BANGKOK - Thai police claim to have uncovered Al Qaeda military training manuals during a raid on an Islamic boarding school in the troubled south, a senior official said Friday. "The find gives rise for grave concerns," Thailand's Interior Minister, Police General Chidchai Vanasatidya, told the state-run Thai News Agency (TNA). Police reportedly found the terrorist documents hidden on a coconut plantation near an Islamic school in Pattani province that they raided looking for Muslim militant ringleaders. | If I was looking for militant ringleaders that's where I'd look. Check the facility roster, better yet just jug the whole lot. |
Thai authorities have thought that the surge in violence in Thailand's three majority Muslim southernmost provinces - Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala - was caused by Thai separatists, with no outside interference from foreign militants such as the Al Qaeda terrorist network of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), a militant Muslim organization in Indonesia. | Well, that's the offical position anyway. Wonder if they can say it with a straight face. |
Earlier this week the Internal Crisis Group (ICG), a Brussels-based think tank, said they had found no evidence of outside involvement in the South but warned that if the situation is allowed to "fester," it might encourage an international jihad.
| "Brussels-based think tank", need we say more? |
"Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is very worried about this and he has assigned me to take care of it," said Chidchai. Thaksin's heavy-handed handling of the southern violence, which has claimed more than 700 lives since January, 2004, has drawn international criticism and concerns among Muslim nations. The deep South is the only majority Muslim region in predominantly Buddhist Thailand. | The 3,694th holiest place in Islam |
The Organisation of Islamic Conferences (OIC) plans to send a delegation of officials to assess the problems in Thailand's southern provinces during a two-week visit to the region starting on June 2, Chidchai said. |