Letter from Yala

Members of civil society, youth and women's groups, and a handful of government officials came together at Rajabhat Yala University's performing centre to display their products, exchange views and watch cultural performances by a ramwong klong-yow (long-drum dance) troupe from Pattani's Wat Chang Hai community, and a young Malay male performing anachid, or Muslim song.
Differences were set aside as smiles and hope returned to the faces of the local residents of this restive region, determined to show the rest of the country that the fabric of their society was still very much intact in spite of the ongoing tit-for-tat violence between government security forces and separatist militants.
Many people who came yesterday had participated in a World Bank-funded community-driven development (CDD) project that provided seed money to selected villages to carry out development projects. The condition was that the villagers must be in charge of the entire process – from planning to implementation.
State officials, such as village chiefs and kamnan, were asked to step aside and function as advisers.
Participants said the CDD approach was very different from the typical top-down government projects that don't always reflect the needs and desires of local villagers.
Moreover, by coming together, they were hoping they could put something in motion – something meaningful that could contribute towards peace, said Lamai Manakhan, a community activist who facilitated yesterday’s discussion with the villagers.
Participants broke off into four groups – women, youth, civil-society organisations, and ordinary villagers – to explore ways to build on the accomplishments from their community-driven development towards lasting peace.
While conversations among the villagers' group centred on their projects and helped bring Buddhists and Muslims closer together, leaders of civil-society organisations, on the other hand, stressed the need for Thai society to change its attitude towards Patani as a region if the two sides were to co-exist peacefully.
The youth group, meanwhile, stressed the need to understand the root cause of the violence if the conflict were to be resolved.
Much of their conversation was focused on state-minority relations. They maintained that the Malays in the southernmost provinces could live with the Thai state, but the deal had to be on their terms, not that of the state. Yesterday's activities were focused on identifying those terms.
The Thai government has over the years poured billions of taxpayers’ baht into the restive region. Most of the money went to security operations but some was set aside for development projects. Bangkok has consistently hoped the project would bring the local residents closer to the state agencies.
But trust between these agencies and the local residents, particularly among the Malay Muslims, has not changed much.
Millions of baht are being given out to compensate people who have been subjected to abuse by state officials. The government referred to these initiatives as “rehabilitation”, as opposed to “compensation”, thus opening up opportunity for others, such as teachers, to demand an equal amount of money.