Insurgents turn up heat with hotel blast

When it comes to the element of fear, the separatist Muslim insurgency in Thailand's deep south reveals itself to be a classic guerilla campaign.

Day or night, no one feels completely safe in the three southern provinces of Pattani, Yala or Narathiwat. Muslim plantation workers fear beheading as they tap rubber in the predawn darkness; ethnic Chinese car dealers watch for drive-by assassins as they walk their lots and school children hurry in the afternoons to the shuttered safety of their homes.

Yet for all the tensions, the CS Pattani hotel has stood above the flat coastal plains as an oasis of calm and relative safety. Visiting government and military officials, ethnic Chinese tourists from Malaysia and Singapore and local and foreign reporters have all used the hotel, owned by a prominent and long-established Thai-Chinese business family. Muslim and Buddhist staff worked in apparent harmony - a reflection of the quiet but persistent sense of community tolerance that the insurgents are bent on destroying.

That peace was shattered last weekend as a car packed with bombs exploded in the forecourt, killing two staff and injuring 13 others, including owner Anusart Suwanmongkol, a senator with deep ties to both the Muslim and local Buddhist communities. His driver was among the dead.

Two years ago I found Mr Anusart sceptical about the real scale of the insurgency as we spoke long into the night over tea on the terrace targeted last weekend. A year later on another visit and he was much more fearful after long-established ethnic Chinese businesses were targeted over Lunar New Year.

Ordinary Muslims and Buddhists who once rubbed along together were growing suspicious. 'There is fear and confusion among ordinary people on all sides,' Mr Anusart said at the time. 'The seeds of mistrust have been sown very successfully.'

The bombing of his hotel, while not the biggest or most violent attack in four years of insurgency, is highly significant.