Alienation and insecurity are constant threats

Lee Kwan Yew, Senior Minister, Singapore

The immediate threats to security in the region are not state- related tensions or dangers of conflicts. These threats come from non-state terrorist Islamic groups. We discovered from interrogation of detained terrorists after 9/11 that these groups have been building up since the early 1990s. Hundreds of Muslims from the region have returned home after fighting with al-Qaeda and the Taliban forces in Afghanistan.

The leaders among them have started their indigenous al-Qaeda- like groups in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and, hard to believe, also in Singapore to overthrow these governments and set up an Islamic state.

There are more than 230 million Muslims in Southeast Asia. Nearly all were tolerant and easy to live with. The majority of the 200 million Indonesian Muslims were abangan, Muslims who have fused Islam with Buddhism, Hinduism and other beliefs. They were not the intense and strict Muslims of the Arabs in the Middle East.

Over the last three decades, as part of a world-wide trend, Muslims in the region, including Singapore, are becoming stricter in their dress, diet, religious observances, and even social interaction, especially with non-Muslims. Increasingly Muslim women will not shake hands with males. The generation of convivial and easy-to-get-along-with Muslim leaders in the region has given way to successors who observe a stricter Islamic code of conduct.

My original concern was over the growing separateness of our Muslim community, as Singaporean Muslims tended to center their social and extra-mural activities in their mosques, instead of in multi-racial community clubs. What came as a shock was that this heightened religiosity facilitated Muslim terror groups linked to al-Qaeda to recruit Singapore Muslims into their network.

When al-Qaeda became big news after Sept. 11, a Singaporean Muslim informed Singapore's Internal Security Department (ISD) that Muhammad Aslam bin Yar Ali Khan, a Singaporean of Pakistani descent, had links with al-Qaeda. The ISD immediately put him and his associates under surveillance. On Oct. 4, Aslam left suddenly for Afghanistan. The police did not stop him because they were hot on the trail of his associates.

On Nov. 29, a foreign intelligence agency told the ISD that a Singaporean named Aslam had been detained by the Northern Alliance. Before the story leaked widely and Aslam's associates could abscond, ISD arrested 15 of them. Interrogation and examination of their computer hard disks and video compact discs revealed they were targeting U.S. assets in Singapore. Thirteen of those arrested are members of Jemaah Islamiah (JI), a terrorist network based in Indonesia that also spans Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore. Some 20 members escaped and have fled, first to Malaysia and now probably in Indonesia.

Interrogation disclosed that Abu Bakar Baasyir, the leader of the Indonesian Mujahideen Council in Indonesia, was the overall leader of the JI organization which covered both Malaysia and Singapore. He was a member of Darul Islam which aimed at the violent establishment of an Islamic state in Indonesia since the late 1940s. He was in Malaysia for 14 years to avoid detention by the Soeharto government and returned in 1999 after Soeharto fell from power.

Baasyir's right-hand man, Hambali, an Indonesian, wanted by Malaysia and Singapore governments for personally directing terror groups in both countries is now missing.

Osama bin Laden has successfully twined together a broad range of local groups, each with its own history of struggle for its own objectives, into a common universal jihad against the enemies of Islam. In the region, the groups include the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), Abu Sayaff (ASY), Kumpulan Mujahideen Malaysia (KMM) and Jemaah Islamiah (JI). Al-Qaeda has co-opted them into a larger common jihad.

For example, JI's original agenda was an Islamic Indonesia. When the leaders like Hambali returned from the Afghan battleground after training with al-Qaeda, their ambition expanded to an Islamic archipelago, Dauliah Islam Nusantara, to include Malaysia, Southern Philippines and Singapore into a larger Islamic Indonesia.

Militant Islam feeds upon the insecurities and alienation that globalization generates among the less successful. And because globalization is largely U.S.-led and driven, militant Islam identifies America and Americans as the threat to Islam. That America steadfastly supports Israel aggravates their sense of threat.

But terrorism would continue even were the Middle East problem to be solved. Osama bin Laden's and al-Qaeda's principal objective is to get American forces out of Saudi Arabia. This Islamic terrorism has been brewing since the 1970s and cannot be taken off the boil easily or soon. The war against terrorism will be long and arduous. Terrorists, the existence of weapons of mass destruction, and the continuing Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be threats for many years.

It is necessary to emphasize that the war against terrorism is not a war against Islam. The majority of Muslims have nothing to do with terrorism or extremism. However, militant terrorists groups have hijacked Islam as their driving force and have given it a virulent twist.

Throughout the Muslim world, the militants are out to impose their version of Islam. The majority of Muslims who are moderates are caught in between first, their sympathy for and identification with the Palestinians and anger against the Israelis, and second, their desire for a peaceful life of growth and progress. To resolve the problem of terrorism, the U.S. and others must support the tolerant non-militant Muslims so that they will prevail.

In this respect Indonesia faces the most difficult challenge. When Soeharto was removed, the centralized system of government he presided over unraveled. Fundamental issues are being contested in a democratic process less than three years old.

Whatever their personal beliefs, Indonesian Muslim leaders now vie for the support of militant Islamic groups to garner votes in the 2004 Presidential elections. At stake is the future of the new Indonesia.

One key institution to hold Indonesia together is the TNI. Its mission since the founding of the state is to keep Indonesia secular, a Pancasila state that stays united. The police are not equipped for this task. Despite all its shortcomings, the Indonesian military is still led by a nationalist, not an Islamic, officer corps. It is one of the few national institutions capable of holding together a sprawling country facing centrifugal pressures.

But after the 1999 East Timor debacle, the Indonesian military has been denigrated and is only slowly recovering its morale. If the U.S. does not re-engage the TNI and help it reform itself, a young newly elected government will not have an effective institution to support its policies. The stability of Indonesia is crucial to the future of the region and the strategic balance in East Asia.

This is an excerpt of the Senior Minister's address at the Asia Security Conference, organized by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore on May 31.