Published on April 03, 2002 - For the past couple of months, Police Maj-General Thanee Thawisri has had many sleepless nights.

The area under his command in the deep South has come under a spate of attacks that have claimed the lives of eight police officers and one school teacher, putting the Muslim South once again in the national spotlight.

The timing of these attacks suggests the gunmen knew the geographical setting of the area, and that they are well-trained and able to carry out their attacks with some degree of co-ordination, Thanee said.

"These guys are pretty accurate, able to pick their target with |an AK-47 at night from quite a distance," said the deputy |commander of the Police Region Nine.

At a border police unit near the Chat Warin waterfall, the scene of a 15-minute shoot out between three armed men and scores of officers here, Thanee gave his men a pep talk and urged them to stay focused.

The fact that they took the fight to the unit here, where a significant number of officers are assigned, is a testimony to how bold they are, Thanee said.

The worst may be yet to come, he added.

The incident ended when another officer suffered a bullet wound in his right arm.

He was lucky.

The motorbike he was on the time of the attack was full of M-16 rounds and shotgun pellets. In spite of the ongoing attacks, no one yet is willing to make anything out of the incidents.

When asked, politicians and senior government officers recited the standard line - that there had been infighting among "influential" people who stand to gain if the security situation remains shaky and that government officials may be involved.

But then again, ordinary bandits don't attack police stations, Thanee said.

"We're like sitting ducks here," said one police officer on guard duty at one of the checkpoints along the major highway.

What is confusing to people who lean towards the idea that the separatists were behind the attacks is that no one has stepped forward to take credit.

One senior police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the attacks against the police were carried out by a small group of "thugs" who called themselves "holy warriors", or "mujahideen", but are unable to find any backing.

He said the leading foreign-based separatist organisations, the Pattani United Liberation Organisation (Pulo) and the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), maintain that they would not support them, pointing to their decision to give up armed struggle a decade ago.

Wahdah MP Burhanuddin Useng believes the attackers were once hired to do the "dirty work" of the police at the height of the separatist movement over a decade ago.

He said the same faces are still roaming around doing the same kind of dirty work they once did, but now under a new setting shaped by illicit "money-making" activities.

When asked if they are the same men who called themselves "holy warriors", Burhanuddin replied: "They can call themselves anything."

Narathiwat Senator Fakhruddin Boto, on the other hand, compared this latest spate of attacks to the making of a movie in which the stage is the same but the scene changes from time to time. "There is one director calling all the shots," he said.

The idea, Fakhruddin believes, is to create a scene to justify the existence of the security agencies in the region so that the current security arrangement remains in place.

Associate Professor Perayot Rahimmula at the Prince of Songkhla University in Pattani supports the assessment.

The stage in Thailand's deep South is very much different from what it was in the previous decades, he said.

He and many others point to massive infrastructure development projects where kickbacks are channelled to government officials, as well as other "money-making" activities such as prostitution, casinos, drug trafficking and smuggling, including illegal petroleum, as the playing fields where criminals and officers come together.

To make matters worse, says Aliphen Utrarasin, a leading member of the Wahdah faction, government agencies don't seem to be co-operating, further alienating the local population who wonder if justice will ever prevail.

Aliphen warned the authorities against coming up with a scapegoat - a common practice of the past in which suspects were either produced or "go missing".

But in spite of all the finger pointing and the confusion, life in Thailand's Muslim South goes on. People still talk of low rubber prices, while fishermen complain about having to go out further and further out to sea to make their catches.

Community mosques, as well as Buddhist temples, are well attended as always, while the warmth and hospitality of the local residents have not disappeared.

"This is still a very peaceful region and it has its charm," said Jaran Maluleem, a leading Thai Muslim academic.

"It's still a very liveable place."

Don Pathan