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Blasts in Philippines fuel
fears
By Marites Sison
MANILA
- A deadly bomb explosion near a Roman Catholic church
on Sunday night in the southern Philippine city of
Zamboanga, a bomb blast and grenade explosion in Metro
Manila on Friday, twin explosions on Thursday in
Zamboanga, and threats of further bombings are
reinforcing fears of more attacks in Southeast Asia.
The Philippine bombings began almost a week
after a car-bomb attack in Bali on October 12, which
killed more than 180 people and injured more than 300.
While no stranger to political instability and
bombing incidents in the turbulent times in the past,
Filipinos nonetheless appear to be more fearful this
time around so soon after the Bali bombing. The question
being asked in Southeast Asia's capitals now is, "Where
will the terrorists strike next?" wrote political
columnist Amando Doronila of the English-language daily
Philippine Daily Inquirer.
On Friday, security
jitters pushed the Philippine peso down to a 14-month
low of 53.29 to the US dollar. "The Bali incident was
bad, and the Zamboanga [bombing on Thursday] is not
helping any," Central Bank deputy governor Amando
Tetangco said, saying the market was making a knee-jerk
reaction to the Friday blasts in Manila.
Thursday's two explosions in Zamboanga killed at
least seven people and wounded 149. Earlier bomb blasts
in southern Mindanao island, where Zamboanga is located,
occurred on October 2 and September 25. One person was
reported killed and about a dozen injured on Sunday when
a home-made bomb exploded in Zamboanga.
Military
and police authorities have not declared any links
between the attacks in the Philippines and in Bali. The
deadly blast in Bali was first pinned by Indonesian
officials on the al-Qaeda network and then on Jemaah
Islamiyah, which seeks to establish a pan-Islamic state
in Southeast Asia. "We cannot assume anything. We are
considering all possibilities," Philippine National
Security Council chief Roilo Golez said of the
possibility of any connection between the blasts in the
Philippines and the Bali attack.
However,
military officials have blamed the Zamboanga blasts on
the Muslim extremist Abu Sayyaf Group, a band that
claims to seek a separate Islamic state but which many
consider nothing more than a group of bandits. The group
has been linked by the United States to the al-Qaeda
network.
Analysts say the bombings in Bali and
Zamboanga have raised alarms that Southeast Asia,
specifically countries belonging to the 10-member
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) that have
declared support for US war against terror, are being
targeted for synchronized attacks.
At a security
seminar in Singapore on Friday, a Filipino intelligence
official said an Indonesian Muslim cleric believed to be
the head of Jemaah Islamiyah, Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, was
involved in a series of planned attacks in the region in
the past.
"We are only beginning to unravel a
vast clandestine network of terrorist organizations,
cells and support groups," Maria Concepcion Clamor of
the Philippine National Intelligence Coordination Agency
was quoted as saying by local media.
Earlier,
Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong expressed fears
that terrorist groups were aiming at soft targets,
including Southeast Asia, as authorities clamp down on
militant activity on other parts of the world such as
the Middle East.
Doronila says the timing of the
latest attacks in Southeast Asia may be linked to anger
over the US unilateralist policies and threatened action
on Iraq. "If, indeed, the bombings are the handiwork of
extremist groups linked to al-Qaeda, they could be an
expression of rising anti-Americanism in Southeast Asia
fueled by the campaign of the Bush administration to
invade Iraq if it does not dismantle, on tough
conditions imposed by the United States, its facilities
for the production of chemical, biological and nuclear
weapons of mass destruction," Doronila said.
US
newspapers have reported that Southeast Asian leaders
have privately warned Washington that a unilateral
strike against Iraq could radicalize moderate Muslim
communities in Southeast Asia.
But Doronila also
said that the bombings in Zamboanga - a predominantly
Christian area surrounded by Muslim provinces - could be
due to "the close identification of the administration
[of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo] with the war
policy of [US President George] Bush".
Arroyo
recently reiterated her support for the US war on
terror. "The current Philippine-US alliance is a moral
partnership. We have offered political, security and
humanitarian assistance to the United States in the
pursuit of her most vital interests against terrorism
which coincide with our own," she said.
She also
announced that a new round of war exercises between
Filipino and US troops would push through in August or
October 2003. This is a follow-up to the controversial
war games held early this year on Mindanao island,
exercises that critics noted took place at the heart of
the combat zone between government soldiers and the Abu
Sayyaf.
US defense officials had called the
Philippines the "second front in the war against
terrorism", after Afghanistan. In the wake of the Bali
bombing, Arroyo has also reiterated her proposal for a
regional dialogue on counter-terrorism, offering Manila
as the venue.
In July, ASEAN foreign ministers
agreed to increase cooperation and pool their resources
to fight terrorism. They signed a counter-terrorism pact
with the United States that, among others, binds
signatories to freeze the assets of terrorist groups,
improve border patrols and increase the sharing of
intelligence information.
The Bali bombing,
diplomats here say, will test the value of this pact.
Before the Bali incident, there had been intelligence
sharing particularly among Malaysia, Singapore and the
Philippines - all of them watching out for members of
Jemaah Islamiyah.
Indonesian officials last week
linked al-Qaeda to the Bali attacks but without citing
evidence, drawing fire from critics who warned Jakarta
against rushing to judgment without proof.
(Inter Press Service)
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