Thailand's Troubled South
By Shaheen Chughtai
27 October, 2004
Aljazeera
Thailand
is a predominantly Buddhist nation of around 60 million people, but
up to 10% of the population are Muslims, living mostly in the five southern
provinces bordering Malaysia.
Many southern inhabitants are also ethnic Malays who often speak a different
language from their more northern Thai neighbours.
In three of those
southern provinces - Yala, Pattani and Songkhla Muslims predominate.
The former sultanate of Pattani, which covered these provinces, is seen
by some as the cradle of Islam in the region.
The area was annexed
by Thailand in 1902 as a buffer against British-ruled Malaya.
During the 1970s
and early 1980s, however, an armed separatist movement sprang up seeking
the region's reunification with Malaysia.
But change in government
policy in the 1980s and 1990s, which aimed to strengthen national identity
among all Thais and boost Muslim political representation, plus wider
economic development, helped bring peace to the region.
More recently, Prime Minister Thaksin promised some $700 million in
aid for the south, including the opening of an Islamic university in
Narathiwat. But intermittent violence since late 2001 has prompted some
to suggest the integration drive is failing.
Clashes in April
2004, in which more than 100 mostly young local Muslims died, represented
a serious escalation of violence that began three months earlier with
a raid on a weapons cache.
Locals blamed excessive
force by the authorities for those deaths, most of which took place
inside one mosque.
But some analysts
have suggested the armed youths who battled security forces in April
may have been encouraged by armed Islamist groups outside Thailand.
Hanbali, a senior
commander in the Indonesia-based group Jemaah Islamiyah, which is alleged
to have carried out bombings in Bali and Jakarta and was planning major
attacks in Bangkok, was among five of the group's alleged members to
be arrested in southern Thailand in 2003.
But others have
blamed the government for stoking separatist sentiment with its heavy
handed crackdown in early 2004.
Martial law has
been imposed across the border provinces and Muslims still complain
of discrimination and relative poverty.