For the South, no trust means no peace

The kiss of death hung over prospects for peace in the southern border provinces from the moment that the government of Yingluck Shinawatra reopened negotiations with insurgents in Kuala Lumpur nearly six years ago. Ever since, this much-vaunted initiative aimed at ending the bloody mayhem has limped along like a man with a broken leg. Peace was never on the minds of those who participated, and Yingluck and Malaysia’s Najib Razak were chiefly concerned about political gain.
The move surprised the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), the 
organisation that gives the armed militants their marching orders. Caught off guard, the group instinctively sought to derail the peace process, which it succeeded in doing by the third quarter of 2013. Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur had taken a leap of faith in the belief the BRN leadership would come to its senses and endorse the talks. That never happened, partly because the whole effort had stood on shaky ground from the beginning, neither the Thai military nor the BRN being properly consulted in advance.
Complicating matters severely
 by late 2013 was the Yingluck 
administration’s struggle to survive the chaos of the “Bangkok Shutdown”, which ultimately led to its downfall in the May 2014 coup. When it came to the southern unrest, the military junta that seized power realised that ditching Yingluck’s peace initiative would be bad politics. It decreed that efforts should continue, but only if all of the insurrectionist groups were seated around the negotiating table.
The groups that had waged war against the state three decades earlier formed an umbrella organisation called MARA Patani to sit down and talk. The BRN, now in control of all active combatants, scorned the idea without a government commitment to grant some level of autonomy. MARA Patani found a handful of “BRN members” who turned out to have no authorisation to speak for the BRN. And still the process continued, in the hope that the militants would eventually come around.
The talks produced several ideas, most notably the “safety zones” that would have demarcated ceasefire areas. That notion was abandoned after General Udomchai Thamsarorat took over as chief negotiator last year and reached out to the BRN, in the process trampling over the dignity and interests of MARA Patani. The latter were nothing more than rebels without guns, Udomchai understood, and their hurt feelings mattered little.
But his efforts to draw in the BRN leadership have been in vain. The group’s elders simply do not believe any good could emerge from talking to representatives of the Thai state. It’s a humiliating situation for the government, worsened by MARA Patani’s apparent wish to hold off on further talks until after the election in March. MARA has likely taken umbrage at Udomchai’s recent statement that he was willing to meet one of its leaders, Shukri Hari, but not the entire negotiating team. MARA no doubt sees this as a divide-and-conquer tactic.
Official government sources say terms already agreed for the next meeting between the Thai and MARA negotiators restricted it to a technical level. The leaders were to meet later. This is only the latest of many brick walls encountered. Again, no one knows how to proceed from here. 
One suggestion would be to secure back-channel contact with the BRN so that a simple question can be posed, one that successive governments have always been too insecure to ask – what will it take for the rebel leaders to come to the negotiating table?