If it turns out insurgents were responsible for last week’s bombings, it would mark a risky new expansion of the low-level war that has plagued the mostly Buddhist country’s southern border region with Malaysia.
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Southern Muslim insurgents have already shown a much more organized capacity of bombing than their Ouighour counterparts who where held responsible for the Erawan Shirne attacks in Bangkok. “The story becomes mundane”, said Rungrawee Chalermsripinyorat, an independent analyst and expert on the insurgency.
No one has claimed responsibility for the bombing spree, which hit tourist towns in the country’s south last today and Friday, killing four and wounding dozens, including European visitors. The fact that the group’s clandestine fighters were likely operating in unfamiliar southern terrain may also explain why several of the attacks appeared to be poorly executed.
Since 2004, more than 6,500 people have been killed and 12,000 injured as a result of the conflict in the south.
Critics say the referendum was a sham because the military restricted open discussion and jailed more than 100 people who criticised it.
On Tuesday, Police Gen. Srivara Ransibrahmanakul told reporters that police are seeking the arrest of a suspect they say is part of a network that carried out the attacks. He declined to elaborate further.
The attacks, including the use of staggered bombs created to target people responding to an initial smaller blast, were consistent with known insurgent tactics in the deep South.
Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a respected commentator at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, said the targeting of tourist destinations discredits the military’s vaunted ability to maintain law and order, and dampens economic prospects under the junta’s rule.
On Saturday I expressed?PATA’s steadfast support in my letters to the Minister for Tourism and the Governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand.
But political parties, including the Pheu Thai Party, deposed in the May 2014 coup, and its supporters, the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), have denied links to the bombings.
Rungrawee stressed that the involvement of southern militants in the recent attacks “remains a hypothesis”.
The Sunday before the attacks, a national referendum approved a new constitution proposed by the military government that is supposed to lead to an election next year.
But Assistant National Police Chief Suchart Theerasawaat said the bombs used in at least three of the attacks were similar to those found previously in the southern border provinces. He said they forwarded the warrant request after finding the DNA of a known insurgent on a diffused bomb.
The military seized power from the Pheu Thai government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra in May 2014.
But they have spiked considerably so far this month, with 88 incidents of violence just in the first 10 days of August in the three southern provinces and neighbouring Songkhla province, according to Deep South Watch (DSW), a Pattani-based group which monitors the conflict.
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He noted that the Erawan Shrine bombing in Bangkok on August 17 a year ago had only a short-term adverse impact, with tourism affected by no more than one month.
