Bangkokpost, 13.1.2004

On Oct 30, 2003, this newspaper ran an article headlined ``Army steps up role, works with police in bid to restore peace''. In it Army Commander-in-Chief Gen Chaisit Shinawatra, the prime minister's cousin, was quoted as saying he was overseeing southern problems closely and had decided to use both hard and soft approaches to solve them. Hard approaches, which were not described, would be backed by effective intelligence while soft approaches were aimed at gaining support from locals.

Gen Chaisit said the army was intensifying its role in restoring peace in the southernmost provinces and would coordinate its efforts closely with the police. In addition, we were told, for the safety of local police, the army was distributing bullet-proof booths to southern police who work in danger zones. I assume the bullet-proof booths belong to the ``hard approach'' category.

Last week, at a well-attended and very informative discussion on the deep South problem at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand, one of the panellists suggested the deep South was Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's Iraq and the first major crisis facing his administration. All three panellists agreed that the dynamics surrounding the deep South had changed significantly, for the worse, and that any resolution of the discontent and disaffection felt by Thai Muslims would require a much deeper understanding of the issues than is currently being exhibited by our leadership.

While Mr Thaksin clearly feels the need for prompt and immediate action, upon which his reputation over the last three years has been partly built, the situation in our southernmost provinces is clearly one of great and increasing complexity, hardly susceptible to seven-day deadlines. In fact, that first deadline has already passed into oblivion without any results, except a great deal of wheel-spinning by all those in the hot seat.

This is also a situation in which off-the-cuff remarks are not only not helpful but downright dangerous.

The crisis in the deep South is being compounded, and has probably been exacerbated, by the fact that Mr Thaksin and his Thai Rak Thai party have their sights set on dislodging the Democrat party from their iron grip on southern national politics.

Notwithstanding the fact that any significantly larger parliamentary majority for Thai Rak Thai as a result of the next elections would effectively destroy a functioning parliamentary democracy in this country, at least for the time being, the South has become a battleground in which TRT appears determined to emerge victorious, whatever the cost.

This political battle was at least partly responsible for the dismantling by the present administration of the well-established and carefully nurtured security apparatus which had been put in place in the South. Two critical agencies which had produced a steady decline in the number of violent incidents in the deep South have been dissolved by Mr Thaksin. The Centre for Southern Border Provinces Administration in Yala was dissolved because it had served its purpose, and the Joint Command of Civilian, Military and Police, a tripartite coordinating body, was dissolved for the same reason.

The dissolution of these two agencies created a power vacuum in the region which has not been successfully filled, and it destroyed carefully constructed bridges reaching out to Thai Muslim civil society leaders. At the same time, recent international events, namely the war on terrorism, and the long-term creeping influence of the Saudi Arabian Wahhabi sect of Islam, described variously as a more puritanical or purer form of Islam, have combined to create a potentially explosive situation.

A Marshall Plan for the deep South might be one urgent priority since incomes there are lower than in the Northeast. But this plan should be designed and implemented by Thai Muslim administrators. With good will and an open heart, solutions can be found.

uKanjana Spindler is Assistant Editor, Editorial Pages, Bangkok Post.