LEEDS, England — Thailand's former prime minister, Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, recently ignited a furor when he proposed that the separatist campaign in his country's Muslim-majority southern provinces might be solved politically, with a form of self-rule. Thailand's ruling Democrat Party immediately called Chavalit's remarks "traitorous."
But recent developments surrounding Afghanistan's elections have highlighted the shortcomings of using military force alone to resolve a civil war. This precedent offers a lesson for Thailand and other countries facing intractable insurgencies. As Aristotle put it, "politics is the master science in the realm of action."
In June 2006, I sat in a village in southern Thailand's Yala province with several ordinary-looking young men who had taken part in extraordinary events. They had joined the militants who had attacked a dozen security checkpoints across three southern provinces on April 28, 2004.