ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the origin and history of the insurgent movements in Thailand's southern region. It discusses how the insurgents' violent tactics potentially influence the dynamics of this deadly conflict. The chapter examines how violence used by the insurgent groups, once promised to deliver anticipated achievements, would instead undermine the groups' ultimate objectives. It proposes to distinguish the functions of insurgents' use of violence into "obvious consequences" and "less obvious" ones. The insurgency-driven violence in southern Thailand, once thought to be resolved, gradually re-emerged in the form of small-scale attacks by mid-2001. The chapter argues that the violent tactics of Thailand's southern insurgent groups have both obvious and less obvious consequences. It also argues the violent strategy used by insurgent groups in Thailand's southern deadly conflict, which re-erupted in 2004, yields obvious and less-obvious consequences, based on Robert Merton's original concepts of manifest and latent functions.