THE assertions may have been unsubstantiated, at least publicly, but foreign intelligence officers and diplomats in Bangkok during the 1980s held some common views on the separatist insurgency that had flared again then in southern Thailand.

There is foreign funding, they would say over a meal at some discreet restaurant. Saudi money.

I found this confusing, as I couldn't understand what motive the Saudi Arabian government might have had. It took some years before it became clear that it was not the government they were referring to, but private Saudi-based charities promoting an extremist religious agenda.

Young Muslims are being radicalised in the madrasahs, they would explain. Several pious Islamic countries and private institutions were providing promising young people from southern Thailand, as they were doing elsewhere, with scholarships to study their faith in Islamic religious schools overseas. Most benefited, but some emerged with a hardened ideology that they sought to spread in Thailand, and a few among the latter were further inspired to take up arms.

These aspiring insurgents were being trained and armed by Libya, they said. Tripoli has a secular perspective, but was actively supporting a number of revolutionary movements at that time. In the 1970s and 1980s, this agenda included shipping arms to the Provisional Irish Republican Army.

Finally, they argued, there is a connection to sympathisers in Malaysia.

Regular uprisings have characterised southern Thailand - centred on the provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat - since it was annexed by Bangkok more than 200 years ago. The root causes are varied but the central issue ultimately involves a lack of empowerment for the region's population, the majority being ethnic Malay and Muslim.

The unrest evident in the 1980s eventually fell to a simmer before coming to a boil again in 2004. And this underscores the salient feature of every long-term conflict: They invariably ebb and flow in intensity.

The Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG), in a report issued on Dec 8, notes the current trend. 'Military sweeps from July 2007 curtailed violence in the south... While the number of attacks so far in 2009 is still below the peak since the insurgency restarted in 2004, the trend is upward,' it states. 'The insurgency has proved resistant to military suppression.'

The Thai armed forces appear to disagree, convinced they can achieve a military solution. This view is doubtless heartened by Sri Lanka's victory earlier this year over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

But the LTTE was a highly centralised group under a charismatic leader, with a conventional military force that could fight set-piece battles. The southern Thai insurgents, by contrast, seem organisationally diffuse and use guerilla tactics under shadowy chiefs whose linkages remain unclear.

This suggests that the military can suppress the rebellion but not defeat it so long as the root causes remain unaddressed. As before, it would simply return to a simmer until it boils over again.

The political turmoil besetting Bangkok means that the military continues to direct Thailand's southern strategy. The ICG notes that the civilian government under Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has vowed to reclaim the leading role, so far with little success, and has launched some new initiatives.

These include a massive development programme approved in April, worth US$1.86 billion (S$2.6 billion) over four years. Its implementation has been problematic and its rationale is flawed, presuming that the insurgency is driven at its core by economic issues rather than political grie-vances.

Mr Abhisit has meanwhile publicly dismissed negotiating with the militants for fear of bolstering their legitimacy, reflecting a policy in place since 2004. His government has nevertheless pursued several tracks of unofficial dialogue through third-party facilitators, none of which has proven productive as the insurgency's leadership remains fractious.

For outsiders, the path towards a sustainable solution is clear: some suitable level of local autonomy providing southerners with a voice over issues they view as critical. The ICG report supports this view.

'Governance reform has proved to be a crucial component in successful negotiations in several 'separatist' conflicts,' it states, adding: 'Without widespread popular support, which is unlikely outside of the south, it would be political suicide for the Abhisit government to take any action that might be seen as promoting autonomy.'

Even if the Abhisit government supported negotiating some form of political autonomy for southern Thailand, which is far from clear, every other component of the country's ruling elite is steadfastly opposed to any such solution.

'This taboo,' observes the ICG, 'has deterred efforts to explore new governance arrangements that could help end the conflict.'

It is a discouraging truth.