BANGKOK

The Thai government hopes to reach a joint declaration with insurgents in the country’s south this year while more groups have expressed interest in future peace talks, according to an official Saturday.

"We're discussing what and how to proceed [with the talks]," Maj. Gen. Nakrob Boonbuathong, government peace dialogue team secretary, told the Bangkok Post.  
Underlining that a deal had yet to be reached, he said they would gather with the Majid Syura Patani – an umbrella group for insurgency movements -- after the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, set to end around mid-July.

According to the team, five insurgent groups expressed interest this week in joining talks with authorities alongside the National Revolutionary Front (BRN), one of the most active separatist movements on the ground. The BRN had served as the lead representative during peace dialogue with Thailand’s previous government before it was overthrown in a coup last year.

All six groups – including three factions of the Patani United Liberation Organization, the Gerakan Mujahideen Islam Patani and the Barisan Islam Pembebasan Patani – took part in informal talks hosted by Malaysia in April and May.

Boonbuathong, also deputy director-general of Internal Security Operations Command’s 5th Operations Coordination Center, told the Post that prior to a finalized joint declaration before the end of 2015, the groups might gather for more rounds of dialogue.

"With more mutual understanding and confidence we hope we can officially launch the peace process later this year," he said. 

The three Muslim majority southernmost provinces in predominantly Buddhist Thailand -- Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat –have been embroiled in a bloody insurgency that has left more than 6,200 dead and around 11,000 injured since 2004.

They had constituted an independent Islamic sultanate with great religious influence in the Southeast Asian Muslim world until it was incorporated into Siam after a 1909 Anglo-Siamese agreement.

Great Britain was then the colonial power in Malaysia and was exerting a degree of control over the region.

From 1938, a virulently nationalistic campaign organized by Field Marshall Phibulsongkhram government tried to impose Thai cultural norms onto the Malay Muslims, who reacted by asking for some degree of political and cultural autonomy.

Things turned for the worse in the 1960s, when the military dictator Field Marshall Tarit Sanarat attempted to control the Islamic boarding schools, locally known as pondoks.

Several Muslim groups then took up arms and waged a guerrilla war against the Thai state.

The civilian government of former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra began a process in 2013 to restart peace dialogue with the insurgents, but it was overthrown last May.

In the wake of the May 22 coup, the Thai junta announced its will to continue the official dialogue. Some insurgent groups, however, are reluctant to join as political autonomy has been excluded from the talks.