U.S. attack on Iraq may blunt SE Asia war on terror
U.S. attack on Iraq may blunt SE Asia war on terror
Dan Eaton, Reuters, Bangkok
A U.S. attack on Iraq would fan the flames of anti-Americanism in Southeast Asia, making cooperation in the war on terror more difficult and secretive, analysts and officials say.
A war with Iraq, which the United States says is gathering weapons of mass destruction, would force leaders into delicate balancing acts in a region home to Muslim militants, including al-Qaeda operatives fleeing Afghanistan and Pakistan, they say.
There are Muslims throughout Southeast Asia, the huge majority of them moderate. Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim country, while Malaysia and Brunei are also mostly Muslim. Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia all have minority Islamic communities.
An attack on Iraq would put many leaders in Southeast Asia, who have publicly declared solidarity with the United States in its post-Sept. 11 war on terror, in a tight spot, says Amris Hassan, a member of parliament in secular Indonesian President Megawati Soekarnoputri's party.
"It will put President Megawati in a very difficult and delicate position regarding the Islamic movement and organizations here," Hassan, who chairs a parliamentary subcommission of foreign affairs and lectures at the University of Indonesia, told Reuters by telephone.
"She has to walk a tightrope, and it's very difficult. There is now more and more so-called Islamic propaganda in Indonesia saying the U.S. is siding with Israel, the Jews, against Muslims."
That has created an uncomfortable feeling among Indonesian Muslims in general, he said.
Others agree, including Singapore Senior Minister Lee Kwan Yew, who said last month the United States ran the risk of radicalizing Southeast Asia's moderate Muslims.
"It would increase the domestic pressure in countries in Southeast Asia," said Amitav Acharya, deputy director of the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS) in Singapore.
"It will make it most difficult for those countries to support the United States as openly in the war on terror with public displays of solidarity like arrests."
But those arrests are likely to keep coming, given the economic and political influence of the United States.
"The U.S. has other means of persuading those countries to continue to cooperate," said Magnus Ranstorp, an expert at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St Andrews University in Scotland.
And although the occasional al-Qaeda suspect is dug up and handed to U.S. interrogators, "most of those arrested are from local groups seen as a threat to Southeast Asian governments", said a Western diplomat based in Bangkok.
There is a large dose of domestic politics involved in recent highly publicized arrests, particularly in Malaysia and Singapore, where concerns have been raised that leaders are using the war on terror as a pretext to clamp down on dissent.
"Asian governments see these elements as a threat to national security, so there will be a degree of common interest, but it will have to be done very secretly," said the IDSS's Acharya.
"So far the intelligence sharing, to the extent it exists, has been very secretive, and it will become even more so."
The highly publicized successes in recent weeks -- dozens of arrests of Islamic militants in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines -- could become a thing of the past.
And with all the focus on Iraq, as the United States tries to muster support for an attack, there will be even less pressure for other countries to act in the war on terror.
Countries such as Thailand -- one of Washington's oldest allies in the region, which has declared solidarity but has yet to arrest a single suspect amid fears of damaging its tourism industry -- would have less incentive to do anything.
The same would go for countries less close to the United States, such as Myanmar and Vietnam.
"One of the problems is it is going to obscure the necessity to fight the war on terrorism," said Ranstorp. "The war on Iraq will become the number one issue."