Published on July 16, 2005 - Hopes were high at the beginning of this year when Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra announced a “major breakthrough” following the arrests of “key figures” behind the spate of violence which since January of last year has claimed the lives of nearly 800 victims in the Muslim-majority South.

Thaksin insisted that the unrest in the restive region had reached a “turning point” because authorities had nabbed the top layer of a pyramidal insurgent organisation, arresting seven of its leaders, while the eighth, Sapae-ing Baso, principal of Dhamawitthaya Foundation School and the man who would supposedly serve as the leader of a liberated Pattani, had been put on the run.

Seven months later Sapae-ing is still on the run, bombs still go off, and officials continue to be assassinated. Six more innocent people have been decapitated, and thousands of schoolteachers are putting in for a transfer out.

If anything, the coordinated attacks on Yala on Thursday evening are convincing testimony that the end of violence is nowhere in sight and that the government is still as clueless as ever as to how to prevent the situation from deteriorating.

In retrospect, it appears that the government was overly hasty in concluding that the arrested individuals and Sapae-ing were members of a hierarchical organisation that pulled the strings behind the lion’s share of the insurgency.

While the public was awed by the bold announcement, not all security and intelligence officers on the ground shared the optimism.

They see this generation of insurgents as militants organised into independent cells with very loose and relaxed directives from their superiors as to how to carry out their attacks. Taking out one cell does little to suppress the insurgency.

The previous generation saw government troops slugging it out with militants in remote hills and mountains. With the exception of the January 4 raid and April 28 bloodbath last year, tactics by this generation consist mainly of hit-and-run attacks and point-blank assassinations of officials.

Collateral damage has been on the rise, while Muslims who work with government security agencies have received direct threats from insurgents, who state in flyers that they cannot guarantee the safety of any Muslim who continues to work for the state.

In the wake of Thursday’s attacks in Yala, troops were out in full force while the entire region was put on high alert as Yala was left in the dark – literally, as power and telephone services were crippled by the bombs.

A spate of firebombs has centred on high-profile places like the public market and a major department store in the heart of this provincial capital, which has been recognised internationally by Unesco as a city of peace.

In spite of the quick response by security agencies, there were few signs of a let-up as another bomb exploded yesterday at a restaurant where five soldiers were having lunch.

One officer suffered a head injury, but the message was loud and clear that violence is here to stay.

Analysts say the government has failed to grasp the magnitude of the historical resentment towards the state of the Muslim community in this Malay-speaking region or of the new political order that sees the previous generation of Malay nationalists making way for a newer and feistier generation of insurgents who give little consideration to collateral damage. Along the way, the militants managed to unravel the fabric of this society that has held both Muslim and non-Muslim communities together for more than a century.

Despite the obvious changes in tactics and strategy, the government has continued to respond in a very conventional manner, with the latest moves being an executive decree that gives the prime minister even more power than he already has and a procurement project that includes six attack helicopters and 24,000 guns.

The intelligence community acknowledges that the crisis is not the work of common criminals and welcomes the decree as it can deal with suspected insurgents without having to go through lengthy due process and convince eyewitness to step forward on behalf of the state.

The local community says if the 4,000 security officers already deployed to the restive region and operating under the current martial law cannot bring the situation under control, then there is little hope that the new decree will make much difference in bringing about a peaceful and just outcome.

Don Pathan