The otherwise prosperous and stable Southeast Asian country of Thailand is beginning to stagger a little under the pressure of a growing Muslim insurgency in the south.

The rebellion against the predominantly Buddhist government's authority has been around for decades but has heated up in the last 18 months to include daily attacks that have claimed some 900 lives. The heightened pace of the violence has led to the enactment of tough, new security measures by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's government to deal with the insurgency.

Thailand's southern three provinces are predominantly Muslim in a country that is 95 percent Buddhist. Prime Minister Thaksin last week was given new powers in those provinces to impose curfews, tap phones, suspend publication of newspapers, detain suspects without charge and command the military directly.

Both the new measures, which Thai critics call unconstitutional, and their clear indication that his government has been unable to bring the insurgency under control without them, are embarrassing to Mr. Thaksin. The Thai prime minister aspires to succeed Kofi Annan as U.N. secretary-general when Mr. Annan steps down in 2007.

The Thai government maintains that the problem in the south is internal, but the level of organization and its intensity may indicate that it is being fueled or fed from outside, specifically by the hostilities in Iraq, which has become a seedbed of Islamic violence across the world, in the United Kingdom, Spain, Turkey, Afghanistan and now, perhaps, Thailand since the war began in Iraq in 2003.

What may be legitimate in the Muslim Thais' grievances is the fact that development in the three southern provinces lags behind the level of prosperity in the rest of the country. There is also a problem of mistreatment of prisoners, 78 of whom died last year in the custody of the central government.

The United States has so far taken the position that the insurgency is purely a Thai problem. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a recent visit there called it "a domestic issue."

It isn't necessary to say yet that Thailand is in trouble. It showed strong resilience in its recovery from last year's tsunami. At the same time, the importance of tourism in the Thai economy indicates the country's vulnerability to persistent insecurity.

When the trouble in the south flared up at a previous period in Thai history, the mid-1980's, the government was able to deal with it through talks and amnesties. It is important that this time it not rely entirely on military means to bring matters under control. The new emergency security measures may be necessary, but they are no substitute for serious attention to the problems of Thailand's Muslim minority in the south.