Published on Nov 01, 2006 -Surayud Chulanont is coming to town, his first trip to the troubled South as prime minister, with a gesture of goodwill to this Malay-speaking region where the violence seems unending.

In his first press conference upon assuming the post of prime minister, Surayud made an attempt to reach out to the region by saying "historical injustice" was the root cause of the ongoing problem. It was a complete turn-around compared to the government of Thaksin Shinwatra, which saw the insurgency that has claimed more than 1,700 lives since January 2004 as more of a law-and-order issue instead of one with a human face.

But the violence over the past few weeks has been especially grim, even by the region's terrifying standards. Just days ago, a bomb ripped through a column of monks, along with the soldiers guarding them, as they went about their morning alms round. Days before that, a group of six armed men launched a brief attack on a small Army outpost, killing a soldier on guard duty before fleeing. Roadside bombings followed by quick gunfights have been taking place almost daily. It is a chilling reminder that an end is nowhere in sight.

The past three years have shown insurgents often step up attacks during the rotation of forces, which is currently taking place until January. It is said to be their way of "welcoming" the newly arrived soldiers. In Bangkok, the Surayud government was quick to call for calm - a complete opposite from the knee-jerk, hardline statements Thaksin usually churned out whenever the security apparatus got humiliated after a violent incident. Pracha Therat, Narathiwat's outgoing governor, on the other hand, still has a tendency to offend local Muslims with his statements and initiatives. He was quick to bring Islam into the equation.

Indeed, many here still recall Thaksin's "us-and-them" mentality when he announced he would deny development money to villages not doing enough to help authorities track down insurgents. But apart from the absence of harsh language from the government, there have been no major initiatives so far beyond Surayud's gesture of goodwill, expressing his desire to talk to the insurgents.

Surayud and the coup plotters know very well that failure in the South would undermine their authority. They will be hard-pressed to go beyond gestures.

Analysts outside the region tend to link Surayud's goodwill gesture with the lack of reciprocity by the militants. Some point to the secret talks on the Malaysian island of Langkawi between Thai officials and exiled separatist leaders over the past year. Senior intelligence and security officials claim that talks with these leaders, many of whom live in Malaysia, are part of national reconciliation. Moreover, these same officials believe the return of these leaders would not have any real effect on the ground, because the vast majority of the violence is being carried out by a new generation of village-based militants who are part of a loose network of small cells scattered throughout the region. They surfaced in late 2001 but were not officially acknowledged until the January 2004 raid on an Army battalion, when militants made off with well over 300 military-issued weapons.

Over the past weeks, Surayud has been visiting neighbouring countries. He praised Indonesia and the Philippines for their reconciliation efforts with home-grown separatist movements, and stated that Thailand could learn from their experiences. Earlier this year, coup leader General Sonthi Boonyaratglin surprised everybody by calling on all security agencies to do away with the compilation of blacklists, but fell short of admitting to a secret policy of targeted killings. Just days ago, the government announced the revival of the Southern Border Provinces Administrative Centre (SBPAC), which was dissolved by Thaksin just months after he came to power in 2001.

It would be unrealistic to expect the SBPAC to create the same kind of trust that the agency once enjoyed with the people here. Whether the new SBPAC lives up to expectations, on the other hand, remains to be seen because the absence of the centre was not the reason for the revival of the insurgency. Indoctrination of the new generation of militants had gone unnoticed for the past decade prior to their surfacing in late 2001. Since then, cells have begun to spring up like wildfire, almost organically, across the region.

In a recent interview, local community leader Dr Waemahdi Waeda-o pointed out that the number of violent incidents should not be a benchmark to determine the government's success. Raising the wellbeing of the region, one of the poorest in the country, must continue to be a national priority regardless of the security situation, he said. Many are suggesting it is time to think about some sort of political or structural reform that would guarantee the Malays a greater political and cultural space.

After the dark Thaksin years, gestures of goodwill from Bangkok are welcome. But in a region where killings and bombings are daily occurrences, it will take more than gestures if peace is to be achieved.

The insurgency in the three southernmost provinces was ever-active during the Thaksin years. Today, it has spread much deeper and more widely across the Malay-speaking region.

The road to peace, it seems, will have to run through every village in southern Thailand.

Don Pathan
The Nation
PATTANI