PATTANI, Thailand (AP) - While Thai authorities are preoccupied with riots in the capital, a five-year-old Muslim uprising in the south of the country is intensifying, and Thailand's troubled government and army are at odds about how to deal with it.

The bombings, shootings and beheadings show no signs of quieting. Machine-gun mounted Humvees scour for roadside bombs, soldiers sweep through villages suspected of harboring the insurgents and helicopters clatter above an idyllic, tropical landscape over which authorities have cast a security net more dense in terms of area and population than in Iraq.

The toll has risen to more than 3,400 dead and some 5,600 injured as the shadowy rebels pursue an ill-defined agenda that sometimes seems to call for an Islamic state separate from Buddhist-dominated Thailand, but is mostly a reaction to a history of discrimination.

Last month, in a surge-style operation, 4,000 more soldiers were added to a security force of 60,000 already in the three southern provinces.

But stalked by years of failed military efforts, the government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva is considering less military-focused options including lifting martial law and emergency decrees in the restive provinces, and reviving councils that once allowed Muslims more say in local matters.

But Abhisit is hamstrung. His energies have been absorbed by the mass demonstrations in Bangkok that are unrelated to the insurgency, and his political future is far from assured. And to an extent, he owes his premiership to a military that doesn't want to cede such powers as holding of suspects for up to 30 days without trial.

"Even if Abhisit knows exactly what he ought to do in the south he hasn't got a lot of power over these (military) guys. To move to a political situation you need to reduce the military's dominance and demilitarize the problem to some degree. But he isn't strong enough to launch a civilian-political offensive," says Duncan McCargo, author of the recent book on the insurgency, "Tearing Apart the Land."