Published on March 07, 2005 - Militant group helping unit formed by Afghanistan war vets in South; Bangkok attacks planned, says US expert

A world expert on terrorism in Southeast Asia has warned that the government’s poor understanding of terrorists could help spur violence in the country’s deep South.

He also warned of moves among the terrorists to bring their bombing campaign directly to Bangkok.

Dr Zachary Abuza, associate professor of political science and international relations at Simmons College in Boston, said international terrorist groups, notably Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), based in Indonesia, had been assisting an Islamic militant group in Thailand’s southernmost provinces.

He said this small but radical militant group was known as Gerakan Mujahideen Islam Pattani (GMIP), or the Pattani Islamic Mujahideen Movement. It was formed in the mid-1990s by a group of veterans of the war in Afghanistan, following their victory over the Soviet Union.

Abuza said the activities of the GMIP, which had strong links with JI, had “flared up” in Thailand’s deep South. It was one of several terrorist groups that attended three meetings held by JI between 1999 and 2000 to broaden the regional terrorist network, he said.

“The fact that the GMIP was founded by Afghanistan war veterans is what causes me the most concern,” he said.

Abuza, who has given evidence on terrorism in Southeast Asia to the US House of Representatives’ Committee on International Relations, was speaking to reporters outside a seminar on religion and conflict held in the Philippine capital by the Konrad Adenauer Centre for Journalism.

He said key members of the GMIP group, Che Kumae Kuteh and Nasori Sori Saeseng, or Ae Wae Afghan, were being hunted by Thai authorities.

Abuza went on to say that there was a small network of individuals “from a couple of Islamic boarding schools, or pondok” in the deep South that had connections with the terrorist groups.

Some of the operatives work-ing around the arrested terrorist suspect Nurjaman Riduan Isamuddin, also known as Hambali, had recruited a group

of militants from the South with the aim of bombing Bangkok.

He said JI might not be directly involved in the deep South, but local militants had received the technological assistance from the group.

“If we look at the technological capability involved in the first car bomb [in Sungai Kolok last month], then we know the technology has been transferred,” he said.

“Technologically, these groups do learn from one another and they are able to increase their assaults.”

Abuza said the number of explosions had increased dramatically after the Tak Bai riot in October last year. As a consequence, the number of people killed by bombs had also risen.

He said the militants who posed a threat of escalating the violence in the deep South were not the old actors, as portrayed by the Thai government, with familiar names such as Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) and the Pattani United Liberation Organisation (Pulo).

These organisations had already died out, Abuza said, and such a poor understanding of the character of the active terrorists was the main reason the spate of violence had continued over the past year.

The death toll in the continuing violence in the deep South over the past 14 months stands at more than 600.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra recently insisted that international terrorists are not involved in the violence in southern Thailand.

Supalak Ganjanakhundee