The suspect, reportedly a member of Gerekan Mujahideen Islam Patani (GMIP), grabbed his AK47, ran to a nearby house and stood his ground, killing three officers before they could take him down. Two colonels and one sergeant died in the shootout that ended only when reinforcements of police and soldiers arrived.

 

The incident was echoed on Tuesday in Pattani's Kok Phoe district, when ten security officers thought that six suspected insurgents would come out from their vantage point and surrender. The gunfight lasted for about an hour. All six insurgents fought to the death, and no imam or local village elder could talk them out of it.

 

Beside the difficulties of fighting against young men who are willing to die for their cause, the Thai security forces have demonstrated that they have not learned much from the past. The fact that the ten officers had gone to Ban Tupah in Kok Phoe district without having a backup team with them, or positioned nearby, illustrates a low level of professionalism on their part.

 

Many security big wigs in Thailand can talk until the cows come home about security strategy. But when it comes to logistics, they are a bunch of amateurs. Is it because the security planners don't take the insurgency seriously enough? Or is it because the security agencies in this restive region don't know how to coordinate their work.

 

Response times for reinforcements following roadside bombings or ambushes are all too slow, and too often the security forces don't seem to be working under the same standard operating procedure when moving from place to place. For the insurgents, there is no difference between a joint coordinated patrol or a truck full of soldiers passing by. If the opportunity for an attack exists, they will take it more often than not. Military top brass say that checkpoints are supposed to be part of a security grid, but in reality these roadblocks do little more than irritate local residents, and perhaps even make a target for insurgents.

 

It has been said that in an insurgency, government forces are not out-fought but out-governed. In other words, the aim is to win the hearts and minds of local residents. But if the past five years is any indication, the psychological strategy, too, has been an utter failure on the part of the Thai authorities.

 

Besides coming up with a better standard operating procedure for the troops on the ground, the government also has to think outside of the box for a wider solution to the violence that has so far claimed 4,000 lives.