According to counter-insurgency expert David Kilcullen, the violence in Thailand’s deep South – which has now claimed more than 3,500 lives – was some of the most intense in the world between 2004 and 2007, “second only to Iraq and Afghanistan during this period.” Yet, despite such alarming levels of bloodshed, the insurgency has been under-reported and under-researched, barely registering on the international community’s radar screen, largely because the conflict cannot be reduced to a sound bite-friendly narrative of identifiable bad guys and good guys.