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Terrorists in southern Thailand using schools to recruit
 Insurgents in southern Thailand are using a network of Islamic schools to recruit fighters, but their movement does not appear to be linked to Al Qaeda or other foreign Islamist groups, according to a study due to be released Monday.Since an upswing of violence five years ago, analysts have sought to pinpoint the primary motivations of an insurgency that has left more than 3,400 people dead in towns and villages within several hours drive of Thailands most popular beach resorts. The 20-page study by the International Crisis Group describes a homegrown movement of Malay Muslim fighters that seeks independence from Thailand and is built around longstanding resentment toward the majority Thai Buddhists in the country. Thai officials have in the past attributed the violence to the drug trade and other criminal activities. A group known as the National Revolutionary Front-Coordinate was the main force in recruiting an estimated 1,800 to 3,000 fighters drawn from more than 100,000 students in the areas Islamic school system, the report says. The classroom is the point of first contact, the report said. Recruiters invite those who seem promising devout Muslims of good character who are moved by a history of oppression, mistreatment and the idea of armed jihad to join extracurricular indoctrination programs in mosques or disguised as football training. The Crisis Group said the report was based on 16 months of interviews with religious teachers and students all of whom are unidentified involved in underground activities. Until recently, a two-year crackdown by the Thai military appeared to be reducing violence in the area. But tensions flared earlier this month when a group of masked gunmen opened fire on a crowd of worshipers outside a mosque, killing 10 people and seriously wounding 12. Since the start of this month, at least 36 people have been killed and more than 100 have been wounded in southern Thailand. Buddhists are often targeted in the conflict, but more than half of those killed in the past five years have been Muslim, many labeled by the insurgents as collaborators or spies for the government. The insurgents use many of the same methods in their recruitment oath-taking, indoctrination and military training as other jihadist groups. But in southern Thailand, the report says, recruiters appeal to Malay nationalism and the oppression of Malay Muslims by Buddhist Thai rulers rather than invoking a universal Islamic state or a global jihad. A pamphlet found at an Islamic school during a raid by security forces in 2005 offered a window into the teachings. Our land is crying and calling and waiting for independence and fraternity, it said. We have been treated as second-class citizens or like children of slaves. The insurgents are helped in their recruitment by reports of torture by the military, disappearances and extrajudicial killings, according to the study. A Muslim lawyers group tallied 74 reports of torture of detainees between June 2007 and April 2008. The recruitment is secretive, and, even in schools where insurgents are active, not all school administrators, teachers and students may be aware of what is happening, let alone consent to it, the report said. Training often occurs at night in the remote, low-lying mountains of the area. Government efforts to offer an alternative to the Islamic schools have met deadly resistance. Over the past five years, 115 public school teachers and education officials have been killed and 200 schools burned. Posted by: ryuge 2009-06-21 |
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