Bomb attacks and religious violence in Thailand's 'Deep South' leave children traumatised

Life in the towns of the three southernmost provinces of Thailand - Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala - appears relatively normal on the surface. Even with the threat of bomb attacks and the presence of security forces in large numbers, the towns are busy during the day - although eerily quiet come nightfall. The ethnic Malay Muslims, who make up 80 per cent of the population in the region, and their Buddhists neighbours work and live alongside each other without any obvious hostility.

The deep south is largely rural, however, and it is in the countryside that the relentless cycle of tit-for-tat killings rages. Amid the rubber plantations, coconut trees and rice paddy fields, a stark apartheid operates, with villages either Muslim or Buddhist.

The sheer scale of the conflict in Thailand's deep south, and the fact that it is taking place in just three provinces, each with a relatively small population, means almost no one in the region has been left untouched by the insurgency. More than eight years of guerrilla warfare between Muslim separatists fighting for an independent country and the Thai state has had a devastating impact on children and farmers, Buddhist monks and local officials.

Children must come to terms with their teachers being assassinated and their classrooms being burned to the ground as the insurgents step up their assault on the school system, which they regard as symbolic of the Thai "colonisation" of their land. Rubber tappers and rice farmers are the victims of reprisals just because they are Buddhist, or Muslim. And monks, too, have become targets, alongside the Thai security forces and local bureaucrats.