Asia's Muslim Radicals Take Up Beheading
Pastor Dale Morgan
Asia's Muslim Radicals Take Up Beheading*
By AMBIKA AHUJA
The Associated Press
Saturday, June 2, 2007; 12:14 PM
NA PRADU, Thailand -- It took two days for the young Muslim assassin to
calm his nerves before the slaying.
Then, Mohama Waekaji says, he walked one cool morning to a rice mill,
carrying a knife and following orders from a guerrilla commander to
behead the 72-year-old Buddhist owner.
He asked the elderly man, Juan Kaewtongprakam, for some rice husks. As
he turned to collect them, Waekaji says, he slashed the blade through
the man's neck.
"I didn't dare to disobey," the 23-year-old Waekaji said in an interview
with The Associated Press _ the first time a Thai militant accused of a
beheading has spoken to the Western media. "I knew they would come after
me if I did not do what I was told."
The killing in February was one in a spate of beheadings that has
shocked Thailand, a nation with no past history of the practice, and
fueled fears that the brutal terrorist tactics of the Middle East are
spreading in Asia.
Twenty-five beheadings _ including 10 already this year _ have been
reported in southern Thailand since an Islamic-inspired insurgency
erupted in 2004, claiming more than 2,200 lives. Militants in the
heavily Muslim region seek independence from mostly Buddhist Thailand.
"Beheadings are certainly on the rise outside of the Middle East
proper," said Timothy Furnish, professor of Middle Eastern history at
Georgia Perimeter College. "These groups do take their cues from ...
hardcore Islamic thought coming out of the Arab world. Beheading
infidels not only shocks, but also demonstrates Islamic bona fides to
other groups."
Thai authorities say jihad videos from the Middle East, captured from
rebel training camps, may be inspiring young men like Waekaji. One clip
said to have come from Iraq shows a woman lying on her side on a patch
of grass as a man slowly cuts her throat with a long knife. Blood spurts
from the wound, the screaming finally stops and her head is completely
severed.
"The inspiration is clearly coming across the Internet or through DVDs
clips," said Zachary Abuza, an expert on terrorism in Southeast Asia at
Simmons College in Boston.
"Islamist militants in Southeast Asia are very frustrated that the
region is considered the Islamic periphery," Abuza added. "Militants of
the region are actively trying to pull the region into the Islamic core.
They want people to understand that their jihad is a part of the global
jihad."
Beheadings have been linked to other militants across Asia, including
groups in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indian-held Kashmir and Indonesia, the
world's most populous Muslim nation. In the mostly Roman Catholic
Philippines, at least 37 people have been decapitated in the last decade
by the al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf.
Beheadings are not solely a tool of guerrillas. Its imposed as
punishment under some strict interpretations of Islamic law such as in
Saudi Arabia and under the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
Waekaji's account of his journey _ from quiet, average student to a
confessed killer _ offers insights into how young Muslims fall under the
influence of militant Islamic thinking.
He was attending a private Islamic school in Pattani province when a
school buddy persuaded him to join a religious event at a mosque. There
"ustad," or teachers, told him about an organization to liberate
southern Thailand, asking him to take an oath to become a servant of
Allah, obey the teachers and take the secrets of the organization to his
grave.
Although confused and with little knowledge of politics, he took the
oath and began secret training at age 19.
His teachers stressed the sufferings of Muslims in the Palestinian
territories and Afghanistan and also in Thailand, where many Muslims
feel they are second-class citizens in a Buddhist-dominated land.
The teachers detailed the Tak Bai tragedy of 2004 when Thai security
forces confronted Muslim protesters, resulting in the deaths of 85. The
victims died of suffocation when authorities arrested 1,300 people and
stacked them on top of each other in trucks.
"I was shaken when I heard the story. I was revengeful and I did hate
them, those who did this to us Muslims," Waekaji said at the prison in
Na Pradu, about 680 miles south of Bangkok.
His story could not be independently confirmed, but Waekaji has made a
formal written confession and the police have filed a case against him
in criminal court.
During rigorous training, he learned how to do knuckle push-ups, wield
knives, swords and guns and how to take a life by squeezing an
opponent's Adam's apple with his hands or breaking a victim's neck.
After two years, he was sent out to burn tires and spread nails on roads
to puncture tires and distract police before attacks staged by his comrades.
"They recruit responsible, tightlipped and trouble-free teenagers ...
people who can carry out orders and who don't attract attention to
themselves," said Thai army Col. Shinawat Mandej. "They train their
minds before training their bodies. They get them at the most vulnerable
age when they need something to believe in and turn them into
cold-blooded killers."
When the order came to slay the mill owner _ a person he had seen but
didn't know _ Waekaji said he was frightened, both by the orders and
what his leaders would do to him if he failed.
"It was too late to want out," he said, his eyes closed and his head
downcast. "It was either me or him."
Police found the man's headless body at the rice mill and his head in a
nearby field that separates Muslim and Buddhist villages. Waekaji was
arrested and charged with the killing about two months later.
Leaflets left in mailboxes and motorcycle baskets in Pattani the day of
the beheading warned: "We will give Thai Buddhists three days to leave
our land. Otherwise, we will kill you and burn your houses. ... Thai
Buddhists will never live peacefully. You will be killed cruelly."