A former member of southern Thailand’s separatist movement, Awae Wae-Eya, 37, is planning to establish an Islamic State (IS) presence in his country with the hope of securing funds from the global terror group to fund his “jihad”, a senior Malaysian security source has told Channel NewsAsia. Southern Thailand’s insurgents have so far eschewed transnational extremist groups, including IS, and its radical teachings. The mostly Muslim provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala in Thailand’s far south are home to a long-running insurgency by ethnic Malay Muslims fighting for autonomy, in which more than 6,000 people have been killed since 2004. Awae hails from Thailand’s Narathiwat province in the south. He is currently wanted by Malaysian police for planning terror plots in Johor state. The police said on Monday that they were hunting Awae and three other IS-linked suspects involved in a plot to kidnap and murder police officers, as well as attack non-Muslim places of worship.