Targeting Thailand

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To hear the soldiers tell it, they didn't stand a chance. Their attackers—roughly 100 in number—slipped into the army camp through a thicket of bamboo and fruit trees, armed with machine guns. The barracks were hopelessly vulnerable: almost 300 soldiers were asleep, while the rest of the battalion was either temporarily stationed elsewhere or on leave. And the sleeping soldiers were not even a fighting force but engineers building roads and canals in the province of Narathiwat in Thailand's deep south. When the shooting began, at about 1 a.m. on Jan. 4, the soldiers awoke with a start and dived to the floor. Not one reached for a weapon: their guns were securely stowed in the battalion's armory. That night, four soldiers guarding the armory were killed—one had his throat slit—and more than 300 M-16s and pistols were stolen by the intruders. "It was frightening," says a soldier. "We could do nothing to stop them." So who were the killers? "I don't know," he replies.

Much of the violence that has occurred in the troubled Muslim south in the past two years has—at least officially—remained a mystery. The government has blamed unknown "bandits" or criminal gangs for the mayhem, which has included more than 50 cop killings, a spate of arson attacks on state schools, numerous bombings, and assaults on military and police posts. But no one in the government is talking about faceless crooks now. The military precision of last week's attack on the army base, which coincided with the burning of 21 schoolhouses in the district, and was followed a day later with a bomb blast in Pattani that killed two police officers, has forced the government to reassess the potential of the enemy it is up against.

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Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, furious that a battalion base had been overrun, declared that the four soldiers killed that night "deserved to die." He imposed martial law in three of the five southern provinces and acknowledged that the south harbors an Islamic insurgent movement bent on creating unrest within Thailand. His security adviser, retired General Kitti Rattanachaya, claimed the attacks last week were the work of a little-known group, the Gerakan Mujahideen Islam Pattani (G.M.I.P.), which has close ties to the Kumpulan Mujahideen Malaysia—a militant Islamic outfit with links to more established terror groups Jemaah Islamiah (JI) and al-Qaeda.

Until now, few believed there were enough armed insurgents in the south to wreak such chaos. The fervor for separatism has waned since its peak in the 1970s and 1980s, when Islamic militants waged a bloody struggle against the Buddhist-dominated central government. But a senior Thai security official in the south told TIME that the past few years have seen a resurgence in militant Islam among the country's impoverished youth. This time, he believes, their fight is for a more grandiose cause. "[They are] in line with the global jihad... These kids have watched the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. They worship Osama bin Laden," he says. "When we've arrested them they've said they are doing it for God."

Yet little in the makeup of the G.M.I.P. suggests that it shares the jihadist fervor of JI or al-Qaeda. Founded in 1995, the group seems driven as much by profiteering as fighting for Islam. Like the Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines, the G.M.I.P. is deep into extortion and kidnapping. Governmental and security officials are speculating openly that the group is not seizing arms for its own use but to sell on the black market that flourishes in the south.

Similarly unclear is the extent to which G.M.I.P.'s members, estimated to number more than 150, have received assistance from local Islamic radicals in northern Malaysia or from JI and al-Qaeda. Thai officials suspect the professionalism of G.M.I.P.'s latest attacks suggests that they have received training from foreign militants. But Andrew Tan, a terrorism expert at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University, argues that the recent violence is most likely a local affair: "This is just the latest in a long line of bombings, assassinations, arms robberies and school burnings that have been going on since the '70s. The modus operandi bears absolutely no hallmarks of groups such as JI or al-Qaeda. If it had been either of them, we would have seen the use of car bombs, ammonium nitrate, attacks on civilians, and the like. If JI had burned those schools, they would have done it with the students inside them."

Riduan Isamuddin, a.k.a. Hambali, himself claims to have had no success dealing with southern Thai militants. The alleged former JI operations chief told his U.S. interrogators shortly after his arrest in central Thailand last August that Thai militants refused to help him blow up tourist spots in the country, recalling, "They did not agree with the targets." Whatever the motives behind the latest violence, there is no sign it will let up: last Friday, Thai security officers found a time bomb at a police station about 40 kilometers from the military base where the four soldiers were murdered. For once, an attack was foiled.