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| Southeast Asia |
| An update on the Thai Jihad |
| 2005-08-18 |
| EFL The Thai authorities continue to face difficulties in their efforts to bring the activities of the jihadi terrorist elements under control in Southern Thailand. The current wave of jihadi terrorist violence in the three Muslim majority southern provinces, which started in January last year, has already cost over 800 lives of Government servants, innocent civilians and suspected Muslim militants. Like all jihadi terrorist movements, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya or elsewhere, it has already passed through two stages and is presently in its third stage. The first stage saw attacks on the security forces, including village defence elements, partly to demonstrate their mobilisation power and partly to capture arms and ammunition. The second stage saw targeted attacks on individual government servants and teachers and non-governmental elements with the help of the arms and ammunition secured by them during the first stage. The third stage has been seeing increasingly indiscriminate attacks on innocent civilians through the use of hand-held weapons as well as improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and targeted attacks on alleged agents of the police and the security forces and local Muslims perceived as co-operating with the Government. The idea is to create doubts in the minds of the local population about the ability of the Government to protect them. Their present tactical objectives seem to be to radicalise the local Muslim population, to promote feelings of Islamic solidarity and Islamic consciousness, to create a mental and emotional divide between the Muslims and the non-Muslims, mainly the Buddhists, and to prepare the ground for a sustained jihad. What is their strategic objective--- greater autonomy for the Muslim-majority provinces or an independent Muslim homeland to ultimately form part of an Islamic Caliphate for the whole of South-East Asia? The answer is not clear from the reports emanating frm South Thailand, but in the madrasas and mosques of Bangladesh and Pakistan from where the ideological inspiration and material support for the movement are coming, the strategic objective is projected as an independent Pattani homeland. In Bangladesh and Pakistan, the Thai Muslims are referred to as the Pattanis. The external inspiration has so far been mainly from Bangladesh and Pakistan, the main motivating organisations being the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), which has a presence both in Bangladesh and Pakistan, and the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), which has a presence only in Pakistan and not in Bangladesh. The extensive media reporting in Pakistan on the presence of foreign students in Pakistani madrasas, which followed the reports of the involvement of three British citizens of Pakistani origin in the London explosions of July 7,2005, has revealed the presence of nearly a thousand Pattanis in the Pakistani madrasas. This has been a surprisingly large number. Till the Pakistani media gave an estimate of the number of Thai students in their madrasas, one was under the impression that the flow of Thai Muslims to the madrasas in Pakistan had considerably declined after the arrest of the brother of Hambali, the operational chief of the Jemaah Islamiya (JI), and some other Indonesians and Malaysians from madrasas in Karachi controlled by the LET and their deportation to their respective countries in 2003. One does not know when the flow of the so-called Pattanis to the Pakistani madrasas was resumed. Even the American intelligence agencies, which have a large presence in Pakistan, seem to have missed the enrollment of such a large number of Thai Muslims in the Pakistani madrasas. Many of these Thai Muslims have enrolled themselves in the madrasas of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Balochistan, which are the hotbed of the activities of the Taliban and the Wahabi-Deobandi organisations of Pakistan. Some of them have also undergone training in the jihadi training centres of the Taliban and Gulbuddin Heckmatyar's Hizbe Islami (HEI) and have been participating in the current Taliban-HEI-Al Qaeda offensive in Afghanistan from sanctuaries in the NWFP and Balochistan. While there are reports of a creeping Arabisation of sections of the Muslim youth of Southern Thailand, similar to what one had seen in Indonesia, there are as yet no trends which could be described as the possible Talibanisation of the youth. Recent developments such as the orders by the Muslim militants to all commercial and other establishments to close down on Fridays and even Thursdays are indicative of a greater radicalisation, but not necessarily of Talibanisation. The two most important characteristics of Talibanisation are attacks on places of entertainment such as movie halls and video parlours, and radio and TV stations and greater restrictions on the personal lives of women. One has not seen reports of any such trends in Southern Thailand so far. There has been considerable fraternisation of the Thai Muslims in Pakistan with the Taliban, the HEI and the remnants of the Al Qaeda. While this has strengthened their motivation and feelings of Islamic solidarity, this influence has not led to the Thai Muslims doing a copycat of the mass casualty reprisal terrorism of the Al Qaeda brand in Southern Thailand. The Al Qaeda's main strategic interest in cultivating the Thai Muslims and helping them is in using them for possible acts of maritime terrorism in the Malacca Straits. The importance of the Malacca Straits from the point of view of the global jihad is one of the lessons taught in the madrasas and jihadi training centres of Pakistan. From the reports available so far from Southern Thailand as well as Bangladesh and Pakistan, it has not been possible to establish the identity of the organisation behind the current jihad in Southern Thailand. Is it the Pattani United Liberation Organisation or is there a new organisation behind it? The prestigious "Daily Times" of Lahore has reported that the decision to launch a jihad in Southern Thailand was taken at a meeting of the jihadi leaders held in Lahore, but it has not indicated when this meeting was held and who attended it. There is still a window of opportunity for the Thai authorities to dilute the feelings of alienation in the Muslim population so that their support could be enlisted in the counter-terrorism operations. The difficulties for the Thai authorities are likely to multiply when the Thai Muslims presently in Pakistan and Bangladesh start returning. They have to tone up their counter-terrorism set-up and policies without any further delay. |
| Posted by:Paul Moloney |