BANGKOK: Prospects for peace in Thailand’s troubled south have dimmed because of escalating incidents of violence by shadowy, Muslim-Malay insurgent groups on the one hand and calls for tougher measures by Buddhist monks on the other.

Caught between the spiralling violence by the insurgent groups and the angry monks is the one hope for a peaceful resolution of the two-year-old ethnic conflict — the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC). Just how daunting is the task faced by the NRC was brought home, over the past two weeks, by a string of attacks in the predominantly Malay-Muslim southern provinces, including the derailing of a train, on Thursday night, by placing bombs on the tracks.

The attack was the worst of its kind since the region, that includes the border provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat, adjacent to Malaysia, was first struck by violence in January 2004. It came a day after militants mounted a well-coordinated attack on 63 communities in the three provinces which included raids on security outposts that were robbed of 90 weapons. The week before, suspected militants broke a taboo, by attacking a Buddhist temple in Pattani, killing a 76-year-old Buddhist monk and two teenage temple boys, and damaging temple property and desecrating a statue of the Buddha. In response to the murder and desecration, over one hundred monks from Pattani mounted fierce criticism of the NRC and called on the government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to disband the body formed seven months ago.

The monks’ wrath reflected growing sentiment among people in this predominantly Buddhist country against suspected insurgents who have targeted Thai-Buddhist civilians and government officials and even beheaded monks in the streets over the past 21 months. “This anger can be understood, since the government looks powerless to stop the violence, so how helpful can the NRC be for them?” asks Chaiwat Satha-Anand, a Thai Muslim academic who is a member of the NRC. “The divisions are indeed deepening between the Buddhists and the Muslims due to the taboos being violated and the escalating violence.” Yet the NRC, which has among its ranks distinguished statesmen, academics, parliamentarians, human rights activists and government officials, is far from conceding defeat, he confirmed during an interview to IPS.

“Our agenda is long term, to begin building bridges between the two communities before the violence ends,” he added. “There are many pockets of hope in the area, where the communities are living together, that we could strengthen.” But the rapid escalation of violence places such pockets of hope in peril. During the first six months of this year, there have been more than 700 incidents and the attacks by the militants are becoming much more lethal,” says Panitan Wattanayagorn, a national security expert at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University. “There is clearly a sign of sophistication in the bombs that have gone off this year. Three of them were over 50 kg,” he told IPS. “It is a spike from attacks with knives, pistols and guns.”

At the current level of violence, he expected this year to be far bloodier and more volatile than 2004. “During all of last year there were nearly 900 incidents, and that number has almost been reached in only the first six months of this year,” he added. The spate of attacks is in marked contrast to the decade that preceded it, where conflict between suspected Malay-Muslim militants and government troops was of very low intensity, with an annual average of 30 to 35 incidents. In the year 2000, one of the quietest periods, there were only eight incidents, resulting in 10 deaths, according to Panitan.

The death toll in the current cycle of violence has topped 1,000 people, most of them victims of attacks by the suspected militants. They include teachers, community leaders, rubber collectors, soldiers and policemen, both from the Buddhist and Muslim communities. Government forces in the region, which number some 15,000 soldiers and 18,000 policemen, have been responsible for brutalities too. The worst of these was deaths from suffocation while in custody of 78 Muslim boys and men rounded up after a protest in the southern town of Tak Bai in October, last year. Human rights groups have also expressed concern about increasing cases of “disappearances” of Malay-Muslim boys and reports of torture in police custody in the south.

Behind this escalating violence is a history that places the heavily centralised Thai state at odds with the south’s Malay-Muslim minority that accounts for about 2.3 million people of this South-east Asian nation’s 64 million population. The Muslims have complained of cultural and economic discrimination ever since the former Muslim kingdom of Pattani, which the provinces of Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani were part of, was annexed in 1902 by Siam, as Thailand was then known. The 1970s saw a burst of violence in the south after Malay-Muslim separatist groups launched attacks in a bid to reclaim the lost kingdom of Pattani.

“The time for reconciliation is so urgent now and the NRC is our best hope of resolving the differences from the past and overcoming the problem of today,” Chiranuch Premchaiporn of ‘PrachaThai,’ an on-line publication that has been focusing on the southern violence in its coverage, told IPS. “We have already written editorials criticising those who have attacked the NRC,” she added. “If the NRC was not around, the violence could be worse.” —Dawn/IPS News Service