The challenge of hybrid insurgency in Southern Thailand Cover Image

The challenge of hybrid insurgency in Southern Thailand
The challenge of hybrid insurgency in Southern Thailand

Author(s): Octavian Manea
Subject(s): Transformation Period (1990 - 2010), Inter-Ethnic Relations, Identity of Collectives, Peace and Conflict Studies
Published by: Editura Militară
Keywords: War; insurgency; ethnic conflict; identity; state; strategy; Thailand; counterinsurgency campaign;

Summary/Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to explore to what extent the violence in Southern Thailand is the product of a hybrid insurgency (a concept understood more along the lines of what research literature calls “criminal insurgency”). Today, in the aftermath of Ukraine, it is fashionable to talk about hybrid warfare. But it may be useful to understand this hybridization of conflict in the larger context of what former SACEUR, Admiral James Stavridis called convergence (and where the possibilities may be endless): ”the merger of a wide variety of globally mobile human activities, each of them individually dangerous but representing a far greater threat when they combine”. I will proceed by defining the problem and by showing why this is mainly an insurgency. In this context, it is important to understand how the Thai state handled the challenge posed by the communist insurgent groups during the Cold War, with a focus on what lessons where learned at the time, but later forgotten. The enabling factors and causes that triggered the relapse of the insurgency in 2004 and set the ground for the current violence will be assessed in the fourth part. In the final part, I will focus on explaining how the traditional insurgency evolved gradually into a criminal type insurgency and will try to suggest ways to deal with this phenomenon.

  • Issue Year: 2015
  • Issue No: 1-2
  • Page Range: 43-56
  • Page Count: 14
  • Language: English