SE Asian security at risk if insurgencies blow up

SE Asian security at risk if insurgencies blow up

P. Parameswaran, Agence France-Presse, Manila

Separatist insurgences in the Philippines and Indonesia are
threatening to flare up into full scale wars that could unhinge
Southeast Asian security and hinder the region's battle against
terrorism, officials and analysts say.

The Indonesian military was readying aircraft, warships and
troops for an assault on Aceh province even as Japan hosted last-
ditch talks at the weekend to avert a return to war between
Jakarta and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM).

In the Philippines, the government has given a June 1 deadline
to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the country's
largest Muslim separatist group, to disavow alleged terrorist
links or face the full wrath of the military.

Landmark cease-fire pacts forged to end the nearly three-
decade-old battles for independence in the two countries are in
tatters.

Analysts warn that full-blown war will also further
internationalize the conflicts and raise the prospect of more
U.S. antiterror troops entering Southeast Asia, to the chagrin of
governments and groups opposed to foreign military presence in
the region.

Andrew Tan, a security analyst at the Singapore-based
Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies, said Indonesian
President Megawati Soekarnoputri and Philippine leader Gloria
Arroyo could be taking advantage of the global war on terror to
end the separatist campaigns at home.

"There are nationalist right-wing elements in the Philippines
and Indonesia pressing for a military solution to the conflicts,
but the repercussions of such a strategy in terms of regional
security and stability are enormous," he said.

He cited extensive loss of civilian lives and an influx of
refugees to particularly neighboring Malaysia as among the
consequences.

Malaysia already houses hundreds of thousands of refugees from
the southern Philippines who arrived during the height of the
Moro rebellion in the mid-1970s. Hundreds of Aceh refugees also
reside in that country.

More than 10,000 people have died in the Aceh conflict while
tens of thousands of Filipinos had perished during the 25-year-
old MILF rebellion.

"We hope the Indonesian government will take the necessary
measures to prevent war or political tension in Aceh. Its
(Indonesia's) economic and political stability is pivotal to
ASEAN's well-being," Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar
has said.

Aside from Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia, the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) comprises Brunei,
Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Malaysia has been acting as facilitator in peace talks between
the Philippines and the MILF, but Manila last week canceled
further meetings after a series of bloody attacks by the rebels.

"We must fight back now or face greater peril in the future,"
Arroyo declared on Saturday as she ordered selective aerial and
artillery attacks on MILF hideouts.

The 12,500-strong MILF wants to set up an Islamic state in the
southern third of the mainly Roman Catholic Philippine
archipelago, while the 5,000-odd GAM has been fighting for
independence in energy-rich Aceh in northwestern Sumatra island.

If the conflicts, which had been largely contained of late,
flared up into full blown wars, they would open the doors for
greater American military presence and complicate the region's
battle against terrorism, said Clarita Carlos, political science
professor at the University of the Philippines.

"President George Bush has already declared that his
government would hunt down terrorists no matter where they are if
the governments concerned do not do enough to contain them," she
noted.

"So if the conflicts blow up, they would be like midwivery to
more terrorism in the region," Carlos said, blaming "lack of
basic trust and goodwill" for the dual problems. "War is a
failure of diplomacy."

For more than a year, U.S. troops have been helping the
Philippine military battle the Abu Sayyaf kidnap-for-ransom
group, branded terrorists by both governments.

Carlos said Washington might train its guns on the MILF if
Arroyo went ahead with her threat to brand the separatist group a
terrorist organization after the June 1 deadline.

The MILF has been linked to the Jamaah Islamiyah (JI), the
Southeast Asian chapter of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

Tan believed Megawati could also tag the Aceh rebels as
terrorists to cut off GAM's key links in Europe although he said
there are "no proven links" between GAM and al-Qaeda.

He said even if the military prevailed in an all-out conflict
in Indonesia and the Philippines, "the underlying resentment
against the central governments will not dissipate and will only
engender more problems in the future."