The southern rebellion against the government begins its 58th year tomorrow. It will be the first time the anniversary is marked without any of the original 1960 instigators but in particular it will go on without its primary leader, better called the godfather of the southern conflict.
The 57 years of low-level warfare have seen off dictators and democrats, soldiers and civilians, heads of 24 separate governments who share a common distinction. They couldn't put down the rebellion in the deep South's three and a half provinces.
Sapae-ing Basor, who died in Malaysian exile late last year, is ringed by photos of some of the violence he created and supported.
There never has been complete peace in the deep South, but the Long War only began in 1960. In 1945 Patani nationalists scratched up a petition to the British to be allowed to join Malaya. When Malaya became Malaysia, another petition, allegedly with 250,000 signatures, was just as aloofly waved away by The Tunku (Abdul Rahman).
So while resentment and secession were continuing topics, the real revolution began on March 13, 1960, at an iconic pondok, or Islamic boarding school, Thamavitya Mulniti. A young fire-breathing school head, a separatist and anti-Bangkok fanatic, Sapae-ing Basor, declared it was time to take up arms against Bangkok. He had little difficulty persuading a small group to mount an armed effort to throw out Thai control of their area, which was and is mostly ethnic Malay, mostly Muslim, formerly part of Malaya.
Sapae-ing died on Jan 10 in exile in Terengganu, a bounty of 10 million baht still on his head. For more than 56 years, the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) he founded, inspired and led, achieved nothing.
OK, not quite nothing. Well over 10,000 people died and the region he championed missed so many opportunities at economic development that it is, comparatively, many years behind the rest of the country. If you count those two as achievements, Sapae-ing and the BRN have been moderately successful. Most people don't count keeping alive a hopeless and hopelessly violent conflict as an achievement.
Sapae-ing and friends began to target "Siamese troops" five years before the first US troops arrived in Vietnam. When they burned down government-run schools for the first time, a new government-run station, Channel 4, was broadcasting black-and-white TV to Bangkok for several hours a day.
When Sapae-ing set up an alliance with the Malayan Communist Party to share territory and enemies, parents in Thailand and around the world were outraged by the obscene behaviour and lyrics of the new sensation, Elvis Presley, whose filthy song It's Now Or Never was misleading innocent children.
Sapae-ing's death in January was supposed to be the end of an era. And that was how The Leader saw it. In a surprising -- some said "shocking" -- move, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha sent condolences to his family. Aides explained the prime minister's unexpected conciliation was, in effect, a request for everyone to turn over a new leaf. The War Bringer was dead; let's stop bringing war.
The amount of gratitude and hope for the prime minister's gesture cannot be described. Literally, it can't be described because there was none, as in not a smidgen, as in zero. The Basor family conducted a funeral without a body, even though Gen Prayut ordered full cooperation and transportation to return his remains from Malaysia. The BRN, as always, was publicly silent, speaking only through guns, bombs and matches, which it always owns enough of. Even those with a sliver of sympathy for the separatists lose it when they kill monks, torch schools or kill schoolchildren on the road for no discernible reason except sheer, bloody terrorism.
That was Sapae-ing's style his entire life. He was in on the attempt to assassinate a high-ranking officer, he was behind the butchery of Hat Yai bombings. He planned and led (from nearby, not on the field of battle) the Jan 4, 2004, attack on a military camp in Cho Airong that restarted the violence and for which he went into exile in Malaysia.
As for important current events, he was the co-author and enforcer of the BRN's strategy of "no surrender". As early as 2013, Thai media reported that Sapae-ing was strongly opposed to peace talks and had taken his friends in the Malaysian government to task for supporting them.
It's no surprise the group won't talk settlement with this or previous governments. It would be a shock if they did. His entire life was based on bringing war.