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karldahlfred
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Name: Karl
Location: Orange County, California, United States
Birthday: 4/3/1976
Gender: Male
Interests: the worship of God among the nations, my lovely wife Sun, baby Joshua, Thailand, running, warm weather, ultimate frisbee, hiking, people, steamed pork buns
Expertise: 2 Corinthians 3:5 "Not that we are adequate in ourselves... but our adequacy is from God."
Occupation: Missionary
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
MSN: karldahlfred
Yahoo:  karldahlfred
Member Since:
2/12/2004
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| Since Sun & I have started a new website (www.dahlfred.com) for our life and ministry in Thailand, I have also started a new blog to chronicle our life and ministry there and will mostly DISCONTINUE USING MY XANGA SITE. The new blog is called "Gleanings from the Field" and can be viewed at www.dahlfred.com/blogs/gleanings-from-the-field or may be accessed through our website home page (www.dahlfred.com)
Although Xanga is more user-friendly in terms of subscribing and reading other people's blogs, the actual blog page itself is rather limited in terms of design and ability to edit the HTML. And we wanted a blog more devoted to more general family and ministry items rather than just posting whatever ramblings, opinions or jokes that I ran across (as I had been doing with this site) - Hence the new site. If I am currently subscribed to your xanga I still plan on reading it when I can but I just will not be maintaining my own xanga site.
For those who have been reading my xanga site and wish to keep up on our news, I would encourage you to either bookmark our NEW BLOG SITE or sign up for a email subscribtion using the form at the bottom of the right hand column of our new blog
VIEW OUR NEW BLOG "GLEANINGS FROM THE FIELD" (www.dahlfred.com/blogs/gleanings-from-the-field) | | |
| We arrived in Singapore around midnight on Nov 1st and have been catching up on sleep ever since. Joshua did well in the airplane and more than one fellow passenger remarked on how good our baby was. We are relaxing for a few days at the OMF guest home and have had some extra time to read the Bible, pray, and talk which has been very good after our busy final weeks in the States. Our orientation course starts next Wednesday, I think. Until them, we are enjoying a little bit of down time as a family.
God was really good to us in the final weeks leading up to departure and provided so many friends to help us with packing, moving, and so forth. The night before we moved out of our apartment, the doorbell rang and UPS had a surprise gift for us. Someone had sent an anonymous gift of a full set of Calvin's Commentaries. Awesome. So I put them right into the pile to ship via ocean freight and will get much use from them starting in a couple months when all our possesions catch up with us in Thailand.
We've been learning about the city/nation of Singapore. It only takes an hour to go from one end to the other and it is super clean and highly regulated. It feels a lot like Thailand in some ways, but different in others. Maybe I'll write more about Singapore later, but in the meantime, here's a map of Asia to show where we are right now. You'll see Singapore at the tip of the Malaysian penninsula.
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| We fly out to Singapore for a month of training this coming Tuesday 10/31 (LAX, 11:25am Cathay Pacific) and then on to Thailand on Dec 4th. We are busy finishing up last minute details - packing, selling the car, buying last minute items, turning in apartment keys, meeting with family and friends one last time, and so forth. Look like we can pick up our visas at Thai embassy in Sinapore. Praise God! We are finally here and it is time to go.
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| A recent article in the Los Angeles Times about Muslim insurgency in Southern Thailand was brought to our attention and I found it to be a particularly helpful summary of what is going on in that region. I 've known for a long time that the South has been unstable because of the tension between Muslims and Buddhists but I have a newfound interest of late since OMF has asked if Sun and I would be willing to work with another missionary couple in Southern Thailand, as opposed to Central Thailand where we had planned on going. Nothing is set yet and we need to pray about this and seek more information about the particular ministry in the South that we are being asked to consider joining. If we went to the South, we would still be working primarily with Buddhists but the Muslim population would be much higher than it is in the rest of Thailand. For those who are praying for us as we head out to Thailand, please ask God to give us wisdom and discernment in deciding where in Thailand to work.
The following article was published in the Los Angeles Times on October 1, 2006 and can also be viewed on their website by clicking here.
In Thailand, a New Model for Militants?
Muslim
separatists' relentless low-level attacks on civilians are taking a
heavy toll, but the campaign is largely unnoticed by the West.
By John M. Glionna, Times Staff Writer
October 1, 2006
HAT YAI, Thailand — The bomb that exploded
outside New Cherry Ancient Massage was among the most sinister kinds —
a lethal sucker punch timed to detonate moments after two other blasts
had lured onlookers into the streets of this tourist town.
The
homemade device, hidden in a motorcycle parked outside the busy parlor,
killed five people, including a Canadian teacher and three masseuses.
All 30
surviving massage workers quit on the spot. Within days, the parents of
the three dead women came to take their daughters' bodies home.
"One
father asked, 'Why my child? She was a good girl,' " said New Cherry
owner Boonchai Sangmankung. "And I couldn't answer him. I don't know
myself. Why do the attacks continue? Why are more innocent people
killed every day?"
Since 2004, militants in Thailand's
predominantly Muslim south have waged a bloody separatist insurgency
against the cultural elite of this largely Buddhist nation, targeting
teachers, monks, community leaders and government officials. So far,
1,700 people have been killed, yet the campaign of almost-daily
bombings, arson attacks, kidnappings and assassinations has gone
largely unnoticed in a Western world fixated on higher-profile Islamic
terrorism campaigns in Iraq and elsewhere.
"The violence in
southern Thailand is quite significant compared to many other world
conflicts today," said Panitan Wattanayagorn, a political scientist at
Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. "The U.S. lost 3,000 soldiers in
three years in Iraq. This death toll is not far behind."
International
terrorism experts are keeping a close eye on southern Thailand's
guerrilla war, believing that the attacks could become a blueprint for
small insurgencies in the post9/11 world. The strategy of incessant
low-level attacks against civilians could be imitated by other regional
militants, they say.
Experts also fear that the insurgents could
soon be joined by international terrorists slipping across Thailand's
porous borders, bringing money, expertise and manpower.
"It's
important that this regional war not escalate," said John Brandon,
director of the Asia Foundation's international relations program. "The
world cannot afford this war to become ripe for outside terror
influences to take advantage of it."
A recent State Department
report concluded that there was no evidence of any connection between
the militants and global terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda or Jemaah
Islamiah, based in Southeast Asia.
"There is concern, however,
that these groups may attempt to capitalize on an increasingly violent
situation for their own purposes," the report stated.
Under Thai
rule since 1902, Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala, the three
Muslim-dominated provinces at the heart of the violence, are distinct
from the rest of Thailand. The people speak a different language — a
Malay dialect — and observe a strict Muslim lifestyle not far from the
jet-set crowd sprawled on the sandy beaches of Phuket, a draw for U.S.
and European tourists.
Many Muslim residents still chafe over
what they consider a century of abusive rule. But experts differ over
the roots of the insurgency. Some say it's a battle over religious
freedom, others say it's a fight for territory and self-rule. Still
others say it's both.
But the tensions have filled daily life in
Thailand's south with newfound risks — walking children to school,
shopping in an outdoor market, driving at night.
In the first
six months of 2006, two people died every day, on average: A Buddhist
teacher was gunned down in front of his fourth-grade class by men
dressed as students. A salesman was beheaded outside a crowded teashop.
The owner of an elephant troupe was shot seven times by assailants who
had lined up with children to buy tickets for a show.
In August,
22 small bombs exploded nearly simultaneously in banks throughout
southern Yala province, killing one person and bringing commerce to a
standstill. Two months earlier, 50 bombs went off in a single day at
government offices and police stations.
Last year, 15 militants
stormed a Buddhist temple and hacked two monks to death before setting
fire to their bodies. Thai officials believe that 30,000 Buddhists have
fled the south since the attack. Insurgents also have targeted fellow
Muslims suspected of conspiring with a military known for its brutality
in dealing with the Islamic militants.
For their part, Thai
officials claim to be fighting a ghost insurgency: The killers don't
issue claims of responsibility for their acts. Officials have little
clue about the identity of the attackers. About 20,000 troops in the
region have yet to arrest any insurgency leaders.
"The nation's
best military intelligence concedes we are waging a war on ghosts,"
said Srisompob Jitpiromsri, a political scientist at Prince of Songkla
University. "We don't have a clue as to who their leaders are or what
they want."
Terrorism experts believe that the insurgency is led
by a coalition of regional groups, including the National Revolutionary
Front Coordinate and the Pattani United Liberation Organization, or
PULO, which are vying for control of the region.
The two groups
have developed cells in most southern villages and have their pick of
disenfranchised youths eager to take part in the violence. But neither
claims to control all of the region's militants, saying that religious
splinter groups, warlords and business and political rivalries also
play a role in the attacks.
"People on the street may know who
is responsible, they may even know them, but everyone is too afraid to
say anything aloud, or even speak in private about the attacks,"
Srisompob said. "That, to me, is the mark of a successful insurgency."
Mahkota
Kasturi, a PULO foreign affairs spokesman in exile in Sweden, said Thai
officials "know who we are and where we are, but they are reluctant to
come to the table. Perhaps they do not feel they need to negotiate with
so-called terrorists."
Experts say the militants eventually want
to create an autonomous Muslim state in southern Thailand, where
residents have long complained of being treated as second-class
citizens, enduring the erosion of their language and culture. None of
the three southern provinces, where Muslims make up 80% of the 1.8
million residents, has ever had a Muslim governor, they point out.
Mahkota
said separatists seek to disrupt Thai society as a way to win freedom.
"The killings and the violence will continue until we reach our goal —
and that is independence," he said.
Former Thai Prime Minister
Thaksin Shinawatra, deposed last month in a coup, had recently struck
hard against the insurgents, imposing martial law that brought
allegations of torture and counter-assassinations.
In 2004,
nearly 200 Muslims were killed by security forces. First, 32 militants
died during the storming of a mosque in April. Six months later, a
military crackdown on a demonstration against martial law at a regional
police station killed scores. Seventy-eight men suffocated after being
stacked five-deep into sweltering army trucks.
Thaksin has been
replaced by Gen. Sondhi Boonyaratkalin, a Muslim who has pushed for a
more conciliatory stance toward the insurgents. But within a week of
the coup, attacks had killed four people and injured more than a dozen.
Experts doubt that the regime change will bring peace.
"If
anything, they may step up attacks in an attempt to provoke a
heavy-handed government response," said Zachary Abuza, a terrorism
expert who has written a soon-to-be published book on the Thai
insurgency. "The secessionist agenda operates on a time frame that you
and I don't understand. For them, 30 years is not a long time."
The
scope of the violence has widened since 2004. At first targeting civil
servants, soldiers and police officers, militants soon included
restaurants and businesses serving the military. Then monks and
teachers came under fire; the death toll now stands at 49 teachers and
six monks. Many attacks have been staged by men using motorcycles for
quick escape. Bombs are usually detonated by cellphone.
Insurgents have made teaching the most dangerous job in southern Thailand.
In
July, while his fourth-graders looked on, Prasarn Martchu was shot in
the back as he stood at his blackboard instructing a morning class at a
rural school in Narathiwat province.
Principal
Adul Jekyeng said Prasarn had taught for 25 years and was a leader in
the local teachers union. He said four men rode up on motorcycles and
passed several classrooms before they found Prasarn.
"He never
saw his killers," Adul said. "They shot an unarmed teacher in the back.
He had no gun, no weapon, only a piece of chalk."
Educators say
teachers are seen by insurgents as authority figures and targeted
because they are easy to find. Many, such as Phairat Saengthong, are
fighting back.
The regional school director recently flew to Bangkok to buy a 9-millimeter pistol.
"This is the model the U.S. soldiers carry," he said proudly, pointing the weapon around the room.
"Today,
90% of male teachers carry guns such as this, and even 30% of the
women, which shows how fearful we have become. I may be a Buddhist, but
now I too carry a gun. And I am not afraid to use it."
Sitting
cross-legged on the floor of her home in a rural village in Pattani
province, Chitra Ngen-Moon said she felt trapped in the crossfire
between rebels and soldiers.
Her 29-year-old son, Anek, was
killed last year. Friends found his beheaded body soon after he
disappeared while on his rounds as the local tax collector. He is one
of 10 men who have been killed in the village of 400 residents.
Holding a photo of her son, the 70-year-old woman vowed that one day she would know who was responsible.
"When all of this violence is over, I want to know who cut off the head
of my son," she said. "I want to see these barbaric people with my own
eyes. But I am an old woman. Now I am too afraid to ask questions."
Nearby,
at the Krue Se mosque in Pattani, site of the deadly 2004 storming by
the military, Haji Niseng Nilaeh said he did not approve of the
violence being waged by either side.
"Every day, people die —
it makes me unhappy," said the 77-year-old Muslim elder, dressed in a
traditional tunic and sarong. "But the insurgents are not only killing
Buddhists, they are killing fellow Muslims now as well. No one is safe."
john.glionna@latimes.com
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| My ordination service is set for this coming Sunday evening. My parents
are able to make it out for the weekend so it will be good to see them
again before we head off to Thailand for about four years. Praise God
that our financial support has come together sufficiently for us to
leave at the end of this month. We gave notice to our landlord and are
looking for plane tickets now. In the few weeks that we have left we
are trying to not get everything packed up but also see as many people
as we can before we leave. My brother recently came out to visit and we
all headed out to Joshua Tree National Park for a few days. Here is one
of the many pics that we took. I have posted more on Joshua's blog
(yes, we have a blog for our baby, and no, he does not write his own
entries)
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![asiamap[1]](http://x9e.xanga.com/fbed25367703786979849/z60005622.jpg)
