Thailand has been in the international headlines a lot over the past few years. First there was the tsunami, then the charges of corruption and the subsequent military coup. YouTube was banned and an airplane crashed on the resort island of Phuket.
There has been reasonably little coverage of the ongoing conflicts in the southernmost regions of Thailand. It’s hard to say whether government persecution drove the region’s majority Muslim population towards violence, or whether it is simply a case of extremist elements battling the government for independence.
The Nation, an independant Thai news service, has collected their articles on the conflcit into one place. Perusing through the articles, one gets the sense that, like all conflicts, this one hurts the average joes caught in the crossfire most.
The deep south of Thailand has largely been ignored by Thai officials when it comes to aid and development. For that reason, there is a lot of poverty. As is the case everywhere, poverty breeds discontent and allows more extreme views to be seen as “the answer to our problems.” This seems to have been the case in southern Thailand.For now, the violence seems to be ebbing and flowing, with accusations of abuses by government forces being followed by bombings in which police, troops, and, mostly, civilians are killed.
Whether a solution will ever be reached depends, it seems, on the governments willingness to develop the area, and continue doing so even if extremists continue their activities.
