Bali plot linked to Thailand

By Rafael D. Frankel, Globe Correspondent, 11/10/2002

BANGKOK - Thai authorities have stepped up security measures across the country amid reports that the perpetrators of the Bali bombings might have plotted the attacks from inside Thailand and worries that terrorism that has plagued other Southeast Asian nations could migrate here.

Law enforcement officials are paying particular attention to popular coastal tourist spots, whose white sandy beaches and turquoise seas draw millions of visitors each year.

Media reports, citing Asian and Western diplomatic and intelligence officials, said last week that members of Jemaah Islamiyah, a group linked to Al Qaeda, met in January in Thailand's far southern provinces, near the Malaysian border. While there, they planned attacks against Westerners in the region - including the Oct. 12 attack in Bali that killed 190 people, according to descriptions of the gathering, which first appeared in the Asian Wall Street Journal.

Among those attending the meeting was Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, who security specialist believe is the region's operations chief of Al Qaeda.

The Thai government vehemently denied that such a meeting took place. ''We have no information about Al Qaeda or JI in Thailand,'' said Lieutenant General Chumporn Manmai, the commissioner of the Royal Thai Police intelligence unit. ''Every special branch policeman is looking for their members, but we have only suspicions.''

The commissioner said, however, that ''one or two suspects'' of Al Qaeda or Jemaah Islamiyah could have passed through Thailand in the past year.

Although 95 percent of Thailand's 66 million people are Buddhists, the far southern provinces are predominantly Muslim. Separatist groups operating in the south have engaged in sporadic terrorist attacks on government and civilian targets in Thailand for nearly three decades.

On Oct. 29, in the south, five schools were burned, two bombs exploded, and one bomb was defused. No one was killed. Two suspects were arrested last week in connection with those attacks. Previously, intelligence agencies had not linked those groups to Al Qaeda or Jemaah Islamiyah.

However, Panitan Wittayakorn, a security analyst from Thailand's prominent Chulalongkorn University, said Thai authorities believe members of those groups may have attempted to contact members of Al Qaeda via telephone and e-mail over the last year. ''But to what extent [the contact is], is not officially known,'' Wittayakorn said.

With rising terrorism in the region, cooperation with US intelligence agencies has increased, Thai and US officials confirmed. And earlier this month, at a summit of Southeast Asian countries, Thailand acceded to an accord to share security information with Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines - the latter two being the hardest hit by terrorism in the region.

Whatever effort Thai authorities are making, they had better try harder, said Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism and security analyst and author of ''Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror.'' Jemaah Islamiyah is operating in Thailand, both in the south and in Bangkok, he said, citing debriefings of detainees who have admitted involvement with Al Qaeda.

''What we know is that in January, the key leaders of Jemaah Islamiyah had a meeting in southern Thailand, which included Hambali, the JI operational leader of Southeast Asia,'' Gunaratna said. The Thai government ''has not taken this business seriously, and for many years, foreign terrorist organizations, including Hezbollah and the Tamil Tigers, have used Thailand as a base.''

''It is time now for Thailand to take action against these groups. Bali could have very well happened in Phuket,'' the popular Andaman Sea resort town.

With the importance of tourism (it accounts for 6 percent of Thailand's economy) the government says it is scrambling many of its resources to ensure a repeat of Bali does not occur here.

Publicly, the US Embassy has expressed satisfaction that the Thai government takes terrorism seriously. But last Saturday, the State Department warned American citizens living and traveling in Southeast Asia that Thailand could be a possible terrorist target. It said terrorist organizations in the region have ''transnational capabilities to carry out attacks against locations where Westerners congregate.''

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra insists that Thailand is not a target for international terrorism because of its nonconfrontational stance in global politics. However, the recent allegations have raised the stakes for the country and may thrust it into a role in the US-led war on terrorism, observers say.

''If it is true, if these people were and are in Thailand, then we are involved much more than the government led us to believe,'' Wittayakorn said. ''It will create a whole new situation for Thailand.''

©2002 Globe Newspaper Company