Follies of Appeasement

The New York Times is simply reporting what any number of folks, myself included, have warned. Appeasement is met with more violence. Hope for reconciliation and peace is met with bomb blasts and murder. Jihadis and Islamists have no interest in peace on the terms of the Thai government. They want peace on their terms and see the Thai government's appeasement as weakness to be exploited.

Some are already calling it war, a brutal Muslim separatist insurgency in southern Thailand that has taken as many as 2,000 lives in three years with almost daily bombings, drive-by shootings, arson and beheadings.

It is a conflict the government admits it is losing. A harsh crackdown and martial law in recent years seem only to have fueled the insurgency by generating fear and anger and undermining moderate Muslim voices.

A new policy of conciliation in the past four months has been met by increased violence, including a barrage of 28 coordinated bombings in the south that killed or wounded about 60 people on Feb. 18.

“The momentum of violence is now beyond the control of government policy,” said Srisompob Jitpiromsri, a political scientist at Prince of Songkhla University here.

“The separatists can pick and choose the time and place of the violence without any effective resistance from the government,” he said. “They have the upper hand.”

Now the insurgents seem to be taking their war to a new stage, pitting local Buddhists against Muslims by attacking symbols of Buddhism with flamboyant brutality.

This has nothing to do with Israel or the Middle East and everything to do with the bloody ideology of the Islamists.