Word: southernization
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...generation is a fertile recruiting ground for the insurgency. Southern Muslims have long felt neglected and marginalized by successive Bangkok governments, a sense reinforced by clumsy attempts to assimilate their Malay-speaking Islamic culture. Many Muslim youths are first groomed for rebellion at tadika, or private weekend schools, where they are taught that the invading Siamese (as Thais were then known) stifled their religion and enslaved their people, a version of Pattani history still banned by the state. History seemed to repeat itself when Thaksin sent thousands of troops south to quell the rebellion, culminating with Tak Bai, which radicalized...
...generation of militants is tightening its grip on the south, employing increasingly brutal methods that threaten to wreck an uncommon mood of conciliation in Bangkok. The leader, who calls himself Hassam and commands 250 fighters, claims there is now at least one militant cell in 80% of southern villages. His and Ma-ae's rare testimony help to illuminate a shadowy insurgency remarkable for its secrecy, resilience and bloodiness...
...crush the rebellion. He has personally apologized for the government's past heavy-handedness, including the notorious Tak Bai incident in which 85 Thai Muslim protesters died, and has acknowledged Islam's special place in a corner of this predominantly Buddhist nation. His government has also revived the Southern Border Provinces Administrative Center, a peace and development agency credited with keeping a lid on the violence until Thaksin dismantled it in 2002; kick-started the investigation into the 2004 abduction of a prominent Muslim human-rights lawyer, Somchai Neelaphaijit, who is still missing; and last week announced the formation...
...will these initiatives be enough to douse the southern fires, which have burned sporadically since Thailand annexed the independent Pattani sultanate a century ago? Ma-ae and Hassam suggest otherwise. In modern times, the insurgency has been driven by groups such as the Pattani United Liberation Organization (P.U.L.O.) and Barisan Revolusi Nasional (National Revolutionary Front, or B.R.N.), set up in the 1960s. The new militants are more ruthless and, while their youthful ranks overlap with P.U.L.O. and B.R.N., they refuse to publicly align themselves with any insurgent outfit. Their leaders are unknown. In the local Malay dialect, the new militants...
...this in a hotel room, out of public view, fearful of meeting the same fate as his father. Militant leader Hassam is different. A doleful-looking man with an ill-concealed revolver in his anorak, Hassam chooses to meet with TIME in a open-air teashop in the southern city of Yala?a measure of how confident the insurgents have become...