Thai troops crush Muslim militant revolt

Only five security personnel were reported to have died in the clashes. Police were tipped off about the raid in advance and were waiting for the militants, reports The Age of Melbourne, Australia. Some of the militants had guns, but most were armed only with machetes, said Lieutenant General Proong Bunphandung, the chief of police for the south.

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Thailand's Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra sought immediately to portray the attacks as localized criminal acts that were not connected to Islamic militancy in the region. He says the attacks were motivated by crime, reports Reuters. "We will uproot them, depriving them of a chance to allude to issues of separatism and religion. In the end, they were all bandits," Thaksin said.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks, but Mr. Thaksin's official spokesman, Jakrapob Penkair, said the government was launching an investigation into the matter. "There have been people who take advantage by trying to motivate others to enter a war of ideological confrontation, but actually the government sees it as camouflage for illegal enterprise."

But a transcript of an Australian Broadcast Corporation radio program says that Thaksin's government "has blamed Islamic separatists seeking to establish a homeland in the south of the predominantly Buddhist country." On this transcript of ABC's "The World Today," Southeast Asia correspondent Peter Lloyd reports on the confusion surrounding who is behind the attacks. He said that some analysts believe that the incident is linked to "clashes between corrupt elements of the police and the military and also gangsters who are running cross-border trade – illicit cross-border trade – between neighboring Malaysia." Mr. Lloyd also reports that the intelligence community in Thailand doesn't believe that Islamic terrorist groups like Al Qaeda or Jemaah Islamiyah have "carved out any presence in the south."

But other analysts have "voiced concerns that the attackers could have links to militant groups outside Thailand," reports the BBC. One of the militants killed in the clashes had a shirt with JI on the back, which BBC says could be a "possible reference to Jemaah Islamiyah, the group blamed for terrorist attacks across Southeast Asia, including the Bali bombings."

Voice of America cites professor Ron May, an expert on Southeast Asian Islamic movements at Australia National University, as saying: "JI and other groups have been operating in southern Thailand and as the Army has moved in there have been increasing clashes."

Some people blame a heavy-handed government crackdown for creating animosity in the region, however. BBC reports that Islamic community leaders say tactics used by security forces "may have served to encourage those who already felt disenfranchised."

Radio Singapore International cites Chairman of the Human Rights Committee of Thailand's Law Society Somchai Homlaor as saying: "The Thai government has underestimated the situation in southern Thailand for a long time. The group that is behind these attacks may have political intentions to establish an independent state."

In January the government enacted martial law in the southern region of Narathiwat after four Thai soldiers were killed and militants took M-16 automatic rifles from an army weapons depot. Since then clashes in the south have been escalating, says Reuters in a brief chronology of the 2004 violence.

Muslim separatists launched a small-scale insurgency in region in the 1970s. By the late 80s, this was ended by a general amnesty, notes Voice of America.

The BBC also reports that there is concern Thailand's tourism will be affected, despite the fact that most tourist activity is far from the southern provinces hit by Wednesday's violence. Malaysia has tightened security along its border with Thailand following the violence, reports AFP

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