Published on Oct 10, 2006 -A recent statement from Army chief General Sonthi Boonyaratglin saying that he would like to talk to separatist groups operating in the Malay-speaking South was billed as an abrupt reversal from the policy pursued by the recently ousted Thaksin Shinawatra administration.

The administration's handling of the situation there was said to be part of the problem.

Former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad added momentum to the issue when he confirmed that he had facilitated meetings between Thai officials and separatist leaders.

While Sonthi's announcement was not exactly a big surprise, considering that the Army chief had made a similar proposal to the former administration, it is still not clear what the current government hopes to gain from entering into a dialogue with the separatists.

Meetings between separatist leaders and Thai government officials are nothing new and have been quietly taking place in recent decades in various locations throughout the world. Most of these meetings were initiated at the request of the bosses of the involved agencies, with little consideration of the formulation of a coordinated, national agenda. But this time around, the idea is has come straight from Gen Sonthi himself, hence the sudden optimism that some kind of breakthrough is inevitable.

Sonthi is not billing the proposal as a form of negotiation, rather it is merely a "dialogue" between parties with conflicting views on the Malay-speaking South.

He didn't single out any particular organisation - key players include the Pattani United Liberation Organisation (Pulo), Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) or Bersatu - so the exact shape of this dialogue remains unclear.

An exiled leader of one of the separatist groups said that from the look of things, the Thai government is seeking to engage the known exiled separatist groups.

Many have become residents or citizens of Malaysia, though they continue to see themselves as champions of the ethnic Malays in Thailand's deep South. Their perceptions of the three southernmost provinces vary. Some see the region as a Muslim land occupied by invading Siamese, while others see it as the ancestral domain of the Malay people. Some in the exile community, such as Bersatu leader Wan Kadir Che Man, have expressed a willingness to return from exile and work towards a peaceful end. Pulo's foreign affairs chief, Kasturi Makota, has said his organisation is willing to settle for something less than complete independence. This is a retreat from the group's historical stance.

What the Thai military is hoping to do is get these exiled leaders to help end the daily violence, which has largely been carried out by a new generation of militants who do not share the same mindset, attitude or agenda as the separatist groups of the past.

While groups like Bersatu, Pulo and BRN may have "eyes and ears" on the ground that are helping to prolong the insurgency, the new generation of militants, which has sprung up organically over the past five years, does not fall under anybody's chain of command. Insurgents and security officials have said that today's militants are village-based and are organised in independent cells, or clusters of cells. They decide for themselves what constitutes a legitimate target. More importantly, they don't seem to be interested in negotiating. Their emergence at this point, when there is no real unified command structure, could prove disastrous.

For the past three years, roadside bombings followed by brief gunfights or drive-by shooting attacks by gunmen on motorbikes have taken place on a daily basis in the restive region. More than 1,700 people have been killed since January 2004.

Groups of insurgents occasionally carry out simultaneous attacks that are apparently intended to inflict psychological damage rather than real destruction. Examples of such attacks include bomb attacks at 22 banks in Yala in August and the June bombing-arson spree that hit nearly 100 locations.

The insurgents decide at a cell level what or who to attack. This explains why the scope of targets has expanded from security personnel to include Buddhist monks, teachers and innocent villagers, analysts have said.

Security officials on the ground say they don't see the current wave of violence, which erupted in late 2001 but was not officially recognised until January 2004 when scores of militants raided an Army battalion in Narathiwat, as an end game.

The main motivation behind the killings of government officials and suspected informants appears to be a hatred of the state apparatus and the desire to get even for what the militants have deemed the history of injustice against the ethnic Malays.

But with Thaksin out of the picture, the atmosphere has improved. People in the restive South have welcomed Sonthi's announcement. They have also hailed newly elected Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont, who blamed the problems in the South on the state's long-running injustice towards the Malays.

Moreover, Mahathir's participation has been well received by the southern community. But the former Malaysian leader can only do so much and go so far, said one exiled leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is no longer a representative.

Thailand has been at this juncture before. Two years ago, when Wan Kadir asked to return to his birthplace to work for reconciliation, he was given the cold shoulder.

Besides, there is no guarantee that once the Thai authorities have settled matters with the old generation of separatists, they will have the same success with the young men behind the recent killings in the deep South.

Don Pathan