Car Bomb Rocks Southern Thai Hotel

By Zachary Abuza

On Saturday night, a 20 kg bomb hidden in the back of a car was detonated in front of the CS Pattani Hotel in Pattani, southern Thailand. Two were killed, three are in critical condition and 15 others sustained moderate injuries. It was the boldest attack by Muslim insurgents in southern Thailand in recent months. Some 3,000 have been killed since the insurgency got underway in January 2004. Violence peaked in June 2007, and has gone down, owing to stepped up counter-insurgent operations; but the average rate of killing today is still above the 4-year average. This is not the first car bomb in southern Thailand, but the first in over a year.

The CS Pattani is the hotel in southern Thailand. It is where every delegation from Bangkok stay, the meeting point for journalists and visiting academics, and a conference center, where much of the government’s reconciliation meetings have taken place.

It is unlikely that the bombing will galvanize the government’s response. The southern insurgency was a non-issue during last December’s election, and barely rates as a priority of the current government of Samak Sundaravej. The military’s response has been passive at best: the majority of troops are confined to barracks and when deployed are in fixed static positions. The insurgency is a low priority for the military, which is more concerned with allocating its appallingly high budget allocations on Grippen jet fighters and submarines; hardly the weapon systems needed to combat an insurgency. Much of the fighting has been relegated to poorly trained and ill-disciplined paramilitaries. The police are riddled with corruption and inept: when insurgent suspects are detained, they can be held for 28 days, in which time the police and prosecutors must build up a case. Yet the police fail to gather the requisite forensic evidence or witness statements. Over 90% of the detained insurgents are freed. The different military and civilian security agencies are squabble over resources and have failed to create an integrated command structure and share intelligence. As long as the insurgency remains in the deep south, it will remain off Bangkok’s radar screen.

TrackBack