Thailand has not solved Muslim insurgency

Zachary Abuza:

One day short of the nine month anniversary of the Thai Coup that deposed former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the acting PM General Surayud Chultanont, acknowledged that the situation in the South “had deteriorated,” and suggested the permanent closure of remote schools, a bitter acknowledgement that the military was unable to stop attacks on teachers and schools.

In all more than 2,300 people have been killed and close to 6,000 wounded in the Thai insurgency that began in January 2004. The violence since the coup has spiked, some 600 have been killed, despite the fact that one of the many justifications for the coup was to remedy Thaksin’s mishandling of the insurgency. The government installed by coup leader General Sonthi Boonyaratglin promised a two-prong strategy to fix the south: to win back the hearts and minds of the moderate Muslim community and to improve the capacity of the security services to neutralize the insurgents. They have failed on both counts and the government of Prime Minister Surayud Chultanont has proven incapable of quelling the violence.

There have been several trends in the violence since the coup. First, the IEDs have become larger, and now rural roadside IEDs average around 15 kilograms. Many more IEDs are command detonated which has improved the accuracy of detonation. The result of these factors is that more soldiers are being killed than ever before. In one instance a week ago, 12 soldiers were killed with a single bomb on 31 May. On 15 June, an IED flipped a truck with seven soldiers in it; all were then shot execution style by insurgents. The use of second bombs, set off both with timers and command-detonated charges has also increased. Sadly Thai security forces and first responders still fall victim to this, by not securing the scene of the first attack. Cell phone detonators are still being used, but increasingly timers – such as Casio watches- and command detonations are being used.

Second, the killings have become far more brutal: One third of the 30 beheadings, has transpired in 2007. There have been almost as many machete attacks, and the desecration of corpses has become routine. In one case, a Buddhist woman was still alive when insurgents set her ablaze. Many attacks are meant to elicit shock and fear. In March 2007 a minivan was disabled and all ten Buddhist passengers, including two girls and two women, were shot execution style. The majority of victims are still killed by gunshots, but the added macabre has increased the sense of fear. The victims now regularly include women, children, Buddhist monks, as well as Muslims themselves.

Third, teachers and schools continue to be targeted with appalling frequency. 80 teachers have been killed and some 200 schools arsoned. On 11 June, three Buddhist teachers, including two females, were killed in Narathiwat, when two gunmen got off a motorbike and walked straight into the school library, and shot the women in front of some 100 children. The attack closed more than 260 schools for the week. On 13 June, insurgents torched 13 schools in Yala and Pattani provinces nearly simultaneously. Schools across the three provinces have been shut down for weeks at a time, destroying the social fabric and increasing the rate that Buddhists are fleeing the south.

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Thee is more about this Muslim war for ignorance and intolerance. It is hard to blame this one on the Crusaders or the US. It is all about Muslim religious bigots doing what they do and their victims include other Muslims who do not follow the weird beliefs of the insurgents.