EDITORIAL
Saturday's car-bomb attack on the best-known hotel in the deep South should send urgent, twin signals to both the government and security forces. The so-called southern insurgents are becoming more deeply radical, more murderously violent, more dangerously terroristic.
The car bomb and other weekend violence once again demonstrated that the gangs are determined to show a ruthless side never seen in Thailand. Beheadings, ambushes of innocent bystanders and now car bombs, make it clear the shadowy gangs of the South are determined to use the most terrible and bloody violence.
The large and deadly car bomb at the CS Pattani Hotel marked the first such use of this fearful tactic. Indeed, the fact that separatists attacked the hotel was itself an important escalation of the conflict by the increasingly uncivilised gangs. The evening explosion had no specific target and no legitimate military objective.
The bomb killed a totally innocent hotel security guard. It wounded the hotel's owner and new Senator Anusart Suwanmongkol and several local village officials who were sipping tea at the time of the explosion. They were clearly not the target of the bomb, nor were they seriously wounded, unlike other victims who still are in critical condition.
The import of the hotel attack became clearer when analysts determined that only the clumsiness of a would-be bomber prevented a second and potentially worse car bomb. A would-be bomber blew himself up while driving through Yala municipality. Evidence indicates he was trying to park his deadly auto at the Youth Centre. If so, the Saturday afternoon bomb would have potentially killed and maimed dozens of young people in a true terrorist attack. The dead, would-be killer turned out to be Salahuding Pula, the younger brother of a known gang leader behind a string of violence in Yala province.
The strategy of these gangs has been clear for a couple of years now. It is to import and use every possible type of violence which can terrorise and bully the deep South. The gangs have employed the secrecy of al-Qaeda, the beheadings of Abu Sayyaf and the Iraqi gangs of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Now the car bombs of Lebanon kill and wound. Since the resurgence of violence in January, 2004, the aim has clearly been to terrorise the population and overcome military and police efforts with the most bloody violence possible.
It was discouraging that Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej had nothing to say to the nation or to the people of the South in the aftermath of the terrible car bombing. It was doubly demoralising that he instead was defending the Burmese dictators. Mr Samak may have forgotten while he was so generously feted in Burma that his prime responsibility is in Thailand.
The fact that terrorist gangs in the South can park a car bomb at a first-class hotel is evidence that security forces are not performing their jobs properly. There should long ago have been measures to check vehicles and drivers at such easily controllable places as a major hotel. The army and police should long ago have instructed such public businesses on the dangers. More importantly, it appears that the Army, police and Southern Border Provinces Administration Centre all fall short on knowing what the separatist gangs are up to.
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