Posted on 06/23/2002 6:45:42 PM PDT by JimSEA
Isoc links unrest to separatist groups
Malaysia urged to screen travellers
Wassana Nanuam Waeda-o Harai
The Internal Security Operations Command believes the current unrest in the South is the work of a mujahideen separatist group whose 15 core members have just returned from training in a Middle East country.
Gen Pallop Pinmanee, Isoc deputy director, said separatist groups still existed in the South, but police chose to refer to them as common bandits rather than terrorists.
``Now the Civilian-Police-Military Command 43 has been dissolved and the police have asked for three months to get things reorganised without the military's involvement, but 13 people have been killed in the past two months and police cannot do anything,'' Gen Pallop said. Isoc last month learned that 15 core members of the mujahideen group had returned from the Middle East, while another 185 had left for training in Iraq under President Saddam Hussein's sponsorship.
``The 185 men are expected to return in the next six months and it is feared they will cause further trouble, and the South will again find itself the centre of a raging fire, just like in 1987,'' said Gen Pallop, who used to fight communist insurgents in the region. The mujahideen trainees would come back with a separatist ideology and follow the line of the Aceh separatists in Indonesia, Gen Pallop said. After the Sept 11 terrorist attacks in the US, Muslims around the world had joined hands in adopting the same ideology as Osama bin Laden, head of al-Qaeda terrorism network, he said.
Gen Pallop also believed the mujahideen group was behind last Thursday's raid by hooded men who stole a large number of weapons from the living quarters of park officials at Yala's Bang Lang national park. He thought the raid was carried out with help from insiders with the aim of discrediting police.
Meanwhile, authorities in Narathiwat province have asked neighbouring Malaysia to carefully screen people travelling across the common border, a source said.
Following the request, the commander of a border police battalion in Malaysia's Kelantan state notified Thai authorities that 13 border crossings in Kelantan opposite Tak Bai, Sungai Kolok, Sukhirin and Waeng districts would be temporarily closed. Thai authorities have sent their Malaysian counterparts a list of names and pictures of suspected members of 10 separatist groups operating in Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat provinces.
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