Strategy Page
While terror attacks are up so far this year, investigations are more frequently leading back to drug gangs, who are financing the attacks and protecting the terrorists. Police have made hundreds of arrests, and about a hundred terrorists have surrendered. While many trace their radicalization of Moslem religious school, there always seemed to be someone from one of the drug gangs there to provide cash, or weapons, to keep the killing going.
Red shirt populists and yellow shirt royalists are still demonstrating in the capital, but the sense of crises has diminished. The yellow shirts are largely responsible for the current “war” with Cambodia, by pushing the use of force to press a shaky claim on some land around a border temple. Most of the population backs the red shirts, but no one wants a civil war over the issue of new elections (which the royalists would lose).
The armed forces have put 15,000 troops on the Cambodia border, around a 4.6 square kilometer temple compound that both nations claim control over. Cambodia have about the same number of troops in the area, but Thailand has prepared plans to send a lot more troops to the border, and apply Thailand’s larger and more powerful military power against Cambodia. The royalists running the current government see this as a way to gain wider support in Thailand.
No comments:
Post a Comment