Net Versity

There are several ways to assess the geo-politics of the 11 Southeast Asian states. First, one can examine the continental states, consisting of the three Indochina countries plus Thailand and Burma, sandwiched between two regional great powers (India and China), and compare them to insular Southeast Asia (Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, East Timor, Brunei, and the Philippines),
which sit astride the major sea-lanes. Alternatively, Southeast Asia can be analyzed through the countries’ various political systems, which range from Marxist-Leninist (Vietnam and Laos), a military dictatorship (Burma), through soft authoritarian (Malaysia and Singapore) to new and somewhat fragile democracies (Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia). A third assessment of the region can be via its ethnic and communal characteristics and the disputes that frequently spill over national boundaries, particularly creating tensions between Thailand and all its neighbors; Malaysia with Singapore and Indonesia; and the Philippines with Malaysia and Indonesia. Finally, Southeast Asia can be seen as a vibrant economic region that has been integrating into the global economy for over thirty years, although its pace has somewhat slowed in the aftermath of the 1997–98 regional financial crisis.

These alternative prisms of geography, politics, culture, and economics provide various views of the complex challenges facing Southeast Asia since September 11, 2001. Virtually all eleven Southeast Asian states, but especially Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Thailand, have been affected by terrorism, which destabilizes societies, reduces international confidence in investment opportunities, and undermines political systems.

Terrorism is not a new phenomenon in Southeast Asia but rather an insurgent tactic with a long history. The Moros of the southern Philippines attacked Christian colonizers in the early Spanish colonial period and continued to do so through the American succession in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Indonesia in the late 1950s experienced a Muslim rebellion in the outer islands against Javanese rule from Jakarta. The Pattani United Liberation Organization (PULO), consisting of radical Muslims in southern Thailand as well as sympathizers from northern Malaysia, periodically attacked Buddhist residents and public schools in their region up into the 1980s. Muslim-Christian violence persists in Indonesia’s Malukus and Sulawesi, and anti-Chinese riots coincided with President Suharto’s fall from power in Indonesia. More recently, Southeast Asia’s current leading terrorist organization, Jemaah Islamiyah, was involved in a series of December 2000 church bombings in Indonesia.¹ There is, therefore, a history of communal violence in Southeast Asia directed against societies as well as governments that predates Al Qaeda and its regional affiliates.

Southeast Asia     •               263

Southeast Asia and the War on Terrorism²

Southeast Asia’s greatest vulnerability to transnational threats has been its political under-institutionalization. There is no equivalent to NATO, much less a European Union (EU). At the onset of the global terrorist challenge in late 2001, there were three international organizations dominated by Southeast Asian states: the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), composed of all ten of the region’s members; the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) led by ASEAN but also including the states of Northeast Asia, the European Union, North America, as well as Russia and more recently India; and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, which for its Asian members duplicated the ARF minus the EU and plus Taiwan and Hong Kong. The first two organizations dealt with politicalsecurity issues, the last exclusively with economic concerns. All three were premised on the maintenance of national sovereignty, which meant that none was prepared to sacrifice individual decision-making authority to an international body. Hence, they emphasized discussion and confidencebuilding rather than rule-making and enforcement. This structural weakness was exacerbated in Southeast Asia when, in the last half of the 1990s, four states were added to ASEAN—two of which were communist (Vietnam and Laos) and the other two authoritarian (Burma and Cambodia, the latter governed by a political party that has brutally suppressed any opposition). None of the new ASEAN members wished to see the noninterference norm modified; nor were they prepared to deal with transnational terrorist threats characterized by cells and personnel that regularly moved across national boundaries, smuggled weapons and explosives, and transferred money both electronically and via personal messengers.

Prior to September 11, 2001, China was viewed with suspicion in Southeast Asia because of its claims on the South China Sea islands, its inexorable development of a “green water” (regional power projection) navy, and its lack of military transparency. The ASEAN states employed both balance and engagement strategies toward the PRC. They engaged China through inclusion in annual ASEAN post-ministerial conferences as well as its memberships in the ARF and APEC. The hope of the engagement strategy was to lock the PRC into the consultation and peaceful dispute settlement norms of these bodies. As for balancing, access for U.S. naval and air forces was provided by several Southeast Asian states as they agreed to Washington’s “places not bases” deployments. Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Singapore all provided ports and airfields for joint exercises and provisions, thus supplying the locations through which American forces maintained a permanent presence from the eastern Indian Ocean to the Sea of Japan.

264         •               Strategic Asia 2004–05

There is a debate over the extent to which Southeast Asian “jihadist,” or holy warrior, groups are linked to Al Qaeda. The debate centers on Jemaah Islamiyah, primarily led by Indonesian Islamists, and the Abu Sayyaf and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in the Philippines. All have had contacts with Al Qaeda operatives and rather modest financial support, probably not exceeding $250,000 in the aggregate by the end of 2003. The core of the controversy is whether Southeast Asian jihadists operate at the behest of Al Qaeda or whether they have separate agendas compatible with Osama bin Laden’s organization but independent of it.³ The bulk of the evidence suggests the latter. That is, Jemaah Islamiyah’s goal is to create an Islamic entity encompassing Indonesia, Malaysia, southern Philippines, southern Thailand, and Brunei—all Muslim majority regions. Abu Sayyaf and the MILF seek secession of Mindanao from the Philippines. While the Jemaah Islamiyah and Abu Sayyaf have targeted Westerners and condemn their religions as well as their secularism, unlike Al Qaeda they neither see the United States as their main enemy nor do they target Arab governments. Jemaah Islamiyah does target Southeast Asian governments led by Muslims. The agendas of the Southeast Asian jihadists are confined to their region, where their followers reside. Nevertheless, since two-thirds of Al Qaeda’s senior leadership has been arrested or killed in the past two years, Osama bin Laden increasingly relies upon regional affiliates and supports their more limited agendas.⁴

Jemaah Islamiyah is the most sophisticated and far-reaching of the Southeast Asian terror groups, with adherents in most of ASEAN’s ten members. Although over 200 members have been arrested, mostly in Indonesia, those detained have been predominantly low-level operatives. Many with planning and technical skills, trained in Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and more recently the southern Philippines, remain at large and are trained and equipped to commit further attacks.⁵ Unless Jemaah Islamiyah training camps controlled by the MILF in Mindanao and Sulawesi in Indonesia are shut down, the terrorist organization will continue to be able to turn recruits into killers.

The September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington thrust the United States into this witch’s brew of Southeast Asian Islamist terrorism. Identifying the region as a primary venue for Al Qaeda activities, the Bush administration sought cooperation in its anti-terrorist campaign from Southeast Asian governments. While the Southeast Asian states declared their sympathy for the United States in the wake of September 11, their willingness to become a part of the U.S.-led war on terrorism varied. The strongest response came from Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who fully backed the United States by offering Philippine air bases