THAILAND & INTERNATIONAL ISLAMIC FRONT

Indicators available since March, 2002, that the International Islamic Front (IIF) formed by Osama bin Laden in 1998 has been trying to extend its activities to southern Thailand have now been strengthened by the recent recrudescence of acts of violence in southern Thailand.

2. These indicators spoke of a surprisingly large number of Muslims from Thailand studying in the madrasas of Pakistan, some of them run by the five Pakistani components of the IIF. These components are the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), which has now been co-ordinating the activities of the IIF due to the inability of bin Laden to do so, the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ).

3. According to very reliable statistics for 2002, there were 190 students from S.E.Asia in the madrasas of Sindh, of whom 86 were from Malaysia, 82 from Thailand and 22 from Indonesia; 151 in the madrasas of Punjab, of whom 61 were from Malaysia, 49 from Thailand and 41 from Indonesia; and 59 in the madrasas of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), of whom 21 were from Indonesia, 20 from Malaysia and 18 from Thailand. Thus, there were 167 Malaysians, 149 Thais and 84 Indonesians in the various madrasas of Pakistan. Figures for 2003 are not yet available.

4. The reports received since March, 2002, also indicated that about 200 jihadis from Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand had joined the jihadi groups of the HUM, the LET and the HUJI and had gone into Afghanistan to fight against the allied troops led by the USA after the US started its military action on October 7, 2001, but they re-entered Pakistan after sustaining casualties when Kabul fell to the Northern Alliance and the US troops and the Taliban decided to melt away for the time being. The HUJI subsequently helped these dregs from S.E.Asia to escape to Bangladesh, from where they were to sneak their way back to their respective countries.

5. In a paper ( Paper no. 588 of 20. 01. 2003 at www.saag.org) on terrorism in Asia presented in the Asian Security Seminar at New Delhi in January, 2003, I had assessed as follows:" The IIF has four priorities in S.E.Asia:

* PRIORITY NO. 1: To attack American and other Western targets (including Australian) if and when an opportunity presented itself due to the lax security of the local authorities. * PRIORITY NO. 2: To assist Muslim minorities in non-Muslim States (the Philippines, Thailand and Myanmar) in their jihad for an independent State in the Muslim-inhabited areas as a prelude to the establishment of Islamic rule. Singapore, at present, does not fall into this category because they look upon it as rightfully belonging to Malaysia. Moreover, they want to confine their operations in Singapore to possible attacks on Western (including Australian) and Israeli interests. The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), the coalition of six pro-bin Laden and pro-Taliban organisations, which has come to power in the NWFP and Balochistan in Pakistan, had, in its election manifesto, pledged to assist the "independence movements" of the Muslims in Southern Philippines, Myanmar, J&K in India, Palestine and Chechnya. There was, however, no reference to the Muslims of Southern Thailand.

* PRIORITY NO. 3: To assist Muslims in the Muslim majority States (Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei) achieve an Islamic state ruled according to the Sharia.

6. I had also stated: " The Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), whose activities are orchestrated from Indonesia, is being developed as a regional replica of bin Laden's IIF, a united front of like-minded Islamic organisations of the region. The JI is at present functioning as a homogenous organisation taking trained recruits, preferably of Afghan vintage, unattached to any other organisation. In the next stage, the JI wants to bring in the other independent Islamic organisations of the region such as the Kumpulan Militant Malaysia which has had links to the JI, the Indonesian Mujahideen Council headed by Abu Bakr Bashir etc under a common umbrella in a united front."

7. On January 4, 2004, about 30 unidentified armed attackers killed four soldiers of the Thai army during a pre-dawn raid on an army weapons depot in Narathiwat in southern Thailand. They were reported to have decamped with more than 100 guns. Eighteen schools were also torched by another group of armed attackers during raids in the Narathiwat and Yala provinces the same day. The next day, two policemen were reportedly killed while trying to defuse a bomb in the Pattani province. Following these incidents, the Thai authorities declared a martial law in the Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala provinces in southern Thailand.

8. Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, in his initial comments, was reported to have blamed the incidents on a Muslim group called the Mujahideen, said to be operating in southern Thailand and the adjoining areas of Malaysia. Thaksin blamed a lack of co-ordination between the police and the army for the incidents and accused the 2,000 soldiers based in the camp of negligence .

9. This is not the first time that the five southernmost Muslim-majority provinces of Thailand --- Songkhla, Satun, Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani ---have seen sporadic acts of violence. The year 2002 saw a rash of incidents which resulted in the death of over 15 policemen.

10. The Thai authorities used to blame the past incidents either on the dregs of the separatist movement for independence in the 1980s, who, according to them, had taken to banditry, or narcotics smugglers and peddlers. In 2002, Thaksin ruled out the involvement of any jihadi terrorists in the incidents on the ground that many of the policemen killed were Muslims. According to him, jihadi terrorists would not kill Muslims. This argument is not correct. Thousands of innocent Muslims, including political workers and government servants, have been killed by the jihadi terrorists of the Pakistani components of the IIF in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) in India since 1993.

11. The incidents of January 4 and 5, 2004, have to be taken more seriously as they definitely indicate the possible beginning of jihadi terrorism in southern Thailand. On May 30, 2003, the Cambodian authorities had announced the arrest of two Thais and an Egyptian on suspicion of having links with the JI. The Cambodian authorities also ordered the expulsion from their country of 28 teachers belonging to Nigeria, Pakistan, Sudan, Thailand, Yemen and Egypt along with their families, making a total of 47 persons. They were reported to be searching for another foreigner--described as an Yemeni -- on a charge of links with the JI.

12. According to the Cambodian authorities, all these persons were associated with a school run by an organisation called the Umm al Qura (UAQ), which has also been ordered to close down its activities, including the school. The arrested Egyptian named Esam Mohammad Khidr Ali has been described as the chief of the UAQ. In addition to Phnom Penh, it had two branches in the provinces, which were also ordered to close down.

13. Media reports said that these actions were taken on the basis of intelligence received from the USA about the association of the UAQ and the arrested individuals with the JI and the likely threat of a terrorist action by them during the meetings of the Foreign Ministers of the ASEAN and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) member-countries at Phnom Penh from June 16 to 21, 2003.

14.In a surprise announcement in June, 2003, Thaksin announced that his officials had arrested four Muslims---three from Thailand and one from Singapore, since handed over to the Singapore authorities--- on a charge of plotting to stage terrorist strikes in Bangkok coinciding with the APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation) summit held at Bangkok in October,2003. The Thai authorities claimed to have recovered from the arrested Thai Muslims a tourist map of Bangkok with likely targets circled on it --- reportedly including the embassies of the United States, Britain, Israel, Australia and Singapore. It was also stated that the Singaporean Muslim admitted to being a member of the JI.

15. Subsequently,on June 11, 2003, the Thai police announced the identities of the three Thais arrested as Maisuri Haji Abdullah, his son Mayahi Haji Doloh, and medical doctor Waemahadi Wae-dao. They were arrested in the province of Narathiwat, where the raid on the army depot of January 4, 2004, has taken place, indicating that these incidents might be in retaliation for the June arrests.

16. The Thai Police also claimed that Haji Abdullah and his son had admitted to belonging to the JI and confessed that they were planning bomb attacks on embassies and tourist spots in Thailand such as Phuket and Pattaya. General Panlop Pinmanee, deputy director of the military's Internal Security Command, said that the doctor did not admit to membership of the JI, but had confessed to making counterfeit passports for its members. Separately, Singapore officials announced the identity of the Singapore Muslim arrested in Thailand on May 16 and handed over to them as Arifin bin Ali, said to be an important member of the JI.

17. In August, Hambali, said to be the operational chief of the JI, who was wanted by the Indonesian authorities in connection with their investigation of the Bali explosion of October, 2002, was arrested by the Thai authorities at Ayuthya and handed over to the USA's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). These incidents showed the presence of sleeper cells of the JI in Thai territory. Even then, there was a reluctance to admit openly that jihadi terrorism is spreading to Thailand.

18. However, after the latest incidents, at least one security expert of Thailand has openly expressed his concern over the real background of the dramatis personae behind the incidents of violence, which seem to be acts of jihadi terrorism and not of bandity as claimed by the Thai authorities till recently.

19.General Kitti Rattanachaya, a former Thai army commander in the south and now stated to be a government security adviser, was quoted by the media on January 8, 2004, as saying that an organisation called the Gerakan Mujahideen Islam Pattani, with links to Al Qaeda and the JI, was responsible for the recent wave of attacks in southern Thailand which killed six members of the Thai security forces.

20. According to him, of the Muslim extremists from South-East Asia, who had participated in the jihad against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan, " the Indonesians formed the Jemaah Islamiah, the Malaysians formed the KMM (Kampulan Mujahideen Malaysia) and the Thais quietly formed the Mujahideen Pattani."

21. He said that the professional nature of the attacks - which included co-ordinated arson on several schools and an arms depot raid - indicated that the gunmen had outside help, "possibly from the Kampulan Mujahideen Malaysia".

22. "At present, international terrorists are linked together like a network, with Al Qaeda at the core," Gen. Kitti said.

23. Gen.Palop Pinmanee, has been quoted as saying that one of the group's leaders, Jehbemae Buteh, was being hunted and was believed to be hiding in Malaysia.

24.While Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has admitted the presence of one such group in the region, he continues to maintain that the recent acts of violence in southern Thailand were motivated more by criminal (banditry) than political reasons.

25. Following Gen.Kitti's comments to the media in which he reportedly criticised the Government's reluctance to admit the existence of this organisation, Thaksin was reported to have banned all Government officials except four Ministers of his Cabinet from talking to the media on the subject in order to avoid creating unnecessary nervousness among foreign tourists visiting the country.

26. As mentioned in my assessment of the Bali explosion, "among the foreign nationals who fought in the International Islamic Front as members of its Pakistani components were American Muslims (mostly Afro-Americans), nationals/residents of West European countries, Thais, Malaysians, Singaporeans, who projected themselves as Malays from Malaysia, and Indonesians. Their total number was estimated to be about 200. Practically all of them had been recruited by HUM, HUJI and Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) teams, which went to these countries posing as preachers of the Tablighi Jamaat (TJ), brought them to Pakistan and trained them in the various madrasas with funds provided by the TJ and then taken to Afghanistan to get jihad inoculation.

27."Reports of the fighting earlier this year (2002) by the dregs of the Taliban, Al Qaeda and other components of the International Islamic Front against the US troops (Operation Anaconda) brought to light the participation of trained Indonesian jihadis in the fight against the US troops. It is learnt that these jihadis were trained in the training camp of the LET in the Muridke area in Punjab from where they were sent to Eastern Afghanistan to participate in the fighting against the US troops. According to the "News" of Islamabad (March 15, 2002) one of the dead bodies recovered by the pro-US Afghan troops after the fighting in the Shahi Kot area had an Indonesian identity card.

28." Evidence available so far indicates that while the terrorists from Malaysia and possibly Singapore were trained in the headquarters of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) in the Binori madrasa complex in Karachi, those from Indonesia were trained in the Muridke complex of the LET, near Lahore. The HUM had always been training the recruits from Southern Philippines and Myanmar, in addition to those from Xinjiang,Chechnya, Dagestan and the Central Asian Republics. The HUJI trains those from Bangladesh. Before October 7, 2001, the training camps of the HUM and the HUJI were located in Eastern Afghanistan. It is not known where they have been shifted since then. However, it is known that in the past they had used the infrastructure of the Tablighi Jamaat in Raiwind in Punjab for training purposes." ( Citation ends)

29. Reports received after the arrest of Hambali's brother Gungun and some of the Malaysian and Indonesian students studying in two madrasas of Karachi, one of them run by the LET, in September indicated that the IIF has asked the HUJI branch in Bangladesh identified as HUJI (B) to take over the responsibility for the future training of recruits from S.E.Asia The HUJI (B) already has a long-established training infrastructure in BD and it is likely to play an increasingly important role in the provision of training and other facilities to the jihadi terrorists of S.E.Asia, including Thailand. .

(The writer Is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Distinguished Fellow and Convenor, Advisory Committee, Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Chennai Chapter. E-mail: corde@vsnl.com )

The attacks in the south of Thailand are being done by individuals/small groups that are very very losely connected to each other. For example, there is almost no technology transfer either between the groups in Thailand or between the groups in Thailand and groups in the Middle East. If the article is true, and there are these many connections, I would expect to see more coordination which is not happening.

As an aside, Hambali was caught in Ayuthaya after being overheard by a street vender. He was talking about terrorist attacks and the vendor, a Muslim, called the cops on him.

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