Peaceful Means in Thai National Security Policies for the Southern Border

Abstract

This research aims to study the changing of security policy in combating with southern border insurgency along with examining the meaning, implication and understanding of the peaceful means in implementing the policy. Lastly this study will also investigate the drawbacks of peaceful means during the implementation. This research has adopted the qualitative research methodology by using in-depth interview, documentary review, collecting and analyzing data from academic article, government’s policy and announcements, and national acts for solving the insurgency problem. The findings show that peaceful means had plethora effects on southern border provinces security policy’s implementing process as follow 1) Security policies are variously changed from government to government depends on political situation. 2) The perception, understanding and attitude towards peaceful means and context of southern border provinces problems between government officers and people are not mutual, and 3) The violence structurally and culturally embedded in the society has formed a platform for contradiction between the policy implementation and peaceful means, hence the policy implementation might not be going in the same direction with peaceful means.