Bomb Blasts In Thailand

Once again violence has come to Thailand. On the eve of the New Year, at least 8 bomb blasts have rocked the capitol city of Bangkok. Initial reports play down the possibility of Islamic Terrorists being to blame. New Years Eve celebrations throughout the nation have been cancelled, primarily because of fears of further violence.

Police do not believe foreign groups or militants from the Muslim south are to blame, says the BBC's Jonathan Head.

Our Bangkok correspondent says many Thais suspect the bombs were the work of opponents of the current military government, which forced Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra from office in September.

There are reasons, however, to doubt the official version of events.

Over the last several years, increased Muslim violence throughout the south of Thailand has plagued the country. The southern provinces, once part of the ancient kingdom of Pattani, have long been a hot-bed of Islamic unrest. A revolt in the 1070s was put down by the Bangkok government, only to re-emerge in the late 1990s.
Increased Wahhabi indoctrination of the Muslim educational system has led to increased violence, and unrest. Attempts by the Thai government to downplay the crisis have fallen on increasingly deaf ears, as the intent of the Muslim extremists have become clear.

Such liberal icons as Yale Global have noted the trend toward radicalism in the region.

Mr Vairoj Phiphitpakdee, a Muslim member of parliament for Pattani, has said that some Thai Muslims mistakenly believe Islam is just about adopting Arab customs. 'They're taken to the Middle East and they're brainwashed,' he recently told reporters.

The Saudi Arabia-based International Islamic Relief Organisation (IIRO) remains the largest donor to Islamic causes in southern Thailand. According to The Nation newspaper, during the last 10 years hardly any educational or religious project has been untouched by the IIRO, which is part of the wahhabi-inspired Muslim World League. After Sept 11, 2001, the United States Treasury froze IIRO funds in the US because of its alleged links to Al-Qaeda.

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One senior Thai government official in Pattani, clearly shaken by recent events, told me he was aware of the first signs of 'ethnic cleansing' (his words) in Narathiwat, one of the south's Muslim-majority provinces. Some Thai Buddhist families have been told to leave under the threat of violence, he added.

”Ethnic cleansing,” the sanitized word for mass murder in the name of religion, has become a real threat to any ethnic group that finds itself in the path of the World Islamic Caliphate envisioned by the radical Islamofascists.

But there is an increasing suspicion that Islamic separatists - perhaps allied to international militant groups such as Jemaah Islamiah - are behind the attacks.

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The southern provinces were originally part of the ancient Kingdom of Pattani, a semi-autonomous Malay region which adopted Islam in the mid-13th century.

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There are a number of Muslim separatist groups known to operate in southern Thailand - including Pulo (the Pattani United Liberation Organisation), BRN (the Barisan Revolusi Nasional) and GMIP (Gerakan Mujahadeen Islam Pattani).
In the past, these groups have been linked to larger Islamic organisations such as Jemaah Islamiah - blamed for terrorist attacks across South East Asia - and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) in the troubled Indonesian province of Aceh.

For some reason, the Thai government has been reluctant to admit the problem exists. This has become, however, increasingly difficult to do as the violence has escalated.

Again, although Bangkok has refused to link the bomb-blasts of today with Islamic extremists, the link must be examined.

After the Muslims killed on April 28 were shown on television wearing green Hamas-style headbands and other clothes with Islamic slogans emblazoned on them, the government at last conceded that, on one level, it was facing a complex separatist threat. One killed militant had stitched into the back of his jacket the letters 'JI' - an assumed reference to Indonesian-based terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah (JI), which seeks to establish a pan-South-east Asian Islamic state from southern Thailand through Malaysia and Singapore and across Indonesia into the southern Philippines. Numerous regional leaders from JI, Al-Qaeda and the Free Aceh Movement are known to have spent time in southern Thailand since the attacks in New York on Sept 11, 2001.

We have been told that the fighting in the Middle East is all about Isreal and US support of the Zionist regime. And yet, throughout the world, Islamofascists are on the march, attacking anyone who is different, or who does not share their view of religion. Perhaps these Bangkok blasts will awaken a sleeping World to the dangers in their midst.

Then again, perhaps the World will continue to slumber.

Happy New Year!

David Hinz ©2006