The then-prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra kicked off her peace initiative on February 28, 2013, one year after her fugitive brother, Thaksin – with the help of his associates and cronies – paved the way for the official launch.

The Thai army was more or less kept in the dark throughout the entire planning and preparation process. The same goes for the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), the one long-standing separatist movement that today controls virtually all militants on the ground, which was pretty much caught off-guard when the initiative was officially launched.

Hasan Taib was designated as the “liaison” by Thailand and Malaysia; his job was to convince all other long-standing separatist groups and leaders, especially members of the secretive BRN ruling council, to come to the negotiating table. When it was clear that the BRN wouldn’t budge, Hasan threw in the towel and went incommunicado.

At about the same time, the government in Bangkok went into a tailspin as “Shutdown Bangkok” set the stage for a coup in May 2014.

While the generals did not create the February 2013 peace initiative, they were stuck with this hot potato, and some wanted to scrap it altogether.

In the end, after nearly seven months of deliberation, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha went to Kuala Lumpur to meet his Malaysian counterpart Najib Razak and formally request that Kuala Lumpur continue to act as the facilitator for the talks.

Security planners in Bangkok do not see Malaysia as an honest broker but rather as a stakeholder. But that is all the more reason for the Malaysians to be at the table.

Having three stakeholders in the talks with no neutral mediator would prove to be a disastrous endeavour given the historical mistrust among the three parties that still prevails.

The NCPO asked that a new phase of talks be inclusive, meaning all the long-standing separatist groups working under one common platform. The junta also wanted to be sure that they were talking to the right people, and that participants at the talks could prove they had command-and-control on the ground. Their short-term goal was to reduce violence on the ground.

The problem with the Thai generals was that they were not interested in making concessions or addressing the historical grievances of Patani Malays. Their aim was to get the “real guys” to the table and go from there, they thought.

BRN members said the junta was only concerned with its own legacy and did not want to be seen as the people who “gave away Patani”, so they were not about to give much legitimacy to whoever came to the table.

By August 2016, MARA Patani, an umbrella organisation made up of long-standing separatist groups, was introduced to the public at a press conference in Kuala Lumpur. It was billed as a platform for the separatists to make their case. The focus of attention was on a group of young religious teachers who participated under the BRN banner.

But BRN operatives on the ground and abroad insisted these few self-proclaimed “BRN leaders” did not have the mandate of the group’s ruling council. The BRN Information Department would issue a rare public statement late last year to say that they were not involved in this peace initiative. They issued a similar statement last month to say much the same thing, reiterating that any talk with the Thais must be observed by foreign governments.

Like previous Thai governments, the current junta wanted to treat the dialogue process as a domestic issue as much as possible. With the exception of Malaysia’s involvement, Bangkok will continue to resist any attempt by the international community, such as the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), to assist with facilitation or mediation.

Attempts by OIC to raise the conflict in Thailand’s Malay-speaking South in their forum have been resisted by the current and previous Thai governments. The Foreign Ministry has been quick to send Thai diplomats, along with friendly Thai Muslims, to lobby groups such as the OIC and other Muslim countries.

Over the past three years, the NCPO launched various programmes to win the hearts and minds of the local villagers, the main backers of the BRN militants.

Projects such as “Bring People Back Home”, a half-baked public relations exercise that was billed as an amnesty programme, was carried out but did nothing in terms of changing the course of violence. Mistrust between local Malay Muslims and the Thai state continues unabated.

The junta also pulled out regular army troops from the region and replaced them with locally hired, poorly trained paramilitary Rangers who form part of the military’s security grid in the restive region.

Outsourcing security work to locally hired officials, such as kamnan, village chiefs and Defence Volunteers is a work in progress. These local officials who fall under the Ministry of Interior have been accused by the army of turning a blind eye to insurgents’ activities. But forcing them to put their lives on the line by going on foot patrols with regular soldiers has not produced the kind of outcome the army has been hoping for.

Former prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, in an interview with The Nation, said the junta paid lip service to the long-standing argument that counter-insurgency work is political, not military.

But creating space to enhance state legitimacy in this historically contested region required a high degree of sophistication; the fact that the state agencies responsible for the conflict in the far South keep changing does not help the overall situation, especially when the aim is to enhance the capacity of those agencies.

Moreover, the frontline Cabinet dealing, which is led by Deputy Defence Minister Udomdej Saithibutr, needs to be broadened so that diverse voices from the region can be represented.

Abhisit said the current inherited peace initiative should not open itself up too fast to the public, not before trust and confidence between negotiating parties can be established.

Last month, the BRN reissued their demand for talks with Bangkok. Similar demands were made in 2013 shortly after the Yingluck initiative was launched. But the idea then was to derail the process, according to sources in the movement. This time around, the intention is to engage in direct talks with the Thais.

Thai soldiers welcomed the move as they had pretty much lost hope with the current dialogue with MARA Patani. They said it would be good to establish a channel of communication with people who can actually control the combatants.

Bangkok did not rule out direct talks in principle but suggested that such a request should go through Malaysia, the designated facilitator. Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur are also concerned that a second track would undermine the existing one, in which both countries have already invested a great deal of resources.

Both countries would rather see the BRN come on board in the existing dialogue. But given the bickering between MARA Patani and the BRN, Thailand and Malaysia might have to wait a very long time before these two Patani Malay movements can patch up their differences.

DON PATHAN is a security analyst and a consultant based in Yala, one of the three conflict-affected southernmost provinces. He is also a member of the Patani Forum (www.pataniforum.com), a civil |society group dedicated to promoting critical discussion on the insurgency in Malay-speaking South.