DAR AL HARB - ISLAM - THAILAND: THE "INSURGENCY" MAY HAVE LINKS TO THE GLOBAL JIHAD *GASPS IN SURPRISE, CANNOT BELIEVE THIS WOULD BE PUBLISHED"

Thailand insurgency may have links to the broader world of radical Islam
DENIS D. GRAY and VIJAY JOSHI,
Associated Press Writers

THANNAM THIP, Thailand (AP) - A shallow river, deep jungles and a 12-mile wall mark the divide not just between Thailand and Malaysia but between Southeast Asia's Muslim and Buddhist worlds.

This ragged stretch of border is viewed by some as a potential front in the Muslim insurgency wracking southern Thailand, mysterious in its goals and undeterred either by government crackdowns or by peace overtures.

People on both sides of the border share ethnicity, language and religion - Islam. Muslim-run soup restaurants on the Malaysian side are suspected of being funding sources for the rebels, and this has become an irritant in relations between two countries that are mainstays of the Southeast Asian alliance.

Analysts are divided over whether Thai insurgents are plugging into a broader Islamic movement or would rather confine their fight to winning some degree of autonomy. But an Associated Press investigation indicates the separatist rebellion, which has already taken the lives of more than 2,000 people, is making outside connections:

- Young Thai Muslims - thousands, by Thai government estimate - are being educated in neighboring Muslim countries and the Middle East, with an unknown number returning as recruiters or actual participants in the insurgency. Some may be receiving military training while abroad.

- Reports persist that some Indonesians or other foreigners are training and fighting with the rebels, though none has been captured and the reports are unconfirmed.

- Islamic radicals around the world are increasingly setting their sights on the insurgency. An Arab Web site appeared in January, dedicated exclusively to southern Thailand and believed the first of its kind. Couched in Islamic rhetoric, the site backs independence for southern Thais.

- Malaysia denies providing any support, mindful that the insurgency could infect its own predominantly Muslim population. But the Thai government is worried enough to be proposing a longer wall than the barrier the Malaysians built in Cold War times to stop smugglers and communist guerrillas.

''We know when some of them cross the border and report it to our Foreign Ministry and the Malaysian military, but nobody ever gets caught,'' said Lt. Chatchai Kitkhunthot in this frontier village. He was one of several Thai army officers and local officials who pinpointed infiltration and escape routes across the border on maps and the ground.

''Basically the southern Thailand conflict is becoming more regionalized. But we are at the very early stage of it,'' says Rohan Gunaratna, who heads the International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in Singapore and wrote ''Inside al-Qaida: Global Network of Terror.'' Islamic militancy is spreading in Southeast Asia, he says, and ''What is happening in Thailand will not be an exception.''

Others disagree, likening the insurgency to the Muslim uprising in Indonesia's Aceh province, which shunned foreign help and was resolved with U.N. mediation.

''They are fighting for a separate state so they don't want one which is going to be run by outsiders,'' says a Western official in Bangkok who is knowledgeable about anti-terrorism efforts and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The insurgents, according to the Thai military, number 3,000 to 5,000, with some 10,000 to 12,000 sympathizers out of a Muslim population of 3 million in the southernmost provinces of Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani which border Malaysia. They are secretive, brutal, effective, and ''We don't know when or where they will attack next,'' says Col. Wichai Thongdaeng, an army spokesman in the south.

An independent sultanate until it was merged into Thailand a century ago, the southern provinces have seen rebellions come and go. In the latest, which began in early 2004, the rebels have torched schools, bombed banks, beheaded some 25 people and shot teachers, policemen, government officials and just ordinary citizens. More than half the victims have been Muslims suspected of collaborating with authorities - teachers, civil servants, policemen.

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1) Thailand insurgency may have links to the broader world of radical Islam