Acknowledge the cause and we may solve the problem

Every time something dramatic happens in the deep South and the government in Bangkok wants to be seen to be doing something about it – something sensible perhaps – officials come out with big words to describe new arrangements and then promise that the situation will improve. This is not a tactic employed exclusively by the current administration; it has been used by just about every administration over the past decade or so.

Several of the government’s proposals and initiatives seem to have had some thought behind them, while others are simply knee-jerk reactions. They all sound good on the surface, but the approach is all too often “too textbook”. The terminology employed sounds very much like a high-school introduction course on governance and public administration: stronger cooperation among agencies, improved intelligence gathering, quicker response time to incidents, a politics-before-military approach, and the list goes on. Thai people, especially those in the South, have heard it all before.

For the purposes of public consumption, government leaders love to set up war rooms and task forces – which, of course, come and go. 

Remember the one set up by the then-prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra – the Southern Border Provinces Peace Building Command? It was dissolved after the 2006 coup and replaced by another military-led organisation: the Internal Security Operation Command (Isoc). The Isoc would have worked with the civilian-led Southern Border Provinces Administrative Centre, which was dissolved by Thaksin in 2001 but then brought back to life by the military-installed government of Surayud Chulanont. 

During the Abhisit government, the so-called “mini-Cabinet” for the deep South was set up to give the impression that there would be political accountability regarding the conflict in the region. 

The need for accountability has also been reiterated by Deputy Prime Minister Yuthasak Sasripapra, who stated a month ago that the performance of the security forces would be tied to budget allocation. 

Of all the talk so far about improving the situation in the violence-plagued region, Yuthasak’s point was probably the most daring. But like other ideas or initiatives, there was no follow-up, and the deep South once again drifted from the minds of our policy-makers and the general public.

That was indeed the case until the recent Mayo attack, carried out in front of a government closed-circuit camera. This time around, all sorts of proposals have been tossed out. From putting Deputy Prime Minister Chalerm Yoobamrung into the line-up, to conducting aerial reconnaissance, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, like her predecessors, is trying hard to be taken seriously.

The post-coup Surayud government was the only one that understood this very point, and tried to address it. But the interim administration was short-lived and the subsequent government chose to play it safe by paying lip service to development and reconciliation in the region, while ignoring other aspects of the problem such as justice and equality.  

Unfortunately, no one is talking about the root cause of the conflict. Experts, academics and the National Reconciliation Commission have consistently pointed out that the root cause of the Malay-Muslim insurgent violence is ethno-nationalist in nature, not religious. Essentially, the problem lies with Thailand’s nation-state construct, which has yet to achieve a buy-in from the Malays of Patani. 

If our policy-makers could finally agreed that this is the root cause of the conflict, then they would know that relying on bureaucratic measures – like rehabilitation packages and development – will not be enough to solve the historical mistrust between the Patani Malays and the Thai state. They will have to step beyond their comfort zone and re-examine the very notion of Thailand’s claim on the region, and go from there. This is, of course, uncharted territory. 

It could very well be suicidal, politically speaking, for any government to go down this path. But then again, what is more important – the wellbeing of the nation or the survivability of a fly-by-night political party? If the past eight years is any indication, our political leaders will continue to play it safe. And it’s not because they don’t understand the nature of the problem. It’s because they care more about their own hides. Political courage is a rare quality in Thailand.