Hostage crisis a security wake-up call for region

Hostage crisis a security wake-up call for region

By Ranjan Roy

KUALA LUMPUR (AP): A Malaysian navy gunboat is anchored just off Sipadan, the site of a kidnapping two weeks ago that has focused attention on a little-known Muslim insurgency in the southern Philippines.

Its presence, along with the police dinghies crisscrossing the Malaysian part of the Sulu Sea, may provide a semblance of security for the residents and tourists visiting the tropical islands.

But if kidnappers were to strike again, these patrol boats could be frustrated if a chase lasted for more than 30 minutes. By then, the prey would have slipped into Philippine waters.

Hot pursuit of kidnappers and pirates into territorial waters is strictly forbidden, unless the time-consuming, bureaucratic clearances have been obtained.

"The intellectual argument about hot pursuit is sound, but it goes against national sovereignty," says Andrew Tan, a conflict analyst at Singapore's Institute for Defense and Strategic Studies.

In recent years, Asian countries have forged ahead toward a borderless region for commerce, but they have remained zealous about maritime boundaries.

Combined with mutual suspicions, it has stunted prospects of a regional security framework and maritime patrolling in the dangerous waters around Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines.

Two-thirds of the world's piracy cases were reported from these waters in 1999, and now the hostage crisis has shown that armed terrorists can easily sneak into another country and take hostages.

While experts say the June 23 kidnapping of 21 people, including 10 foreign tourists, should serve as a security wake-up call, there is little optimism that the nations will join forces to combat piracy and gunrunning in these seas.

The countries grouped under the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have spoken for the past few years about a security arrangement under the ASEAN Regional Forum. Yet only piecemeal attempts at joint patrolling against piracy and anti- drug operations have emerged.

All the forum had achieved so far was prodding China to discuss the Spratlys with ASEAN members, but largely it "hasn't moved beyond broad principles," Tan said in a telephone interview.

He said the lack of a security doctrine became obvious when ASEAN failed to respond as a collective to the crisis in East Timor, leaving countries from outside the region to take an initiative.

Now there is an even greater need for a concerted effort by all the countries to clear the deep blue waters of bandits, says Prasun Sengupta, a top editor for the Kuala Lumpur-based Asian Defense Journal.

The big issue is the Spratlys, a resource-rich area in the South China Sea, claimed in total by China and Vietnam and in part by the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei. And there are a host of smaller territorial disputes.

Sipadan, the site of the hostage-taking, for example, is claimed by both Malaysia and Indonesia. That could have contributed to the area being unsecured, despite its position in waters known to be traditional grounds for pirates who loot and rob in the Sulu and Celebes Seas.

"Because the Sipadan dispute is at the International Court of Justice, Malaysia would not be permitted to mount a heavy security there without raising eyebrows in Jakarta," says Sengupta.

"It's logistically impossible to guard these waters," he said, underscoring the importance of creating joint patrols and trans- border aerial and maritime surveillance mechanisms.

Malaysia's frustration at being unable to create a joint search and rescue operation soon after the Sipadan kidnapping was more than obvious.

"What we would like to do and what we can do are two different things. We recognize the fact that they are Philippine nationals, and they are on Philippine territory," said Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar.

"Countries in the region trust each other somewhat more than they did in the past, but Southeast Asia is not Western Europe. There are still deep divisions in the region," says Tan of Singapore's Institute for Defense and Strategic Studies.

Both Tan and Sengupta see the Islamic dimension in the latest hostage crisis as serious and hence an even greater need for nations to jointly address the danger.

Among demands of the captors from the Abu Sayyaf Muslim radical group, one of the two groups fighting for independence of the predominantly Muslim Mindanao province, is release of three terrorists from U.S. jails, including Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 bombing of New York's World Trade Center.

Besides, the southeastern seas and the Malacca Strait have become easy markets for weapon buyers with small assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades used by the former Khmer Rouge being sold after the army of Pol Pot was demobilized in Cambodia, said Sengupta.