Political solution desperately needed to resolve insurgency, top scholar says

A political solution as well as political leadership is needed to solve the prolonged separatist-related violence in the deep South, according to Duncan McCargo, an expert who has written three books about the conflict.

"This problem is not going to be solved by military means," said McCargo in an interview, adding that successive governments, including the current Yingluck Shinawatra administration, are still in a state of denial.

McCargo said some officials and politicians already admit the need for a political solution and some form of decentralisation but only in private - and they "are not going to say it in public".

The Englishman, a professor of Southeast Asian Politics at University of Leeds, said violence in the deep South, with over 5,000 deaths since 2004, is the most serious problem confronting Thailand today, although many Thais may not see it that way.

He said there was a need for support from different spectrums of society to press for political leadership and a political solution.

It was not enough, he said, that some military leaders acknowledge the limits of a heavy-handed approach that alienates locals and helps insurgents recruit more separatists.

"It's really time that people in Thailand realise that this is one of the most serious conflicts in the world. Nothing is going to get solved until it becomes a political priority. The problem isn't going away," he said, adding that while the level of violence had gone down since its height in 2004 to 2007, attacks are now more sophisticated.

"So, we can't say things are getting worse but that doesn't mean that it's improving in a profound sense."

What's more, said McCargo, the military and not the civilian government was directing policy in Pattani and the rest of the deep south. "The Internal Security Operations Command [Isoc] and the military is really controlling what is going on in the South. So that's another problem. We need political leadership [to end it].

"Five thousand people have been killed. Let's stop messing around. That's what we actually need. Everything is decided in Bangkok."

He criticised the mainstream Thai mass media for not doing enough to make society aware about the issue in a meaningful way.

"The media reflects the readers and the people who are consumers. The Thai media is not very big on getting ahead of public opinion," he said, adding that most Thai media coverage on the deep South was in a response mode. "There's a sense that what is happening in the province is not really news."

"The media doesn't want to show leadership. There's no audience for the stories about the South. People don't want to hear about it. There's a lot of news fatigue."

McCargo said the single biggest thing many Thais don't understand is that far more Muslims have been killed than Buddhists in the deep South.

At least six models of decentralisation and autonomy have been floated by experts and concerned citizens over the years, he said, and this ranged from having an elected governor to full-blown autonomy. McCargo said some form of decentralisation was an indispensable part of the solution. But public debate and space to enable people to decide on the matter was needed.

"Thailand is using a 19th century colonial model of public administration," he said.

Yet many Thai officials and leaders were plagued by the sense of paranoia that decentralisation means losing the territory and that Malaysia wants to take the three southern-most provinces, he said.

Concern about Malaysia made no sense as northern Malaysia was a stronghold for the opposition and the government would not want to strengthen the opposition by having Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala joining them, he said.

In regard to decentralisation, McCargo urged people to see it in a wider context of the general move to decentralisation in other provinces such as Chiang Mai.

Many conservative politicians and state officials remain "very afraid" about this, fearing that any kind of decentralisation will be "a threat to the established political order" when in fact it would strengthen the system, he said.