A female paramilitary walks along the site of a recent car bomb attack in Yala city, Yala province, March 9 2011. AlertNet/Thin Lei Win
PATTANI, Thailand (TrustLaw) – Seven years ago, Phakaporn lost her husband to a drive-by shooting in Pattani. He was cleaning one of the southern Thai city's main streets one morning when two men on a motorcycle shot him point blank from behind. She never found out who the killers were.
"We had just started building a house together," she recalled. "After he was killed, I had to work alone to finish the house and look after our two sons. The money (provided) by the government was very little at that time. It was horrible."
Their younger son "was very angry and wanted to take revenge" for the death of his Buddhist father, the widow told TrustLaw. "I was so stressed when he started watching war and violent movies." He was nine.
The year Phakaporn's husband died, 2004, marked the start of a new phase in the separatist insurgency affecting Thailand's three southernmost provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat, as well as parts of neighbouring Songkhla province.
Over 4,500 people – mainly civilians – have died since then, and academics and observers say around 2,000 women have been widowed as a result of insurgency-related violence. In just two days this month, a monk, a young Buddhist and a retired police officer were shot dead.
"He was probably unlucky," says Phakaporn of her husband. The fact that he was employed by the Thai state most likely made him a target of Muslim rebels fighting for autonomy from the largely Buddhist nation.
A combined police and military force of around 60,000 has failed to make any progress in quelling the unrest. Worse, it has angered locals who feel that security personnel and government officials behave with impunity.
MUSLIMS NOT SPARED EITHER
The violence, driven by issues rooted in Malay-Muslim identity and rejection of the Thai government's legitimacy in the south, has been exacerbated by criminality and the proliferation of guns. Nor does it spare Muslims either, as Fatimah* found out in 2006.
While waiting for her husband - who worked in a government department - to come home from evening prayers, she heard a gunshot ring out. He died in hospital. The perpetrators had hidden behind some trees on the road a few hundred metres from their house.
In her mid-forties, the Muslim housewife from northern Thailand suddenly found herself without a home, which came with her husband's job, or work, yet with two children to look after.
Despite compensation from the government, it took her a couple of years to get back on her feet. And she still wonders whether it was really insurgents who killed her husband.
Fatimah and Phakaporn, both 50, now participate in a government job-creation scheme where government agencies hire locals for 4,500 baht ($150) a month. They supplement this meagre income doing odd jobs.
They also work with women's groups to help others in a similar situation. "All we can do is to advise other women who encounter the same fate, and support and comfort them," Phakaporn said.
NO END IN SIGHT?
The two women both insist life goes on as normal but their fear of the protracted conflict situation - in which civilians find themselves caught between militants and the military - is palpable.
Phakaporn did not want to give me her full name, while Fatimah, worried she'd criticised the authorities too freely, contacted me the next day asking me not to identify her.
Past events still haunt them. Phakaporn burst into tears when talking about how she had struggled after the death of her husband, and Fatimah's voice quivered as she described discriminatory treatment at the hands of the authorities.
"There is a double standard. When a Muslim dies, (they) will investigate whether it is related to the (political) situation or a personal conflict, but if a Buddhist dies, then they say it was committed by the insurgents," she said.
"So every Buddhist is good and has no personal conflicts? Can't the case be unrelated to the insurgency?"
She says she is fearful whenever she travels on a motorcycle, and feels the Buddhist Thais look down on their Muslim compatriots.
Phakaporn no longer worries that her son, now 16, will try to take revenge, but she is concerned he will become a target of violence like his father.
Neither is optimistic that things will change for the better soon. Their only wish, Phakaporn says, is to "live in the community harmoniously. I think that will be enough."
*name has been changed
Muslim women drive in front of a checkpoint with military vehicles on the road between Yala and Pattani provinces on March 9, 2011 (AlertNet/Thin Lei Win)
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