“Terrorism” in the region

After it invaded Afghanistan, the U.S. set its sights to Southeast Asia. Aside from being eagerly welcomed by a most loyal puppet in President Arroyo, the region provided the U.S. with a convenient excuse to export its “war on terror.” For one, Southeast Asia is home to a substantial population of Muslims and a number of Muslim-based movements.

Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim nation. The Philippines and Thailand have predominantly Muslim areas in its southern parts. Islam is one of the major religions of Malaysia.

But studies commissioned by the U.S. government would show that Muslim movements in the region are hardly an international threat. Linkages between them are relatively weak and most of these movements focused of domestic issues such as promotion and adoption of Islamic law and independence from their respective governments.[9]

The two largest Muslim political parties in Indonesia pursued a largely secular political agenda.

In the Philippines, the Abu Sayyaf is generally regarded as a bandit group. It was created by the Philippine military for the purpose of discrediting the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. The Abu Sayyaf’s connections with the military was confirmed when on June 2, 2001, 35 Abu Sayyaf rebels, thought to include the leadership, were trapped by Philippine government forces in Lamitan, on Basilan island. But they were able to escape. Suspicions were rife that they were allowed to escape after releasing a millionaire construction magnate in return for ransom. Then Army Chief of Staff General Diomedio Villanueva has since been accused of accepting some of the money as a bribe to pull back troops, and President Arroyo of covering up the event under pressure from the army.

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Moro National Liberation Front both have armies. They are fighting for an independent Islamic state in Mindanao but are willing to settle for some degree of autonomy from the central government.

Following a visit by former U.S. State Secretary Colin Powell to the Philippines in 2002, the U.S. included the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), the New People’s Army (NPA) and Prof. Jose Maria Sison, consultant to the negotiating panel of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) in peace negotiations with the Government of the Republic of the Philippines, in its list of “terrorists.” While the CPP-NPA-NDFP has not used terror tactics in its 37 year armed revolution against the Philippine government, it nevertheless is a major concern for the U.S. The CPP-NPA-NDFP, like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC, has been included as targets in the U.S. “global war on terror” although its concern at this historical juncture is to wage a war of national liberation.

In southern Thailand, there is a separatist element in the resistance to assimilation of the ethnic Malay majority in four of the country’s southern provinces.

Only Jemaah Islamiyah, reportedly based in Indonesia, is said to have a regional agenda of establishing an Pan Islamic state in Southeast Asia.

But Islamist groups, including those participating in mainstream politics, represent a very small minority of Muslims in Southeast Asia. In the June 1999 parliamentary elections in Indonesia, the self-defined Islamist parties – the PBB (Partai Bulan Bintan) and PK (Partai Keadilan) and others that advocated for the establishment of an Islamic state received less than six percent of the votes. Within this minority, an even smaller minority advocates violence. [10]

In Malaysia, Parti Islam se-Malaysia, which also advocates for an Islamic state, won only 27 seats in the 193-seat parliament, during the November 1999 elections. It also controls only two of Malaysia’s thirteen states.

Official reports, including that of the Congressional Research Service, claims that the radicalization of Islamist movements in the region started in the early 1990s and that Al Qaeda began establishing a network in the region in the mid-1990s. It also claims that extensive links between Al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah have been established. And that the Bali bombing, supposedly carried out by Jemaah Islamiyah presented evidence of this link and a shift in Al Qaeda tactics to “soft targets.”

But the International Crisis Group (ICG), a conflict resolution group headed by Gareth Evans, a former Australian foreign minister, said that there is scant evidence linking Al Qaeda with Indonesian radicals.[11] It also revealed that Abu Bakar Baasyir, alleged leader of Jemaah Islamiyah who was arrested for the Bali bombing, is the founder of the “Ngruki network”, a loose group of Indonesians advocating for the establishment of an Islamic state. Baasyir, said the ICG, lived in exile after the Darul Islam movement was suppressed in the 1980s but has returned to Indonesia after the downfall of Suharto. His activities, upon his return, was to advocate for an Islamic state and a vague idea for a revived caliphate, which is not even illegal.

The ICG report accused the Philippine government of planting explosives on an Indonesian radical, Agus Dwikarna, who was arrested in March, 2003 to give credence to reports of alleged links between Indonesian radicals and the Al Qaeda.

It concluded that Indonesia is not a hotbed of terrorism, implicitly rejecting Washington’s suggestion that Southeast Asia is the “second front” in the war.[12]

Data and information from both official and independent studies reveal that there is no real terrorist threat in Southeast Asia. Nor are there definitive links between these groups and the Al Qaeda network, purportedly the target of U.S. operations.

There does exist a movement opposed to U.S. imperialist interest, the CPP-NPA-NDFP. But it does not employ terrorist methods and is not a threat to the American people.

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