Bangkok dangerous: An update from ground zero

Bangkok: Taxi drivers are the best indicators of the public mood in Bangkok. These days, they tell you that Iranians have spoiled the peace of the city. “No terrorism in Bangkok, but for the Iranians,” said one. The city was still in the new year hangover when explosives went off in a house in busy downtown Sukhumwit on 14 February. The driver is unhappy and angry. He, however, is quick to add that there won’t be bilateral tension between Thailand and Iran because of the trade ties - Thailand exporting mostly rice while importing a good part of its oil from Iran.[caption id=“attachment_217740” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Thai immigration officers escort detained Iranian Mohammad Kharzei, centre, at the immigration headquarters in Bangkok on 16 February 2012. Sakchai Lalit/AP”]  [/caption] Iranians also account for a sizable chunk of the Arab tourists that the country receives. Arab men are everywhere in Sukhumwit - on the streets, in shopping malls, upmarket hospitals and brothels. Of late, one can see a lot of African sex workers in and around Nana, apparently to cater to Arab men who like XL sized women. Many sois (streets) in Sukhumwit are almost exclusively Arab. A large number of those single men are Iranians. The impact of the blasts and related anxiety, however, haven’t changed the relaxed but busy air of the city. The sky-trains (BTS for local people) are full of people, the sois of Sukhumwit and the weekly Chatuchak market are chock-a-block filled with tourists; and the Arab translators at the Bumrungrad of Samitivej hospitals are busy with their customers. However, somewhere deep in their heart, they are upset that some renegades were manufacturing bombs in their neighbourhood. They don’t want it to impact their earnings - about six percent of the country’s GDP comes from overseas visitors. The entire tourism industry, including taxis and the 24,000 plus sex establishments, were badly hit during the recent and prolonged floods. The first question both local residents and expats asked was how did the Iranians smuggle the explosives into the city? Interestingly, they also had the answer. The most common guess was that they could have procured them from southern Thailand. Many provinces in the southern Thailand have long been affected by separatist insurgency, which are often linked to the usual trans-national Islamist terrorist networks. There has been a lot of violence, arms and killings since the early 2000s in the southern provinces although Bangkok remained more or less unscathed except for a series of blasts in 2006, which killed three people. Another possibility of the source of the explosives was the porous borders with Myanmar and Cambodia. Thailand provides arms and ammunition to the Myanmar insurgents and a lot can trickle back from the “buffer zone” that the country keeps on its border, allegedly as a safe haven for the insurgents. Although the incident shocked the city residents, what restored public confidence was the quick breakthroughs that the Thai authorities have been able to achieve: all the people involved in the incident have been identified; three of them arrested, including one in Malaysia; and they have also been able to trace their antecedents. Reportedly, they are now searching for a fourth suspect. The authorities were forthcoming with the information leaving no scope for speculation. According to Thai authorities, the sequence of events follow something like this: On 8 February, the three Iranian men fly into Bangkok and drive straight to the sex capital of Pattaya. They engage three sex workers to escort them and party with them. They leave considerable footprint in the form of hotel records and mobile phone photos. The immigration officials have been able to locate one of the sex workers by tracing the hotel in Pattaya where they stayed. All the hotels, including the cheap shacks catering to backpackers, in Bangkok and other key towns, keep immigration records in computerised databases and in no time, the authorities could trace the trail of the suspects. The sex worker located by the immigration officials had taken photos of the Iranian men partying at a restaurant in Pattaya on her mobile phone, which was published by Bangkok Post on Thursday. When one of the suspects, who was arrested at the Bangkok Suvarnabhoomi airport while he was trying to flee the country hours after the blast, was showing signs of stress, the immigration authorities took the same sex worker to him to calm him down. Apparently, he appeared relieved only on seeing the woman and agreed to eat. The arrested Iranian was also presented before the media. After staying in Pattaya till the 13 February, the men move to Bangkok leaving behind the Thai women. And the explosion occurs the next day. Perhaps they were assembling the explosives when they accidentally went off. The Thai authorities did not rush to any conclusion even as Israel alleged the the incident was part of an Iranian plot to hit their installations and people in Bangkok. They said, the modus operandi was similar to the incident in New Delhi in which an Israeli diplomat was seriously injured. After the initial investigations, Thai authorities also confirmed that the suspects were indeed planning to target Israeli individuals. Magnet strips found along with explosives in their house indicated a plot similar to the sticky bomb attack in New Delhi. They were not powerful enough for larges-scale terror attacks, but were sufficient to target individuals. As in similar terror plots, there were women too. One was an Iranian, whose passport details and visa page had been released by the Thai authorities. Reportedly, she had left the country ahead of the incident and is now in Iran with which Thailand has no extradition treaty. That also explained how all the three suspects were trying to get back to their country immediately after the blast. Two of them got away and were caught at the airports in Bangkok and Malaysia respectively, while one got trapped in an explosion that he himself set off on a busy street (Soi 71). You can watch a graphic video of the man with severed limbs immediately after the blast here. The other woman is a Thai national, who apparently was the girl-friend of one of the suspects. Neighbours have seen her with the suspects many times before. Neighbours’ accounts also indicate that the suspects had been operating from the house for some time. The house was rented by the Iranian woman, who is now reportedly back in Iran. If all went well, there could have been an attack on an Israeli target or a few targets on 14 February. They were preparing to leave the house, sent the women out of the country and perhaps would have boarded planes to Iran after completing their tasks. But the apparently innocuous Thai surveillance was as effective as one could get. The images that the street cameras captured were immediately rushed to immigration authorities who used to trace their passport and immigration details and nab them. Media reports said that the authorities now know who the Thai woman is and is trying to locate her whereabouts. As happened during the recent catastrophic floods, social media—dedicated blogs, Twitter and YouTube—continue to be a source of information and analyses for local residents and expats in Bangkok. The most popular among them is Bangkok Pundit, who has been providing a summary of round-ups based on various published sources of information. During the floods, a couple of expats provided minute-to-minute tweets on the level of flooding, traffic diversions, stock and supply of food items and even water contamination. Bangkok had witnessed bomb blasts in 2006 and 1980; both the times they were linked to southern insurgency. While three people were killed in the eight blasts during the new year revelry in 2006, in 1980, no deaths or injuries were reported in six blasts.