Comparisons, Patani

Abstract

I will now apply the flight, support, and voice schema to two other secessionist conflicts: southern Thailand (Patani) and, in the next chapter, the southern Philippines. All three of my cases involve Southeast Asian Muslim communities with histories of statehood involved in ethnosecessionist rebellions against centralized states dominated by other ethnic majorities. Though similar, and thus comparable, the three cases also vary in several respects. While Aceh and Indonesia share a common faith, Patani and Mindanao feature Muslim minorities resisting non-Muslim majority states. And while GAM was relatively cohesive, rebels in the other cases have been fragmented. And while the Aceh conflict has been firmly resolved, the others face more ambiguous futures.