June 22, 2006: Captured documents and interrogations reveal that the major Moslem separatist group in the south, the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), had amassed $1.2 million to finance a bombing campaign. The money came mostly from gangsters who like the idea of the police being distracted by Islamic terrorism. Farther down the road, the gangsters see less police attention in an independent Islamic state made of of Thailand's three southern provinces. This may be unduly optimistic, but these ideas are motivating criminal support for the religious and ethnic violence in the south.
June 20, 2006: In the south, shootings and bombs are increasingly directed against the police. Diligent detective work is turning up the names of people involved in the terrorism, and teams of police are constantly on the road, seeking to serve arrest warrants, and take suspects into custody. This is apparently inspiring more violence, in an attempt to make the police back off. But many Moslem leaders in the south are against the violence, and some are assisting the police in identifying the guilty individuals.
June 17, 2006: Bombs continued to go off in the south, with over 60 detonated so far. They were all small, and some were not discovered until hours after they went off.
June 16, 2006: Six Moslems, five Thais and one Indonesian, were arrested for the bombing campaign of the last two days. Over 40 small bombs went off. The six arrested men were accused of building and planting 74 bombs recently, and were captured along with bomb making equipment. The leader of the bombing effort was a drug dealer, who used drug profits to finance the bombing campaign.
June 15, 2006: In the south, 21 small bombs went off in the morning, killing at two and injuring over 30 people. Islamic terrorists were suspected.
