The news from Promprasith came as a shock to the rest of Thailand. It brings with it an unmistakable message: that dedicated jihadists who have been committing acts of terror in Southeast Asia for years have now set their sights on this primarily Buddhist country. The region's image of peaceful co-existence among more than 200 million Muslims, Christians, Buddhists and Hindus -- a peaceful co-existence among vastly different religions from Indonesia to Burma, which has made Southeast Asia a model of tolerance -- now exists only in tourism ads.Terror is everywhere. Although Indonesia recently reported the death of dangerous bomb-maker Azahari bin Husin ("Dr. Azahari"), a member of the notorious Indonesian terrorist organization Jemaah Islamiyah and the man believed responsible for the 2002 attacks in Bali, among other acts of terror, the whereabouts of the more than 40 suicide bombers he trained remain a mystery. In Australia, authorities reportedly managed, at the last minute, to prevent a group of Muslim extremists from staging "an attack on the scale of the London bombings." The would-be attackers had apparently singled out the country's only nuclear power plant as their target.
