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A SENSE OF ASIA

Southeast Asia: worldwide terrorism microcosm


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By Sol Sanders
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

Sol W. Sanders

August 5, 2002

Temporarily Washington has adopted for the anti-terrorist war in the Philippines Sen. AikenÕs tongue-in-cheek formula for solving ÒVietnamÓ: Ñ declare victory and go home.

A six months U.S. training program [and $100 million in aid] knocked out Abu Sayyaf leadership, gangsters-cum-Islamicist extortionists. It leaves behind larger questions about other more important Philippines Moslem Moro minority radicals and the ir connections to Al Qaida and worldwide terrorism. That a failed plot proposing to use a commercial airliner, a model for 9/11, was concocted there for the PopeÕs visit in 1995 demonstrates the threatÕs universality. And more recently there were Philippines connections to a multinational plot against the Embassy and other American targets in Singapore, aborted through intelligence discovered in Afghanistan.

Still Sec. Powell was able to get highly visible public recognition of the threat to all legitimate societies at the annual just completed ASEAN conference and a whirlwind tour around the region. A nonbinding treaty commits ASEAN leadership to collaboration including exchanges of information.

What Powell leaves behind, however, is inordinate complex issues that mirror the anti-terrorism campaign in the larger world arena. In Malaysia, critics claim Prime Minister Mahathir Ñ soon to retire ø is using the issue to cripple his legitimate political opposition, including the reformist legal Moslem fundamentalist party, which controls two of MalaysiaÕs states. Mahathir, congenital anti-U.S. xenophobic, blocked his deputy AnwarÕ effort to reform Òcrony capitalismÓ after the 1997 East Asia financial crisis with trumped up charges.

In Singapore, the exposure of the plot has demonstrated its Moslem minorityÕs alienation, just as the PAP political monopoly was making its first gestures toward liberalization. It also comes simultaneously with an economic slowdown and growing pessimism [which even the self-censoring press acknowledges]. In Thailand, where Bangkok always looks the other way when possible, there has been new violence among Moslem Malays in its southern provinces with longtime separatist movements.

But the crux of the U.S.Õ problem for effective pursuit of the terrorists in Southeast Asia is Indonesia. Djakarta drug its heels since in collaborating with the U.S.Õø a reflection of the fragile Indonesian political scene where President Megawatti, a secularist, does not want to antagonize political Islam. There has been some quiet progress; e.g., allegedly Al Qaeda agents, a Pakistani and Kuwaiti, were secretly deported at CIA.request. And it is true, as the oft repeated clichŽ holds, that although nominally the largest Moslem nation in the world, Indonesian Islam is traditionally a tolerant mŽlange of strong Hindu and animist traditions. That overlooks, however, a history of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, particularly in West Java [Pasoendan] and Celebes [in East Indonesia].

As elsewhere, Washington is presented with difficult choices that require the most of diplomacy ø and, finally, decision making. The bits and pieces of the Islamic terroristsÕ plots in Southeast Asia, while presenting something of the mob that couldnÕt shoot straight aspect, also show a capacity that ignores borders and even ethnic distinctions. There is, for example, an ideological call for a Moslem fundamentalist state with pretensions to social and economic reform, which would transcend the present statesÕ old colonial boundaries. ThatÔs a call that resonates in some quarters ø one that MegawattiÕs demagogic father, Soekarno, tried to exploit in his presidential heyday. And itÕs an answer, however false, to the growing regional dysfunctional erratic economic development with great inequalities, e.g., manifested in MalaysiaÕ current brutal expulsion of Indonesian and Filipino illegals.

An immediate difficult decision facing Washington is the bitter guerrilla war in Ache, IndonesiaÕs most northern province at the tip of Sumatra. Ache was the first landfall of Islam in the archipelago. It has a long history as an independent sultanate, succored with relatively large Arab immigration. The Netherlands East Indies incorporated its religious people only with great difficulty [two ÒwarsÓ in the 20th century]. Since 1956, a bloody revolt against DjakartaÕs [Achenese see it as Javanese] dominance. has sputtered. Traditional exiled sultanate leadership has led it, although now split into various factions. And it has been funded through traditional connections to Malaysian Moslems and smuggling which, characteristically, Singapore authorities have overlooked while they profited.

Megawattti, indecisive on most issues, has been adamant, arguing as do many Indonesian nationalists that independence demanded by the guerrillas for the oil and spice wealthy region would begin the disintegration of Indonesia with its myriad populations on thousands of islands. In her anniversary summation as president, Megawatti has called for suppression of the rebels. And that comes just at the moment the U.S. is taking the first tentative steps toward renewing its ties with the Indonesian armed forces, seen as the essential [and perhaps only] unifying institution in the country and critical to pursue the American anti-terrorist objectives. Like Kashmir in the Indo-Pakistan imbroglio, AcheÕs ÒsolutionÓ seems illusive but one on without which the whole SE Asian anti-terrorist enterprise might founder.

Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@comcast.net), is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.

August 5, 2002

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