Conflict in the Southern Part of Thailand and Its Possible Management and Resolution for Future Business Investment Decisions

It is known that the Southern Part of Thailand faces many problems that affect local business and trade. Most of the problems are due to conflict. It looks at the historical, economic, and social background, the position of the Muslim population in Thailand and in the neighboring countries, and then it suggest ways of managing conflict. The conflict in Thailand is caught up with the wider growth of Islamist movements internationally and need to look at the ethnic question as conflict is also seen as ‘ethnic conflict. The conflict analysis method was applied to specify the potential resolutions for the conflict, and to predict stable resolutions to conflict situations. The purpose of this study is to gain historical and perceptual information about the conflict in 5 provinces in the southern part of Thailand, to identify respondents ’ attitude towards causes of conflict and possible resolution, and to identify impact on business and businesses ’ attitudes towards conflict and its resolution. The studies were planned throughout one year and a half from the year 2004 through 2006. All the conflicts data were analyzed by Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) which was divided into two major stages: The modeling stage and the analysis stage. The research consists of three parts. Three questionnaires were constructed. Each question of the questionnaire were translated into Thai language and explained their meaning to the participants, the duration in answering questionnaire of the focus group was one hour. The answered questionnaires were collected and then were analyzed by computerized program of SPSS 14.0 for window. Descriptive component was reported as percentage and 95 % confidence level, so all data were given as mean ± S.D. The first one was the pre-tested study to reveal the exact problems existing i