Saturday, March 07, 2009

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.

4 comments:

Steen said...

There are numerous videos from southern Thailand on You Tube. The violence is ubelievable:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX9T7JP7uXE&feature=related

babs said...

I seriously ask what if Thailand just wrote off the south to the Muslims and walled the border?
Kind of a Pakistan/India thing. Is there some specific resource in the south that Thailand relies heavily on?
I don't see another solution.

Peter said...

Actually, there is a simple solution. Muslims are a minority in Thailand. If the majority gets sufficiently tired of having people beheaded and burned they can go off on a jihad themselves.

It sounds ugly but the way to stop aggression is to be more aggressive. I don't know what percentage of the Muslims would have to be killed to calm the rest down, I only wish to find out.

Unfortunately, all the smart people decided to let everyone be killed or enslaved. I love smart people.

Unknown said...

Babs,

Because the separation worked so well for India. Fifty years later, Pakistan is clinically free of Hindus, while there 150M+ Moslems in India and Moslem terrorism in the country happens on a regular basis...