Thai Military Wants U.S. Satellites to Hunt Islamist Rebels

About 30,000 soldiers are fighting against 8,000 people who support the insurgency, including 2,000 armed rebels, said the chief of the Royal Thai Army in the south, Lt. Gen. Pichet Wisaijorn.

A London-based Amnesty International official, however, said the Thai military was "torturing" suspects with "suffocation" and "electric shock" at Thai Buddhist temples and elsewhere in the south.

More than 3,700 people on all sides have perished during the past five years in Buddhist-majority Thailand's three Muslim-majority southern provinces.

Much of the southern war is fueled by Muslim ethnic Malay-Thais who are fighting for autonomy or a separate homeland.

Asked in an interview on Wednesday (November 18) what help Thailand's military would like America to provide, so Bangkok can crush the insurgency, Lt. Gen. Pichet replied:

"What I would really like now is a satellite that would focus on their activity 24 hours a day. I would love to be able to look at a screen to see who is laying the landmines."

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