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| Southeast Asia |
| Thailand and the International Islamic Front |
| 2004-01-10 |
| EFL, a view of the Pakistani role on the South East Asian jihadis, but bear in mind the author is a former Indian intel agent. Indicators available since March, 2002, that the International Islamic Front (IIF) formed by Osama bin Laden in 1998 has been trying to extend its activities to southern Thailand have now been strengthened by the recent recrudescence of acts of violence in southern Thailand. These indicators spoke of a surprisingly large number of Muslims from Thailand studying in the madrassas of Pakistan, some of them run by the five Pakistani components of the IIF. These components are the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET), which has now been co-ordinating the activities of the IIF due to the inability of bin Laden to do so, the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ). According to very reliable statistics for 2002, there were 167 Malaysians, 149 Thais and 84 Indonesians in the various madrasas of Pakistan. Figures for 2003 are not yet available. The reports received since March, 2002, also indicated that about 200 jihadis from Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand had joined the jihadi groups and had gone into Afghanistan to fight against the allied troops after the US started its military action on October 7, 2001, but they re-entered Pakistan after sustaining casualties when Kabul fell to the Northern Alliance and the US troops and the Taliban decided to melt away for the time being. The HUJI subsequently helped these dregs from S.E.Asia to escape to Bangladesh, from where they were to sneak their way back to their respective countries. In a surprise announcement in June, 2003, Thaksin announced that his officials had arrested four Muslims—three from Thailand and one from Singapore, since handed over to the Singapore authorities— on a charge of plotting to stage terrorist strikes in Bangkok coinciding with the APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation) summit held at Bangkok in October, 2003. The Thai authorities claimed to have recovered from the arrested Thai Muslims a tourist map of Bangkok with likely targets circled on it — reportedly including the embassies of the United States, Britain, Israel, Australia and Singapore. In August, Hambali, said to be the operational chief of the JI, who was wanted by the Indonesian authorities in connection with their investigation of the Bali explosion of October, 2002, was arrested by the Thai authorities at Ayuthya and handed over to the USA’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). These incidents showed the presence of sleeper cells of the JI in Thai territory. Even then, there was a reluctance to admit openly that jihadi terrorism is spreading to Thailand. On January 4, 2004, about 30 unidentified armed attackers killed four soldiers of the Thai army during a pre-dawn raid on an army weapons depot in Narathiwat in southern Thailand. They were reported to have decamped with more than 100 guns. Eighteen schools were also torched by another group of armed attackers during raids in the Narathiwat and Yala provinces the same day. The next day, two policemen were reportedly killed while trying to defuse a bomb in the Pattani province. Following these incidents, the Thai authorities declared a martial law in the Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala provinces in southern Thailand. General Kitti Rattanachaya, a former Thai army commander in the south and now stated to be a government security adviser, was quoted by the media on January 8, 2004, as saying that an organisation called the Gerakan Mujahideen Islam Pattani, with links to Al Qaeda and the JI, was responsible for the recent wave of attacks. According to him, of the Muslim extremists from South-East Asia, who had participated in the jihad against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan, "the Indonesians formed the Jemaah Islamiah, the Malaysians formed the KMM (Kampulan Mujahideen Malaysia) and the Thais quietly formed the Mujahideen Pattani." He said that the professional nature of the attacks - which included co-ordinated arson on several schools and an arms depot raid - indicated that the gunmen had outside help, "possibly from the Kampulan Mujahideen Malaysia". As mentioned in my assessment of the Bali explosion, "among the foreign nationals who fought in the International Islamic Front as members of its Pakistani components were American Muslims (mostly Afro-Americans), nationals/residents of West European countries, Thais, Malaysians, Singaporeans, who projected themselves as Malays from Malaysia, and Indonesians. Their total number was estimated to be about 200. Practically all of them had been recruited by HUM, HUJI and Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) teams, which went to these countries posing as preachers of the Tablighi Jamaat (TJ), brought them to Pakistan and trained them in the various madrassas with funds provided by the TJ and then taken to Afghanistan to get jihad inoculation. The Deobandi jihadi outfits recruit many of their members from the TJ, which is a prosyletising organisation that has millions of members. It is an easy way for Jihadis to slip into other countries and recruit from amongst the faithful. Evidence available so far indicates that while the terrorists from Malaysia and possibly Singapore were trained in the headquarters of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) in the Binori madrassa complex in Karachi, those from Indonesia were trained in the Muridke complex of the LET, near Lahore. The HUM had always been training the recruits from Southern Philippines and Myanmar, in addition to those from Xinjiang, Chechnya, Dagestan and the Central Asian Republics. The HUJI trains those from Bangladesh." Reports received after the arrest of Hambali’s brother Gungun and some of the Malaysian and Indonesian students studying in two madrassas of Karachi, one of them run by the LET, in September indicated that the IIF has asked the HUJI branch in Bangladesh identified as HUJI (B) to take over the responsibility for the future training of recruits from S.E.Asia. The HUJI (B) already has a long-established training infrastructure in BD and it is likely to play an increasingly important role in the provision of training and other facilities to the jihadi terrorists of S.E.Asia, including Thailand. |
| Posted by:Paul Moloney |