Jakarta – While some officials claim that militants who raided armories in southern Thailand are selling weapons to rebels in Indonesia's neighboring Aceh province, an expert said Monday there is no clear evidence of such a trade.
The killing of more than 100 militant suspects who attacked security posts in southern Thailand last week in what the government said was a bid to steal weapons has renewed speculation that Islamic separatist movements in both regions are linked.
Thai officials differ about who was behind Wednesday's raids, in which 107 militants and five security forces died.
Some blamed drug traffickers and organized criminals allegedly using Islamic ideology as a cover for their activities. Others fear a Muslim separatist insurgency thought to be dormant for years is gathering pace since militants raided an army camp in January, killing four soldiers and stealing hundreds of weapons.
The vast majority of attackers in the latest raids in southern Thailand, the country's only Muslim-dominated region, were armed with machetes and knives – a possible indication that they had no access to the weapons stolen earlier.
After the January raid, Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said arms smuggling gangs in the country's south became active when fighting erupted last year in Aceh.
"If you ask whether some weapons [in the hands of] Aceh rebels came from the Thai army or not, the answer is yes," Thaksin said at the time. "These are weapons smuggled out of an arsenal of the Thai army."
The Aceh guerrillas deny buying firearms from overseas, saying their weapons come from attacks on Indonesian forces or simply by buying them from poorly paid and corrupt army and police commanders in the province.
Indonesian troops have captured weapons from the Aceh rebels, but military experts have been unable to positively identify any as coming from Thailand, said Ken Conboy, a specialist in guerrilla warfare who heads a risk consultancy in Jakarta.
Most of the small-arms used by the Aceh rebels are AK-47 and M-16 automatic assault rifles, which are freely available on international arms markets, experts have said.
In past raids in southern Thailand, militants are reported to have seized mainly M-16s, the standard-issue rifle of Thailand's armed forces.
"Alone among the weapons captured from [Aceh rebels], only the M-16s have had their serial numbers erased," said Conboy. "Filing the numbers off makes it impossible to identify where they came from."
Filing off the serial numbers suggests the possibility that the weapons were provided by some internal source who wanted to hide their origin, like the Indonesian army, or from the Philippines, where Muslim militants have reportedly also bought weapons from the security forces, he said.
Aceh is about 320 kilometers west of Thailand across the Andaman Sea, and the two regions share some ethnic and religious ties.
In May 2003, the Indonesian military ended an internationally sponsored peace process by launching an offensive against the Aceh guerrillas.
During a visit to Bangkok at the same time, President Megawati Sukarnoputri asked the Thai government to clamp down on attempts to smuggle weapons and ammunition to the Aceh separatists.
Nearly 2,000 people have died since Jakarta abandoned the cease-fire, and analysts say the 55,000 Indonesian troops and policemen in Aceh are increasingly bogged down in an unwinable guerrilla war.