U.S. fears Thailand's insurgency may fuel regional terrorism

U.S. fears Thailand's insurgency may fuel regional terrorism

P. Parameswaran, Agence France-Presse/Washington

The United States is casting a wary eye on a bloody Muslim insurgency in southern Thailand, fearing it could flare up into a regional flashpoint for religious extremism and stoke international terrorism.

U.S. President George W. Bush's administration has classified the separatist revolt in the Muslim-majority south of the mainly Buddhist kingdom as a "domestic issue" and not part of Washington's global "war on terror."

But as beheadings, bloody bomb attacks and daring drive-by shootings make grim headlines daily, Washington fears the 21- month insurgency could feed into Southeast Asia's al-Qaeda-linked terror network, analysts said.

Just two months after regional security officials heaved a sigh of relief with the end of a 29-year-old separatist revolt in Aceh province on the western tip of Indonesia's Sumatra island, the Thai conflict threatens to explode into a major bloody insurrection along the border with predominantly Muslim Malaysia.

Nearly 1,000 people have died in the Thai insurgency since early 2004, when a century-long struggle for an independent Islamic state gained new momentum.

"I am sure within Washington corridors there is quiet concern that things in the Thai south seem to be getting worse," said Karen Brooks, who served as Asia director in the White House's National Security Council until last year.

"Stability in the Thai south is and will continue to be an important issue for the United States," she said.

Thailand is among key U.S. allies in Asia but Washington does not want to have any direct role -- including possible peace moves -- in containing the conflict.

"We haven't been asked for any assistance," deputy U.S. State Department spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters at a daily briefing on Thursday.

But he admitted that the unending violence is "an issue of concern for all of us who want to see calm in Thailand and are concerned for Thailand and who work with Thailand as friends of that country."

U.S. Ambassador to Thailand Ralph Boyce held talks with Thai Deputy Prime Minister Chidchai Vanasathiday this week, saying he was concerned that if the unrest was not resolved soon, it could become breeding ground for international terrorism.

There has been no evidence of foreign involvement in terms of financial support or weapons, Boyce said, despite public claims by Thai security officials of Indonesian and Libyan links to the insurgency.

The separatists also have reportedly threatened to rope in foreign fighters, including from the Middle East, to boost their ranks.

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who discussed the issue with Bush during a Washington visit last month, has been blamed by some groups for failing to nip the problem in the bud.

"It appears that the brutal treatment of the Thai Muslims by the security forces, either through negligence or lack of training or some other reasons, seems to contribute to the insurgency," said Dana Dillon, senior policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington.

"It will blow up into a big issue if Thaksin does not gain control of it ... and we don't want to wait for that to happen and at the same time, we don't want to undercut Thaksin," he said.

Some American strategists closely following the Thai conflict say there is not a lot of support in the Thai body politic for a sympathetic and culturally sensitive approach to the Muslim problem in the south.

Thaksin is the perfect manifestation of that, they say.

But Brooks, a leading architect of U.S. policy toward Asia during both the Bush and Clinton administrations, said Thaksin "is not the problem himself."

"He sits on top of a system that supports a hardline and a security based approach in dealing with the Muslim insurgency."

She also said there was not yet a global consensus as to whether domestic grievance-based insurgencies, such as that in Thailand, were part of the war on terror.

"We haven't yet found a good answer to that dilemma -- legal, rhetorical or otherwise.

"When I was in the White House, of course the issue was Aceh. Now, God bless the Indonesians, they found a way out of this box. Really, I can't give them enough credit for that," Brooks said.