Thailand: Political Turmoil and the Southern Insurgency

Bangkok/Brussels, 28 August 2008: Despite its political woes, Thailand’s embattled government needs to give more attention to tackling the bloody insurgency in the Muslim-dominated Deep South.

Thailand: Political Turmoil and the Southern Insurgency,* the latest policy briefing from the International Crisis Group, examines recent political developments in Bangkok and their implications for the conflict in the southern provinces. The government of Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej faces serious challenges to its survival in the courts and on the streets, where up to 20,000 people demonstrated on 26 August, occupying government buildings. With his hands full in Bangkok – and needing to keep the military sweet – Samak has left southern policy in the hands of the military.

“The army has made some progress in reducing militant attacks over the last eight months”, says Crisis Group Analyst Rungrawee Chalermsripinyorat, “but it has come at a price: increased human rights abuses and a program of extended detentions which will increase resentment in the longer term”.

Improved security operations will not solve the conflict in the Deep South. The insurgents are far from being defeated. But they are on the defensive for now, making this a good time to address the root causes of the conflict decisively. The longer this is put off, the harder it will become to resolve the conflict and the greater the risk that foreign jihadists might seek involvement.

There is little immediate prospect of a negotiated settlement with the insurgents. But there is much the government could do unilaterally in areas such as education, justice and development. It should start giving serious thought to long-term political solutions including ways of granting some degree of self-rule in the Deep South.

This requires a unified approach by the entire government, led by a senior political figure, perhaps a deputy prime minister, not a largely unsupervised military. It requires freeing the key conflict-management body, the Southern Border Provinces Administrative Centre, from military control. It requires enhancing oversight and accountability of the security forces, including rationalising and amending the complex security legislation governing their actions in the South. And it requires holding individual officers to account for past and present human rights abuses – perhaps the single best way to rebuild a measure of trust with the Malay Muslim population.

“The government needs to take back control of southern policy”, says John Virgoe, Crisis Group’s South East Asia Project Director. “Otherwise, there will be no solution, and the conflict may deteriorate further”.