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For the past seven months or so, Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), one of the long-standing separatist movements that control most insurgent activities in Thailand’s southern provinces, has been stepping up its pressure on locally hired Defence Volunteer (DV), security guards for the Ministry of Interior. The objective was to force the latter to quit working for the “Siamese State”.
It employs messages, often in the form of graffiti sprayed on the backroads and leaflets. These are in response to the Internal Security Operation Command – Region 4’s (ISOC4) effort to replace regular soldiers with DVs.
The idea is to have local Melayu DV officers to look after Melayu affairs in the region, explained one Thai army intelligence officer who spoke on condition of anonymity. But BRN did not see it that way and has shown they have no problem taking the fight to the DVs, regardless of their ethnicity.
DVs are locally hired security details who fall under the Ministry of Interior’s chain of command. Their functions involved manning checkpoints along the roads and at entrances of government installations.
For much of the past two decades – since the current wave of separatist insurgency resurfaced in this Malay historical homeland –DVs have been largely unchallenged by the insurgents as long as they do not engage in intelligence-gathering activities for the government or become part of military operations.
This changed 10 years ago, when ISOC4 was toying with the so-called Tung Yang Daeng model, named after a district in Pattani province where a fierce gunfight between BRN combatants and government troops jolted the nerve of the security apparatus and forced them to the drawing board.
The idea then was to assign the Ministry’s people — village chiefs, tambon staff and DVs — more onerous security duties, such as patrolling violence-prone areas alongside regular army soldiers and Paramilitary Rangers.
Naturally, it would place them in the line of fire of insurgents. It was a bigger plan to gradually pull out troops from other regional commands and replace them with Paramilitary Rangers.
The Thai army had reasons to be optimistic at the time. The number of violent incidents was declining, from just under 2,400 in 2007 to 850 in 2015, according to Deep South Watch’s statistics. Deep down, however, there was an understanding that as long as insurgency exists, Thailand can never declare victory.
The absence of violence – or, in this case, the reduction – does not mean peace, not as long as the narrative that equates separatism to a moral obligation is still alive and well.
Thailand went through a decade of relative calm in the 1990s, thinking that the conflict in the far south had ended. Combatants of the various movements may have put down their weapons, returned to their village and their leaders took up residency in foreign countries abroad. But the narrative of the Patani Malay – one that sees Patani as the Malays’ historical homeland worth liberating – never went away.
Like many other initiatives in Thailand that did not materialise, the Tung Yang Daeng model disappeared from the memories and the discussions of security planners.
Escalation
Worse, violence has increased steadily over the past five years in the far south. Gone are the guerrilla tactics that usually involve roadside bombings followed by a brief two-to-three minutes gunfight before they retreat to the woods.
These days, attacks are much more coordinated, with gunfights sometimes lasting up to half an hour. More importantly, these attacks must be heard, meaning they have to create a psychological impact in the minds of the security apparatus.
The 9 March 2025 attack on the Sungai Kolok district office by a 10-strong BRN unit – resulting in the death of two DVs and the injury of eight others – was an example of this. The assault ended with a car bomb that ripped through the compound moments after the combatants retreated.
The incident came just days after it was clear that the Thai government had rejected BRN’s counter-proposals for a ceasefire during Ramadhan this year.
Two weeks before the start of Ramadhan, the National Security Council (NSC) suggested that the two sides observe a unilateral ceasefire during the holy month. BRN agreed in principle but had demands of their own. These include reducing the number of days from 30 to 15, releasing an unspecified number of prisoners, permitting monitoring of the ceasefire by international and local observers, and requiring the government to appoint a negotiating team to restart peace talks.
When it became clear that Bangkok was not interested in any of these counter proposals, BRN combatants took over the course of direction on the ground, starting with the 9 March 2025 raid of Sungai Kolok district office. That was the first spike of violence that unnerved the security agencies – especially the DVs throughout the region – as it became clear that they are now deemed to be legitimate targets by BRN.
The same evening also saw a double-tap operation in Pattani’s San Buri district in which a smaller bomb drew a group of ordinance officers to the scene just to be hit by a much bigger explosive. One officer died, and two were wounded.
The already tense situation became even deadlier after the shooting of Abdulroning Lateh, 60, on 18 April 2025. Abdulroning was a senior figure in the military wing of BRN who spent the past two decades as a mentor for the new generation of combatants. As expected, the Thai Army blamed BRN for his killing.
His death sparked a series of seemingly revenge attacks by combatants who ignored unwritten rules of engagement. They hit soft targets, including the shooting of a Buddhist novice on 22 April 2025 in the Saya Yoi district of Songkhla. A senior monk and another novice were wounded from the same attack.
Two days earlier in Narathiwat’s Khok Khan sub-district, an 80kg explosive exploded near a police flat as officers lined up in formation for their daily routine. A passenger vehicle full of Islamic religious students was approaching at the time the explosive detonated. Nine people, including seven children aged between 7 and 15, were wounded from the shrapnel.
On 28 April 2025, two separate attacks in Yala province resulted in the death of a DV whose vehicle was set on fire in the Banang Sata district and a border patrol police officer who was killed after a roadside bomb went off, flipping his armoured vehicle into an upside-down wreck and wounding two other colleagues inside.
Separately, on 30 April 2025, a sniper wounded a police officer as he was about to set up a checkpoint in the backroad of Yala’s Pron subdistrict.
A new low came on 2 May 2025, when gunmen killed four – including a 9-year-old girl and a 76-year-old blind woman – in Narathiwat’s Tak Bai and Chanae districts. The elderly woman was riding a motorbike with her son, who suffered a bullet wound, while the young girl and two other residents were killed by a group of six gunmen on three motorbikes who fired multiple rounds into a house.
The next day, a bomb went off in Narathiwat’s Rueso district, not far from a public event where the Deputy Minister of Interior Sabeeda Thaised was about to open. Nobody was injured, but the explosion was close enough to rattle the nerves of the participants and the country’s security apparatus.
In a rare public statement, dated 5 May 2025, BRN condemned the violence against soft targets and reiterated its long-standing policy of not targeting civilians. The statement did not address the spike or the soft targets. It was understood that the statement was not just for public consumption but for the combatants who had gone off the rules of engagement.
Condemnation against the soft targets poured in relentlessly. There was a direct intervention from a local political actor who met with BRN representatives to call for the return of civility and reminded the BRN leaders of the commitment their organisation made with members of the international community about rules of engagement and respect for humanitarian norms. Since the visit and the statement, civilian targets have gone off the hit list. The only exception was the shooting of a Malay Muslim couple, 46 and 48, on 17 May 2025 in Raman district of Yala province. This time around, nobody is pointing their fingers at BRN.
Generally, BRN still sees itself as an underground movement, although public statements are issued to mark certain anniversaries and critical issues. Some observers said the group lacks a proper communication strategy, which is only possible if there is an identifiable political wing to speak publicly on their behalf.
Thailand’s and Malaysia’s refusal to officially acknowledge the presence of BRN’s political wing and allow it to operate independently is an obstacle to the movement’s move to engage the global community and its own constituency.
While condemnation against the killing of the novice poured in, sympathy for Abdulroning, on the other hand, was whispered as any public outcry would invite the wrath of Thai security officials, whose homemade narrative always put the blame on BRN. Mistrust of the state apparatus is still high, and no government has ever succeeded in convincing local Muslims that they are the good guys, much less winning the latter’s hearts and minds.
International engagement with BRN tends to be discreet and focus on political outcomes and not enough on capacity building. Overall, however, respect for humanitarian norms and principles has improved over the years; that is why the alleged attacks on the monk and novices irked a great deal of people, including local political activists like The Patani who advocate peaceful and political means to resolve the conflict.
But that is easier said than done. The Thai military is not open to discussion on sensitive issues, such as rights to self-determination for this historically contested region. Reference to the combatants as “shahid” – Arabic for martyr – could land one in jail.
Standstill
Meanwhile, the peace talks here have come to a complete standstill because the government refuses to appoint a negotiating team until BRN ends their campaign of violence, although Bangkok has softened its position by suggesting the talks can resume if BRN stops hitting soft targets.
Chulalongkorn University’s military expert, Prof Surachart Bamrungsuk, said BRN must guarantee that there be a cessation of violence and that civilians would be protected. BRN countered by stating that even a reduction of violence must be negotiated.
Incidentally, for much of the past two decades of on-and-off peace initiatives, Thailand has never wanted to engage in any formal arrangement or ink anything unless it is the final peace agreement, if and when there is ever one.
Speaking to the media, Defence Minister Phumtham Wechayachai tried hard to convince the public why the peace talks had to be halted. He said the past talks were failures because representatives from BRN at the negotiating table were not key decision-makers. He added that the spike in violence suggests that BRN representatives do not have influence in the movement and added that Malaysia will be working with Thailand to bring key BRN leaders to the negotiating table.
Thai security officials and BRN representatives rejected his claim, saying the movement has, time and again, publicly and secretly, demonstrated to the Thai officials that they have command and control over the combatants on the ground. The 45-day ceasefire during Ramadhan in 2022 was a case in point, not to mention the 24 months unilateral ceasefire during the COVID-19 outbreak. There were also secret dealings, a clearinghouse of sort, between the two sides to go over the incidents on the ground to prove to the Thai government that they were dealing with the right organisation.
Local activists said the gap between political representation and the armed forces is more of a Thai problem, pointing to the unwillingness of the hardliners to allow the peace process to move beyond a talk shop, which participants at the table referred to as confidence-building measures (CBM).
Up to now, however, the two sides have never discussed anything concrete. The Joint Comprehensive Plan Toward Peace (JCPP), the so-called roadmap for peace, put together by Thailand and BRN, with the help of foreign NGOs and the Malaysian government working in separate and often competing tracks, spent the past three years going back and forth on the negotiated text.
The best they could do was identify three items to be on the negotiating table: reduction of violence, public consultation and a political solution to the conflict. Specific details are to be negotiated in the next phase of the talk.
However, JCPP could be scrapped, as the current Thai government is likely to dismiss foreign participation, thus putting all the mediation and conflict resolution work on Malaysia. Surachart also suggested that JCPP should be ditched, saying the framework puts Thailand at a disadvantage.
If anything, Phumtham sounded like a broken record – playing up the “meager BRN negotiators” rhetoric when in fact there is no political will from Bangkok to come to the table and make any concessions to BRN or the people of Patani.
BRN insisted that the Thai side does not get to decide who or which individual leader they can talk to; Bangkok will have to talk to whoever the movement sends. But the Thai government has always wanted to deal with the BRN military leaders, believing in their ability to sweet-talk them out of the conflict, or at least reduce the violence.
Political activists like Artef Sohko, president of The Patani, said Thai governments’ interest in the peace process has always centred on public relations stunts, not the root causes or the wellbeing of the people of this region.
Besides not having anything to offer, Thailand’s disregard for negotiation protocol reflects poorly on the government’s leaders and security planners. Many in the BRN movement, on the other hand, think Thailand’s peace initiatives are aimed at getting them to surface so they can be eliminated at a later date when talks produce no concrete result.
A government source who works on the conflict sayid Phumtham is afraid that restarting the peace talks amid the spike in violence would make Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra look weak. She is already at the receiving end of many criticisms for just about every policy initiative.
Her father, Thaksin, on the other hand, appeared to want to start his own initiative, reaching out to Malaysian authorities to facilitate a meeting with BRN top leaders, preferably in Phuket. Legal charges against the former prime minister prohibit him from traveling abroad. A senior Malaysian officer said Thaksin just wanted “a photo op” for his public relations purposes.
BRN said they are willing to meet with Thaksin or official Thai representatives, but protocol must be respected. A peace process has many stakeholders and components, from the negotiators themselves to the policy-research-technical committees, as well as independent observers.
A BRN representative said their negotiators are mandated by their organisation; the negotiators are not just anybody, and no one individual can make a decision for the entire group. Thai officials at the negotiating table, on the other hand, said Artef, have difficulties convincing its own military to follow the political path set by the policymakers.
