False hopes are no shield against bullets

With the taking of hostages becoming part of the insurgents’ strategy, the conflict in the far South appears to have found a new and disturbing threshold. Even more alarming is the fact that one of the kidnapped victims in the case that came to light this week was ordered to drive a truck full of explosives into the heart of Yala city while his wife remained in the custody of the militants.

Tragedy was fortunately avoided when the hostage abandoned the bomb-laden truck and sought help, and then his wife was released unharmed.

This relatively “happy” ending doesn’t mask the menace posed by such fresh and dangerous tactics. Clearly the war in the contested southernmost provinces is darkening.

The authorities can still hope, of course, that the kidnapping was a singular occurrence, an act of desperation or a trial run that failed. It could just as easily represent a sign of things to come. But the authorities have not been forthcoming about what’s really happening in the deep South. They should be apprising the public frankly so we can understand what the country, the government and our society are actually up against.

When it comes to this bloodstained, decade-old insurrection, we have to move beyond shallow public-relations exercises like the one staged this week. Officials presented 650 so-called “defectors” from the separatist movement in what was billed as “a show of force” against the violence gripping the South. 

Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Prawit Wongsuwan, army chief Theerachai Nakvanich, Fourth Army chief Wiwat Pathompak and National Security Council secretary-general Thawip Netniyom put on a grand show of welcoming these people to the “good side”, but doubt spoiled the occasion. Given the return to daily violence in the past two months, this self-congratulatory feel-good exercise just seemed like so much make-believe.

Successive governments have taken credit for the overall decline in violence in the past two years, but arguably the decline was entirely due to the insurgents themselves setting aside the weapons and bombs. Now the bullets are flying again, most shockingly in the daring attack in Cho Ai Rong in which a hospital was used as a staging point. And this week there was kidnapping and the revelation of a car-bomb plot.

The spike in violence is a slap in the face for the latest peace initiative. The government is attempting to negotiate with the MARA Patani, an umbrella organisation for militant groups, even though no one seems convinced that this organisation wields any influence in the conflict in the Muslim-majority South.

So who are the 650? Defence Ministry spokesman Major General Khongcheep Tantravanich said they’re among the nearly 2,000 Muslims in the southern provinces who have pledged to give up their separatist activities. “They are tired of the violence,” Khongcheep said. And so is the rest of the country, but this elaborate photo opportunity was hardly persuasive that the current government has finally found the right track towards ending the horror. We have seen this show too often before.

As well, even if is true that these 650 individuals were separatist combatants, the sad reality remains that there is no shortage of dedicated fighters still in the field. And their efforts are sustained by the support of the residents of the three southernmost provinces. Even those citizens who oppose violence as the means share the same sentiment about the desired end, which is autonomous rule, free from the cultural repression of the mistrusted Thai state.

After 12 years there is still no closure in view for this nightmare. The government can no longer cling to – or disburse – false hopes.