I have a post at StrategyPage on the increase on the Thai "surge" and change in counterinsurgency. Introduction:
A Thai-style surge campaign, and change in counter-insurgency strategy, has lead to more than 50 percent reduction in violence in the first 6 months of 2008. Terrorism over the previous 4 years was threatening to get out of control, with some areas becoming no-go zone areas.
In 2004, there was a dramatic upsurge in the violence perpetrated by Islamic terrorists in the three southern provinces ("Deep South") of Thailand which border Malaysia. The population of these three provinces is 1.8 million and Muslims make up around 75% of the population whereas the rest of Thailand is 95% Buddhist.
From January 2004 until December 2007 there had been average of 160 terrorist incidents (assassinations, bombings etc) per month in the Deep South, but this reduced significantly to less than 60 incidents per month in the first 6 months of 2008. The number of killed or injured had gradually increased from 120 per month in 2004 to 200 a month in 2007, but this has halved to 100 per month in the first 6 months of 2008.
BP: The site's style guide does not allow to footnote references, but amongst the references used were Southern comfort - Thai insurgency falters (subscription only), statistics from this post, this NYT article, this AFP article, and information from a few posts of mine.
Interesting read behind that link. Very interesting. Hope you are right about the conclusions why casualties have gone down and atleast finally some intellectual progress is made in down South.
Also it was interesting page that you had posted the commentary. I need to explore it more.