Security forces alone cannot resolve unrest in South

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha recently announced that soldiers from Army Regions 1, 2, and 3 currently dispatched to the far South will return to their respective regions by October, saying the situation has improved over the past few years in this conflict-ridden area.
He based his reasoning on the drop in overall insurgency-related violent incidents in this historically contested region. More than 7,000 people have died since January 2004 when the government of Thaksin Shinawatra began to acknowledge that the perpetrators were not “sparrow bandits” but a new generation of Malay insurgents bent on carving out a separate homeland for Muslims in this part of the world.
Under Prayut’s plan, troops from Regions 1, 2, and 3 – the Central, Northeast and North, respectively – will return to their bases. They will be replaced by locally hired paramilitary Rangers. The Fourth
Army Area will command these Rangers.
The division of labour in the past – when the four commands divided the region up and oversaw security in their assigned provinces since 2007 – may have made administration a little easier for the top brass. But it did nothing in terms of changing the situation on the ground, as the insurgents do not function or operate along provincial lines. For them, the entire region is a battlefield.
But getting over that bureaucratic mindset has not been easy for Thailand’s defence planners.
The overall number of violent incidents may have dropped in recent years, but the military should not be too quick to take credit for the improved situation.
One reason for the drop has to do with the fact that insurgents are not carrying out disturbances, like setting fire to tyres, telephone/electric poles or erecting road spikes.
The insurgents have shown from time to time that they are as strong as ever and that they are capable of hitting just about any place, any time.
In recent years, they seem to be focusing on security targets – military and police officers out on road and foot patrol, as seen in this past week’s roadside bomb attacks in Narathiwat’s Si Sakhon district that wounded eight people, seven of whom were from the Interior Ministry’s line of command. The victims included the district chief, his deputy and five defence volunteers.
The idea of downsizing the number of troops is not new and it is not a bad idea considering the kind of security challenges the troops face. The military is not fighting a conventional force and therefore there is no need to have 60,000 security personnel stationed in the region.
It took the top brass a long time to realise that the more troops they have on the ground, the more targets the insurgents have to choose from. In other words, the soldiers have become sitting ducks for the militants.
The process of downsizing the number of troops has been slowly taking place for the past couple of years. What’s worrying about this initiative is that the troops are being replaced by paramilitary rangers.
Some are hired locally; others come from elsewhere. But it is generally understood that they are poorly trained and don’t have a good standing in the region.
Given the animosity among the local people towards the military, one has to wonder how the rangers will perform. Perhaps the country’s top brass should do more in terms of preparing these rangers for this daunting task so that they can be more than just armed security personnel hunting down armed insurgents.
These rangers are sent out to extremely remote areas where they form a part of a region-wide security grid to curb the activities of the insurgents.
But without the help of local villagers, one can be certain that any attempt to change the course of this conflict is doomed to fail because from the look of it, the rangers don’t have the knowledge or the sophistication to win the hearts and minds of local residents.