Thailand and international terrorism have a history that goes way back. The current calls for security forces to get serious about threats to the country are only echoes of the past 40-plus years.
As the IRA said after a failed attempt to kill Margaret "Iron Lady" Thatcher, "[W]e only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always."* Aug 17, at the Erawan Shrine, was when the terrorists targeting Thailand finally were successful.
Before that, a combination of luck, skill and occasional terrorist incompetence had kept Bangkok’s people as safe as a babe.
In 1972, on the day of the investiture of the HRH Prince Vajiralongkorn as Crown Prince, Black September terrorists seized the Israeli embassy, and were talked out of it. In 1981, Komando Jihad (remember them?) hijacked Garuda Indonesia Flight 206 to Don Mueang airport, only to be killed, all but one (later sentenced to death) by real commandos who stormed the plane and rescued the hostages.
March 11, 1994: Iranian terrorists killed a lorry owner, constructed a truck bomb and headed for the Israeli embassy - but the driver hit a motorcycle 300 metres short of his target and fled the scene.
January, 2012: Hamas operative Atris Hussein was arrested before he could turn tonnes of urea into a massive fertiliser bomb. Valentine’s Day, a month later: incompetent Iranian terrorists blew themselves up and never got to target diplomats and tourists as they hoped.
International terrorists including al-Qaeda, Jemaah Islamiyah, the Palestine Liberation Organisation and others have used and abused Thailand for years. Welcoming, open Bangkok has often been used for terrorist “summits” - most notoriously by the planners of the Sept 11, 2001, attacks on America. Yet a half-dozen terrorist plots killed one innocent Thai and no foreigners.
Until Aug 17. the bombing of the Erawan Shrine and the failed second bomb, possibly intended for Asiatique, took the lives of 14 ethnic Chinese and six Thais with (at press time) 25 people still hospitalised including four in intensive care. All evidence so far says clearly the bombs were aimed at China. That’s a vital point.
“Terrorists are made, not born,” repeated more than one terrorism expert in the wake of the Aug 17 atrocity.
In the past five years, Chinese authorities have taken extra care in making Uighur terrorists. For no apparent reason, they force Muslims to eat during Ramadan, mandate that Uighur shops must display alcoholic beverages prominently and sell them, and forbid all wearing of the hijab, which doesn’t even cover the face. The oppression in Xinjiang is equivalent to that in Tibet, just as bloody-minded and just as viscerally resented.
The terrorists who killed 20 and maimed another two dozen people at the Erawan Shrine on Aug 17 were not retaliating for Thailand’s decision to render 109 Uighurs to China. The timeline emerging from the bombing investigation makes that theory impossible.
The Uighurs were beaten into submission at Songkhla, hooded and flown to China on July 8. But we now know that the bombing plot was well under way by then. Apartments were rented and occupied in June. Wanna Suansant, aka Maisaroh, the first-identified Thai suspect and alleged terrorist facilitator, had rented apartments and installed residents by June. Her husband Emrah Davutoglu is accused of handling bomb material, but that also had to occur in June, because the duo and their infant left Thailand for Turkey, via Phuket, on July 1, a full week before the rendition of the unfortunate 109 Uighurs.
The Aug 17 bombing at the Erawan Shrine succeeded because of that careful, long planning. It had military-type precision seen in other such attacks around the world.
There was a small team of bombers, apparently all foreigners. And there was a support team, allegedly made up of experienced Thai and foreign human traffickers.
By evidence so far available, they arranged everything the bombers needed for their butchery: housing, money, transportation and the like plus the actual explosives and other material for the bombs.
So far accused as Thai accomplices, witting or otherwise, are Ms Wanna the apartment leaser and Kamarudeng Sahoh of Narathiwat.
The latter is a known human trafficker with the special skill of getting people across the Malaysian border. Mostly, he has dealt with Rohingya. Police wonder publicly if the man in the yellow T-shirt and friends were his latest customers.
The infamous July 8 departure of the Uighurs deserves a long investigation of its own. Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha claimed last week it was a compromise, that he couldn’t send all the Uighurs to Turkey because it would anger China too much, and vice versa.
No doubt the bombers assembled in Bangkok by July 8 were outraged at that rendition.
The stark, known facts up to now, however, indicate that once again Thailand was not the terrorists’ target but only the stage where the terrorists played out their dirty drama. The target was Chinese tourists, and the message was meant for Beijing. As it was previously for the Palestinians, the Iranians and other groups, Thailand was again the innocent bystander, and wounded like the human victims of the Ratchaprasong bomb.
* NOTE: An earlier version of this story misattributed the "lucky" quote to Mrs Thatcher. h/t to reader DaveQ for the correction.