Thailand’s prime minister said Wednesday an eruption of violence in the Muslim-majority south should come as a "wake-up call" for the security forces, as police were targeted in a new attack.
| Then wake the hell up and go on the offensive against the turbans. Don't just sit back and wait for them to kill your people. |
Thaksin Shinawatra said a spate of attacks against soldiers, police and schools was "regrettable" and that the government "must accept that we underestimated some things".
| Yeah. I always find dead people "regrettable," too... |
"This incident shows our prolonged weakness in working together and in relations between officials and residents," he said in a speech to a political science institute in Bangkok. "It will be a big wake up call for the Thai security system and we must solve the problem systematically. It is a lesson for us."
| Learn from it. Even better, show how quick you are on the uptake... |
An audacious attack on a military camp in Narathiwat Sunday left four soldiers dead while 18 schools and two police checkpoints were torched. A day later two policemen were killed in Pattani as they tried to defuse a bomb. In the latest violence Wednesday, two policemen were slightly injured when gunmen opened fire on their station in Yala province. Army chief General Chaisit Shinawatra blamed the attack on the same assailants, who have been linked by Thai officials to interests as varied as Muslim militants, organized crime, bandits and business disputes. "It’s the same old group of attackers. They were very brazen to carry out the attack. We want them to go on so that we can retaliate against them," he told reporters.
| How about if you hunt them down and kill them like dogs so they don't go on? This is the sort of thing governments are supposed to protect their people against, not second-hand smoke. |
No arrests have yet been made in connection with the case and the government has fumbled in its attempts to name those responsible. Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar was quoted as saying by the official Malaysian Bernama news agency Wednesday that Thailand had told Malaysia it suspected terrorists were involved.
Bernama said Syed Hamid told reporters Thailand "considered the attacks as those of terrorists and not bandits". Syed Hamid held talks with his Thai counterpart Surakiart Sathirathai in Malaysia on Tuesday, when he flew in to brief Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi on the violence. Thaksin however insisted Wednesday that the attackers were not terrorists and said instead that they were Islamic teachers holding dual citizenship in Thailand and Malaysia who had slipped into Malaysia. "No, they were not international terrorists and this had nothing to do with the capture of Hambali," he said.
| Ummm... He really isn't quick on the uptake, is he? He's assuming that to be a terrorist you have to belong to al-Qaeda, or at least to JI. He seems to know that the bad guys are "Islamic teachers," but he gags when he tries to say they're terrorists. |
Thai officials have repeatedly blamed "bandits" for the violence, but Thaksin on Monday implicated Islamic militants "tied to mujahedin." He later said, however, that business conflicts were probably the root of the trouble.
A separatist movement has rumbled on for decades in the five Muslim majority provinces bordering Malaysia but most analysts believe the groups would be unable to launch such well-coordinated attacks independently.
| Most analysts probably haven't made a bomb or two, even experimentally. It doesn't take much. |
They have said this week’s attacks were a marked departure from previous violence in the region and could have been organized crime gangs and Islamic militant groups working together. Top Thai ministers meanwhile met here for a second day to plan a response to the attacks and said they would set up a task force of military, police and civil servants to provide security in the restive area.
| Good idea. Form a committee. Make it a blue ribbon panel. |
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