A senior military official in Thailand has for the first time charged that Indonesian jihadists are actively participating in the Thai insurgency. Straying from his government's line, retired General Kitti Rattanachaya charged that Muslim fighters from Aceh province in Indonesia were infiltrating the conflict zone and carrying out attacks against Thai authorities, according to the AP:
A security adviser to the prime minister said Thursday that Indonesian fighters are involved in Thailand's Muslim insurgency, contradicting government insistence the bloody separatist movement is a homegrown affair unconnected to Southeast Asia's al-Qaida-linked terror network."I have warned the authorities concerned several times about Indonesian fighters sneaking into the region but they have ignored it," Gen. Kitti Rattanachaya told The Associated Press, saying the militants infiltrated from the Indonesian province of Aceh.
His assertion comes amid rumors of Indonesian Muslims joining the fight in Thailand's southernmost provinces. No substantial evidence has emerged to back the claim, and Rattanachaya gave few details of the infiltration. Most analysts regard the insurgency as domestic but with a strong potential to attract foreign Muslim militants including members of the Jemaah Islamiyah network, blamed for deadly attacks including the 2002 Bali bombings and a 2003 blast at Jakarta's J.W. Marriott hotel.
The general’s statement is not the only indication that Indonesian jihadists may be joining the Thai-based insurgency:
In a recent AP interview, a veteran Thai rebel leader warned that militants from Indonesia and Arab nations might join the Thai fight for a separate Muslim homeland if the government continued a crackdown that is provoking a new generation of fighters.In another interview earlier this week, a Thai Muslim who fought with the mujahedeen in Afghanistan and who has close contacts with the Thai insurgents said he believed fighters from Aceh with superior training have been operating in southern Thailand for some time. Thai insurgents, mostly recruited from religious school and given just rudimentary training, were not good enough to carry out some of the attacks witnessed in the south, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity out of concerns for his safety.
There have been centuries of contact between the Muslims of Aceh and southern Thailand, with only the Straits of Malacca to separate them. Indonesian government troops are now withdrawing from the province following a peace accord to end a separatist rebellion that erupted in 1976.
It is tragic. 35 years ago, when I travelled through Indonesia I didn't see any headscarves at all, the people were friendly, everywhere I went people were smiling and waving at us.
Now you have to fear for your life wherever you go and the hijabs (and skullcaps, otherwise known as coffee-filters) are everywhere. You can feel the hatred emanating from the mosques physically.
The south of Thailand, along with Malaysia, has been systematically infiltrated by Wahabi-educated zelotes who spread their poison -backed by Saudi money- with impunity.
The resulting violence is the well planned terror of the global Jihad.
Unless our leaders face up to the fact that we are fighting Islam instead of simply 'terrorism' or an 'evil ideology'- which is simply a strategy-, we will be losing the WOT and our people are dying for nothing.
Winston Churchill understood very well what Islam is all about.
Our polit-props, who didn't bother to study their own history, wallow in ignorance.
Learn it by heart and learn to recite it wherever you go:
"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property - either as a child, a wife, or a concubine - must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men."
One of the main problems is the fact that our leaders would get slaughtered by the Press and media, be branded as religious bigots, and probably lose the next election (that obviously won't happen to Bush, but it could happen to Blair, Howard etc), if they dared to say the obvious and describe Islam in the terms used by the likes of Winston Churchill, John Wesley, John Quincy Adams etc. We in the West live in a politically correct bubble which has conditioned many of us into not seeing danger when it is there, and political correctness is a dangerous condition to be afflicted with when fighting a battle for survival. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan must be the first wars in our history that we've had to fight under the terms of lawyers, human rights organizations, Amnesty International and media figures whose lust for a self-destroying story, and money through court cases built around the lies of captured Jihadis, is far more important than the future survival of our civilization, which threatens to be lost to a greater extent in the courtroom rather than on the battlefield.
Thais, must to reaccionate now, jihadism must be attacked and refused. Now, until it would be so late.
Well, it doesn't look like they've all joined the Thai insurgency. Some stayed behind to make sure the jihad still thrived in Bali. News reports in the past half hour say that there have been a few explosions there. Some deaths. Very early yet to know what's happened, how many killed. Sketchy details, but I don't think I'm jumping the gun by suspecting this is the work of the Religion of Body Pieces again. Damn them.
I suspect that Thai officialdom does not like to think that Thai citizens could be disloyal.