A peace process that’s going nowhere

Thailand's negotiators in the deep South conflict are preparing to publish a report outlining their work and accomplishments during the 2015-16.

Chief negotiator General Aksara Kerdpol told reporters that the accomplishments of his team have not been publicised widely enough, hence the decision to make their work known in both Thai and English.

He said Thai negotiators have been meeting "legitimate representatives of various insurgency groups" and in the next round the Thai side will request that these groups order the militants to cut back on violent incidents to demonstrate good faith as they work for peace.

The Thai side will even allow the separatists where in the Malay-speaking provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat they would like to reduce the violence.

While insisting that the ongoing peace dialogue was the best way to resolve the conflict, Aksara conveniently ignored other factors that have rendered his peace initiative hollow, placing it somewhere between a hoax and a big leap of faith.

First of all, the six so-called separatist groups that he has been working with - the so-called MARA Patani - have never demonstrated any command or control over the insurgents on the ground.

Sources in the Thai government who work on the southern conflict closely said they don't believe that the MARA Patani wield any influence with the militants.

In fact, the current crop of junta don't even want to recognise MARA Patani as an entity for fear that the umbrella group would become too "institutionalised and internationalised" and therefore decided to call them "Party B".

What Aksara is not telling the public is that the Army was not involved with this peace initiative, which was launched by the Yingluck government on February 28, 2013 in Kuala Lumpur.

The initiative brought Hasan Taib into the picture. Here was a man nobody knew and he was not able to deliver on anything.

The second time around, with the Army in charge of this half-baked peace initiative following the coup, they got a group of young Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) cadres that a lot of people in the deep South knew.

But then there was the question of whether these individuals - Sukree Hari, Mah Chuwoe and a handful of others - had the endorsement of the BRN's ruling council. Only Aksara and his associates believe that they do.

The facts on the ground tell a different tale. Even BRN insurgents on the ground and outside the country are discrediting this current peace initiative that had started off on a false premise. Unfortunately for Aksara, he inherited this mess and now nobody knows how to get off this bandwagon.

If only there was a reset button that Aksara and the junta could push. But that's a bit of a wishful thinking.

Then premier Yingluck Shinawatra launched the initiative because she wanted to save her brother's skin. Let's not forget that Thaksin was ousted, among other things, because of his handling of the conflict in the deep South.

Moreover, the Army made a concerted effort to discredit her initiative while Yingluck's people were running the show. And then there was the May 2014 coup and the decision on whether to continue with the Yingluck peace initiative that the military had tried to derail.

Even today, it doesn't seem that peace is on the mind of the junta. They want the number of violent incident to drop but won't talk about meaningful concessions to the separatists or the Malays of Patani.

And every time they pushed that line about peace and the peace initiative being on the right track, the insurgents responded with more violence on the ground. The spike in violence these past weeks, especially the car bomb near the Pattani border patrol police station that wounded seven officers and five bystanders, are reminders that peace won't come easily in the deep South.

More than 6,500 people have been killed in this past 12 years of insurgency violence and the end is nowhere in sight. Perhaps Bangkok should try to think out of the box and find some fresh ideas.

It is obvious that the current crop of negotiators can't do much except hope that the real separatists - the men with command and control over the insurgents - will join their initiative.

Unfortunately, hope appears to be the only thing they have. And if the Thai junta won't think in terms of deliverables - give and take and/or making meaningful concessions - the only thing that Aksara and his team can do is sit back, cross their

fingers and hope for a better tomorrow.