Asia Times: Southeast Asia


	May 11, 2002	atimes.com

Southeast Asia

The fear behind Southeast Asia's terror pact
By Alan Boyd

SYDNEY - Southeast Asia's first terrorism pact, soon to be ratified by its four founding members, will be a battle of perceptions as much as a blow against extremism. For politicians know that to become effective, it first must be sold to restive Muslim populations. Trouble is, everyone is working to a different political agenda, and some of these don't have an awful lot to do with suppressing terrorism.

Malaysian leaders have found that their security powers offer a convenient means of cracking down on the opposition Parti Se-Islam Malaysia (PAS). Indonesia is preoccupied with a leadership split and in sending the right murmurs of support to Western countries without upsetting the Islamic moderates who prop up its ruling class. The Philippines is targeting more US development aid, while Thailand wants to displace Indonesia as the region's de facto powerbroker. There is even a constant state of denial over the existence of terrorists in Southeast Asia. Thailand and Indonesia say that they don't have a homegrown problem at all; the Philippines has "religious separatists" and Malaysia misguided politicians who strayed to the wrong cause.

Only Singapore has eschewed political posturing and given terrorism the full attention it deserves since the September attacks in the US. Yet the republic has chosen - temporarily at least - to remain outside the pact. Foreign Minister S Jayakumar said that his country wanted to evaluate the geographical coverage for the proposed exchange of security data, and was looking at the potential legal issues.

He might also have mentioned that Southeast Asia already has a clutch of security cooperations that involve the same types of information exchanges. Why the need for a new one? Probably because of the two conflicting signals that have been coming out of the region. On one hand, security agencies have been quietly working together on an issue that transcends national borders; on the other, governments have done their best to pretend it doesn't exist. Signing a formal accord will satisfy both camps, by putting intelligence cooperation on an official footing and giving the politicians some breathing space from external critics. Little, though, will change at an operational level. There is no provision for joint policing activities, and the intelligence swaps will essentially be on an unsolicited basis, though cross-border warrants will be honored in second countries. All parties have been careful to avoid using the word "treaty", which can carry wider military connotations. Like all such arrangements in Southeast Asia, the agreement works by consensus and can be permitted to quietly lapse if it no longer meets expectations.

Even this relatively modest system of liaison could falter if it is sucked into domestic politics, especially in restless Indonesia. Caught between her Muslim clerics and the more pragmatic security chiefs, President Megawati Sukarnoputri is being undermined by conservative hardliners who are increasingly setting the domestic agenda on terrorism. Her own deputy, Hamzah Haz, caused a stir by publicly visiting Jafar Umar, jailed leader of the archipelago's biggest Islamic extremism movement. He is reportedly lobbying for the release of Umar, whose Laskar Jihad has been blamed for the deaths of hundreds of Christians in the volatile Moluccas.

Separately, the Supreme Court quashed subversion charges against Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, accused by Singapore and Malaysia of having terrorist links, on the grounds that the cited legal statutes were no longer valid. Another court did pass a death sentence on alleged bomber Taufik Abdul Halim, but that was probably because he is a Malay and thus did not create an internal political dilemma. Prosecutors had sought only a 20-year jail term. Diplomats say that Jakarta is passing intelligence on local extremist groups to neighboring countries, but is slow to act on evidence against its own nationals. Which raises immediate questions over the efficacy of the new cooperation pact.

The same envoys also charge that Kuala Lumpur has adopted a selective response to cross-border terrorism activity, despite having recourse to tougher security regulations than Indonesia, whose statutes were watered down several years ago to pacify human rights activists.

Alleged members of the Jemaah Islamiah cell are being held indefinitely without trial in Malaysia, prompting charges that they have intentionally been isolated while the government milks the ostensible PAS link. Several of the detainees may have had religious contacts with known terrorists in the US or Europe, according to foreign security analysts. However, there is no evidence that Malaysian Mujahedin Group (KMM), the PAS's reputed extremist arm, has ever existed. A by-election has already been won from the publicity fallout against PAS, and Kuala Lumpur, unlike Jakarta, is in no danger of suffering a political setback if it embraces the regional security agreement.

Philippines leader Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is also on firm ground after staking her political future on a sensitive joint operation with US special forces against Abu Sayyaf guerrillas in southern provinces that appears to be succeeding. Nationalist sentiment is running high against the return of US troops, who were ejected a decade ago from naval and air bases in the Philippines. However, Arroyo has the backing of business leaders and the influential middle classes. It was no surprise that Manila, as the biggest victim of terrorism, should be the prime instigator of the anti-terrorism pact.

Nor that Thailand, the least-affected, would be the last to join. Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra has been less than forthright, despite persistent evidence that Thailand acts as a staging area for a motley collection of extremist organizations, ranging from Muslim saboteurs to Tamil separatists and rightwing Vietnamese factions. Reports in diplomatic circles indicate that he is worried at the potential impact of a terrorism alert on foreign business confidence. Yet the evidence suggests it is the countries staying on the sidelines, and thus avoiding their security responsibilities, that will suffer the biggest exodus of investment. With only two million Muslims in an overwhelmingly Buddhist population, Thailand could easily set the terrorism agenda, and gain a headstart in the regional leadership stakes without risking a loss of domestic support. But like other Southeast Asian leaders, Thaksin is not looking only at the immediate political angle. He knows the comfort zone could easily evaporate if, as many anticipate, the level of security cooperation grows beyond mere information exchanges.

The main flaw in the current arrangement is that it does not offer a formula for preempting terrorism threats. Although suppression agencies will be able to pool intelligence for the first time, most are geared up only to respond to existing threats. Taking the framework to the next level would require a bigger commitment, and probably closer links with security entities in the US and Europe. Then one would be talking of genuine political risks if it all went wrong.

One potential hazard lies in the wide definition of activities covered by the existing agreement, which theoretically is not restricted to terrorism. An over-zealous security agency could broaden the net to cover weapons transactions, illegal immigration and even drug trafficking, areas that have traditionally been viewed as too hot for domestic leaders to tackle.

More inter-action also invites greater scrutiny. Hence, the participating governments will come under pressure to plug loopholes in money-laundering legislation that does not proscribe activities by extremist groups.

Is Southeast Asia ready to go the whole hog against transnational crimes? Surprisingly, the answer is a guarded yes, though only because the perceived security threat no longer fits squarely into a national context.

Fear that a regional Islamic state could emerge from the scattered extremist cells throughout the region has created an extraordinary sense of shared apprehension between government leaders, even if the supporting evidence for this threat is circumspect.

A linkup between Middle East financiers, Philippine separatists, Indonesian ethnic insurgents and Thai gun-runners is the stuff of policing nightmares, no matter how implausible the scenario might be to some foreign strategists.

Having an identifiable target would promote a level of unprecedented cooperation within the region, and counter some of the criticisms being levelled by Washington and its Western allies.

There would also be a political dividend, as government leaders display a rare streak of statesmanship and - in a few cases - exploit the situation to bolster their power bases against opposition parties. That should get the attention of politicians, if nothing else does.

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