 Bangkok (AKI) – Thirty-one injured and one dead is the tally of Tuesday morning’s double bomb explosions in Yala, one of the three predominately Muslim provinces of Thailand, where bloody and secretive insurgent groups have killed over 2,400 people since January 2004. As it is often the case in this region, reports say that the second blast was triggered to inflict maximum damage against those who had converged on the scene of the first explosion.
On Tuesday the police said that nine security personnel, several onlookers and pressmen from TV7, TV3, Reuters and ASTV News 1, were among the injured. The double bomb attacks follow 40 coordinated violence-related incidents in Narathiwat on Monday, including the burning of schools, nails thrown onto roads and trees being cut to block the police.
The pace of the attacks is not unusual. Data for the first week of July alone shows that 32 people and three militants were killed, and 94 were wounded. In the same seven day period, 23 bombs detonated and three were defused. The attacks come as the authorities are still in the dark as to who exactly is behind the insurgency.
| That bespeaks either incredible ineptitude or an unwillingness to say in public who the bad guyz are. My guess is it's the second. If it's the first, I'm available at relatively modest cost to solve that for them. |
To date, there has not been a single credible claim of responsibility, nor have the insurgents publicly stated their goals or political platform.
| They don't have to announce it. They "announced" it when the first head came off. |
Zachary Abuza, widely considered among the top experts on the Thai insurgency, has stated in the past that “the rebel groups’ unwillingness to disclose any details has worked to their advantage and left the Thai intelligence in a quandry.”
| Thai intelligence should have all the details on all the bad guy corpses collected over the course of the past few years. Each of those corpses had a mom and dad and brothers and sisters, unless they're automatons or efrits or something. When animated, the corpses went to madrassahs and to mosques. Buying a low-priced map and a few boxes of pins with colored heads would allow the dullest of M. le Inspecteurs to group their points of origin and trace what they had in common. A few packs of 3x5 cards and what used to be a 29 cent notebook -- I believe they're still only $1.59 or something like that -- would suffice to hold the notes needed to build the outlines of the organization, whether it has a name or not. Outside connections would be shown with cheap colored yarn on that map, and it would give them the approximate location of the local Mr Big. That's all elementary stuff, my dear Watson. There's no brain surgery required, nor do you have to plot a trajectory to Jupiter. |
Nonetheless, from the murky scenario experts agree that there are several groups working together and sharing a common Islamist agenda.
| No! Reeeeeeeally? I'll bet that's why they call them experts, huh? |
It is widely believed that their aim is to make the region ungovernable and create the condition for the establishment of an independent Islamic state. Thai intelligence speaks of the insurgency as being a "pondok-based" movement, referring to the private Islamic schools that dot the region.
| Solution: shut the pondoks down. Even better solution: tax them out of existence. Make their paymasters pay for the privilege of subverting a decent country. |
According to reports, among the most active groups is the BRN-Coordinate, one of the three splinter groups of the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (National Revolution Front, BRN). BRN was founded in March 1963 by Ustadz Haji Abdul Karim Hassan to oppose the nationalist agenda of PULO, the group that led previous conducted revolts in the area. PULO claims it was mostly nationalistic rather than religious and was centred on the incorporation of the three provinces into Thailand at the turn of the last century, after a shady deal with England, the then colonial master of Malaysia. Until then, Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani were part of the independent Sultanate of Pattani.
The number of members in the BRN-C is not known, but Thai officials estimate that there are approximately 1,000 members. Its current leaders are believed to be mostly schoolteachers and ustadz – religious leaders - from roughly 18 schools, including the Thamawittiya Foundation School in Yala, the Samphan Wittaya School, Jihad Wittaya School and Pattana Islam. When Adnkronos International (AKI) visited Thamawittiya Foundation, the school owner, Razi Bensulong, denied any connection to the radical fringes.
"This is a school, we have 7,000 students and 600 teachers. We just teach, we have nothing to do with what is going on here," he said.
| When more than a random number of their school's students show up with toe tags the school needs fined and shut down. |
Abuza said that “current known BRN-C leadership includes Afghan-trained Masae Useng, Sapaeng Basoe, Abdullah Munir, Dulloh Waeman (Ustadz Loh), Abroseh Parehruepoh, Abdulkanin Kalupang, Isma-ae Toyalong, Arduenan Mama, Bororting Binbuerheng and Yusuf Rayalong (Ustadz Ismae-ae).” Some of them have lately been arrested. The BRN-C is thought to be structured along strict cellular lines. It is estimated that 70 percent of the villages have a cell of between five and ten people. Many villages have two or more cells.
Other groups believed to be involved are the Gerakan Mujahideen Islami Pattani (GMIP) and the Runda Kumpulan Kecil (RKK). The RKK is alleged to gather the members of the BRN-Coordinate militants that have been trained in Indonesia. The Islamic agenda of the new breeds of rebels has brought the spectre of a civil war in the region with local Buddhist joining ‘en masse’ the government-established, trained and armed militias. |