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2 Explosive escalation of Thai
insurgency By Anthony Davis
BANGKOK - Hard on the heels of
international terrorist scares in Bangkok in
January and February, coordinated car-bomb attacks
in the southern cities of Hat Yai and Yala on
March 31 highlighted with lethal clarity the
growing capabilities of Thailand's home-grown
separatist insurgency and reignited concerns over
the potential for Malay-Muslim militants to
migrate their attacks northwards from the current
theater of three southernmost provinces.
The weekend blitz also appeared to
indicate that conventional political and military
responses to what is typically seen as a
low-intensity conflict confined to the majority
Malay-speaking provinces of Pattani, Yala and
Narathiwat are failing, and are certainly no
longer capable of preventing potentially
disastrous blows to the country's lucrative
tourism industry.
In three specific
respects the bombings came as an unprecedented
escalation of the violence which first gathered
pace in early 2004. In
human terms, the casualty toll of 14 dead and over
400 injured constituted the deadliest single
operation in the south to date and appeared to
push the conflict into territory ominously similar
to Afghanistan or Iraq.
Tactically, the
operation marked the first time the insurgents
have successfully carried out complex, coordinated
attacks using several car-bombs in urban areas
where security was supposedly reinforced.
Thirdly and politically, the bombers'
return to Hat Yai after an absence of several
years and the targeting of a high-rise tourist
hotel and shopping complex in the heart of the
city was terrorism clearly calculated to raise the
threat level in a manner that the government will
find difficult to dismiss as "business as usual".
Notwithstanding efforts to track down
specific individuals suspected of involvement in
the attacks, it would be a mistake to view the
bombings as a one-off strike by a small "gang".
The attacks emerged from a far more worrying
landscape shaped by a broad growth in the
capabilities of an insurgency which over the past
18 months has become better organized, better
coordinated and notably harder hitting.
Better bombs These rising
capabilities have been demonstrated at a range of
levels. In terms of home-made bombs or improvised
explosive devices (IEDs), attacks have not
increased appreciably but have become more
carefully targeted and generally more effective.
This is particularly the case given a wide and
constantly shifting choice of triggering
mechanisms now used by separatist militants which
today include mobile phones, walkie-talkie radios,
radio remote control devices, digital clock
timers, command wires, and pressure switches used
to detonate improvised mines.
There has
also been a slow but steady increase in the number
of car bombs and motorcycle bombs. Between the
first use of a car bomb in February 2005 and the
present, there has been a total of 29 such attacks
(although not all have been effective). Last year
saw seven car bomb incidents, the highest total of
any year to date. The first quarter of this year
has already seen six including the latest three in
Yala and Hat Yai. Motor-cycle bombs - which can
often be equally lethal in confined areas - are
now virtually monthly events, with three such
attacks in March.
Since early last year,
larger attacks on security forces have involved
insurgents operating at platoon-strength or in
groups of 30 or more. The latest came in Bacho on
March 9 in a coordinated attack not on poorly
trained local defense volunteers but on bases
manned by the Royal Thai Marine Corps. The attack
resulted in 12 Marines being injured by small arms
fire and grenades. This bolder pattern of attacks
has been paralleled in recent months by a renewed
emphasis in seizing firearms from the security
forces, indicating an obvious interest in building
a capacity for more large scale attacks by larger
units.
Less obviously but no less
dangerously, the changing nature of the insurgency
has also been reflected in greater coordination
between cells and units in different districts and
provinces. While this is hardly new, anecdotal
evidence suggests the movement of men, firearms
and vehicles used in such operations is
increasing.
Finally, in notable
distinction to the early period of the conflict
between 2004 and 2007 when security forces had
little understanding of the dynamics of the
insurgency, there is today a far greater stress on
operational security driven by far more alert and
better informed security forces. It hardly needs
to be pointed out that virtually every attack
catches the security forces off-guard.
This growth in the effectiveness of the
insurgency has been obscured by two factors. The
first is the often repeated official mantra that
southern policy - defined primarily in terms of
reforms to the justice system and accelerated
economic development - is "on the right track". In
the light of this optimism, ongoing violence is
necessarily viewed as a reflection of insurgent
desperation driven by dwindling popular support
and crackdowns on criminal activities from which
the militancy may derive a measure of funding.
This reassuring message has further
reinforced the routine nature of the low-level
violence which mostly involves targeted killings
and small-scale IED attacks against government
forces on remote rural roads. What one Western
analyst has described as the essential
"grubbiness" of a low-intensity conflict has
induced an inevitable measure of complacency among
security forces on the ground.
There is
even greater complacency in political circles in
Bangkok and among the national media where serious
analysis of the "southern bandit" organization is
rare.
Professional hit Within
this framework of denial, the increasing
professionalism within insurgent ranks was in
evidence on March 31. The attacks marked the first
time the separatists conducted a successful
coordinated operation using three car bombs in
different cities.
An earlier, less
ambitious attempt failed in March 2008. In that
incident, an obviously less competent team used
two car bombs to target two hotels in Pattani and
Yala. One vehicle exploded prematurely on an open
avenue in Yala city before reaching its target,
killing its driver but no one else; the other was
detonated as planned outside the CS Pattani Hotel
later the same evening, killing two and wounding
13.
In both cases, however, faulty wiring
resulted in only one of the two IEDs loaded into
each car actually exploding, thus significantly
reducing the impact of the blasts.
As the
result of improved capabilities and experience,
there were no such blunders on March 31. One
security source who spoke with Asia Times Online
noted the operation would have involved four
separate stages spread out over a period of at
least two weeks and possibly much longer: planning
and choice of targets; reconnaissance and
preparation; the execution of the attacks; and
finally the withdrawal and escape.
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