The Strange Thai Insurgents Who Like Sorcery and Get High on Cough Syrup

http://www.theatlantic.com/internati...-syrup/275614/

The distance from local problem to universal nightmare can vanish without warning: In Boston, that interval was as brief as twelve seconds. Awareness of the Pattani insurgency in Western governments today is limited to a tiny number of intelligence analysts and Southeast Asia hands. Among those few, there is a shared attitude of wary unease: We don't have the resources to figure out what's really going on, and we don't think it's hooked up with a global terrorist group -- yet . But any morning we may turn on the news and suddenly find that all our assumptions were disastrously wrong.
Analysts and intelligence officials of several nations scratch their heads at the inability of global extremist groups to lure the militants of the Thai south into their family. But the Pattani insurgency, in its very aloofness, may offer lessons to anyone seeking an elusive Unified Theory of Jihadism. For the Pattani rebels, as for so many others who use religion as a rallying cry, Islam is a symbol more than a set of beliefs. If that weren't the case, how could this uprising be permeated by such thoroughly un-Islamic practices as sorcery, narco-trafficking, butchery of innocents, and Coca-Cola cannibalism?