SE Asia tightens security for Iraq war spillover

SE Asia tightens security for Iraq war spillover

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.