All of Bangkok's initiatives and policies have failed to bring about a permanent peace or answer the grievances that have bred dissent in the region. Because nothing has so far worked, men like Ongkorn continue to be sent here to quell armed insurgencies.

This latest round, which surfaced in late 2001 but was not officially acknowledged until scores of militants carried out a major raid on an Army battalion in January 2004, has so far claimed more than 1,700 lives, according to the latest statistics compiled by Srisompob Jitpiromsri, an assistant professor at Prince of Songkhla University, Pattani campus.

Millions of baht have been spent on enhancing security in the region over the past two-and-a-half years, in addition to more than 20,000 armed troops being stationed there. Despite this, the state apparatus is still largely perceived to be a foreign conqueror with officials who rarely speak the local language or take the time to understand local culture.

Ethnic Malays say they don't feel they have a shared destiny with the rest of the country, and that they continue to regard officials as agents of a Buddhist state intent on pushing through a set of policies aimed at making them Thai at the expense of their own identity.

In a recent interview with senior journalists from Nation Multimedia Group, Ongkorn said that initial encounters between the two sides - the Thai state and the Malay-speaking region - started off on the wrong foot, and that the current generation has been left to pick up the pieces. Permanent peace can only be achieved through a long-term collective effort from all sides and a permanent reconciliation could take at least two more generations to achieve, he said.

One of the short-term goals, said Ongkorn, is to look for ways to distinguish insurgents from common criminals, and then to look for a way to channel insurgents back into Thai society.

"Many of these insurgents are good kids. They are not criminal by nature," said Pol Lt-General Adul Sangsingkeo, commissioner of the Ninth Police Region, which oversees the country's seven southernmost provinces.

Adul said officials from the military, law enforcement and the legal community have been meeting regularly to discuss how to differentiate insurgents from common criminals.

Ongkorn confirmed that authorities are in the process of building a detention centre to house suspected insurgents with the aim of returning the "re-educated" ones back into society as productive, nation-loving citizens.

But like most controversial initiatives, the devil is always in the details.

Among those who back the idea of turning insurgents into peace-loving citizens, said Adul, the debate revolves around who should have the power to determine who is a common criminal and who is an insurgent. The legal community said such a judgement should be up to them, while security officials think they should be the ones to decide. But even if the state were to succeed in turning insurgents into productive citizens, the heart of the problem still has to be addressed: the source of inspiration for Malay separatism.

While the two generals agreed the conflict is a battle of ideas - Malay separatists vs the Thai state - neither has gone into detail as to what needs to be done in order to address the roots of separatism. At most, both generals would agree that issues such as history, education, poverty, social mobility and inequality should be addressed collectively with the help of Islamic leaders, if the state is to succeed in winning the hearts and minds of those in the region.

Ongkorn and Adul did not point fingers at any particular government or incident, but stated that decades of neglect, along with the failure to detect that a new generation of insurgents was in the making during the previous decade, has led to the current predicament.

"In the past the militants were hiding out in remote hills but now they are operating from within the villages," Ongkorn added.

Long-term solutions aside, both generals said they have a more immediate concern, pointing to the roadside bombings that are followed by brief gunfights as well as the drive-by shootings that take place almost on a daily basis.

"Insurgents carrying out an attack go through several short steps. They have people who function as their eyes and ears, informing those down the line about the movement of the authorities," Ongkorn said.

"Another team would be responsible for placing weapons at a designated location, and then a different group would enter the picture to carryout a roadside attack," he added. Adul said the immediate aim is to contain the violence from intensifying beyond its current state.

He said insurgents' attacks appear to be intensifying with more coordinated hits and larger explosions in roadside bombings. But fundamentally the overall tactics haven't changed. Even so, security officials appear to be fighting an uphill battle. Last month, authorities found about 20 holes dug in one stretch of road that they believed were supposed to be bomb slots. "It's like a spider's web out there, so many twists and turns," Ongkorn said. Officially, the region of Thailand's three southernmost provinces is not a war zone. "But we feel that we could be hit at any moment," Ongkorn said.

Don Pathan

The Nation

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