This is an important and worthwhile book that should be read by anyone seeking to understand the history and evolution of political violence in Southeast Asia, including the origins of contemporary militant Islamist terrorism. Paul J. Smith, Contemporary Southeast Asia This very fine collection shows how and why Southeast Asia has been afflicted with terrorism from the end of World War II to the present time. No other volume tells us as much about the period and area. Anyone interested in the general theory and practice of terrorism and insurgency will find it indispensable. David C. Rapoport, University of California, Los Angeles, US and Editor of Journal of Terrorism and Political Violence This stimulating collection of essays underlines how Southeast Asia has again, as at the height of the Cold War, been pushed towards the top of the list of world conflict zones by the collision between long-standing regional problems and more recent external frictions. Anyone needing to learn more about the relationship between the war on terror and Southeast Asia, particularly regarding terrorism in Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines, will need to consult this work. Brian P. Farrell, National University of Singapore, and author of The Defence and Fall of Singapore 1940 1942 This book is an excellent addition to the literature on political violence in Southeast Asia providing a wealth of detail on terrorism, guerilla insurgency, and the use of terror and repression by governments. The book is especially valuable for the broad coverage of many different groups (not just Islamic ones), inclusion of the activities of governments, and a variety of opinions and views on terrorism and political violence. This book should be one of the essential resources for academics, policymakers, or anyone else interested in terrorism, insurgency, and political violence in the region. It is an extremely valuable tool for one and all. James M. Lutz, Indiana University Purdue University, US and co-author of Global Terrorism, with Brenda Lutz This is an excellent volume, which is very well conceived and balanced in its treatment of the problem of terrorism and insurgency in Southeast Asia. This volume will greatly advance our empirical understanding of conflict and violence in this pivotal region. The book contains many insightful contributions and, overall, the Handbook will serve as a standard reference on the subject matter for years to come. M.L.R. Smith, King s College, University of London, UK This timely and significant book seeks to explain the deep-seated complexities of terrorism and insurgency in Southeast Asia. In the aftermath of 9/11, this region has been designated by the United States to be the second front in the war on terrorism. Yet despite the emergence of this new global terrorism, the authors argue that armed rebellion in Southeast Asia is a phenomenon that predates Al Qaeda and the global Jihadist movement and that much can be learned from the motivations behind it. Written by a group of leading Western and emerging Southeast Asian scholars, this extensive volume demonstrates the difficulty and diversity of rebellion in Southeast Asia, and explores its intricate historical, political, social and economic roots. The book will serve as an excellent reference and educational text, providing an empirical and regional guide to the complex problem of insurgency in Southeast Asia. It will also contribute to a more educated understanding that could provide the basis for appropriate counter-terrorism strategies in this important part of the world. Comprehensive and engaging, this volume will find widespread appeal amongst researchers, students and policymakers interested in terrorism, international relations and Asian studies and will also be an invaluable tool for studies into political violence and security.

Scholars have given questions about the perpetrators of nameless violence in Southern Thailand little consideration, leaving the motives that drive Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) heavily cloaked in secrecy and speculation. This book offers a rare glimpse behind the veil that shrouds BRN-Coordinate. Using exclusive access to and detailed interviews with BRN-Coordinate members, this book analyses the communicative dimension of the insurgency. It depicts the hidden channels and organized violence that drive the regions enduring rebellion as well as BRN's dichotomous existence between silence and communication.

Current unrest in the Malay-Muslim provinces of southern Thailand has captured growing national, regional, and international attention due to the heightened tempo and scale of rebel attacks, the increasingly jihadist undertone that has come to characterize insurgent actions, and the central government's often brutal handling of the situation on the ground. This paper assesses the current situation and its probable direction.

Since January 2004, the three Muslim-dominated provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat in the Thai south have been ablaze with political violence. This title examines the reasons behind the unrest in south Thailand from a variety of perspectives.

This monograph examines the tragic conflict in Thailand's southern Muslim-majority provinces near the border with Malaysia. Although the conflict has attracted wide national and international interest, no agreement exists on the cause of the resumption of violence in an area that had remained free of major conflict for two decades. This monograph critically examines explanations for the conflict and traces its evolution from the early 1990s to the beginning of the Samak government in 2008. The study points to a wide variety of factors that were important in the resumption of the conflict, with policies of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra being critical in determining the timing and intensity of the violence. These conditions include: (1) the resumption of an age-old conflict between Malay Muslims from Pattani, Yala, and Narithiwat Provinces against a discriminatory central government; (2) entrenched problems of criminality in an area far from the capital and with a porous border with Malaysia; (3) the disbanding of important conflict resolution institutions by former Prime Minister Thaksin, who then gave priority to hard line (sometimes extrajudicial) security policies; (4) growing Islamic religiosity, influenced by regional reform movements and international developments, including the example of extremist movements such as Jemaah Islamiyah; and (5) the growth of southern insurgent movements--which have never issued public demands and whose real leaders remain unknown. In this complex setting, no resolution to the violence appears likely in the near future, as Thaksin's main policies have been retained since the September 2006 coup that ousted his government.

This book looks at the worlding of the Global South in the process of assembling conflict resolution expertise. Anna Leander, Ole Wæver and their contributors pursue this ambition by following the experts, institutions, databases and creative expressions that are assembled into conflict resolution expertise in the Global South. Expertise shapes how conflicts in the Global South are understood and consequently dealt with. Yet, expertise is always and necessarily exclusive. The exclusivity of expertise refers both to the fashionable, the sophisticated and what counts, and also to the exclusion of some people or views. Assembled from a wealth of competing knowledges expertise is always both knowledgeable and ignorant. The ambition of the volume is to explore how this exclusive expertise is assembled and in what ways it is therefore knowledgeable and ignorant of knowledges in/of the Global South. This work will be of significant interest to advanced students and scholars of conflict resolution, peace research, mediation and international relations and scholars of expertise.

This book is an ethnography of the Malay Muslims of Guba, a pseudonymous village in Thailand’s Deep South, in the wake of the unrest that was primarily reinvigorated in 2004. It argues that the unrest is the effect of the way in which different forms of sovereignty converge around the residents of this region and the residents at the same time have cultivated themselves and obtained and enacted agency through the sovereigns. Rather than asking why the violence is increasing and who is behind it, like most scholarly works on the topic, it examines how different forms of sovereignty — ranging from the Thai state and the monarchy to Islamic religious movements, the insurgents and local strongmen — impose subjectivities on the residents, how they have converged in so doing and what tensions have followed, and how the residents have dealt with these tensions and cultivated themselves and obtained and enacted agency through the sovereigns. The phrase “We Love Mr King” or rao rak nay luang inscribed on the decorated, footed tray is one example of how the residents crafted themselves as royal subjects and enacted agency through the sovereign monarch. “This book represents one of the very few locally focussed anthropological studies to be undertaken in Thailand’s Muslim Malay border region since the upsurge in insurgent-driven violence since 2004. Just as noteworthy: the researcher is a Thai Buddhist who succeeded in establishing rapport with his Malay Muslim informants. Unlike most journalistic and academic research in this field based on hit-and-run interviews, Dr Anusorn’s work is founded on sustained in situ observation and participation with the local residents of the hamlet of Guba in Yala Province. Exploring a range of themes including local historical memory and place identification, Islamic practices, cultural rituals, complex local rivalries and violence, and interactions between villagers and military/state officials and projects, Anusorn skilfully highlights the co-existence and tensions between ‘different subjectivities’ in the context of the competing ‘sovereignties’ that inform the world of the villagers of Guba.” — Marc Askew (author of Performing Political Identity in Southern Thailand and Conspiracy, Politics and a Disorderly Border)

The first book to thoroughly examine the terrorist conflict in Thailand in the context of global jihad.

The Handbook of Terrorism in the Asia-Pacific provides a historical overview of terrorism in the Asia-Pacific, the evolution of threat, and the present threat faced by countries with the rise of the Islamic State (IS). This is a concise and readable handbook which examines the origins of the current wave of terrorism across countries in Southeast Asia, South Asia, Northeast Asia and the Pacific, and identifies emerging trends and new forms of terror that have altered the landscape and rendered the region increasingly vulnerable to asymmetric attacks. Comprising of more than 20 chapters, this handbook will be a useful source of reference for undergraduate and graduate students focused on understanding the causes of terrorism and insurgency in the Asia-Pacific.