Bangkok bombing: Looking for a motive

The day after Monday's rush-hour atrocity left 22 dead at a shrine popular with tourists in central Bangkok, authorities have not determined who was behind the attack. So far, no one has claimed responsibility for the bombing at the Erawan Shrine, while police are refusing to rule anything or anyone out. National Police Chief Somyot Pumpanmuang said on state-run TV that authorities had been warned about possible attacks, but they didn't know where or when they might occur. While the capital has never before witnessed such a devastatingly brutal attack, Thailand's recent history has been turbulent to say the least, with the country currently governed by a military junta following last year's coup. Muslim Insurgency Thai security forces have been waging a decades-long campaign against a Muslim insurgency in the south of the country that has claimed thousands of lives. Well-armed, motivated and increasingly audacious, insurgents in the southern provinces of Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat, Satun and Songkhla -- once part of an independent Malay Muslim sultanate until they were annexed by Thailand, then called Siam, in 1909 -- have emerged with a clear goal: the creation of a separate Muslim state for the region's 1.8 million Muslim ethnic Malays. While calls for secession have simmered since then, an insurgent raid to steal weapons from an army camp in January 2004, led to a crackdown by the Thai military, which sparked the modern insurgency. The Thai government has sent more than 150,000 soldiers to the region to protect it from an estimated 3,000 to 9,000 rebel fighters -- or juwae, as they are called locally -- according to estimates from human rights groups. But the conflict has never spread out of the southern provinces.