Group says 'fighter' cell may have been infiltrated

DON PATHAN

THE NATION

Bacho, Narathiwat

Separatist chief considers existence of mole

newsjsNARATHIWAT: -- A senior operative from the Barisan Revolusi National-Coordinated (BRN-C) said his movement has not ruled out the possibility that there was a mole within the local militant cell responsible for planning and implementing Wednesday morning's failed attack on a Marine base in Narathiwat's Bacho district.

He said BRN-C, a separatist group that surfaced in the 1960s and claims to have the best relations with the militants, said the two groups would go back to the drawing board to rethink their future plans, especially those involving such daring attempts.

The Marine Task Force 32 commander, Marine Lt-Colonel Thamanoon Wanna, said information about the attack was obtained from a map found on the body of Suhaidee Tahir, a suspected insurgent who was killed last Saturday in Narathiwat's Sai Buri district in a gunfight with security forces.

Authorities had accused Suhaidee of killing Thai-Muslim schoolteacher Chonlatee Charoen-chon, who was shot dead in front of his students on January 23. BRN-C denies that Chonlatee was killed by the militants, locally known as juwae, which means "fighter" in the local Malay dialect.

The operative said the juwae had killed three teachers and burned down two schools from mid-November to the first week of January in retaliation for the November 14 assassination of Abdullateh Todir, the imam in Yala's Yaha district, and for the Rangae district teashop massacre on December 11, allegedly carried out by a pro-government death squad.At the insistence of senior BRN-C leaders, the juwae stopped targeting teachers and schools around the first week of January, and Chonlatee was not on their hit list, the operative said. He described Marohso Jantarawadee, one of the leaders of Wednesday's attack, as a dedicated juwae.

"Whatever happens in this area, Marohso always gets blamed," said his mother, Che Mah Che Ni, 52, who went on to blast the authorities for being insensitive for sending four truckloads of security officials to search her and her neighbours' homes on the same day that they killed her son in a gunfight.

The action was in stark contrast to statements by political leaders, who earlier expressed regret over the suffering of the families of the slain insurgents.

The Wednesday morning ambush was billed an operational and intelligence success, although statements from officials contradicted each other. While a senior Marine said information about the plan had came from insurgents killed in the earlier operation, other officials said villagers and/or defecting militants tipped them off.

Two villages over from the camp, Ahama Sohkuning, 25, one of the 16 insurgents shot dead, was buried in a cemetery metres from his parent's backdoor. Like Marohso, he left behind a young wife. She is five months pregnant and their son is just 18 months old.

According to Ahama's parents, he went into hiding shortly after he was released from a 30-day confinement in the Ingkrayuth Camp in Pattani where he said he was tortured. He was finally let go because the Emergency Law permits no more than 30 days in detention without formal charges. The torture inflicted upon him had forced him into the movement, his family said.

Like his fellow cell member, Ahama was also buried as "shahid". For the two families, burying their dead as martyrs was as way of coming to term with their losses.

"People here prefer to see their sons killed fighting government troops then dying of drugs because there is no stigma in being a martyr," said a local aid worker. This is the kind of sentiment the Thai public and the state do not want to hear, much less understand, he said.

-- The Nation 2013-02-15

To who and where did he give this interview?

Does any one really care if two truckloads of law and order raid the homes and neighbours homes of a dead insurgent's mother in search of more clues as to who and where the rest of them are? I don't!

these idiots have been killing innocent people and now that they are being killed by those that they are attacking they are crying unfair, what a joke. Do they really think that they can just kill who they like without any retaliation, who are these people. Whats more, if the reporter can get to talk to them this easily why havent the police/army also grabbed them, this is really pathetic, are the thai police etc really trying to do anything about these murderers. The simple solution is to go down there and just wipe out all these terrorists in one swoop, they are obviously well known to everyone except the police so maybe a little investigationis in order. AS for raiding the homes, what in the hell did they expect when their sons try to kill people, these people are just plain thick.

Ah, poor mum, the soldiers are being insensitive by searching the family home of a murderous bastard. Perhaps she should count her blessings that she was allowed to bury her son rather than have his corpse fed to the pigs ala Black Jack Pershing (possibly an urban myth).

these idiots have been killing innocent people and now that they are being killed by those that they are attacking they are crying unfair, what a joke. Do they really think that they can just kill who they like without any retaliation, who are these people. Whats more, if the reporter can get to talk to them this easily why havent the police/army also grabbed them, this is really pathetic, are the thai police etc really trying to do anything about these murderers. The simple solution is to go down there and just wipe out all these terrorists in one swoop, they are obviously well known to everyone except the police so maybe a little investigationis in order. AS for raiding the homes, what in the hell did they expect when their sons try to kill people, these people are just plain thick.

They kill the innocent and the killing of teachers is a particularly repugnant aspect of that but they feel they have a cause. The Thai's states efforts to integrate for the last 100 years have not been successful. They still feel rightly or wrongly they are discriminated and would rather be an independent state or part of Malaysia which doesn't want them.

The leaders aren't well known to the police and army. There are some old leaders of BRN-C and other defunct groups around who enjoy publicity and talk to journalists but they have little or no influence over today's terrorists and probably don't know who the leaders are.

If they could the authorities would have wiped out all the terrorists in one swoop. Obviously they can't. Anyway the Thai military prowess was rather lacking when the terrorists were more of an established military force in the 60s, 70s and 80s, alongside the Communist Party of Malaya which like them also operated on both sides of the border. The Malaysian army often complained that they were fighting the terrorists head on and taking big casualties, while their Thai colleagues over the border preferred to take the news cameras into an empty camp and declare a huge victory, having quietly tipped off the terrorists beforehand to avoid their own casualties.

Re searching the home. I agree that is to be expected and also wonder why it hadn't been done before, since they already knew who he was. If the mother has the chance to complain though, obviously she will. Her remarks will not get any sympathy in Thai language media but in Malay language media in Malaysia and Indonesia it will be different story which helps keep international pressure on. You know from the Rosetta stone story how much Thailand likes that.

Edited February 15, 201313 yr by Arkady