It is hard to feel much sympathy for Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s assumption of sweeping emergency powers throughout the country in the wake of the growing unrest in Thailand’s three predominantly Muslim southernmost provinces. The accelerating series of attacks launched by the insurgents in recent weeks clearly confront the government in Bangkok with an extremely serious situation. Nevertheless, introducing dictatorial measures on phone tapping and detention without charge as well as press censorship is unlikely to help and indeed will probably make matters considerably worse. As has been proven time and again — Iraq is only the latest examples — an insurgency that can draw to any significant degree upon the support of a local community becomes ever more difficult to crush with main force. Formerly moderate members of the rebel community become radicalized by violent responses of the authorities. The harder a government tries to crush an insurgency, the more each side is embittered and polarized. Worse, even supposing the rebels were defeated and Bangkok’s undisputed rule returned to its Muslim provinces, the fire of revolt would not be extinguished forever, merely dampened down. Worse, such a victory would make the business of a negotiated restoration of confidence and unity that much more difficult.

The only way to bring a long-lasting solution to this ugly outbreak of violence is to address the root causes, the discrimination and desperation among Thai Muslims, which has fueled the insurgency. During his re-election campaign this February, Thaksin had promised to create a National Reconciliation Commission. Though this body has been set up, many Thais feel that it has not been given a proper opportunity to do its work. One of its members protested yesterday that the emergency powers would do nothing to ease the crisis. Thais are also uneasy both about the increasingly tough line being taken by the government and the implication for the whole country of the state of emergency.

Many decent Thai Muslims have been deeply shocked by the cold-blooded murders carried out by extremists in their community. However, after years in which their region’s proud past has been ignored and the Thai Muslim community as a whole been treated as a second class citizenry, their sympathy with the anger and despair of the rebels, but not their methods must be considerable. In the last 18 months some 810 people have died in the violence. That death toll could rocket if the Thai government now seeks to use an iron fist in the south of the country. There are outside forces in the shape of Al-Qaeda who may already be seeking to stir the pot of misery. If Bin Laden’s evil is added to the crisis then any possible resolution could be buried for years under even greater violence and recrimination. Maybe it is still not too late to seize the initiative from the men of violence. This cannot be achieved by draconian measures that threaten the freedom and well being of all Thais, not just the disadvantaged Muslim minority. Thaksin could even now row back from these ill-advised and precipitate emergency powers.