![]() Muslim deaths hit region's war on terror 01nov04 SOUTHEAST Asia took a giant and dangerous step backwards in the war against terror last week with the Thai Government's catastrophic overreaction to the riots in Narathiwat province in Thailand's Muslim south. The police crackdown last Monday resulted in more than 80 deaths, including scores of protesters who were loaded into trucks, piled on top of each other and left to suffocate. This has transformed a serious problem into a disaster, and guaranteed a new surge of violence and terrorist recruiting throughout the region. The Narathiwat killings will become the "trauma of choice" for Thai Muslim jihadis, and feed into the global jihad movement as another example of the persecution of Muslims. But even before these killings, the regional terror picture was becoming increasingly complex and threatening. The alienation of southern Thai Muslims is now much more likely to be absorbed into the regional terrorist movement. They will feel much more angry, the radical leaders will welcome outside resources and the hard men of Jemaah Islamiah will move in. The regional terrorist organisations are a movement of great power and resilience. The network has suffered serious blows, but has been able to recover effectively. It is ideologically divided and geographically fragmented, but some analysts believe this decentralisation makes it more dangerous. I have just spent a week in Singapore, which is now the intellectual centre of counter-terrorism analysis in Southeast Asia. It has a number of well-endowed think tanks focused on the issue, as well as the commanding heights of government policy departments. It is bending every sinew of its formidable government muscle into making its tiny island state safe. It was Singapore that first revealed JI to the world as a serious terrorist outfit. This came about when a JI plot to blow up the Australian, US and British embassies in Singapore was uncovered, and corroborated by JI surveillance footage recovered by the US from al-Qa'ida camps in Afghanistan. That incident was nearly Singapore's September 11. Although the island state has avoided attacks since then, its leaders have tried to prepare its people for the near inevitability of a terrorist strike. Singapore is just too iconic a target. Consider these factors: it exposed JI to the world, captured its local members and put them in jail, it is a successful, modern, Western-style economy with a substantial Muslim minority, it has a large Western expat population, it is a strong actor in the war on terror and it offers naval facilities to the US military. An early JI plan was to hijack a Russian Aeroflot plane and crash it into Singapore's Changi airport. But perhaps the most urgent and growing concern today is the possibility of maritime terrorism. Singapore has the world's second-busiest container port. It is also the end point of the Strait of Malacca, through which flows a huge portion of the world's trade and oil. The strait often has 1200 to 1400 ship movements a day. Piracy is a growing problem, and there are dozens of serious attacks a year. There are disturbing reports of pirates not only robbing big ships but forcing the crew to show them how to sail and steer such vessels. The Strait of Malacca is only 1.4km wide at its narrowest point. If terrorists hijacked an oil tanker there and blew it up, it could have a catastrophic effect on the world oil market and Asian economies. As one analyst says: "Al-Qa'ida and its affiliates plan strategically and over a very long time. They have done the aviation spectacular in New York. They have done the trains spectacular in Madrid. Will they do the maritime spectacular in Southeast Asia?" Australia is trying to make a contribution through the Five Power Defence Arrangements – which group it with Singapore, Malaysia, Britain and New Zealand – especially in the area of surveillance. All the regional powers are working with the US to try to produce a more comprehensive maritime picture to match the far more comprehensive aviation picture of the region. On the plus side, about 200 JI members have been arrested, including some leaders. But other leaders and bomb-makers remain at large, including the Malaysians Azahari bin Husin and Noordin Mohammad Top. The overall assessment seems to be that things are going badly wrong in southern Thailand, there is no progress in The Philippines, there is some progress, but not nearly enough, in Indonesia, while Malaysia and Singapore have taken the strongest action. "The problem in the region is not a lack of intelligence but a lack of will," says Rohan Gunaratna, head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research. He has repeatedly drawn attention to the role of JI training camps in the southern Philippines, in territory controlled by the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front, and believes JI and other terrorist groups are replenishing their ranks more quickly than they are losing members to prison or death in operations. The International Crisis Group's Sidney Jones is one of several JI experts to point out that the group appears to be fragmenting geographically. But she says this does not necessarily make it less dangerous, as each fragment remains capable of carrying out its own operations. She and others point to evidence there is some opposition within JI to the continued killing of innocent Indonesian Muslims in the group's bombings, as well as to the way these operations have depleted JI's senior ranks. JI is thus confronting a classic dilemma of terrorist groups – whether to concentrate on building up its recruitment and organisational base before launching into a new round of attacks, or to intensify its violent campaign in the belief such a campaign brings in new recruits. There is hope throughout the region that the new government of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono will be more effective in the battle against terrorists. Most analysts in the region voice concern over Indonesia's continued refusal to declare JI an illegal organisation, and the continuing tolerance of the 15 to 20 Muslim pesantren, or boarding schools, from which the overwhelming majority of JI terrorist recruits have emerged. Asked about Indonesia's failure to ban JI, Singaporean Foreign Minister George Yeo told The Australian: "We are concerned about this. We are hopeful that under President Yudhoyono the situation will get better." Singapore's response to its own JI terrorists has been tough at one level, but supple at other levels. For one, it has recruited authoritative Muslim teachers to engage in exhaustive debriefings of the JI prisoners in order to convince them of the falseness of their interpretation of Islam. It has also made sure the families of the JI prisoners do not suffer unnecessarily. Private benefactors have been organised to make sure the children of JI detainees continue with their education and the basic needs of the families are met. JI is a network dependent on family connections. The Singaporean Government does not want to create a community of permanently embittered and alienated families to pass the poison down along the generations. Similarly, Singapore, with its 450,000 Muslims, has six madrassahs, which pre-date even government schools. These have not yet been shut down, but their curriculum is being monitored and they are being encouraged to teach some secular subjects – in particular English, maths and science – as well as religious subjects. No one can really predict the next big target of terrorism in Southeast Asia. In the wake of last week's violence, the militants of southern Thailand have threatened Bangkok and Thai tourist destinations popular with Westerners. According to reliable estimates, more than 500 people have died in the fighting in southern Thailand this year. Until last week, it did not get much international attention because the targets were not Western. But an attack causing mass casualties in Bangkok, or a tourist resort such as Phuket, would have a devastating effect on Thailand. No one thinks the terrorist threat is remotely near to being solved. Instead, the enemy is intelligent, active and almost certainly preparing another strike.
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