PATTANI, Thailand — While Thai authorities are preoccupied with riots in the capital, a five-year-old Muslim uprising in the south of the country is intensifying, and Thailand’s troubled government and army are at odds about how to deal with it.
The bombings, shootings and beheadings show no signs of quieting. Machine-gun-mounted Humvees scour for roadside bombs, and soldiers sweep through villages suspected of harboring the insurgents. Helicopters clatter above a tropical landscape over which authorities have cast a security net more dense in terms of area and population than in Iraq.
The toll has risen to more than 3,400 dead and about 5,600 injured as the rebels pursue an ill-defined agenda that sometimes seems to call for an Islamic state separate from Buddhist-dominated Thailand but is mostly a reaction to a history of discrimination.
Last month, in a surge-style operation, 4,000 more soldiers were added to a security force of 60,000 already in the three southern provinces.
But stalked by years of failed military efforts, the government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva is considering less military-focused options. Those include lifting martial law and emergency decrees in the restive provinces, and reviving councils that once allowed Muslims more say in local matters.
But Abhisit’s energies have been absorbed by the mass demonstrations in Bangkok that are unrelated to the insurgency, and his political future is far from assured.
Critics say causes of the southern crisis are too deeply rooted to be destroyed militarily, stemming from a history of governments that distrust the Muslims and don’t regard them as “real Thais.”
“The way they deal with us, press down on our youth, just makes young men more anti-government. They become more violent and go into the jungle to fight,” said Nomee Yapa, whose father, a village imam, died in military custody. A court ruled in December that he had been tortured to death.
The military has been under intense pressure to take whatever measures necessary to suppress the violence, which includes terrorist tactics like beheadings and attacks on temples widely seen as intended to drive Buddhists from the area.
Now, the military says it is adopting less-aggressive tactics.
“We are doing much more to reach the people, to get closer to them. We are trying to forge more bonds with the villagers. We use martial law power only when necessary to deal with the insurgents,” said Maj. Gen. Saksin Klansnoh, the Pattani task force commander.
