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Thailand's Southern Rebels Draw the Junta's Attention

Sep 2, 2016 | 13:46 GMT

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Thailand's Southern Rebels Draw the Junta's Attention

One of Asia's most opaque and intractable insurgencies may be expanding. Over the past week, Thai police have begun asserting that southern rebels were responsible for a string of bombings and arson attacks that occurred on Aug. 11-12, the birthday of Thailand's venerated queen and the country's Mother's Day. Separatist militants from the southernmost provinces, a Malay-speaking, predominantly Muslim region known historically as Patani, have been waging an insurrection against the state for more than two centuries. Though the insurgency has killed thousands of people — more than 6,000 since 2004, when violence resurged after a two-decade lull — it has generally been confined to the deep south. The recent attacks, however, targeted tourist hot spots across eight Thai provinces far north of where the separatists typically operate.

So far, the evidence surrounding the Mother's Day bombings seems to point south. The tactics used in the attacks match those often seen in the deep south, and a coordinated attack farther north is well within the separatists' capabilities. Even so, the link between the Mother's Day attacks and the southern insurgency has not been confirmed, and other groups may have been responsible. Radical anti-government groups, for instance, have turned to violence routinely over the past decade, though they typically use different methods than the southern rebels do. Alternatively, as the junta leaders posited, a political group could have hired southern militants to discredit the Thai government.

But the junta's skepticism fits a familiar pattern. In 2006, three months after a coup that ousted former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, a series of bombings across Bangkok on New Year's Eve killed three people and injured 38 others. The military government then in power initially blamed pro-Thaksin figures, even as investigators highlighted forensic links to the southern separatists. After a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device went off on the tourist island of Koh Samui in 2015, the military likewise dismissed connections to the separatists, but suspects from the deep south were eventually arrested and prosecuted. The government's denial serves a variety of ends, including restoring the superficial harmony prized in Thai culture, protecting the vital tourism industry and enabling the military to sustain public confidence in its ability to impose order in the south and beyond. It also reflects the degree to which politics, crime and violence are often intertwined in Thailand, making any number of explanations for each attack plausible.

Nonetheless, the prospect of a broadened southern insurgency appears to have gotten Bangkok's attention: Last week, the government announced that it would resume peace talks with southern rebel groups in September. Although the current junta is better positioned to push the peace process forward than previous governments have been, the negotiations — and the military's efforts to quash the insurgency — will encounter the same challenges as ever. And if the militants are expanding their target set to try to force the junta's hand, then the recent attacks may herald a new and precarious phase in the conflict.