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.