Southeast Asia scored some notable successes against terrorism in 2003 but the war won't be won until governments find the political will to deal with root causes, analysts say.
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Thailand achieved the year's biggest coup with the capture in August by US and Thai agents of Hambali — the Indonesian who is believed to have been al-Qaeda's pointman in Asia and a key figure in its regional ally Jemaah Islamiyah (JI). He was said to have been planning to bomb embassies and use missiles to attack commercial airliners in Bangkok. In November four Thai Muslims accused of being JI members went on trial in Bangkok. Police said they plotted simultaneous attacks on embassies and tourist spots in June. "Hambali's arrest was the year's major achievement," said terrorism expert Clive Williams. "Arrests in the region have been significant, especially in relation to Thailand whose government had been in denial about having a problem."
Indonesia, blasted out of its complacency by JI's horrific Bali attack in October 2002, carried out an effective investigation into the bombings which -- with crucial Australian help — netted some 35 suspects. Most have already been sentenced after open and apparently fair trials and three are on death row. But on August 5, two days before the first of those death sentences was passed, JI struck again in the country where it is headquartered. It killed 12 people, 11 of them Indonesians, in the bombing of a US-franchised hotel in Jakarta. Armed police now guard fortress-like hotels and other centres. Indonesia will deploy more than two-thirds of its 250,000-strong police force over Christmas and New Year to prevent a repeat of JI's deadly Christmas Eve bombings three years ago. "Indonesia tended to rest on its laurels a bit, with Bali done very well," said Williams, director of terrorism studies at the Strategic and Defence Study Centre at the Australian National University. "Even now there is not a lot of will in government for rounding up those sort of people in Indonesia." JI is not a banned organisation in the world's largest Muslim-populated nation and political leaders have been reluctant to attack it by name in speeches within the country. Part of the problem is the name, which means only "Islamic community" in Arabic.
A minority of Indonesia's thousands of pesantren or Islamic boarding schools -- notably one co-founded by radical cleric Abu Bakar Bashir — indoctrinate the younger generation in extremism and hatred of the West. "Greater control over the curriculum in pesantrens is a necessary step," Williams told AFP. Singapore and Malaysia, which have detained dozens of suspects, say JI branches in their own countries have been contained. But Singapore's Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng has warned that the network is grooming a new generation of militants and planning more Bali-style attacks. Wong said Bashir's school, which remains open despite producing a series of convicted terrorists as graduates, is Indonesia's largest JI training centre. Williams sees Indonesia, and especially Jakarta, as the likeliest venue for new attacks. JI fugitives, including Malaysian bombmakers Azahari Husin and Noordin Mohammad Top, are believed to have enough material for two more attacks.
The Philippines has trumpeted its anti-terror successes, with the killing in October of JI bombmaker Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi and the arrest of his deputy Taufik Rifki. Both were Indonesians. But JI has been training since the late 1990s at camps in the southern Philippines operated by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Time magazine, quoting a Philippine military intelligence report, said in its latest issue that 600 JI members are scattered among at least three camps in Mindanao. The Front denies assisting JI and Manila, which is eager for a peace deal with it, plays down the problem. Williams said the "Philippines is a greater worry than most other areas... JI can continue to train and develop (there) and deploy elsewhere in the region." He doubted whether Manila has the political will to make major concesssions to achieve lasting peace in the south and therefore "the problem will fester." |