Global Post ^ | July 27, 2011 | Patrick Winn
PATTANI, Thailand — Dawn smolders above this seaside city in Thailand’s southern borderlands. Troops already occupy the streets in force. Skinny conscripts with assault rifles patrol through the fog. German Shepherds sniff for bombs in the brush.
This is the hour of paranoia. Come mornings, gunmen slip through curtains of jungle foliage lining the roadside. They kill cops. Army officers. Teachers traveling to class. Kids sometimes. To stoke maximum horror, they decapitate Buddhist monks with machetes.
As oblivious backpackers party up the coast, an Islamic rebellion roars on with no end in sight. The attackers’ prey? In local jihadi parlance, “Siamese infidels” and their “Muslim running dogs.” In lieu of familiar screeds against Jews, Christians and the “Great Satan” America, these mujahideen call for the heads of Thai Buddhists.
Islamic guerillas here vow to wrench free a Connecticut-sized chunk of Thailand and create the world’s newest Islamic state. With Muslim separatist movements in the Philippines and Indonesia largely tamed through peace agreements, this Islamic insurgency is now Asia’s bloodiest.
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