A deputy Yala governor, who was the chief negotiator, decided to pull out some 40 border policemen from Baan Bajoh to avoid confrontation with local residents, whose community is known to have been infiltrated by Islamic militants/Malay separatists. It was good to see that security officials exercised restraint and are now doing their best to avoid conflict with the locals in predominantly Muslim Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat provinces.

But the authorities still have to investigate the alleged murder that sparked the protest and bring the perpetrators to justice. While investigators must take seriously the villagers' allegation that some border policemen were responsible, they must not reject out of hand the possibility that the crime may well have been committed by Muslim insurgents, notorious for their ruthless targeted killings of Muslims who collaborate with the government and random murders of Buddhist civilians.

Investigators must also find out whether the ambush of Army troops near Baan Bajoh on Sunday night was in any way linked to the protest in the village earlier in the day. Legal action must be taken against anyone found to have actively participated in the attack or sheltered insurgents.

The use of women and children to confront security officials or to serve as a human shield in Yala on Sunday followed the same pattern as similar incidents in Narathiwat in the past few years. These include the brutal killing of two marines who were abducted and tortured to death in Ban Tanyonglimo and another incident in Kuching Rupah in which a female schoolteacher was taken hostage and beaten into a coma from which she has still not recovered.

Provincial authorities and security officials in the insurgency-ravaged deep South will be put to the ultimate test, one that requires them to strike a delicate balance between the need for pinpoint military action against insurgents, legal action against villagers who aid and abet insurgents, and psychological warfare to win the hearts and minds of peace-loving Muslims.

Despite a series of reconciliatory gestures by the interim government, including the reactivation of the Southern Border Provinces Administrative Centre and the public apology offered by Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont for the Tak Bai atrocity and other past wrongs committed by the state against Thai Muslims of Malay descent in the southernmost provinces, the situation in the strife-torn region is expected to get a lot worse before it gets better.

It is undeniable that Thailand is now in an advanced stage in its struggle against the home-grown terrorist threat in the deep South. More than 1,700 people, including security and government officials and civilians, both Buddhist and Muslim, have been killed in the ongoing terror campaign in the region that began in January 2004.

Insurgents are expected to intensify their terror campaign to intimidate moderate Muslims who do not share their perverse vision of Islam or separatist ideology in order to prevent them from being persuaded by the government's new initiatives to win peace in the region. They have also tried to drive a wedge between Muslims and Buddhists, who make up about 20 per cent of the total population in the region, by carrying out an inhuman campaign to provoke Buddhists' anger, including attacks and murders of Buddhist monks and villagers.

Indeed, the insurgents may have already upped the ante, apparently in the hope of provoking security officials into taking harsh military action that causes civilian casualties, in order to galvanise the local population against the Thai state. Frustrating though it may be, security officials whose job it is to combat the insurgents and restore peace in the region must not fall into their trap.