SE Asia religious groups sent thousands for `terror training'
SE Asia religious groups sent thousands for `terror training'
Agence France-Presse, Sydney, Australia
Religious groups across Southeast Asia sent up to 3,000 followers
to Afghanistan and the Philippines to be trained as terrorists,
according to a U.S. study widely reported here.
Many more radicals than previously realized have been trained
and sent home to Southeast Asian countries to set up sleeper
terrorist cells, warns Boston-based professor Zachary Abuza, who
prepared the document.
Abuza's report, Tentacles of Terror -- al-Qaeda's Southeast
Asian Network, says most of the radicals had committed themselves
to religious war in their home countries, Malaysia, Indonesia and
the Philippines.
"Most Southeast Asians returned and set about committing
themselves to running jihads at home, recruiting followers in an
attempt to create Islamic states governed by Sharia law," it
says.
The report, quoted extensively by The Australian newspaper and
ABC radio, says ties formed nine years ago between regional
network Jamaah Islamiyah (JI) and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda are
now being identified at an alarming rate.
JI, recently outlawed, has been blamed for the Oct. 12 Bali
bombing in which more than 190 people were killed, almost half of
them Australian.
Abuza believes bin Laden saw Southeast Asia as a region of
great potential for recruitment and fomenting Islamic revolution.
The region includes a number of countries with weak
governments, porous borders, identity theft and laundering,
access to arms markets, and corrupt bureaucracies that give
terrorists space to train and operate.
The report says the terrorist mastermind had also identified
Indonesia as a vulnerable link in the region, adding: "Al-Qaeda
has taken advantage of the political instability and has looked
upon Indonesia as a new frontier."
Abuza, who has made submissions to Australian Federal Police
based on his information, told ABC radio the region now harbored
some 1,000 potential terrorists trained in Afghanistan and the
Philippines.
He also believed JI is an organization of at most 500 people,
many of whose senior leaders had recently been caught.
Abuza, from Boston's Simmons College, said U.S. special forces
had played an important role in helping the Philippines military
eliminate training camps run by Philippines rebel groups Abu
Sayyaf and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
Most JI members appeared to have trained at MILF-run camps in
the Philippines, Abuza said.
But the war on terrorism had eliminated camps in Afghanistan
and the Philippines.