When yet another wave of bombs exploded in Yala 10 days ago and knocked out most of the electricity in the province, military authorities announced quickly that they know who was behind the terrorism.
As usual, they didn't catch him.
The man known as Ismael Rayalong has more names than the average flight manifest, more wanted posters than the Erawan Shrine bombers. He seems to have had more lives than the average feline but here's the thing about him.
He has never been caught. He has never been in custody. There are no photos known to show him. And no one, including the spokesmen who periodically pin bombings, drive-by shootings and school-security ambushes on him, actually know if he's alive.
Ismael Rayalong is actually better known as Ustaz Soh. "Ustaz" is an Islamic title of respect, literally meaning a Muslim scholar but in common use more along the lines of ajarn, the often loosely used title for teacher.
Among the many things that are unknown about Soh is whether he is a trained Muslim scholar, but his known biography indicates he is not. And, general terrorism and un-Koranic killing aside in the deep South, if Ustaz Soh ever was trained in Islam, he betrayed his instructors and teachings alike, particularly on his best-known mission -- where by "best known" we mean hardly known at all outside the South, and not exactly a legend there, either. (Continued after the photo)
Unholy Violence: A Thai Muslim holds up a copy of the Koran stained with blood, found after militants were killed inside Krue We mosque in Pattani. (Photo by Jetjaras Na Ranong)
As a school boy, young Ismael was petulant and recalcitrant. That's according to just a couple of people and a teacher who remember him, but it's the reputation that accompanied him. He wasn't much for studies and disrupted the classrooms of the pondok (Islamic schools) he attended in Yala. But it also stuck with the few people who recall the youth that he was always attentive to the religious classes.
He left or was kicked out of the last Yala pondok that would have him just around the turn of the century. But from what now is known, he already had made up his mind what he intended to do with his life -- kill, bomb and shoot the still very quiet disputes in the South. Irony alert: As the man who turned into Lord Voldemort na Dubai was plotting his grab of power at the central level, the Ustaz of the South was also plotting how to turn the deep South into an inferno by using Islam against central power.
It was about here that the life of Ismael aka Soh took a sharp and determining swerve. He turned to the Sufi branch of Islam, and in particular the mystical form. While this often is identified with the so-called "dancing dervishes", the mystical Sufi strain of Malaysia, Indonesia and the South dabbles in black magic and supernatural events. This is far outside the standard and conservative Sunni practices of Yala and the deep South, but it was the most important turning point in Soh's life.
At the new millennium, Ismael aka Ustaz Soh took a job at the Tarpia Tulwatan Mullaniti Islamic Boarding School in his home province. This was not an accident or fate. The rapidly evolving mystical side of Ustaz Soh was coming to the fore. Within three months, the very uneasy administrators of the pondok had had enough of their janitor and his behaviour, including a strong aversion to any authority.
But three months was all that Soh needed. He revealed, outed and became friends with another Sufi at the school, Abdul Wahab Data, who became his trusted associate. And even the school authorities had no idea of how many students Ustaz Soh recruited and kept contact with.
In January, 2004, insurgents across the deep South launched coordinated attacks against schools in "the night of the fires". It was the restart of the separatist-led, low-intensity war that continues today. And it was when Ustaz Soh saw his chance for glory and leadership.
For three months, he trained and proselytised the school children he and Abdul had recruited. At a secret base -- really nothing more than a jungle clearing -- he spent two months filling the recruits, children really, with malarkey about drinks and amulets that made them impervious to harm. On the night of April 28, he unleashed his Hikmatallah Abadan (Brotherhood of the Eternal Judgement of God) "army" of more than 100 young men on Thai security forces, most of them armed with knives against machine guns.
For some reason, the drinks and amulets didn't work. Most of the screaming, indoctrinated army died. And a handful, mostly the older members, tried to take refuge at the historic Krue Se mosque. After a few hours, army troops obeyed "adviser" Gen Panlop Pinmanee's orders to slaughter them inside the mosque, an event widely resented and marked bitterly in that region every year. Parents of the dead boys buried them as martyrs.
After the battle, authorities found a tract, Berjihad di Pattani (The Conduct of a Holy Struggle in Pattani). Officials, including the Chularatchamontri who condemned it, had never seen such a booklet. Written in Jawi and found on the bodies of several of the dead at Krue Se, the book justifies the use of Sufi mysticism for a "holy war to expel the colonialist Siamese" from the deep South. It claimed that "warrior blood will flow again and this generation will emerge to do battle".
The author was Ustaz Soh. After this, Abdul was arrested, Soh was never found. Some say he died. Some, including Thai army spokesmen, say he not only lived but that he is constantly killing.
"When the army doesn't know anything at all, they blame Ustaz Soh," said one of the sources for this story.
