with coherent policies on the South will spell disaster and prolong the suffering of local people, if not also hold back the whole country's advancement.

The Nation