THE WASHINGTON TIMES
BANGKOK -- Buddhists are fleeing their homes in southern Thailand in the face of an increasingly militant Muslim insurgency that has begun calling for an independent and pure Islamist nation in the impoverished region bordering Malaysia.
What began as an indigenous protest against heavy-handed rule from the mainly Buddhist capital, Bangkok, has developed into a battle reflecting extremism in Iraq and Afghanistan, including beheadings and the burning of schools.
"This land must be separated between Muslims and the nonbelievers. This land must be liberated, and an Islamic system must be its foundation," warned a leaflet recently distributed in the south that the Thai military showed to reporters.
"This is a land of war that is no different from Palestine and Afghanistan," said the leaflet, signed by an obscure jihadist group known as the Islamic Warriors of Pattani State.
"This land is not the land of the Thais, but the land of Fathoni Darulsalam," it said, using an old Arabic name for the mainly Muslim region of southern Thailand.
Other fliers instruct Muslims not to buy or benefit financially from lands abandoned by Buddhists, saying the properties will be distributed to needy Malays once the region is liberated from the "occupying Siamese," according to a Bangkok newspaper, the Nation.
