For many years in the past, whenever the security situation in southern Thailand was discoursed, it had always been uncritically assumed that the only root causes are the troubled history and identity of the Malay-Muslims in the provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani, Yala, Songkhla and Satun.

Separatism was almost entirely seen to have been ideologically constructed in the forms of religio-ethnic nostalgia and territorial irredentism to reclaim the golden or glorious past. This ideological construct may still be held by some individuals or organisations in southern Thailand or even Malaysia.

If that is the objective, separatism of the Malays-Muslims in southern Thailand, either articulated in the form of setting up an independent Islamic State or joining Malaysia territorially, seems to be merely nostalgic utopianism nowadays. For Malaysia and Thailand are now internationally recognised sovereign nation-states whose territorial border has also been generally settled.

Unless there is a major upheaval in the world or region in the scale and scope of the Second World War, it is impossible to alter the settled territorial border between Malaysia and Thailand as in the cases of the 1909 Anglo-Siamese Treaty or the 1943 treaty between Thailand and Japan. Moreover, an independent Islamic State will certainly not be allowed or tolerated, let alone recognised, by Thailand, Malaysia and the mainstream community of nation-states.