Thailand’s forgotten war: recent blasts force southern insurgency back into the spotlight

It happens with horrifying frequency in southern Thailand, a country much of the world associates with pristine beaches and alluring, sapphire blue seas: a bomb goes off. Victims are maimed or killed. Security forces comb through blood-spattered wreckage and debris.

On Thursday and Friday, 11 more bombs rattled seven Thai provinces, killing four people and wounding dozens more. But this time was different: the targets were not in the country’s three southernmost provinces, where a bitter war waged by Muslim separatists has flared for more than a decade.

Instead, they shook towns filled with tourists further north, places like Hua Hin, where 11 foreigners were injured, most by a small explosive device that detonated in a narrow alley filled with bars, restaurants and massage parlours.

Ethnic Malay insurgents launched their armed bid for greater autonomy in Thailand’s so-called “deep south” in 2004. But more than 6,700 dead and 12,000 wounded later, the struggle seems more forgotten than ever – a reality illustrated by a flood of weekend media coverage that dwarfed the usual trickle of reporting about the far-southern conflict.

“Sadly, people get used to violence. The media gets bored with it. The story becomes mundane,” said Rungrawee Chalermsripinyorat, an independent analyst and expert on the insurgency.

If it turns out insurgents were responsible for last week’s bombings, it would mark a dangerous new expansion of the low-level war that has plagued the mostly Buddhist country’s southern border region with Malaysia. It could also prove a dangerous incentive to carry out more violence.

With few exceptions, the militants have so far avoided attacking known tourist destinations because “they didn’t want to be seen as a terrorist group,” Rungrawee said. “But that could change if attacks like this prove effective” by attracting greater attention to a war that’s ground on largely out of sight for years, he said.