Thai Army Announces Reinforcements For South

Tweet

The Thai army will send 3,000 paramilitary troopers to bolster security in the troubled, majority Muslim south early next year, military sources said Saturday. Army Chief-of-Staff Montri Sangkhasap said that in January the army will deploy 10 new companies of Rangers or paramilitary troops, in Thailand's five southernmost provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani, Yala, Songkhla and Satun. Another 20 Ranger companies will be dispatched in April, said the state-run Thai News Agency (TNA). One company normally comprises about 100 men and officers. Sonthi's announcement comes after Thai Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont said he anticipated renewed attacks by the southern separatists before or after the New Year celebrations. Almost 2,000 people have died in clashes, bombings, shootings and beheadings in southern Thailand over the past three years. Surayud, who was appointed prime minister by the military after a coup on September 19 ousting caretaker premier Thaksin Shinawatra, said it was too early to assess whether his government's policies in the south have been effective. Unlike Thaksin, whose heavy-handed tactics were blamed for inflaming a long-simmering separatist movement in the area, Surayud has taken a more lenient approach to the situation. He has publicly apologized to the southerners for past government atrocities and mistakes and had revived the Southern Border Provinces Administrative Centre (SBPAC), a special agency that was credited with listening to the concerns of the local people. Thaksin had dissolved the SBPAC in 2002, giving more authority to the police who are even more detested than the military in the three provinces. Surayud said the government must wait until the SBPAC starts operations on January 1, 2007, to evaluate the current situation in the region. Violence has increased in the region since Surayud came to power, which some analysts consider a sign that separatists are trying to provoke a government crackdown on local Muslims to ensure the population's continued support. On Thursday unidentified assailants gunned down two women teachers in Pattani province. One woman later died in hospital making her the 61st teacher to be slain in the area in the past three years. The south, once the independent Islamic sultanate of Pattani, was first conquered by Bangkok in 1786 and came under direct rule of the Thai bureaucracy in 1902. A separatist struggle against Thailand's predominantly Buddhist state has simmered on and off since World War II, but took a more violent turn in January 2004, when militants attacked army bases and stole 300 guns. Pattani's decades-old separatist movement has been fuelled by the local population's sense of religious and cultural alienation from the predominantly Buddhist Thai state. More than 80 per cent of the two million people in the region are Muslim.