Wave of violence shakes Thailand

BANGKOK - Violent attacks in the Muslim-majority south of Thailand have some observers worried - not for the first time - that the government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is in denial about the scope of the terrorist threat in the area.

Just one day after attackers killed four Thai soldiers, set fire to schools and police checkposts and stole weapons near the Malaysian border, explosions killed at least three police in the south on Monday. The violence occurred despite massive security in the troublesome region, and martial law has been declared in three provinces. Yet some authorities continued to insist that the attacks were the work of "robbers", and not Islamist insurgents.

"It is too early to tell" who the culprits were, the government's spokesman, Jakrapob Penkair, said in an interview on Monday. "These people should be called robbers" who had "no ideological" motivation, Jakrapob insisted, in reference to Sunday's daring assault on a Thai army camp at Narathiwat Ratchanakarin that killed four soldiers.

Whoever staged the Narathiwat assaults displayed synchronized guerrilla techniques enabling them to seize more than 100 US-supplied M-16 assault rifles, burn down about 20 schools and also destroy several police posts, according to reports from Narathiwat.

The assailants drove a pickup truck into army camp and opened fire, killing four warrant officers guarding a weapons stockpile. The attackers fled, scattering spikes on the road to deflate pursuers' tires, and blocked the route with felled trees containing booby traps amid the branches, according to Thai news reports.

Assailants also splashed gasoline onto about 20 schools and ignited the buildings - a tactic favored by Muslim separatists during the past decade amid complaints that minority ethnic and Islamic subjects were not given priority by Buddhist-majority Thailand's education system.

While Thai troops scoured the region in search of the Narathiwat raiders, on Monday in Pattani city, about 160 kilometers to the north, "a fresh round of bombings" killed at least three policemen and injured several others, Jakrapob said. Pattani is about 870 kilometers south of Bangkok.

"A bomb exploded in a guard booth" killing one police officer and injuring three other policemen, Jakrapob said. About an hour later, another bomb exploded in a police station in the city's park, severely injuring another policeman. "Police found more bombs planted near a department store" but while trying to defuse it, "we lost two more policemen", he said.

Thai officials appeared flabbergasted by the bloodiness and success of the attacks, and said corrupt officials may have played a role. "It is inconceivable that a civilian could have sneaked inside the camp and sent information to the bandits," said Deputy Prime Minister General Chavalit Yongchaiyudh. "The attack was well planned," Chavalit told reporters.

"We never thought it [the attacks] would be so fast, so intense," 4th Army commander Lieutenant General Pongsak Ekbannasingh was quoted as saying.

In May, the illegal Pattani United Liberation Organization (PULO) boasted that Thai security forces were "falling like leaves" because Muslims were fighting to free southern Thailand from Bangkok's rule.

In an editorial on Monday, the English-language Bangkok-based Nation newspaper predicted: "In the coming months, there will be growing violence against army positions as well as civilians in the predominately Muslim south. Our leaders must stop describing the perpetrators as amateur bandits who just want to steal weapons and then sell them illegally," it warned. "Following the recent truck-bomb attack on Lima Camp in Karbala, Iraq, in which two Thai soldiers were among the 19 coalition members killed, our government must be more vigilant about possible terrorist attacks inside the kingdom," The Nation said.

More than 420 Thai troops are currently in Iraq, and US President George W Bush recently upgraded Thailand to "major non-NATO ally" status. Thailand also sent forces to Afghanistan to support the US-led occupation there. Some observers view Bangkok's support of the US-led occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq as reigniting long-simmering Muslim grievances in southern Thailand.

"On the one hand, Thaksin admitted ... there are still a handful of uprisings in the form of liberation movements [in southern Thailand], but said that they are not powerful enough to be considered as a threat to his territorial ambitions," wrote PULO deputy president Lukman B Lima in a rare dispatch from exile in Sweden. "If his conglomerates and himself are so powerful in practicing 'might is right' - which is the law of the jungle - then why are his serving security men falling like leaves?" Lukman said in remarks published in The Nation in May.

Bangkok "illegally incorporated" the far south into Thailand 100 years ago and now rules it with "colonial" repression while "committing crimes against humanity in the area", Lukman said.

Bangkok denies all allegations of intentional mistreatment of Thailand's Muslims and insists that separatist guerrillas are "bandits" enriching themselves while spewing religious and political rhetoric.

About 90 percent of Thailand's 63 million citizens are Buddhist. Most of Thailand's 4 percent Muslim population live in the south, in and around Pattani province. About 80 percent of these Muslims are of ethnic Malay descent, inspiring PULO to demand a so-called Malay Kingdom of Pattani, or Greater Pattani. It would include the southern Thai provinces of Narathiwat, Yala, Pattani, Satun and part of Songkhla - a region Thailand annexed in 1902.

For more than 500 years, Muslim ethnic Malays have battled Thai security forces in hit-and-run skirmishes to end what they perceive as Thailand's "racist" Buddhist domination. Thai Buddhists crushed southern Muslim uprisings in 1564 and 1776, but the area remains relatively poor, alienated and misunderstood by Bangkok's government and military officials.

Today, PULO is believed to possess a couple of hundred fighters scattered on both sides of the Thai-Malaysian border.

In June, the US hailed the arrest in Thailand of three suspected Muslim terrorists who allegedly conspired to explode car bombs at embassies and tourist sites in Bangkok. The trio were suspected of belonging to Southeast Asia's Islamic militant group Jemaah Islamiyah, blamed for the October 2002 bombing in Bali that killed 202 people. After they were arrested in June in Narathiwat city, the three men pleaded innocent and their trial is under way.

"I was informed that about 30 trained terrorists had crossed the border" from Malaysia into southern Thailand, Thaksin told journalists in April. "The [Thai] military units, they did not seem to take proper precautions," the prime minister said at the time.

Note the word "priority". The Saudis are funding madrassas throughout 90% Bhuddist Thailand. This includes one at a mosque near our home in 99% Bhuddist North Thailand (Chiang Mai)

How did I know that the assailants were going to turn out to be Muslims, members of the religion of peace? This is really getting out of hand.

4 posted on 01/06/2004 9:39:55 AM PST by aynrandfreak (If 9/11 didn't change you, you're a bad human being)

I was in southern Thailand last month, in the area that starts transitioning from predominantly Buddhist to predominantly Muslim. I generally resist stereotyping, but by their demeanor, it wasn't difficult to tell who was Buddhist and who was Muslim.

I have noticed that as well. I cannot begin to folow the Southern dialect but have noticed Malay being frequently spoken as opposed to Thai. In the North, most of the Muslims are Chinese (Jin Haw) so it is more difficult to tell who is who except in those cases where they have adopted Muslim dress and hair style (more frequent as of late).

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