Southern comfort - Thai insurgency falters

Thailand's military has been reorganised into a focused force notching up considerable gains against the Muslim-Malay insurgency in the south. Yet the separatists maintain an underlying capacity to strike back, despite their vulnerabilities.

After four years of strategic mismanagement and repeated tactical humiliations, Thailand's security forces appear finally to have checked the rise of the Malay-Muslim separatist insurgency in the kingdom's southern border provinces.

Overshadowed by political tensions in Bangkok, the gains in the south have received little attention in either the national or international media. Sporadic reports of bomb attacks and killings across the three majority-Muslim provinces of Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat and parts of neighbouring Songkhla have conveyed the impression that the insurgency continues apace.

However, incident statistics compiled by Jane's from both official and independent sources clearly indicate the extent to which the security forces have succeeded in reducing the violence.

Caption: A vehicle-borne improvised explosive device killed two and injured 13 when detonated outside the CS Pattani hotel on 15 March. Only one of the two devices in the car exploded owing to an error in wiring. 143 of 3,598 words