AT FIRST all seems well in the old centre of Pattani, a city surrounded by lush vegetation near the southern edge of Thailand. Shop buildings painted with bright purple, orange and blue rhombuses offer clove cigarettes, mobile phones, abayas and much more. But there is one jarring detail: vehicles park next to a low green wall down the middle of the street, not by the kerb. Car bombs are sufficiently common for parking to be shifted away from the multicoloured emporia to limit injuries and damage from the explosions.
Pattani used to be the capital of a Muslim sultanate that traded with China, Japan and Europe in its glory days. The current insurgency has its roots in the engulfing of the sultanate by Siam, as Thailand was then known, in the late 18th century. Resistance by the local, ethnically Malay population met cruelty: Thai generals ordered groups of men, women and children to be tied together and trampled to death by elephants, according to historical...Continue reading
from Asia http://ift.tt/2uK68jf
EmoticonEmoticon