SE Asia tightens security as Iraq attack nears

SE Asia tightens security as Iraq attack nears

Michael Christie , Reuters, Sydney, Australia

Commandos guarded Western embassies, heightened border security
checks caused gridlock and foreign schools braced for a Muslim
backlash as Southeast Asia prepared on Monday for a U.S. war on
Iraq.

Visitors of Arab background faced increased scrutiny from
Thailand to the Philippines as security forces took steps to
counter any retaliation from Islamic militants in a region that
includes the world's most populous Muslim country, Indonesia.

While U.S. backers such as Australian Prime Minister John
Howard say any attack on Iraq will not be against Islam,
terrorism experts say an offensive could see mass street protests
and opportunistic bomb attacks on soft targets such as
nightclubs.

"There's a lot of...anger at the West and especially the
United States," said David Wright-Neville, former senior
terrorism adviser to Australia's Office of National Assessments,
the equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency.

"Islamic radical groups will leap on this war on Iraq," said
Wright-Neville, now at the Monash Global Terrorism Research Unit
in Melbourne.

In the Philippines, which saw a bomb attack on a U.S. embassy
library in 1991, five months after Iraq invaded Kuwait and
sparked the first Gulf War, the police chief in charge of
protecting embassies said security had been stepped up.

Brig. Gen. Jose Gutierrez said Special Action Force commandos
and police had been deployed around the U.S., British and
Australian missions.

Groups of up to three armed police, some with bomb-sniffing
dogs, patrolled the Makati financial district where many foreign
companies and upmarket hotels are based.

One aim was to stifle pro-Iraq demonstrations. But Gutierrez
told Reuters another concern was "to prevent a spillover to
Manila" of recent attacks blamed on Muslim separatists in the
south of the mostly Roman Catholic country.

The latest was on March 4 at Davao city airport, where a bomb
killed 22 people.

"We also check the backgrounds of any group of Arab or Arab-
looking guests who check into hotels," said another Philippine
security official, who asked not to be identified.

In sprawling Indonesia, security at the U.S. embassy and at
the homes of U.S. diplomats was tightened after warnings of
possible attacks last September and again after the Bali bombings
in October in which 202 people were killed.

International schools in Jakarta said they were bracing for an
anti-Western reaction to an Iraq war even though most Indonesian
Muslims are regarded as moderate.

"(An Iraq war) has been at the forefront of our minds for a
number of months and we have done a lot of planning," said
British International School principal Peter Hoggins.

Hoggins said he would consider shutting the school for a while
if things got out of hand.

In mostly Buddhist Thailand, security around the embassies of
the United States, Britain, Spain and Australia -- President
George W. Bush's "coalition of the willing" -- and also around
the Indonesian and Iraqi embassies was boosted this month.

Lt. Gen. Chumpol Manmai, commissioner of Thailand's Special
Branch, told Reuters Middle Eastern visitors were getting closer
attention as war became more likely.

"We may need to follow some of them," he said.

Malaysian officials say security has been heightened around
Western embassies and economic interests as well as potential
soft targets such as night spots and churches.

"We've moved back to a state of heightened security," said one
official.

Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines have
together locked up more than 100 suspected members of the Jamaah
Islamiah, a shadowy Muslim group whose leaders are believed to
have had ties with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

Jamaah Islamiah, which wants to create a conservative Islamic
state running from Indonesia through Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei,
the southern Philippines and southern Thailand, is suspected of
being behind the Bali attacks.

In Singapore, traffic slowed to a crawl at the border between
the ethnic Chinese-majority island state and its Muslim-dominated
neighbor Malaysia.

Officials from the wealthy state that serves as a regional
base for many multinational firms inspected every car, truck and
motorcycle crossing over the waterway that forms the border,
infuriating many travelers who revved engines and honked horns.

Singapore stepped up security after the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks on the United States, blamed by Washington on al-Qaeda,
and tightened them again after October's bomb blasts on Bali.