Thailand insurgency may have links to the broader world of radical Islam
Thailand insurgency may have links to the broader world of radical Islam
The Associated Press - Published: March 10, 2007
THANNAM THIP, Thailand: A shallow river, deep jungles and an old 20-kilometer (12-mile) wall mark the divide not just between Thailand and Malaysia but between Southeast Asia's Muslim and Buddhist worlds.
This ragged stretch of border is being viewed by some as a potential front in the Muslim insurgency wracking southern Thailand, mysterious in its goals and undeterred either by government crackdowns or by peace overtures.
People on both sides of the border share ethnicity, language and religion — Islam. Muslim-run soup restaurants on the Malaysian side are suspected of being funding sources for the rebels, and this has become an irritant in relations between two countries that are mainstays of the Southeast Asian alliance.
Analysts are divided over whether Thai insurgents are plugging into a broader Islamic movement or would rather confine their fight to winning some degree of autonomy. But an Associated Press investigation indicates the separatist rebellion, which has already taken the lives of more than 2,000 people, is making outside connections:
Young Thai Muslims — thousands, by Thai government estimate — are being educated in neighboring Muslim countries and the Middle East, with an unknown number returning as recruiters or actual participants in the insurgency. Some may be receiving military training while abroad.
Reports persist that some Indonesians or other foreigners are training and fighting with the rebels, though none has been captured and the reports are unconfirmed.
Islamic radicals around the world are increasingly setting their sights on the insurgency. An Arab Web site appeared in January, dedicated exclusively to southern Thailand and believed the first of its kind. Couched in Islamic rhetoric, the site backs independence for southern Thais.
Malaysia denies providing any support, mindful that the insurgency could infect its own predominantly Muslim population. But the Thai government is worried enough to be proposing a longer wall than the barrier the Malaysians built in Cold War times to stop smugglers and communist guerrillas.
"We know when some of them cross the border and report it to our Foreign Ministry and the Malaysian military, but nobody ever gets caught," said Lt. Chatchai Kitkhunthot in this frontier village. He was one of several Thai army officers and local officials who pinpointed infiltration and escape routes across the border on maps and the ground.
"Basically the southern Thailand conflict is becoming more regionalized. But we are at the very early stage of it," says Rohan Gunaratna, who heads the International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in Singapore and wrote "Inside al-Qaida: Global Network of Terror." Islamic militancy is spreading in Southeast Asia, he says, and "What is happening in Thailand will not be an exception."
Others disagree, likening the insurgency to the Muslim uprising in Indonesia's Aceh province, which shunned foreign help and was resolved with U.N. mediation.
"They are fighting for a separate state so they don't want one which is going to be run by outsiders," says a Western official in Bangkok who is knowledgeable about anti-terrorism efforts and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The insurgents, according to the Thai military, number 3,000 to 5,000, with some 10,000 to 12,000 sympathizers out of a Muslim population of 3 million in the southernmost provinces of Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani which border Malaysia. They are secretive, brutal, effective. "We don't know when or where they will attack next," says Col. Wichai Thongdaeng, an army spokesman in the south.
An independent sultanate until it was merged into Thailand a century ago, the southern provinces have seen rebellions come and go. In the latest, which began in early 2004, the rebels have torched schools, bombed banks, beheaded some 25 people and shot teachers, policemen, government officials and just ordinary citizens. More than half the victims have been Muslims suspected of collaborating with authorities — teachers, civil servants, policemen.
In one recent incident, says army Lt. Jenkila Somboon, three Muslim rubber tappers were shot to death because their village was getting too friendly with the soldiers.
Little is known about the insurgents, or "juwae" — the local word for fighters. They have revealed no program, leadership roster or even a name. Their only public forms of communication are threatening leaflets. But Thai intelligence officers who have interrogated defectors or captured insurgents say that at least some of the groups are fighting for an independent, Islamic state.
"If you go to work, we will kill you cruelly. We will wait for you 24 hours a day, follow you wherever you go," said one recent leaflet obtained by The AP, ordering Buddhists in one area to leave within three days. It's not known whether they left, but the insurgency has already displaced hundreds of villagers.
International Risk, a Hong Kong-based consultancy, calls the insurgency the world's "new terrorism front line," but its shadowy nature accounts in part for the differing assessments of outside involvement.
Thai leaders and intelligence officials say that loose, personal ties but no formal links currently exist between the domestic militants and networks such as al-Qaida and Jemaah Islamiyah, Southeast Asia's foremost terrorist organization.
The main conduits for militancy, they say, are Thai Muslims who study in Muslim countries ranging from Malaysia to Libya, then come back and spread their knowledge in religious schools. These form the breeding grounds of the insurgency, which Thai officials believe also attract funding from the Middle East that is partly channeled into the rebels' hands.
Former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra alleged that Malaysia harbored military training camps for the Thais, and some Western intelligence experts maintain that promising youths are systematically culled for training abroad, including the Middle East, and farmed out to key cells on their return.
Then there's an Indonesian connection going back to the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Thai and Indonesian militants trained together in Afghan-run camps on the Pakistan-Afghan border.
Between 1999 and 2003, Thai students held regular paramilitary sessions in Bandung, Indonesia, with the top "one or two" then sent to Mindanao in the southern Philippines, another region wracked by Islamic rebellion, for more combat training, said Col. Wichai Chucherd, defense attaché at the Thai embassy in Indonesia.
An Indonesian military intelligence report seen by The AP on the Bandung training says the presence of Thai separatists on Indonesian soil is worrying "because they could form links with Jemaah Islamiyah members who are now in Indonesia."
Thai insurgents provided support for frequent visits by Jemaah Islamiyah's alleged operations chief Riduan Isamuddin, also known as Hambali, who was captured in Thailand in 2003 and is now in U.S. custody.
But no foreign fighters have been captured or killed in southern Thailand, although Thai army officers say a small number are believed to be around.
Col. Pornthep Kalamphasut, deputy commander of the army's "hearts and minds" operation in the south, said some communication intercepts among the rebels have been in the Indonesian language. Col. Saksri Ngoypatphan, who commands units in two volatile districts, said defectors talk of tall non-Thais, often hooded, being involved in training.
But of greater concern among the Thai military is the winding 647-kilometer (402-mile) border with Malaysia.
Crossing the frontier is easy, using such corridors as the Hala Bala Wildlife Sanctuary, an area of deep jungle, said Phuchit Saechan, the headman of Thannam Thip. His village abuts the wall that Thailand wants to replace with a 27-kilometer (16-mile) barrier.
"The border doesn't mean much. We are the same people on both sides," said Mohammad Nor Ali, a restaurant owner near the lightly policed immigration checkpoint in Rantau Panjang, on the Malaysian side of the frontier in Kelantan state.
He acknowledged being sympathetic to the Thai Muslims' fight "because they are our brothers."
Gunaratna, the Singapore-based analyst, says despite official Malaysian denials, northern Malaysia "remains an active intellectual and material support base for the insurgent groups active in southern Thailand."
As financing goes, it is the ubiquitous soup restaurants run by Thai Muslims in Malaysia which have lately become the issue, after Thai Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont claimed many of them were a significant source of funding and recruitment of separatists.
Malaysian authorities took offense and issued indignant denials.
Malaysia's government is aware that the insurgency could embolden its own radicals. "We must not allow any breeding ground for terrorism to exist or to be nurtured," says Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar.
But Malaysia must also tread a fine line, curbing extremism without alienating its own people. Despite Thai pleas with its Muslim neighbor states for more cooperation, there have been no joint operations or even a common intelligence database.
Thailand's military regime, which overthrew Thaksin's elected government, says it has adopted a "hearts and minds" strategy rather than brute force to end the insurgency.
"We want to de-couple the south from international Islamic terrorism," said Foreign Minister Nitya Pibulsonggram in an interview. "Cooperation with Malaysia is really the key."
Denis Gray reported from the Thai side of the border and Vijay Joshi from the Malaysian side. Rungrawee C. Pinyorat and Sutin Wannabovorn in Bangkok, Chris Brummit in Indonesia and Jim Gomez in Manila contributed to this report.
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