SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT

BANGKOK'S HUNT FOR MILITANTS HAS LOCAL MUSLIMS LIVID

Last week Sayant Khongton locked up his small grocery store for the last time. An unknown man on a motorcycle gunned down Khongton, who was also a local police officer, as he walked out the front door of his shop in the southern Thai town of Yala. He became the latest victim in a shadowy six-week campaign of murderous attacks against soldiers, police officers and other symbols of authority in Thailand's underdeveloped, Muslim-dominated south. No one seems to know who's behind it. "Take your pick," says one police intelligence official. "Disgruntled Muslims, separatists, foreign Islamic terrorists--you could make a case against any of them."

Thaksin Shinawatra, Thailand's uber-confident prime minister, took office three years ago promising to resolve decades of anger and perceived injustice among the south's 1.8 million Muslims within his first three months in office. But since the violence erupted on Jan. 4, when dozens of gunmen simultaneously attacked a military camp and torched three police posts and 17 local schools in Narathiwat province, it's clear the situation in the south has gone from bad to worse. Not only have the attacks on police and military units continued, but there now appear to be retribution killings of Muslims as well. And Thaksin's heavy-handed pursuit of the perpetrators has many southerners feeling like targets.

Within hours of the Jan. 4 attacks, parts of Narathiwat and the majority-Muslim provinces of Yala and Pattani were under martial law. Thousands of Army soldiers and special forces have poured into the region. Authorities have arrested Muslim clerics on suspicion of murder, while soldiers have raided Islamic schools looking for weapons and suspects.

Thai intelligence sources say that a separatist group--or groups--numbering no more than a few hundred people is probably responsible for the death and destruction, which has claimed at least 15 lives. Clearly the Muslim community could be a vital ally in Bangkok's hunt for the militants. But so far all Thaksin's dragnet seems to be doing is alienating them. "Could going into [Islamic] schools with [trained] dogs, not taking off your shoes and arresting teachers be counterproductive?" one Western diplomat asks rhetorically. "Yes."

It's no surprise that Thailand's southern Muslims view the government's troops with some resentment. The Muslim community believes that it has been neglected for decades by a succession of Thai governments, which at most have taken a half-hearted interest in the southern provinces' economic development. The monthly household income in Narathiwat is half the national average and infant mortality rates in the three southern provinces are as much as 40 percent higher than the rest of the country's. "Without real human-resource development, these people will not have real opportunities," says Surin Pitsuwan, a former foreign minister and prominent Muslim figure. "They have to feel they belong."

If anything, the military's brute force may be fueling sympathy for the militants. Instead of denouncing the attacks on soldiers, Muslim leaders are decrying Bangkok's jackboot tactics. They also claim that the Thai government bears responsibility for the spate of retribution murders and kidnappings of Muslims--crimes that authorities allegedly aren't pursuing with equal vigor. "The local people are living in fear," says Nimur Makache, deputy head of the Islamic Yala Council. Their anger runs so deep that last week the Yala council, as well as its sister Islamic committees in Pattani and Narathiwat, temporarily broke off communication with the central government. "[The government] needs to be very careful," warns Pitsuwan.

But Thaksin, who took direct control over the southern operations from his deputy last week, must also move quickly. Thai intelligence sources say that both homegrown and foreign terrorist groups have seriously stepped up their recruitment of young Thais. Their pitch: it's far more honorable to work toward the creation of a Muslim state than to be loyal to a government that never cared for you in the first place. In response, the Thai Army is considering running a mandatory "patriotic youth" program for young Muslim men to promote nationalism. "We respect Islam," says Lt. Gen. Jhumpol Munmhy, director of the National Intelligence Agency, "but we must say to them that... you can't think about separatism." It won't matter what the message is, though, if the audience doesn't trust the messenger.

(http://www.newsweek.com/id/53151)