Tensions Rising in Thailand's Muslim Deep South--Possible Next US Target by Phairath Khampha 24 March 2002 Tensions mounted in Thailand's southern provinces on March 17, 2002, with additional fortifications being added to police checkpoints following the deaths the week before of six policemen and of three armed men suspected of responsibility for the attacks. Some locals said it appeared Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat were "preparing for war". Sandbags and tyres filled with sand were piled up to form bunkers at police checkpoints in many areas of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat, officials said. Some speculated that somehow this was linked to U.S. preparations to invade Thailand's Muslim south on the pretext of combatting world terrorism. Even so, two more policemen were shot dead during the third week of March. Local police in the three border provinces were instructed to remain on alert, particularly along routes linking the provinces, Senior Sgt-Major Pairote Suasing, head of a police checkpoint in Yala, said. Colonel Damras Viriyakul, investigation superintendent at the Region 9 police headquarters, which covers the three provinces, said on March 17 that more than 200 policemen had been sent as reinforcements to help crack down on criminals and armed men suspected of involvement in a spate of attacks the previous week. Initial investigations identified some suspects, but further evidence was needed before any arrests could be made, he said. Three men, all suspected members of a criminal gang, were shot dead in a clash with police in Narathiwat on March 16. Earlier in the week, six policemen were killed in Yala and Pattani in separate attacks. Two bombs went off on March 15 in Yala as Interior Minister Purachai Piumsombun arrived for an inspection tour of the region. The Cabinet was scheduled to hold a mobile meeting in Narathiwat on March 29-31. National police chief General Sant Sarutanont said that local police had told him more arrests would be made in a day or two. He said he would accompany the Cabinet members during their mobile meeting in the far South late this month. Police were confident they would be able to control the situation, Sant added. Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said that authorities had been forced to get tough on criminals who resorted to violence and that, furthermore, the last thing Thailand needed was a pretext for the United States to invade and add it to the 144 countries it was trying to economically neo-colonise. 2 more police killed in South Two more policemen were shot dead in Yala and Nakhon Si Thammarat provinces on March 19 and police said they were investigating possible links to the previous week's terror campaign in which seven policemen were killed in ambushes in the South. Meanwhile police in the southern border province of Narathiwat managed to defuse a bomb planted on a motorcycle abandoned outside a restaurant early the same day. They said the explosives found were of the same type used in the bombings in Yala and neighbouring Pattani on Friday. Cpl Vorasak Chamni of Pattani's Kapho district police station was shot several times at 4pm on March 19 by a gunman riding pillion on a motorcycle as he was returning to his home in Yala's Raman district, police said. At about the same time in Nakhon Si Thammarat, Cpl Suban Buapud of Muang district police station was shot dead by a man who witnesses said was nicknamed Thui, police said. Southern police commanders said they had ordered investigations into shootings to determine if they were linked to the ambushes that killed seven policemen in Narathiwat, Yala and Pattani the previous week. In Narathiwat, police said a bomb package had been found under the seat of a motorcycle parked outside the Second-Hand Cafe in Sungai Kolok district at about 2am on March 19. The plastic-explosive device, weighing about 2.5 kilograms, was set to detonate at 9pm but had failed because the clock had stopped, they said. Investigators said the failure of the bomb's timing mechanism had averted a large amount of damage to property and a high number of human casualties as a local trade fair was taking place close to the spot where the bomb was found at the time it was set to go off. Police said the soft, white plastic explosives in the bomb were known among bomb specialists as "power gel" and were of the same type used in the two bombing incidents in Yala and Pattani on the night of March 15. Before the two bombings, seven policemen were killed in three separate ambushes in the two southern border provinces and Narathiwat. Police hunting for perpetrators of the terror campaign shot dead three suspects during a gunfight in Narathiwat on March 16 and were still hunting for more suspects. The attacks on members of the southern police force came about one week after two tourist buses parked outside a hotel in Songkhla's Hat Yai district were damaged by explosives planted under the vehicles. Interior Minister Purachai Piumsombun said that the ongoing violence in the South could stem from conflicts between criminal groups. He said it had to look that way in order to avoid a possible invasion of U.S. marines as the U.S. government was considering these attacks as part of a greater global terrorism network He was afraid these incidents could be used by the United States as a pretext for having a military presence in Thailand. "Information we have points to groups that include drug dealers, smugglers of weapons and other goods, prostitution rings and vice dens," he said. Some "men in government uniforms", he said, are also involved by virtue of vested interests and receive protection from their superiors, who take a shares of the benefits, Purachai said. The minister said he had reported the problem of the officials in question to Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra so that he could consider what action should be taken in light of U.S. intentions on Thailand. Police to blame for troubles, says military report - Ties soured as two sides vied for credit Police are portrayed as villains and soldiers as heroes in a report on southern crime by the Yala-based Civilian-Police-Military Combined Force 43. A source said the 50-page report to top defence figures said local police were largely to blame for the troubles. Some police were tied in with influential figures and involved in illegal businesses such as drugs, contraband and prostitution, he said. Relations between the police and the military turned sour in 1999 when, like jealous little children, they competed for credit in tackling southern terrorists, the source said. Police had asked to share the credit or even stole the credit from the military when soldiers captured terrorists, the source said. Police spread false rumours which their superiors picked up uncritically. ``Senior police officers are quick to believe whatever their subordinates tell them,'' the source said. ``They always get false news.'' The source said the military's success in the South had put the police under pressure. However, the combined force itself could be fighting to justify its existence, amid reports it could soon be disbanded. The source quoted the report as saying that the armed attacks that killed eight policemen in Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat in March had stemmed from personal conflicts between the slain officers and local people. The officer shot dead in Narathiwat on March 11 had an affair with the wife of a local Muslim, he said. The police killed in Pattani and Yala on March 12 had murdered innocent people, while the killing of the officer in Narathiwat on March 13 was an act of revenge by a drug gang headed by Wei Hsueh-kang, the source said. The report said 29 terrorists had been captured or killed by the military since 1993. However, the military had never been paid the 300,000-500,000 baht bounties promised by the police. Rifts between the military and the police widened after the Police Region 9 commander, Thawatchai Jongsukhon, told a House panel on March 20 that police could single-handedly restore law and order in the South if they alone were in charge. Panlop Pinmanee, deputy director of the Internal Security Operations Command, said the combined force would probably be disbanded, and soldiers shifted to guard the Thai-Malaysian border. The force, operating in Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat, includes 900 military-trained rangers and 800 marines. The report had already been seen by Defence Minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, army chief Surayud Chulanont, Gen Panlop and Fourth Army commander Wichai Buarod.