strategic asia 2002 03 asian aftershocks Edited by Richard J. Ellings and Aaron L. Friedberg with Michael Wills Regional Studies Southeast Asia Sheldon W. Simon restrictions on use: This PDF is provided for the use of authorized recipients only. For specific terms of use, please contact <publications@nbr.org>. To purchase the print volume in which this chapter appears please visit <http://www.nbr.org> or contact <orders@nbr.org>. 1414 NE 42nd Street, Suite 300 Seattle, Washington 98105 USA 206-632-7370 the national bureau of asian research
Southeast Asia 309 SOUTHEAST ASIA Sheldon W. Simon Southeast Asia s political and economic variety covers the gamut from powerful and effective governments (Singapore) to the early stages of state-building, national identity, and cohesiveness (East Timor, Laos, and Cambodia) and points in between where political pluralism is still fragile (the Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia). Although 10 of Southeast Asia s 11 members form the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), this organization has been of limited utility in recent regional crises such as the 1997 98 Asian financial crisis, the 1999 secession of East Timor from Indonesia, and the current U.S. war on terrorism in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the United States. This chapter assesses Southeast Asia in the wake of September 11 and the reactions of the region s core states to U.S. efforts to create effective regional anti-terrorist cooperation. The focus is on those Southeast Asian states where terrorist cells operate and where there is at least some evidence that these cells aid one another across national boundaries Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand. Radicals in Southeast Asia constitute a relatively small minority of the Muslim community throughout Sheldon Simon is Professor of Political Science at Arizona State University and Director of Southeast Asian Studies at The National Bureau of Asian Research. He wishes to particularly thank Richard Ellings and Michael Wills for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of this paper, and Loren Runyon who prepared the tables and figures. Special thanks go to Aaron Friedberg for his guidance in sharpening the implications of this study.
310 Strategic Asia 2002 03 the region, though Islamist cells have been discovered in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines. While there is some evidence of transnational cooperation among the radicals, for the most part their activities are confined to the countries in which they are located. None seriously threatens any government s viability. However, without continued economic growth and a more equitable distribution of national wealth, particularly in Indonesia and the southern Philippines, as well as reduced corruption and coercion, particularly by political elites in Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, the conditions which nurture militants will persist. These conditions, of course, vary among the core states in Southeast Asia. Malaysia s Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has used the war on terrorism to strengthen his party s position by painting the Muslim opposition as supportive of terror. Indonesian officials have eschewed confrontation with radicals, fearing an electoral backlash in the world s largest Muslim democracy. The Philippines, recently with direct U.S. military and financial assistance, has cracked down on the most extreme terrorists in the south, the Abu Sayyaf, while negotiating power-sharing arrangements with two much larger Muslim political movements. In Thailand, persistent low-level violence in the south does not appear to be linked to the region s Islamists. U.S. anti-terrorist actions are focused on the southern Philippines, where U.S. Special Forces are advising the Philippine military, although not actually participating in the hunt for terrorists. In the rest of the region, Washington offers assistance to upgrade law enforcement capability, intelligence sharing, and ways to interdict and freeze terrorist finances. While the Bush administration hopes to reestablish military ties with Indonesia as a key component of Washington s anti-terrorist, Southeast Asian coalition, U.S. congressional strictures preclude this until those Indonesian military officers responsible for atrocities in East Timor are brought to justice. Exchange of intelligence with the United States on terrorist activities has been formally established with Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand following FBI Director Robert Mueller s visit to Southeast Asia in March 2002. Southeast Asian states on their own have begun to work together. Statements condemning terrorism and urging intelligence sharing and collaboration among law enforcement authorities have been issued by ASEAN and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). However, the most effective anti-terrorist cooperation has been bilateral, particularly between Singapore and Malaysia. The latest development, though, is a counter-terrorism agreement among Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand to monitor their porous borders, across which illegal migration is ubiquitous. The efficacy of all these new joint efforts is problematic, however, given the limited surveillance and interdiction capabilities of Southeast Asian states.
Southeast Asia 311 In sum, Southeast Asian states recognize the importance of collaborating to fight transnational terrorism, but their capabilities to do so are limited, and the political challenge of Islamists varies greatly from state to state. U.S. offers of assistance are generally welcome, though no Southeast Asian government wishes to be seen as pandering to U.S. demands, especially since many Southeast Asian Muslims insist that the U.S. war on terrorism is really an attack on Islam. Emphasizing the distinction between Islamist terrorists and the vast majority of peaceful Muslims is essential for both the United States and its Southeast Asian partners. Southeast Asia and the War on Terrorism The U.S. war on terrorism came home to Southeast Asia in December 2001 January 2002. In these two months, authorities in Singapore and Malaysia arrested dozens of Islamists who had organized clandestine cells in each country s capital. Targeting U.S. and other western embassies as well as U.S. forces in Singapore, the cells included Indonesians, Malaysians, and Singaporeans and were also linked to individuals in the Philippines. The transnational and covert nature of these groups stunned regional security officials, for, until their discovery, it had been generally believed that although Islamism existed in Southeast Asia, it neither dominated the region s faithful nor had become radicalized. In the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks on the United States, all Southeast Asian governments supported the UN Security Council resolutions condemning the attacks. Moreover, at their November 2001 summit in Brunei, all ASEAN leaders agreed to adopt a declaration on joint action to counter terrorism. Yet, at the same meeting, ASEAN representatives stressed that at the international level, the UN should play a major role in this regard. 1 ASEAN was not about to offer a carte blanche endorsement for unilateral American actions against terror, especially since U.S. officials were speculating that Al Qaeda elements might shift their operations to the Philippines and Indonesia as they fled Afghanistan. 2 Indeed, while localized violence could be found in Indonesia and the Philippines before September 11, these flare-ups were not part of the work of a global network. Rather, they were movements for autonomy or independence (Aceh and Papua in Indonesia, and Mindanao in the Philippines) or communal conflicts over who would control particular regions (the Malukus and Sulawesi in Indonesia). While regional intelligence organizations were aware of some Malaysians involved in Indonesia s Laskar Jihad paramilitary, in general, these groups were small and homegrown. 3 Nevertheless, Malaysia s Defense Minister Najib Tun Razak acknowledged that Malaysian militants might well have contacts with Al Qaeda at the inter-
312 Strategic Asia 2002 03 national level, while dismissing the possibility that Al Qaeda cells were present in Malaysia. 4 More disturbing is that the sleeper cells disrupted in Malaysia and Singapore had been in place for up to eight years. They communicated with supporters in Indonesia and the Philippines, and several members were trained by Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Malaysia may have been the center for this coterie of cells because Kuala Lumpur does not require visas for citizens from Muslim countries. 5 In effect, these groups exploited the porous borders among the Southeast Asian states. Joining smugglers, gun-runners, and human and narcotics traffickers persistent security threats of previous years are now Islamist terrorists. Clearly, Southeast Asia s strategic environment had become more precarious after the events of September 11. How prepared was the region to cope? In contrast to China, its neighbor to the north, Southeast Asia was weaker politically, economically, and militarily. While the 10 Southeast Asian states (East Timor, the putative eleventh, was a UN protectorate from its 1999 referendum until it obtained formal independence in May 2002) meet regularly for political, economic, and security discussions in ASEAN as well as ARF an organization encompassing all Asian-Pacific states, exclusively devoted to regional security, and led by ASEAN these groups manage to avoid dealing with the core security concerns of their members. 6 Since formal decisions in both ASEAN and the ARF require consensus, controversial concerns such as the future of the South China Sea islands or drug smuggling across national borders seldom appear on their agendas. Instead, the ARF works best when developing cooperative strategies for peripheral security concerns that yield benefits for all at reasonable national costs. These include measures to deal with piracy, ocean pollution, regional haze, and transnational crime. In these deliberations, no blame is allocated. Rather, proposed multilateral solutions presume that all governments want to resolve the problems they face in common. In fact, however, lying beneath this placid surface remain mutual suspicions among most ASEAN members: Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore have long-term concerns about each other; Thai-Burmese relations are strained over drug trafficking and hundreds of thousands of Burmese refugees in Thailand; friction in Philippine-Malaysian relations exists over lawless elements from Mindanao illegally resident in eastern Malaysia; and Thai-Malaysian relations sometimes flare over an irredentist movement in southern Thailand with crossborder affinity to Malaysia. While these tensions have been contained and even transcended through ASEAN membership, they nevertheless have inhibited security cooperation on core issues such as efforts by religious extremists to destabilize regional governments.