Thailand's quiet civil war: why Southern Malay Muslims are rebelling in Patani

Duncan McCargo, University of Leeds, U.K.

More than 2500 people have been killed in a low-intensity civil war in Thailand's Muslim-majority southern border provinces since 2004. Militants have targeted numerous civilian as well as military personnel, and most of the fatalities have been Muslims. Yet this conflict has gone largely unreported in the international media, and very little serious academic research has been done on the issues behind the fighting. Is this is a separatist struggle, or part of some regional or global jihad? Can we view the conflict through the lens of the ubiquitous'war on terror'? In this presentation, Duncan McCargo will draw upon a twelve month's fieldwork based in Pattani, 2005-2006, during which he interviewed more than 250 informants. He will argue that the southern Thai conflict is essentially a homegrown, political struggle that reflects the Bangkok government's loss of political legitimacy in the deep South.

Duncan McCargo is professor of Southeast Asian politics at the University of Leeds, UK. He has researched and published widely on comparative politics in the Asia-Pacific region (including on Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan and Vietnam), but is best known for his contributions to academic debates on the politics of Thailand. His publications include Chamlong Srimuang and the New Thai Politics (1997), Politics and the Press in Thailand (2000), Reforming Thai Politics (ed., 2002), The Thaksinization of Thailand (with Ukrist Pathmanand, 2005), and Rethinking Thailand's Southern Violence (ed., 2007) - as well as his widely-used 2005 Pacific Review article on Thailand's 'network monarchy'. Duncan is currently finalizing a monograph on the Southern Thai conflict, to be published by Cornell University Press in 2008.

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