Coup kills south Thailand peace chance

http://atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/SEA-01-100614.html



Coup kills south Thailand peace chance
By Anthony Davis
Jun 10, '14

PATTANI - Thailand's latest military coup has finally closed the door on the on-again, off-again debate over whether peace talks aimed at addressing a decade of separatist violence in the southernmost region of the country were over or merely stalled. They can now be officially pronounced dead and buried.

On the Thai state's side of the divide, the May 22 coup and swift purge of senior officials most closely associated with the talks initiated by former prime minister Yingkluck Shinawatra's administration drove the final nails into the coffin of a process already crippled by political changes at the top of the National Security Council (NSC), the point agency for the talks which began in February last year.

Having already turned its back on the Malaysian-facilitated process in Kuala Lumpur, the separatist movement meanwhile was digging a deep grave for peace prospects through a rolling military offensive that sowed panic across several southern cities. The May onslaught served both to underscore the rebels' return to the targeting of urban areas that had been off-limits during the talks and their apparent determination to cripple the economy in the contested border provinces of Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat.

After months of governmental dysfunction caused by debilitating street protests in the Thai capital, the current concentration of power in military hands in Bangkok on the one hand and the emergence of the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (National Revolutionary Front, or BRN) as the dominant force in the revolt in the south on the other has raised hopes among optimists for a reboot of the peace process and a return to substantive negotiations between parties with real authority.