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| Southeast Asia |
| Root causes of increasing Thai violence |
| 2004-11-03 |
| EFL The internal security situation in southern Thailand, which has seen a recrudescence of long dormant Muslim anger against the Government since the beginning of this year, has again taken a turn for the worse with the death of six Muslims allegedly due to firing by the security forces outside a police station in the Narathiwat province on October 25, 2004, and the subsequent death, allegedly due to suffocation and renal failure, of another 78 Muslims who were among those arrested during a large demonstration by about 3,000 Muslims outside the police station which led to the use of tear-smoke and firing by the security forces to disperse them. The anger of the minorities in any country ---whether religious or sectarian or ethnic or ideological-- passes through the following stages--- communal, that is, against a community perceived as adversaries; anti-police/security forces due to their over-reaction and due to perceptions, right or wrong, that they are biased against the minorities; anti-Government due to perceptions that it is insensitive and over-protective of the security forces; and finally anti-national due to perceptions that the minorities cannot get justice as part of the existing nation. A similar evolution has been taking place in Southern Thailand. There are five characteristic features of the situation in Southern Thailand as it has evolved since January, 2004: Use of agitprop methods by Muslim clerics, similar to those used by the communists in the past, to force confrontational situations with the security forces and provoke them to over-react, thereby leading to human rights violations and alienation of the man in the street against the Security Forces and ultimately against the Government. Such agitprop methods were typically in action in the incident outside a mosque in April, 2004, and in the incident of October 25. In recent weeks, there has been a growing number of worrisome incidents of alleged thefts of fire-arms issued to Muslim members of the village defence forces in Southern Thailand. A legitimate suspicion of the Police and other security forces that these were probably not genuine thefts, but instances of the Muslim members voluntarily handing over their weapons issued by the Police to the jihadi terrorists and then covering them up as thefts led to rigorous enquiries by the police. It was the arrest of some Muslim members, who had reported such thefts, which would appear to have led to the surrounding of the police station by a mob of 3,000 resulting in a confrontational situation. Available reports from reliable sources indicate that this was not a spontaneous outburst of public anger, but a carefully instigated and orchestrated one. Targeted killings of individuals such as Government officials and their relatives, Buddhists etc by two-member jihadi terrorist squads using motor cycles for carrying out their attacks and getting away. The modus operandi used by these terrorist squads closely resemble that used by the Sunni extremist Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ) and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami (HUJI) in Pakistan. This modus operandi is taught in the madrasas controlled by the LEJ and the HUJI in Pakistan and in those controlled by the HUJI (Bangladesh) in Bangladesh. Many Thai Muslims had been trained in these madrasas in Pakistan and this job of training future recruits from Southern Thailand has since been taken over by HUJI (B) in Bangladesh. Reliable reports from Bangladesh speak of a HUJI-run OBL (Osama bin Laden) Trail, similar to the Ho Chi-Minh trail of the Vietnam war days, operating between Bangladesh and Thailand for bringing in small numbers of Thai Muslims, with the help of their Myanmarese co-religionists, training them in the HUJI-controlled madrasas of Bangladesh and escorting them back. It is stated that the OBL trail is now being used only for the movement of men and not material. There is also a flow of funds from the HUJI of Bangladesh, which is a member of the IIF, to the Muslims of Southern Thailand. According to some estimates, about 250 plus individuals---public servants and non-governmental personalities----have been the victims of such targeted killings since January this year. Frustrating the efforts of the Thai Police to establish the identities of the individuals and organisations involved in acts of violence/terrorism by projecting their investigation and detention of suspected Muslims for interrogation as anti-Islam. After the incidents of raids and looting of firearms by the terrorists in January, police attempts to detain and question Ismaae Yusof Rayalong, the headmaster of the Tohyeeming Islamic boarding school in Yala's Muang district, and teachers, Muhamad Hayeewea Sohor and Santi Sama-ae, of the Suwannakorn school in tambon Bor Thong of Pattani's Nong Chik district, were projected by the jihadis as evidence of the anti-Muslim attitude of the police. A skillfully planned and executed psychological warfare campaign by the perpetrators of violence and the Muslim clerics supporting them to project serious incidents of violence or terrorism, which might shock the international community, as incidents stage-managed by the local security agencies in order to have the Muslims discredited as terrorists. One finds here a close resemblance between the psywar tactics used by the perpetrators of violence in Southern Thailand and those used elsewhere in the world by the members of the IIF. Pakistani jihadi terrorist organisations, which are members of the IIF, often project serious incidents of terrorism by their followers in India's Jammu & Kashmir as stage-managed by the Indian intelligence and security agencies in order to discredit the Muslims. Till Osama bin Laden admitted the responsibility of Al Qaeda for the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US, the IIF was projecting them as carried out by the MOSSAD, Israel's external intelligence agency. In an interview to the AFP news agency after the January incidents, Yapa Barahaeng, a retired teacher, alleged: "Muslim groups haven't done this. It seems the government itself or the police or military have done it." he said. There have been numerous instances of such false propaganda by Muslim activists to create a divide between the security forces and the local Muslim population. Attempts at an Arabisation of the local Muslim culture and religious practices through madrasas funded by Saudi money flowing largely from the Al Haramain office in Bangladesh, Arabic language classes and dissemination of copies of the Holy Koran in the Arabic language and exhortations to the local Muslims to study the Holy Koran in the Arabic language only and give up the use of the Thai language for this purpose. |
| Posted by:Paul Moloney |
| #6 sounds like they are going to target the clerics and Madrasas. Good |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-11-03 6:48:09 PM |
| #5 Hmm, use of agitprop methods, Wahabi money... reminds me of Michael Moore and George Soros. |
| Posted by: V is for Victory 2004-11-03 6:41:38 PM |
| #4 The main root causes in addition to Wahhabi $$$ is belonging to the death cult of jihadism. I agree with all the previous postings. |
| Posted by: Mark Espinola 2004-11-03 5:45:14 PM |
| #3 Thais are tough,seems they are good at killing wild-eyed fanatics. |
| Posted by: raptor 2004-11-03 3:18:42 PM |
| #2 The Thais crushed the Communists, whose methods are being adopted by the Muslim guerrillas. They will crush these guerrillas as well. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2004-11-03 11:50:55 AM |
| #1 This is an excellent article that describes in good detail the methods our enemies are using to brainwash and program their killbots. And the root cause of all this Thai Muslim anger is...Saudi money. |
| Posted by: Seafarious 2004-11-03 9:52:43 AM |