Word: thailand
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Jiranan Phedsri confesses that she has "one true friend." The 51-year-old Thai housewife strokes the object of her affection, caressing its cool curves. The recipient of the devout Buddhist's ardor? A .38-caliber Smith & Wesson pistol Jiranan carries wherever she goes in Thailand's troubled deep south, where a Muslim insurgency has resulted in roughly 4,000 deaths since it gained momentum in 2004. The handgun, though, isn't Jiranan's only trusted companion. As a volunteer in the Iron Ladies, an all-female civilian militia designed to protect Buddhists from Islamic extremists, she received military training...
...Little more than 60 miles (100 km) from Thailand's fabled beaches lies another land that has far more in common with the barbed-wire disquiet of Iraq or Afghanistan than the sunny image projected in tourist brochures. Nearly every day, violence - motorcycle bombs, shootings, arson attacks, beheadings - claims another life in Thailand's three southernmost provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat, which, unlike the rest of the Buddhist-majority country, are 80% Muslim. The region was a Malay sultanate until the early 20th century when Thailand annexed it. While members of both faiths have been killed by Muslim militants...
...combat the slaughter, Thailand has unleashed a massive surge, sending nearly 70,000 security forces into a region populated by 1.7 million people. But the authorities have also encouraged local residents to arm themselves and form militias with fanciful names like the Iron Ladies, the Night Butterflies and the Eyes of a Pineapple. Around 100,000 civilians are now members of such armed groups, and they either receive free guns from the military or can buy them at deeply subsidized rates. The majority of militia members come from Buddhist ranks because the government feels they are most vulnerable to attack...
...Critics of the arms proliferation are calling for the government to address the root causes of discontent in Thailand's south - on both sides of the sectarian divide. Buddhists complain that an environment where simply commuting to work exposes them to possible assassination is unacceptable. They feel that too few insurgents have been punished for their crimes and wonder why the Thai authorities have not done a better job infiltrating militant cells. In turn, Muslims resent what they see as an official attitude that regards members of their religion as potential terrorists who must be suppressed by draconian emergency laws...
...Trigger-Happy? There's no question that Thailand's southern tip is increasingly awash in guns. The number of legally registered weapons in the three provinces has jumped 10% each year since 2004, and many more are owned illegally. The state readily distributes firearms to everyone from teachers to government officials. In Narathiwat's Tak Bai district, for instance, none of the 56 village chiefs owned a gun before 2004. Now all do. "Guns can't totally protect us against insurgents," says Yoon Yerntorn, chief of Tak Bai's Buddhist Sai Khao village, where five locals have been killed over...