The far south of Thailand experiences frequent incidents of criminally and politically motivated violence, including incidents attributed to armed local separatist and extremist groups. These incidents frequently include drive-by shootings, ambushes, and small bomb attacks of Thai security patrols. These groups seek increased autonomy in furtherance of a separate state related to the partitioning of the Thai/Malaysia border in the early 1900s. There has been sporadic separatist violence over the last 100 years relating to this struggle