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BOOK
REVIEW
Academia abducted by flying
sources
Terrorism and
Violence in Southeast Asia, Transnational
Challenges to States and Regional
Stability edited by Paul J Smith
Reviewed by Allen Quicke
The
threat of terrorism in Southeast Asia is dire, we
are frequently assured, and as the title of this
book implies. Various al-Qaeda-franchised
terrorist groups in the region are helping
al-Qaeda wage global jihad, as well as working
together to create a caliphate that will stretch
across Southeast Asia from the 
Philippines
to southern Thailand.
So we should be
mightily relieved that the region's two terrorist
kingpins are now behind bars. First Hambali (real
name, Riduan Isamuddin) was caught in Thailand in
August 2003. Hambali was a kingpin all right. He
was al-Qaeda's go-between among the region's
terrorist groups. He masterminded the Bali bombing
and is linked to just about every other terrorist
incident in Southeast Asia. His last plot, foiled
by his capture, according to one of the
contributors to this book [p 114], was to bomb the
Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in
Bangkok.
Then Abu Bakar Ba'asyir (or
Bashir, in this book's style), "spiritual leader"
of the biggest and scariest of the Southeast Asian
terrorist outfits, Jemaah Islamiya (JI), after
much pussyfooting by the weak-willed Indonesian
government and pressure from the United States,
was finally tried and jailed in March.
We
slept easier, though with a few nagging doubts.
Ba'asyir received only 30 months in jail (see Indonesia's trial by terror,
March 12). The sentence was light, the judges
said, because "the case against him was weak".
Weak? How could it be weak? This is the man
variously accused of being (like Hambali) the
mastermind of the Bali bombings, or the mentor of
those who did the deed that killed 202 people,
mostly Australians, and of being (somehow) behind
countless other acts of terrorism in Indonesia.
And the Americans had Hambali, Ba'asyir's link to
al-Qaeda, under interrogation for a year and a
half before Ba'asyir's trial.
The US was
extremely displeased by the lightness of the
sentence. The only problem was, Washington had
refused to produce Hambali, who would have been
the smoking gun in the case against Ba'asyir. So
who is this Hambali, we wondered as our sleep
became disturbed again. Why won't the Americans
produce this prize catch? Is he what they claim he
is? Does he really exist? How real is this
"terrorist threat"? The newspapers aren't
answering these questions - they aren't even
asking them. All they are doing is assuring us
there is a dire threat. Could it be their
case is as weak as the one against Ba'asyir?
To ease our troubled minds, we turn to
this book. Here are 12 distinguished academics and
experts, each with their own chapter, assessing
the terrorist threat to the region. Here, we
think, we will be sure to find the evidence and
the answers to our questions: these people, after
all, have made a career out of studying the issue.
It's hard evidence we are looking for, so
we go straight to the copious notes at the end of
each chapter: we want to go to the sources. The
first thing we notice is that the study of
terrorism in Southeast Asia has become a veritable
industry. There are chairs, departments,
faculties, entire organizations devoted to the
subject. There is an untold number of academic
papers, studies, government white papers, and
reports by law enforcement agencies. Well, we'll
leave the governments' and interrogators' reports
aside for the moment - we're not sure we trust
them. Still, we're encouraged. It looks like we're
about to learn everything we ever wanted to know
about terrorism in Southeast Asia.
Then a
niggling disappointment. The various writers
frequently cite each other as sources. Professor
Carlyle A Thayer cites Peter Chalk who cites
Professor Zachary Abuza; all are contributors to
this book. Are we about to go around in circles,
we wonder? And just about all the contributors
cite Rohan Gunaratna. Well, that's not surprising:
Gunaratna is the dean of al-Qaeda studies; he's
the authority cited by everyone from Asia
Times Online to the mainstream media to academics;
he is the MOTHERLODE! And of course he has his
chapter in this book, so we turn to him first, but
not before we notice that an awful lot of
newspapers and magazines are also cited as
sources, and we remind ourselves that they are
part of our problem, not the solution.
Gunaratna's chapter is titled
"Understanding al-Qaeda and its Network in
Southeast Asia". His contention is that with the
loss of Afghanistan and the pressures on it in
Pakistan, al-Qaeda has been forced to
decentralize, though its strategic, tactical and
ideological direction "is still intact" (source
cited: Gunaratna). "By decentralizing ... al-Qaeda
has successfully networked with disparate groups
and in some cases co-opted their leaders. This was
particularly the case in Southeast Asia" (no
source cited). And threat there is indeed: apart
from "suicide terrorism coupled with conventional
attacks ... the group is also considering
revisiting the maritime and the chemical,
biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN)
scenarios ..." (no source cited). And if that were
not enough, "some existing and emerging groups
will seek to match it [al-Qaeda] or even exceed it
...".
Turning to Jemaah Islamiya,
Gunaratna tells us that "al-Qaeda has penetrated
[JI]" and the two groups "have divided their
responsibilities, personnel, infrastructure, and
areas of operation into territorial organizations
called mantiqis". But he does not tell us where he
gets this information. We're expected to take his
word for it. (Elsewhere in this book Peter Chalk
mentions the same information and at least lets us
know it's from a Singapore government white paper:
the thought occurs that perhaps Gunaratna had a
hand in writing that white paper, but we won't
follow that up just now; we've had enough of
vicious circles). Then the caliphate predictably
rears its ugly head: "In addition to emphasizing
the importance of participating in a global jihad,
it [al-Qaeda] created a mission and a vision for
the Islamists to build a caliphate ... comprising
Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Indonesia, Cambodia,
and Mindanao" (no source cited).
Gunaratna
reveals some damning evidence against Abu Bakar
Ba'asyir: "Recent recoveries from Afghanistan
include documents with extensive references to
al-Qaeda's [!] spiritual leader in Southeast Asia,
Abu Bakar Bashir, Hambali, and other directing
figures of the al-Qaeda network in the region."
Strange that the judges at Ba'asyir's trial seems
not to have made much of this timely "recovery".
Come to think of it, why was Gunaratna himself not
called as a witness? He could well and truly have
nailed Ba'asyir.
Disheartened, we get to
the notes at the end of Gunaratna's chapter.
Compared to the other chapters, there are very few
notes, and only two main sources are cited: one is
the illustrious author of Inside al-Qaeda,
Gunaratna himself; the other is "Mohammed Mansour
Jabarah, debriefing, Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI), US Department of Justice,
August 6, 2002" (Ibid, ibid, ibid).
Mohammed Mansour Jabarah, a Kuwaiti-born
Canadian and JI member, was captured in Oman in
March 2002. He is alleged to have been one of the
key planners in a major plot uncovered in
Singapore that was to involve coordinated bombing
of US warships at the Changi Naval Base, the
Ministry of Defense, a shuttle bus, the British
and American high commissions, the US and Israeli
embassies, and American business premises. During
his euphemistically termed "debriefing", he
apparently sang loud and clear to his FBI
interrogators, and Gunaratna was allowed access to
the transcripts of the interrogation.
So
there we have it. This is as close to a real
source as we are going to get.
It's time
to take stock. We have a book written by various
authorities in the field, most of whom cite Rohan
Gunaratna; Gunaratna cites as his source
interrogation transcripts that the US government
has allowed him to see. So it would seem, judging
by this book at least, that these warnings of dire
threats to Southeast Asia from al-Qaeda-linked
international terrorism are based on sources of
information that turn out to be the US government
and its allies themselves. And that's a knockout
blow. We already know what the governments want us
to think. We are trying to find out the truth.
The threat is taken as a given by the
writers of this book, and on this unquestioned
assumption towering academic edifices are built.
Time after time, the familiar claims about
Ba'asyir, Hambali and al-Qaeda's involvement in
the region are trotted out as if it were all
blindingly self-evident. The trouble is, the
ultimate source of the information is Washington.
The rest is a vicious circle, with academics and
experts writing books like this one, and the media
swallowing everything whole and citing the
academics who cite the media and each other.
The rubble and bodies on Bali
spoke for themselves, but that was almost three
years ago. Not a lot happened before or since then
- apart from the foiling of many alleged plots.
Could it be that international, Islamist terrorism
has been stamped out in Southeast Asia
by its super-efficient governments,
courts, intelligence agencies and law enforcers, with help,
of course, from Washington? We doubt it, but nor do
we think the threat is as dire as we are
being told. Various governments and agencies have
a clear vested interest in such a threat being
seen to exist. They have been abetted in this
by the mainstream Western media, which have
been wearing dunce's caps since September 11, 2001.
The PhDs should go and join them in the corner.
Terrorism and Violence in Southeast
Asia, Transnational Challenges to States and
Regional Stability, edited by Paul J Smith. M
E Sharpe, September 2004. Paperback ISBN:
0-7656-1434-0, price US$25.95. 288 pages.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact us for information
on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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