The suicide bombs at Belgium brought heightened alert to Bangkok’s airports and embassies, while police on overtime patrolled tourist-friendly areas of the country, just in case.
“Just in case” has a fortunate history in Thailand. The country has been targeted many times by international terrorists since the 1970s. But skilful detection, combined with luck, has prevented most attacks, until last year’s Uighur bomb at the Erawan Shrine. Many success stories remain shrouded in diplomatic and intelligence agency fog.
Case in point.
After Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded and occupied Kuwait in 1990, a large coalition under US-British leadership prepared liberation. Iraqi embassies received orders to attempt terrorist attacks, to harass or stymie countries that were helping.
First came the Philippines, and it was a fortunate shambles. The assignment called for two Iraqi heavies to take explosives smuggled in diplomatic pouches, and bomb the US-run Thomas Jefferson Cultural Centre in Makati.
Bomber Ahmed Ahmed planned to set the timer for five minutes, put it at the centre doorway and skedaddle. In an entertaining “whoops” moment, he set it to five seconds and became the only fatality. His companion Sa’ad Kahim was wounded, covered in Ahmed’s splattered blood. Sa’ad took a taxi (really) to a hospital, where he asked the staff to call his Iraqi control. Instead they called police, who called the intelligence agencies, who called the CIA ... and so on.
Geniuses in Baghdad had issued their bomb experts Sa’ad and Ahmed with passports and documents identifying them as second secretaries at the Manila embassy. The passports were new, their numbers sequential. Out went notices to intelligence agencies worldwide. In Bangkok, the Special Branch (Santi Ban) police, responsible for diplomatic security — and Thai security against diplomats when necessary — went over the short list of local Iraqi embassy staff and found two “second secretaries” with passports in the same sequence as the Manila bombers.
Senior police officers roused the men, and summoned them to Phloenchit Road headquarters. A couple of hours later, they were publicly accused of smuggling explosives into Thailand, and were escorted to Don Mueang airport and a flight out.
There is no way to tell if the Iraqis would have tried to terrorise Bangkok, and if they were less beclowned than their Manila partners. There is a follow-up. On March 19, 2003 literally on the eve of the second US invasion of Iraq which overthrew the Saddam regime, the Special Branch responded to “hostile acts” by three senior Iraqi diplomats and eight allegedly private Iraqi citizens.
Police cancelled visas and made sure all 11 made it to the airport in time to catch flights out within 24 hours. The prime minister at the time (currently a familiar figure in Dubai) said US intelligence had provided the initial information about the 11, who were discovered in the act of anti-Thailand and anti-coalition efforts.
These Iraqi cases took place during high-profile international crises, and word reached the Bangkok Post first, and then other media. How many such cases are investigated and acted upon discreetly by the Special Branch is by definition unknown.
In addition to the opaque Iraqi cases, however, there have been successful operations that halted terrorism before it got under way. What is somewhat frightening is how many times it was terrorist incompetence that gave away the plot, rather than exquisite anti-terrorism success.
The best example of that came on Valentine’s Day, 2012. An Iranian gang undoubtedly bent on launching terrorist attacks against Israeli diplomats and tourists set off some of their bombs prematurely. Their mistake blew off the legs of one bomber and wounded five bystanders at the mouth of Pridi Banomyong Road (Sukhumvit Soi 71), close to a school.
One of the first international terrorist attacks in Thailand had an equally happy ending. That was on Dec 28, 1972. It started scarily, when the highly dreaded Black September brigade occupied the then-new Israeli Embassy on Phloenchit Road’s Soi Lang Suan, and took six Israeli hostages.
It was also the day of the investiture of His Royal Highness Prince Vajiralongkorn as crown prince, so there was both high-level concern, and a bargaining chip. Air Chief Marshal Dawee Chulasap, then the minister of communications, convinced the Palestinians to free the hostages in return for safe passage to Egypt, and ACM Dawee went along with them.
Popular legend adds that ACM Dawee got all the Black September men drunk on Scotch on the flight and that Palestinian security men hauled them off the plane in Egypt and took them directly to a meeting with the fabled 72 virgins. Never confirmed, either part, but delicious anyhow.