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More on Thai blasts
Two bombs have exploded in southern Thailand’s Pattani province, killing two policemen and injuring others. The policemen died when a bomb they were trying to defuse, which had been placed on a motorcycle, went off. The incident came as martial law was declared in Pattani and two other provinces following weekend raids blamed on separatists turned bandits.

Gunmen killed four soldiers during a pre-dawn raid on an army weapons depot on Sunday, stealing more than 100 guns. Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said weekend arson attacks on 21 schools were designed to distract the authorities. The BBC’s Kylie Morris in Bangkok says the latest attacks are a further set-back to the government, which is already defending itself against criticism that it has under-estimated the problems in the country’s predominantly Muslim south. Mr Thaksin blamed Sunday’s attacks on a Muslim group called the Mujahideen, known to operate from southern Thailand and Malaysia.
My guess would be that this is the KMM, as at least the profile seems to fit.
He suggested they would sell the weapons to allied groups, including separatists in the Indonesian province of Aceh. Martial law has been imposed on Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala as authorities search the Thai-Malaysian border for suspects and weapons. Mr Thaksin blamed a lack of co-ordination between the police and the army for the weapons raid. "The security forces, with more than 2,000 soldiers in the camp, they knew about the bandits looking for a big lot of weapons. But still they were negligent. They deserved to die," he said.
Which is a gratuitously harsh statement...
There has been sporadic violence in Thailand’s five southernmost provinces - Songkhla, Satun, Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani - which has been attributed to Muslim separatists. But analysts say the violence has recently eased after relatively successful government policies aimed at integrating Thai Muslims into the country’s predominantly Buddhist society.
But there's a set of international Islamists that's determined that sort of thing won't stick. Thaksin's going to find that this sort of thing is being financed from abroad — the usual kingdom's oil money being frittered away on it — and that there are the usual beturbanned International Men of Mystery™ holding meetings in the dead of night in heavily-guarded mosques. The only way to clean it up is to take it seriously: get your intel going, and use it to drive the soldiers and the police to those dead-of-night meetings. Bust through the doors, kill everybody in sight. Repeat as necessary.
Thai security officials say most of the separatists in the area are now bandits who run rackets along the Thai-Malaysian border.
Just make them dead bandits who used to run rackets. Kill two birds with one stone...

Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-01-06
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=23868