Watch out for the neighbors
Watch out for the neighbors
SINGAPORE: From the thicket of recent writings on transnational terrorism, one paper is prominent for its postulation about the involvement of a strand of radical Islam in the world's ethno-religious hot spots. The contention breaks no new ground but, as a departure point from the author's theme, the linear progression of this movement into disputes with religious overtones should ring alarms in Southeast Asian countries with unresolved problems.
The paper's author, Reuven Paz of the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Israel, suggests that one decade after the Iranian revolution which dislodged the pro- American Shah, "the war against the Soviet Union was seen as the next stage of the global war between Islam and Western culture". The USSR's eventual collapse was regarded as a consequence of the Islamic mujahideen's defeat of Soviet occupation forces in Afghanistan.
The paper suggests that the bombing of New York's World Trade Center in 1993 and the participation of Muslim volunteers in conflict zones with an Islamic flavor (Bosnia, Albania, Kosovo, Chechnya, Dagestan and Kashmir) throughout the 1990s marked a fundamental shift in direction: a move from fighting "heretic" regimes in their backyard to a global theater.
The author says that this involvement in other nations' fights has led many observers to see the phenomenon of "Afghan Arabs" as an Islamic International, quite similar to the International Brigades of Socialist and Communist Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s.
A disclaimer has to be reiterated. This newspaper, in common with fair-minded opinion elsewhere, rejects as dangerous the notion that the global alliance being formed by the United States to fight international terrorism is a clash between the Judeo- Christian and Islamic civilizations.
It cannot, should not, be so framed. But, as noted, there does appear to have been ideological infiltration in a number of Singapore's neighbors. The probability has to be faced up to, and the appropriate means employed to combat it. Thailand and the Philippines have long-standing problems in their southern regions and these bear watching.
The internecine warfare in Indonesia's Spice Islands and Aceh are of more recent vintage, but susceptible to exploitation by outside forces -- if that has not already happened. Malaysia is in a slightly different category, with the opposition PAS Islamic party trying by political means to encroach on the Malay middle ground long held by the United Malays National Organization. Recent arrests and an ongoing hunt for underground operatives alleged to have undergone armed training in Afghanistan have, however, put a different complexion on the matter.
No one knows for certain whether separatist movements in Indonesia and Thailand, and the Moro liberation organization and Abu Sayyaf outfit in the Philippines, have links with, or are part of, Middle Eastern pan-Islamic terror networks. The global mania unleashed by last week's attacks on the U.S. -- believed to be the handiwork of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda organization but, it should be stressed, not proved yet -- behooves those governments to get on top of the situation on two related fronts.
The first is to neutralize illegitimate organizations, with or without international support in the form of shared intelligence. The second is to deny malcontents the conditions which make unconstitutional methods appealing, terror tactics included. That would entail ending policies of economic neglect, and to negotiate an end to grievances if these are legitimate.
-- The Straits Times/Asia News Network