Muslim attacks end with bloody debacle (for the Muslims)

PATTANI, Thailand -- A heap of bodies in a bullet-scarred mosque attested to a sharp and sudden upsurge of separatist violence yesterday in Thailand's Muslim south. While the prime minister said the issues were strictly local, some tied the clashes to the country's support for the war in Iraq. Police said they shot and killed 107 Islamic fighters -- including 32 inside the mosque -- after repelling near simultaneous attacks by hundreds of militants.

The violence began when the militants, mostly teenagers, stormed about 15 police stations and government buildings in three provinces.

Most of the attackers were armed only with machetes, but at least some of those killed in the mosque had guns and knew how to use them, said army chief Gen. Chayasith Shinawatra.

Three policemen and two soldiers were killed and 17 militants arrested during the pre-dawn attacks in Yala, Pattani and Songkhla provinces, officials said.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said authorities had been tipped and were ready for the attacks. He said the outcome would help end an Islamic insurgency that has simmered for decades in this Buddhist nation's impoverished south. "It will be hard for them to do these kind of bad things again," Thaksin told reporters in Bangkok, the capital.

Muslims, 5% of Thailand's 64 million people, are a majority in the country's thin southern peninsula. They have long complained of cultural, religious and economic repression by the central government, some 965 kilometres away in Bangkok.

Thaksin blamed a surge in violence this year on money flowing into the south from drug traffickers and corrupt politicians. Other officials say the trouble stems from rival criminal factions or conflicts between corrupt army and police forces over the spoils of smuggling.

Thaksin insisted no foreign terrorists were involved, although the area is believed to have been used as a hiding place for militants linked to al-Qaida through Jemaah Islamiyah, a regional terrorist group.

Mansalan Mohamad, a lecturer at the Yala Islamic College in the south, acknowledged the motives cited by the prime minister but said they weren't the whole story. "The trend of growing Muslim anger and the war in Iraq, the situation in the Middle East, also are part of the factors," he said.

Thailand has about 450 troops in Iraq and has co-operated closely in efforts to catch terrorists in Southeast Asia.

Analysts said yesterday's attacks may indicate rising stakes in a hitherto small-scale battle of bombings and drive-by shootings.

Every country that is not an already de jure Moslem Country (Indonesia and Turkey are not) but has any Moslem population at all is or will soon be involved in insurrection and civil war. In North America the small number of Moslems is strengthened by the alliance with the Left. Our lefties may never learn to shoot rifles and handguns effectively but they seem to learn bombmaking in college and prep school. Europe is probably already mostly lost due to the great numbers of Moslems swarming in and the lack of will to survival of the indigenes. The western democracies will not learn that they must eject all their Moslems, regardless of constitutional arrangements until it is almost too late. then those arrangements will be totally and finally shredded in the process. If we in the US could get it together right now to eject all non citizen Moslems and ban Moslem immigration the situation might be manageable later on. We would also have to define constitutionally the nation as being Judeo Christian in such a way as not to prejudice any other religion or atheism except that which means to destroy the religious base of the nation, i.e. Islam. It is not possible to actually ban Islam but Mosques and symbols and most preaching could, in fact, be banned. Sooner or later it has to happen and it probably will not be so rational a procedure and may not leave much of the constitution intact at all.

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