A third problem is: who can speak for the militants? Despite persistent attempts by the Thai authorities to portray the militants as a cohesive top-down organization known as ‘BRN-Coordinate’, in which a small group of leaders have substantial command and control over local cells, many analysts believe that the juwae (young fighters) are decentralized, have connections and allegiances to a range of groups and older-generation leaders, and cannot readily be corralled into a ceasefire or a shared set of proposals. Successive dialogues have generally involved self-proclaimed separatist leaders based in Malaysia or elsewhere, many of whom are at best tangentially connected to the current juwae. Unlike militants in other conflicts—such as the Provisional IRA and Sinn Fein in the Northern Ireland case—the groups actively fighting in the region do not have a genuine ‘political wing’ which is capable of conducting negotiations on their behalf.