Endless Woe

Photograph for TIME by Philip Blenkinsop

Militants planted a bomb near the corpse of a health official on this road

The teachers are late for school again. It happens almost every morning at Ban Bukoh village in Thailand's troubled Pattani province, but the kids are getting used to it. The girls busy themselves by sweeping the corridor outside the government school's single row of tiny classrooms. The boys crib last-minute homework from each other. Then the men with guns arrive—six of them in a pickup truck, two more on a motorbike, all toting M-16 assault rifles. It is the job of these government militiamen to protect two cars and five motorbikes carrying a dozen teachers. Their convoy speeds into this sleepy...

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