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| Southeast Asia |
| JI resurgent across Southeast Asia |
| 2005-03-04 |
| A resurgent Jemaah Islamiah, a regional network of Muslim militants linked to al Qaeda, was trying to take advantage of pockets of sectarian conflict across Southeast Asia, a security analyst said on Thursday. Zachary Abuza, an international politics professor at Simmons College and a consultant to the U.S. Institute of Peace, said he was worried by signs of an increased Jemaah Islamiah role in worsening violence in southern Thailand and the Philippines. "JI will take advantage of it," he told reporters at a seminar in Manila on the role of religion in conflict. Abuza said increasingly sophisticated bomb attacks and a dramatic rise in the number of casualties in southern Thailand could be indications of Jemaah Islamiah's part in the growing violence in the Muslim south of the mainly Buddhist kingdom. Almost 600 people have died in communal violence since the uprising began in January 2004. "JI will inject itself in this conflict the way they injected themselves in places like Moluccas and Sulawesi where they were not there at first," he said. Abuza said the deteriorating security situation in southern Thailand was "tailor-made for JI". In the Philippines, he said there were indications Jemaah Islamiah was providing the "push factor" for the renewed militancy of Abu Sayyaf, a group of about 400 fighters also linked to al Qaeda. "They are back in the business," said Abuza, referring to Abu Sayyaf after the group claimed blasts in Manila and two southern cities on Valentine's Day that killed 13 people and wounded more than 150. He said the arrest of two Indonesians, a Malaysian and their Filipino contact in December confirmed growing links between Jemaah Islamiah and Abu Sayyaf, through training and fund support. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |