Death in the South

Our Bangkok correspondent H. Numan sends the following report about the latest violent incidents in Thailand. The newspaper article concerns people in the south who were shot to death by Muslim terrorists, but it’s notable that many other recent killings have involved beheadings.

Here’s the story from the Bangkok Post, followed by H. Numan’s commentary:

Five shot dead in South

Yala — Southern insurgents have shot and killed five people in four separate attacks, including two army rangers, police said on Saturday.

They said the two rangers were killed in an ambush early Saturday as they rode motorcycles through Muang district of Pattani province.

In another of an increasing number of atrocities, the militants then set fire to the men’s bodies. In the past month they also have beheaded seven people, including three civilians.

On Friday, three men were shot dead in Yala province — two Muslims and one Buddhist.

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The majority of the close to 4,000 people killed in five years of violent unrest in the deep South have been Muslim.

Commentary from H. Numan:

People, please pay attention to that last line. how many died in the 30 years of the Irish civil war? About a thousand. How many during both intifadas in Israel? About 1,500, maybe 2,000. How many US casualties in Iraq? About the same. But that is a full-blown religious war, fought over most of the country. Here we’re talking just two border provinces that can’t be managed.

Here we have 4,000 people killed in 1,825 days, give or take a day. That’s averaging 2.1 person per day. Every day, non-stop, for five years. And no end in sight.