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Southeast Asia

Thai Muslims Moving On

2005-10-08

SUNGAI KOLOK, Thailand, 8 October 2005 — Along with the ubiquitous cans of soda and packets of pot noodles, the mom-and-pop stores of violence-plagued southern Thailand are selling tickets to a new life. For 5 baht ($0.12), the stubs of paper buy a 30-second boat ride across a narrow river to Malaysia — the land of opportunity for young Muslims wanting to escape 21 months of unrest in Thailand’s three southernmost provinces. As the death toll climbs above 900 and the local economy collapses, young Muslims see little point in staying behind to get caught up in an increasingly dirty guerrilla conflict between separatist militants and more than 30,000 soldiers and police. “People here worry about three things. Where will the authorities arrest me? When should I leave? How will I die?” said Abdulrahman Abdulsahad, president of the Islamic Council of Narathiwat province, 1,200 km (750 miles) south of Bangkok. Two points: First, that death toll is mostly Thai Buddhists. Second, the victims are teachers, policemen, rubber plantation workers and shopkeepers. Basically the entire southern Thailand middle class. The imams shut down Friday rubber production on "religious" grounds and recently came after Thusday production as well, with leaflets threatening death to anyone caught working. One estimate I posted here a few months ago said rubber production was down six percent; my guess is that the economic damage is worse than that and the damage to the social fabric of Thailand is horrific. To the Islamists, that's a feature, not a bug. The fear is taking its toll on youngsters in Narathiwat and the neighboring provinces of Yala and Pattani, once an independent sultanate where Muslims now say they feel like second-class citizens. “I am definitely going to move,” said Sobri, a 22-year-old Muslim university student in Pattani who wants to further his studies in Malaysia. “If you don’t agree with the government, you are their enemy.” The mainly Buddhist administration in Bangkok has poured troops into the region, where 80 percent of the 1.8 million population are Muslim, ethnic Malay and non-Thai speaking, but has failed to halt the daily bombings and shootings. This article isn't very clear on just how many "university students" are moving away to get advanced weapons training go on jihad escape the violence. To my skeptical eye, it looks ominous for the Thais.

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Southeast Asia

Bomb attack in southern Thailand

2005-02-17

A bomb in southern Thailand has killed four people and injured at least 35, as Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra visited the troubled region. The bomb exploded in the border town of Sungai Kolok in Narathiwat province at 1905pm (1205GMT), police said. It came hours after Mr Thaksin said he would use military muscle and economic sanctions to punish those villages that were sympathetic to Islamic rebels. Local leaders in the largely Muslim region strongly criticised the plan. "Why is everyone picking on us?" The bomb was planted in a car parked near the Marina Hotel, said police spokesman Nawin Nilwanith. Sungai Kolok is a popular tourist town on the border with Malaysia. It is not the first time the town has been the target of a suspected militant attack. The bombing came as Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was touring the country's Muslim-dominated south, the scene of sectarian violence which has claimed more than 550 lives since January last year. During Thursday's tour, Mr Thaksin outlined his latest plans to tackle the ongoing violence - plans which the BBC's correspondent in Bangkok, Kylie Morris, says are his most controversial yet. The gloves just came off Some 1,580 southern villages have been surveyed for their co-operation with the government, and categorised as red, yellow or green, depending on the degree of violence found there. Villages are designated as red if they are frequently violent, if they refuse to co-operate with the authorities, and if more than half the residents are judged to be sympathetic to the aims of the insurgents. Three hundred and fifty-eight villages are cited as red zones, including 200 in the province of Narathiwat. Mr Thaksin has said he will give more than $500m to villages across the country within the next 10 weeks, and each community's quota will depend on its colour code. Red zone villages will not get any money. "We don't give money to those red villages because we don't want them to spend the money on explosives, road spikes or assassins," Mr Thaksin told villagers in Narathiwat. "If the money sanctions do not work, I will send soldiers to lay siege to the red zone villages and put more pressure on them," he added. "I will never allow anyone to separate even one square inch from this country, even though this land will have to be soaked with blood. So I'd like everyone to be friends with me. Don't be friends with bad guys," he said. "Don't make me angey. You won't like me when I'm angry" But Abdulrohman Abdulsamad, chairman of the Islamic Council of Narathiwat, said Mr Thaksin's ideas would only succeed in pushing villagers into the arms of militants. "When [the Muslim world] find that we are being ignored or sanctioned... they will step in," he said. They already have stepped in, that's one of the problems. Mr Thaksin is meeting both Muslim and Buddhist leaders on his three-day tour. More than 500 people have been killed in the south in a wave of violence blamed on Muslim insurgents. In the past months, Buddhist monks, teachers, police and soldiers have been ambushed and murdered on an almost daily basis.

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