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By Charles Bird Posted in Foreign Affairs | Spotlight Blogs — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

There is terrorism in Thailand again, this time in Bangkok on New Years Eve:

At least six explosions took place in and around Bangkok on Sunday evening, causing at least 17 injuries, Thai police said, and reportedly as many as three deaths.

A government spokesman confirmed a total of six explosions in the Thai capital, three of which destroyed police boxes.

The bomb or grenade explosions occurred almost simultaneously at around 6 p.m. at near the Victory Monument monorail station, at the Khlong Toey wet market, in the Saphan Khwai area, at the Season Square shopping mall, in the suburb of Khae Lai and along Sukhumvit Road in northeast Bangkok.

Read on . . .

Quite a few terrorist attacks have occurred in southern Thailand, but Bangkok is new territory, and these were timed to scuttle the massive New Years celebrations that were to take place. Zachary Abuza at Counterterrorism Blog hasn't ruled out militant Islamists, but it could've been done by others, such as groups loyal to ousted president Thaksin Shinawatra, who was removed from power in a bloodless coup last September.

Whether or not it was Islamic terrorists who did the latest bombings, militant Islamists are an increasingly intractable problem in Thailand, and the situation has gotten worse since the September coup, this in a country where less than 5% of its population is Muslim. According to StrategyPage:

Two months after the coup that brought in a government that offered a kinder and gentler approach to solving the Islamic terrorism in the south, that terrorism has gotten worse. Before the coup, terrorists killed about 49 people a month. Now it's up to 56 murders a month. There are now over twenty bombings a month down there, and about seven school a month are being destroyed. The terrorists continue to concentrate on suspected pro-government Moslems, non-Moslems and government workers. Most of the mountainous back country villages have been terrorized, and "cleansed" of infidels (non-Moslems) to such an extent, that the terrorists can move about openly in daytime. The terrorists are also getting nastier, as in today's attack, where two teachers were shot, then burned to death on a road. Nearly sixty teachers have been killed down south in the last two years. Some in the government believe the increase in terror shows that the Islamic militants are desperate, because of the increasing number of Moslem victims. But the government has not been able to catch any of the terrorist leaders, and only a few of the low level operatives.

Thailand is just one country, but there are similarities in other countries where Islamist hardliners refuse to get along with others. Bill Roggio has a helpful larger perspective in what he calls the Long War, or what I refer to as the War Against Militant Islamism.