Fears grow in Asia as war against terrorism nears

Fears grow in Asia as war against terrorism nears

SINGAPORE (Reuters): Peter Wee, a 54-year-old Singaporean shop owner, sympathizes with the pain Americans feel after last week's deadly terror assault.

But he also knows that any conflict in Afghanistan between U.S.-led forces and militant Muslims could have painful repercussions for Asians, especially with several religious disputes simmering just under the surface across the region.

His view was shared by commentators and experts around Asia on Sunday as concerted support for a U.S.-led global war on "terrorism" is increasingly laced with caution and a growing sense of alarm that Asia could become a battleground.

"There's lots of areas where there could be suffering," Wee said from his 22-year-old shop in Singapore's Katong cafe area, where images of last Tuesday's attack played tirelessly from TVs in nearby shops and restaurants.

Many fear a Muslim backlash across Asia, and the consequences of that in a region already fractured by a number of religious disputes. Others fear they could become targets of acts of terror if their countries align themselves too closely with Washington.

These worries surfaced after a call by the hardline Islamic Taliban on Saturday for all Muslims to fight to the death against American aggression and a declaration by a tough-talking U.S. President George W. Bush that "we're at war".

"We have to think very carefully of how we are going to help the U.S.," said University of the Philippines professor on Asian Studies, Benito Lim.

"We should not commit ourselves to the point of national suicide...we might provoke those sympathetic to bin Laden here and they might bomb metro Manila," he said in an interview on Sunday on Manila's ANC television.

Islam is a dominant religion in many Asian countries, including Malaysia, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country with about 90 percent of its 210 million people followers of the religion.

All of these countries have condemned the attacks on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

India, the Philippines, China, Sri Lanka and Thailand have Muslim minorities. And although many of them have distanced themselves from militant readings of Islam, their countries have all seen religious friction turn violent in recent years.

"The U.S. officials should not make careless accusations," said Dien Syamsuddin, deputy chairman of Indonesia's second- largest Muslim group, Muhammadiyah. "If they do that, the Muslims will react. They will form a solidarity.

"And if the U.S. launches an attack on a Islamic country, such as Afghanistan, the reaction will be global," he said. "If this happens, I can imagine a start of a scenario of a global clash."

Nightmare

The nightmare for Asia is that any U.S. retaliation could inflame entrenched religious rivalries across the region.

Indonesia has been racked by religious violence in recent years, especially in the Moluccas islands where thousands have died since January 1999 when a row between a Christian bus driver and a Muslim boy touched off fierce religious fighting.

In the Philippines, the two biggest Muslim groups, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), have been locked in deadly separatist wars against Manila for decades although a peace agreement was shaping up.

And strained ties between India's majority Hindus and its Muslim minority, which make up around 11 percent of the massive country's population, have often erupted into riots which have killed thousands in the past decade.

India on Sunday warned its police to be on the lookout for clashes if the United States strikes Afghanistan, while Indian media have already reported some sporadic violence between supporters of bin Laden and those opposed to him.

In the Philippines, the MILF has rejected the Taliban's calls for a holy war, or jihad, but bin Laden has been long suspected of helping to fund it and the shadowy Abu Sayyaf, which also professes to fight for an Islamic state in the southern Philippines but is generally seen as a bandit group.

The prime minister of mostly Muslim Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, has cautioned that strikes by U.S.-led forces could fuel more violence, although he supports any action by Washington to punish those behind Tuesday's carnage.

And in China, any cooperation with Washington to battle "terrorism" faces thorny political issues although Beijing has offered to join the United States in its efforts to build a global coalition to stamp out terror attacks everywhere.

China's northwestern region of Xinjiang has been rocked by a series of bombings and violence by Muslim Uighurs seeking a separate state. China, Russia and four central Asian states this year set a goal of quelling Islamic militants.

State media has given no details of what role China might play in any U.S.-led retaliation, but China and the United States are divided over definitions of terrorism, military intervention overseas and Beijing's relations with nations identified by Washington as "state sponsors of terrorism".

Japan faces one of the biggest challenges ever to its post-war security alliance with the United States as it grapples with how to turn staunch verbal backing for America's expected retaliation into action within the bounds of its pacifist constitution.