Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
THAILAND'S FORGOTTEN WAR
It may seem fantastic as you laze on the beach, or meditate at a peaceful hilltop temple, but the Deep South of
Thailand is home to one of Southeast Asia's longest-running and bloodiest conflicts.
Just 300km or so south of the party islands of Ko Samui and Ko Pha-Ngan, a guerrilla war between ethnic
Malay Muslims and the overwhelmingly Buddhist Thai state has claimed almost 5500 lives since 2004 and left
close on 10,000 people injured.
The Deep South, which borders Malaysia, is a different world to the rest of the country. Foreign visitors are
nonexistent and the pristine beaches deserted. Military convoys rumble through the villages and towns, check-
points dominate the roads and mobile phone signals are jammed to prevent the insurgents from using them to set
off bombs.
Around 80% of the 1.8 million people who live in Thailand's three southernmost provinces of Pattani, Narath-
iwat and Yala are ethnic Malay Muslims. They speak a Malay dialect and many want their own independent
state, as the region once was hundreds of years ago.
For the estimated 12,500 to 15,000 separatist fighters here, the Deep South is 'Patani'; this is the name given
to the Qatar-sized sultanate during its glory days in the 14th and 15th centuries. The separatists view the Thai
government as a colonial power and Thai Buddhists as interlopers in their land.
Ranged against the insurgents are around 150,000 soldiers, police and militias. Targeted in ambushes along
the coconut tree-lined roads of the region, or by increasingly sophisticated IEDs (improvised explosive devices),
barely a day goes by without a member of the Thai security forces being killed or wounded.
At the same time, the insurgency has set neighbours against each other. Gruesome tit-for-tat killings occur,
with both Buddhist and Muslim civilians being gunned down as they ride home on their motorbikes, or be-
headed in the rubber plantations that are the mainstay of the local economy. Bombs are planted outside shops
and in the markets of the towns, claiming random victims. The few remaining Buddhist monks in the region
have to be escorted by the army when they collect alms every morning for fear they will be assassinated, while
mosques are riddled with bullet holes.
Yet despite the appalling violence - one 2012 Australian study revealed that 5% of all global terrorist attacks
between 2002 and 2009 occurred in the Deep South - the insurgency remains little-known both at home and
overseas. With 24 million visitors a year, Thailand is fiercely proud and protective of its reputation as the 'Land
of Smiles'. The media downplays the security situation, while Thai politicians act as if they are in denial about
the sheer scale of the conflict.
The insurgents, too, have resisted attacking targets outside the Deep South, a tactic that would do huge dam-
age to the Thai psyche and would garner them far more attention around the world. Nor do they appear to be
connected to the more radical Islamic militants of Indonesia and the Philippines.
Instead, they stay in the shadows, rarely issuing statements or talking to the press. Operating in independent
cells, they belong to three different organisations all likely linked to each other. But there seems to be no com-
mon leader of the groups. That renders the sporadic peace talks that take place between the separatists and the
Thai government meaningless, as no one is really sure if the representatives of the insurgents have any true con-
trol over them.
While the insurgency kicked into life in earnest in 2004, after 32 suspected Muslim rebels were cornered in an
ancient mosque in Pattani Town and brutally killed by the Thai army, its roots go back hundreds of years. From
the 16th century on, the sultanate of Patani was unwillingly under Thai rule for brief periods. But it wasn't until
the Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909 that the Deep South was absorbed into Thailand proper. Britain recognised
Thai sovereignty over the region, in return for Bangkok abandoning its claims to other parts of what were then
the British-ruled Malay States.
Since then, Thailand, the most populous Buddhist country in the world, has set about attempting to remake the
Deep South in its own image. Muslim schools have been shut down and all children made to study in Thai, even
though most of them speak it only as a second language. They are also forced to learn about Buddhism, a part of
