WILLIAMS: Southern Thailand is in the grip of a guerrilla war and bad news travels fast.

MUNG: [On mobile phone] No, no it’s two of them. I don’t know how bad my auntie is, but my uncle is gone. The family called this morning.

WILLIAMS: Our driver Mung has heard his uncle has just been shot dead, his auntie wounded in an attack by Muslim militants. The body has been brought here to the village temple. Like all temples in the south, it’s guarded by the army against insurgent attacks. Among the villagers is the dead man’s son Manob Dindaeng, a policeman.

MANOB DINDAENG: I hugged his body then I fired my gun into the sky because I felt so overwhelmed, so angry… it’s hard to explain.

WILLIAMS: As his parents made their daily trip to the market, a motorcycle with two men pulled up beside them, the pillion passenger pumping nine shots into their car. Two of them hit their target and Manob’s father died instantly.

MANOB DINDAENG: I am angry. I want revenge. I have a weapon. If I knew who shot my father I would shoot them. I would be able to fight back. But I don’t know who did it.

WILLIAMS: While the killer is unknown, his motive is clear. Manob’s father was a Buddhist and a Deputy Village Chief, a target of Muslim extremists trying to drive out Buddhists and Bangkok’s rule.

MANOB DINDAENG: We are going to stay here and fight. The government has to make it better or the problem will continue and set these three southern provinces on fire.

WILLIAMS: And the militants are having considerable success. In the past eighteen months Muslim extremists fighting for their own state in Southern Thailand have stepped up attacks on symbols of central government control. Army posts, police stations and city centres have been targets of increasingly sophisticated raids. Buddhist monks have been beheaded. Every day there are killings and deadly bombings. It’s a fight for secession that first flared when Buddhist Thailand annexed a Muslim state here more than a century ago.

At 450 years old this Krue Sae mosque is a remnant of when this part of Thailand used to be an independent Islamic kingdom. Today while Muslims make up just five per cent of Thailand’s population, they still predominant here in the deep south and feel political and economic discrimination have robbed them of their rightful inheritance. So perhaps not surprisingly it was here that a band of Muslim militants decided to take their stand and bring those frustrations to international attention with fatal results.

Last April militants mostly armed with knives launched a violent protest. In co-ordinated raids they attacked police and soldiers. Thirty-two took the historic mosque. The Thai army’s response was overwhelming. All inside were killed.

Just who leads the militants is still a mystery to many, even to Thai Army intelligence but tonight we gain a rare insight into an Islamic insurgency edging towards Jihad in South East Asia.

This man has spend nine months on the run accused of being a militant, a charge he denies but he does have first hand knowledge of how the attacks are planned.

"YUSUF": They would have been pre-planned – the roles all worked out. For example, if you are told to drive, you must drive. Then they choose someone to sit on the back. It’s their job to kill these people, to kill those people. They have to do it for the group’s aims.

WILLIAMS: The insurgent’s aim is to separate the mainly Muslim south from Buddhist Thailand and there is a vast gulf between the two. Buddhist Lent is marked in Thailand with a giant gold-coloured candle donated by the Royal Family. It symbolises everything that defines what it is to be Thai – belief in Country, King and Buddha, alien ideas to Thailand’s Muslim minority.

In fact the Muslims of southern Thailand are ethnic Malays, more closely linked by blood, faith and culture to those just across the border in Malaysia.

SENATOR KRAISAK CHOONHAVEN: [Chairman, Foreign Affairs Committee] The south is exceptional because of the State’s refusal to allow them to have cultural autonomy. They are allowed of course to have mosque and to pray, to do their cultural practices but not in a proud way but most importantly, is that they are not given equal opportunity for schoolings.

WILLIAMS: Government schools are seen by Muslim separatists as tools of Thai colonial power, eroding Malay language, culture and religion. So they are burned and their teachers are targeted.

Yameela Salae is a teacher and like many in her profession, her ride to work is now so dangerous she must have an armed guard.

YAMEELA SALAE: Since the situation started I’m always afraid. It’s never happened close to me before. It was something that only happened somewhere else.

WILLIAMS: Although a Muslim, as a State employee, Yameela is a target and her school is guarded against insurgent attack. Yameela has always wanted to teach here at the school she attended as a child and she’s just been made its principal but it’s not a promotion she sought. Yameela got the job when former principal, Khru Kob Kul was shot dead by militants as she went to see her mother.

YAMEELA SALAE: The students were very sad because they all loved Krue Kob Kul very much. She liked to play with the children and always helped them.

WILLIAMS: Kob Kul’s empty desk is a testament to terror’s effect. Militants are mounting the attacks to drive government teachers from the area, and it’s working. Thousands are applying for transfers.

YAMEELA SALAE: If I don’t help my village who will help us? If something happens to the teachers it will impact on everyone else – especially the children. The schools will have to shut down because nobody will want to go.

WILLIAMS: The militants may be ruthless, but the government is equally brutal in its response. Last October, Muslims gathered here outside Tak Bai police station to protest against what they claimed were several unfair arrests. Troops quickly moved in, humiliating and beating protestors many of whom it later turned out were innocent bystanders. Hundreds were loaded into army trucks and stacked six-deep like logs for a six-hour journey.

Eighty-five Muslims died, most from asphyxiation in the trucks – the biggest single loss of life in the insurgency so far and it was at the hands of the government. Kraisak Choonhaven led a senate investigation into the killings.

SENATOR KRAISAK CHOONHAVEN: The point is that not a single weapon was found on the spot. The impact was immediate. The week after Tak Bai you had more consistent bombing, more systematic, bigger bombs. Much more violence – the scale that it is on a daily basis.

WILLIAMS: But Thailand’s Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra continues his aggressive policies. He’s replaced reconciliation with a state of emergency. Security forces can now arrest without charge and execute with impunity. Many believe this will simply deepen divisions.

Like all government posts in the south, Tak Bai police station is today in a state of siege. The authorities and the insurgents are trapped in a violent cycle of attack and revenge.

SENATOR KRAISAK CHOONHAVEN: Every corner you turn there is a soldier carrying a semi automatic! And yet massive arrests have led to massive human rights violations and not really discovering the cell network of the insurgents.

WILLIAMS: Desperate to root out the insurgency, the army has closed Islamic boarding schools called ‘pondoks’ that it says are militant training camps. Others like this one remain open for now. It is run by Abdul Rahman Abdul Samad, a respected religious scholar who chairs the local Islamic Council.

ABDUL RAHMAN: I think the government still doesn’t get it. Even the King wants the government to understand the community to get involved and develop it.

WILLIAMS: He warns harsh military action is simply increasing Muslim support for an insurgency that up until now, was backed by only a few.

ABDUL RAHMAN: The people are suspicious of each other and there is distrust, hate and prejudice between the government and the people.

WILLIAMS: Yet the fears of Buddhist Thailand are not without foundation. There are growing links between Thai Muslims and the Middle East.

SENATOR KRAISAK CHOONHAVEN: I have visited countries like Sudan, Pakistan, India, Jordan, Iran and in all those countries I found thousands of Thai students, Muslim students from the south, in fact all of them from the south, studying in these countries.

WILLIAMS: We are told foreign Muslim preachers are already influential here, particularly among the young.

YUSUF: They have a way of talking to people using psychology. They are very good speakers, very persuasive, and they make the youngsters believe them. The guys are very good.

WILLIAMS: Even at Abdul Rahman’s pondok, the teachers went to religious schools in Egypt and Pakistan and just as in western nations, the Thai military authorities look with great suspicion at the fundamentalist message they may be importing.

The government including Thai military intelligence reports say that many of the militants are recruited in pondoks like this one and that people like you are running the organisation.

ABDUL RAHMAN: I don’t think it’s right that they want the institutions to take the blame for what is happening. It depends more on how the government treats the people. If it respects the people the people will respect the government.

WILLIAMS: There’s not much respect in a war zone and for many that’s what this is, especially at night when fear on both sides is running high.

SENATOR KRAISAK CHOONHAVEN: There is a lot of disappearing, extra judiciary killings and this in fact has perpetuated the violence and this is quite well documented even by the government security members themselves. They said this is the main cause of the violence.

WILLIAMS: The use of disappearing…

KRAISAK CHOONHAVEN: They use it yes!

WILLIAMS: … assassinations by the police and military against Muslims?

KRAISAK CHOONHAVEN: Yes.

WILLIAMS: There are more than twenty thousand troops in the south but as attacks increase, the government is also arming civilians. This is the ladies shotgun auxiliary. They’re Buddhists on a self-defence course sponsored by Thailand’s Queen. The best shots will get to meet her but they’ll all be given guns and all say they’re prepared to use them. The result is more firepower in a region already awash with weapons.

Meanwhile the military takes the battle to the militants but here in the villages, it’s almost impossible for the army of outsiders to tell friend from foe.

RAZAK BAGINDA: [Director, Institute of Strategic Studies, Malaysia] Certainly the insurgence in southern Thailand is getting more popular. This is the classic example of terrorist, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. To the southern Thais the insurgents are their hope.

WILLIAMS: Further into the mountains the Thai Army faces a deeper problem. This is bandit country where drugs and contraband are smuggled through the jungle into neighbouring Malaysia and it’s there, fleeing militants find sanctuary among their fellow Muslim Malays.

RAZAK BAGINDA: The problem with that is that Bangkok automatically sees Malaysia as intervening and supporting the insurgents.

WILLIAMS: From his office in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur, Razak Baginda is a key advisor to Malaysia’s Defence Minister and Government. Thailand he says should stop shooting Muslims and instead offer them a political alternative to armed rebellion.

RAZAK BAGINDA: We sympathise with Bangkok not wanting to give autonomy to Southern Thais but you have to have a political roadmap. Bangkok should have come in quite early in the day to come in and say we are, we are giving you hope. You don’t have to rely on the insurgents.

WILLIAMS: As the crisis deepens so do recriminations between the two uneasy neighbours. Thailand publicly accuses Malaysia of allowing Thai separatists to train on its soil and of turning a blind eye to fundraising at local mosques.

RAZAK BAGINDA: A lot of them have come down to Malaysia and asked for assistance in terms of financial assistance. We’re not sure where this money will go. It’s quite likely there’s money, half of it will go to ‘a’, ‘b’ whatever but it’s quite possible it will go in the hands of the insurgents.

WILLIAMS: And Malay sympathies may go further.

RAZAK BAGINDA: It’s not surprising to have Malaysians who are sympathetic to the plight of Southern Thailand, who would cross the border and fight alongside the Southern Thais. After all it’s so easy to cross the border and disappear.

WILLIAMS: Masakree Daolar has made the crossing himself. His picture is still on a police poster for wanted militants. By returning from Malaysia, he was granted an amnesty but he explains why so many former comrades continue to fight.

MASAKREE DAOLAR: The idea of having an independent state is that we have a different religion, different language, different traditional culture. We want to have our own state – it’s been the case for fifty or sixty years.

WILLIAMS: Masakree confirms that many militants are still there. And he warns there is a new, more dangerous force organising much of today’s violence.

MASAKREE DAOLAR: There are militants here – but a very small group. But there’s also a third party coming into the middle of the problem. I can’t say clearly where it’s coming from, it’s very complicated.

WILLIAMS: The third force many fear is radical Islam with links to international terror.

ABDUL RAHAM: If the problems don’t end I am very concerned that this third person is going to get deeply involved in this – whoever it is. I am very concerned.

WILLIAMS: What do you mean by third person?

ABDUL RAHAM: Whoever is going to come, I don’t want to say. We have to see.

WILLIAMS: Do you mean Al-Qaeda? Do you mean foreign terrorists?

ABDUL RAHAM: No, I won’t answer now.

WILLIAMS: It seems Al-Qaeda and its Asian franchise Jemaah Islamiyah are yet to hijack the Thai insurgency but their operatives have already been here and Razak believes international Jihad is on its way.

RAZAK BAGINDA: The Al-Qaeda, the JI’s – they will look around the world and they will see Islamic based pockets of insurgency and obviously Southern Thailand is a beacon and will attract people like Al-Qaeda and all the internationalist Islamic anarchists.

WILLIAMS: But even international Jihad needs local fighters and you only have to come here to Suso Village to find out why they might sign up. Last year on the same night as the Krue Se Mosque uprising, its entire soccer team was wiped out by the police. No one’s really sure what happened, again Kraisak investigated.

SENATOR KRAISAK CHOONHAVEN: Several policemen approached the youth, shots rang out and then nineteen of them were dead.

WILLIAMS: And what were the nature of the injuries?

SENATOR KRAISAK CHOONHAVEN: Injuries in the head.

WILLIAMS: Shot in the head?

SENATOR KRAISAK CHOONHAVEN: Yes.

WILLIAMS: Each one of them?

SENATOR KRAISAK CHOONHAVEN: Yes.

WILLIAMS: What does that say to you?

SENATOR KRAISAK CHOONHAVEN: It’s murder and not a single investigation is going on in that case you see.

WILLIAMS: The murders are part of a pattern but increasing disappearances and wrongful arrests will just fuel support for rebellion.

YUSUF: When one person in the family dies many relatives will be angry and want to take revenge. Just like me, I am the one arrested but I have many relatives and they are angry, and they want to pay back, because I am not guilty. I was not involved.

WILLIAMS: The more Muslims are killed, the more they will seek revenge.

YUSUF: It’s an exchange – if one Muslim dies they have to take revenge and pay back with the death of two authorities. It’s a swap.

WILLIAMS: Our driver Mung is still in shock at the loss of his uncle and joins his cousin, the policeman Manob, in paying last respects but as a grieving son prepares to cremate his murdered father, Manob steals himself for worse to come.

MANOB DINDAENG: They will attack us again, because I am a policeman and the authorities are targets. But I beg them not to attack the villagers. If they shoot villagers, it’s like shooting fish or vegetables – they can shoot them any time they want. If they want to take it seriously they’ll have to fight the police or the military. We’re not going to run away. We just wait for the day this will explode.

WILLIAMS: And back at the primary school, despite all the protection, Yameela has a chilling premonition.

YAMEELA SALAE: I have a feeling it will happen to me. Before it would only happen to teachers outside my province. But now it’s come to the teachers in my school. I think maybe someday it will come to me.

RAZAK BAGINDA: It has to go to Bangkok, that’s the only direction and if Bangkok blows up, it obviously is going to be very bad for the whole region. I think the so-called Islamic network they see Southern Thailand as the war in South East Asia.

WILLIAMS: Many lives have already been lost but if a peaceful solution is not found soon, many more will die and they won't just be in Southern Thailand.