Guess The Insurgent

It's that age-old question: What are these folks are insurging about, what they're militanting over?

BANGKOK, Feb. 22 (Xinhua) -- Two students and an official were wounded when suspected insurgents detonated a bomb at Yala Rajabhat University in Thailand's southern province of Yala on Friday morning.

A five-kilogram bomb was placed inside its Science and Technology Faculty and was detonated by remote control at around 10 a.m. (0300 GMT), according local newspaper the Nation's website.

The victims, all female, were rushed to Yala Center Hospital.

Kraisorn Sritrairat, dean of the university, was quoted as saying that police are still not sure who planted the bomb. However, he said he believes the attack must be staged by suspected militants.

Thailand's three southernmost provinces -- Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala have been troubled with insurgency-related violence which has claimed more than 2,800 people's lives since 2004.

Note that this report is from Xinhua, China's news agency. If we're to believe what officially atheistic China reports regarding its Muslim population, there are 26.4 million Muslims in the People's Republic, so we can see why Beijing doesn't want to rile the jihad set.

But anyone who's been tracing jihad over the last few years has had to track Indonesia, especially its southern provinces. As Global Security reports:

The 4-province area in the southern-most part of Thailand, which is populated mainly by Muslim Thais, has not been completely pacified. There are still some small groups of Islamic radical[s], which sometime resort to violent tactics in order to make their presence felt, are still posing problems to public safety in the south. The crack down on terrorist organizations, with connections to international terrorist groups like Al-Queda, may spill over into this sensitive area. The possibility of local Islamic radical groups in the south giving sanctuary or staging location for future attack to fellow neighboring or international factions cannot be totally discounted. It has been a concern among Thai and friendly countries. Authorities have known for quite some time that many Muslim Thai activists went overseas to Islamic schools, where they came under influence of hard-line teachers. Some were reported to have joined the jihad war against the Soviet Army in Afghanistan and returned to Thailand as extremists.

So I guess what they're insurging and militanting about, eh?