SITTING on the floor with neighbours, Sakariya uses a mobile phone to flick through photos of his son. In one, Kholid stands dressed in his school uniform. In another he sits hunched over his university work. In a third he is dead—lying cold on a mortuary slab. The picture was taken in March, only hours after soldiers surrounded a group of men at a construction site in Toh Chud, their home in Thailand’s restive south. Seven bullet holes perforate his chest.

Kholid was one of four to die that day—victims of a botched operation seeking to collar murderous separatists who for years have dreamed of resurrecting an independent sultanate in Thailand’s southern borderlands. Nearly two dozen villagers were detained and interrogated but later released. The men who were shot may have tried to run, perhaps for fear of being found with soft drugs on them. A fact-finding panel says the killings were an error. Compensation is promised. But what the families want is justice, says Mohammad, another parent whose son is among the dead.

Toh Chud up in the hills had mostly managed to escape the nightmares suffered by so many communities in Thailand’s southernmost provinces. Of 2m-odd people in the region, over four-fifths are ethnic-Malay Muslims. Hotheads among them have long agitated against the Thai government in Bangkok and its policies of assimilation—denying the region autonomy, for instance, and even recognition of the local Malay language. In 2004 secretive insurgent groups began a campaign of exceptionally violent attacks on security forces as well as on their own Buddhist neighbours.

Since then about 6,500 people have died in this lush coastal strip, most of them civilians. Terrorists have bombed shops and restaurants and murdered scores of schoolteachers, who are seen as agents of the state; victims’ bodies are sometimes beheaded or set alight. Moderate ethnic-Malays considered to be collaborators are also targets. On December 13th an ethnic-Malay Thai soldier and his father were blown up in a graveyard, where they had gone to bury his mother. State violence has done much to boost the body count. The apparent legal immunity enjoyed by trigger-happy soldiers and pro-government vigilantes continues to radicalise new generations of combatants. Kholid’s family say his killers placed an assault rifle next to his body to make him look like an insurgent. Over the past decade seven Thai governments, swept in and out of power by broader political problems, have grasped for a resolution. Officials say that regional autonomy of the type that has soothed Islamist insurgencies in Indonesia and the Philippines is off the table. But so are smaller concessions, such as formal recognition of the region’s odd Malay language. Some argue that the fat budget the security forces get to prosecute the conflict gives them little incentive to end it. Three checkpoints clog the road out of Pattani, a seaside town, each manned by a different force. Some energy has gone into boosting the deep south’s economy, which depends greatly on its rubber trees. Though it remains far poorer than Bangkok, the region is not as hard-up as some other far-flung parts of Thailand. But locals tend to compare their fortunes with those of ethnic kin across the border in Malaysia, where laws grant the Malay majority a host of advantages over ethnic-Chinese and Indian minorities. Christopher Joll, an academic, says the region is like “meat in a sandwich”, squeezed by inflexible nationalisms from either side.

Thailand’s ruling junta, which had said it would try to fix the conflict by the end of 2015, trumpets progress. Lured by the promise of fresh peace talks, a gaggle of once-shadowy separatist groups has formed a common political wing. The violence has ebbed markedly in recent months. But Don Pathan, a local security analyst, speculates that militants may be swapping frequent small assaults for better planned and more lethal ones. As for dialogue, hardliners within BRN, the most powerful rebel group, say they will play no part in the junta’s proposed talks.

Peace-builders on the ground complain that it is getting harder to discuss unpopular solutions. The army has long refused to countenance international mediation, one of the separatists’ principal demands, for fear of legitimising separatist claims. And it is hardly likely to consider devolving powers when it is busily recentralising the state, in part to neuter the government’s opponents in other provinces and in part to keep a lid on the dissent which may follow a looming royal succession.

Matt Wheeler of the International Crisis Group, a research outfit, thinks the generals are simply “kicking the can down the road”. Yet that carries two risks. Although the insurgents have largely rejected international jihadism, some people fret that Islamic State’s flashy propaganda may yet find an audience among the region’s unhappy young. Lately someone in cyberspace has been adding Thai subtitles to the jihadists’ video-nasties.