INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM IN THAILAND: SITUATION, PREVENTION, AND SOLUTION

Abstract

Since the 9/11 incident, global political and security landscape have drastically changed. Terrorism and counter-terrorism have inevitably become significant global agendas. For Thailand, threats of terrorism have just recently manifested, that is, the bombing incident in Sukhumvit 71 on 14 February 2012 by five Iranians. The incident was a very hot topic in Thai society at the time. However, looking at historical facts, it would be found that Thailand had been the location of terrorist incidents arising from foreign organisations or groups of individuals for at least 10 times since 1972. Hence, this article has been written with an urge to answer two major questions regarding the incidents: 1) situational question; what were the causes of the terrorism incidents in Thailand, how was the overall pattern of each incident, and how likely it would be for another incident to occur in the future and why?; and 2) question on policies and strategy; how were Thailand’s public sector’s previous policies, strategies and actions to manage the threats from transnational terrorism, especially those of security agencies, were there any problems and obstacles, and what would be the public sector’s plans for the time ahead? In this article, the researcher has employed documentary analysis, in-depth interviewing, and organisation of focus-group conferences under the conceptual frameworks on international terrorism in globalisation era and national advantages, with expectations that answering the aforementioned questioned would meaningfully help in predicting the trends and risks of Thailand to become a place of incident in the future, as well as providing an analysis on potential solutions and approaches to control such threats in a more efficient manner.