Asia's Terrorist Conundrum
October 2001
While focus has been on the Middle East, Asia
is fast becoming a terrorist breeding ground. From Singapore, Daniel Wagner
examines Asia's role.
by Daniel
Wagner
AIG
The World Trade Center (WTC) bombings were the worst act of terrorism in
history. New York and the United States paid a terrible price in terms of lives
lost and property damaged. The rest of the world has also paid a high price
in terms of collateral economic and financial damage. As horrific as the WTC
bombings were, it will prove to have served a very useful purpose as a wake-up
call to all the world's nations about the threat of global terrorism.
There has been a historical tendency to focus on the Middle East as the source
of most of the world's terrorists. It has been demonstrated by many of the developed
world's intelligence agencies that the Middle East is, in fact, the source of
much of the world's terrorism. The media helped promote the widely held belief
that the Middle East is the breeding ground for terrorists. When citizens of
most any country hear the word "terrorism," they are most likely to think there
is a link with the Middle East rather than any other part of the world. However,
because of the global network that some terrorist organizations have crafted,
Asia is fast becoming its own "breeding ground" for individuals who have the
propensity to become terrorists, or are terrorists.
Asia's Role in Terrorism
There is no way to know for certain what role Asians may have played in the
WTC bombings or in terrorist acts in general. But Asia has endured its own fair
share of terrorist actions over the past 12 months, whether it was the bombing
of the Hat Yai train station in Thailand, the bombing of the Philippine Embassy
in Jakarta, the bombing of a movie theater and metro rail line in Manila, or
the ongoing piracy of huge ships in the Straits of Malacca.
Only luck has prevented a number of other terrorist acts from taking place
in Asia. A few examples:
- An Iraqi agent was killed when the bomb he was trying to arm outside
a U.S.-funded library in Manila exploded prematurely in 1991.
- In 1994 a traffic accident foiled a plot by operatives of Osama bin
Laden ("OBL") to blow up the Israeli Embassy in Bangkok with a truck bomb.
- Police who were called to investigate a fire in a Manila apartment in
1995 discovered a computer file that outlined plans to blow up a dozen U.S.
commercial aircraft over the Pacific. This was later linked to Ramzi Yousef
and OBL.
- Muslim radicals stole arms from an army facility in Malaysia in 2000.
- Six months before the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, New Zealand police found
evidence in an Auckland home of a plan to attack a Sydney nuclear reactor,
thought to be linked to OBL.
There thus appears to be evidence that OBL's terrorist network—Al-Qaeda—
operates, sometimes with impunity, in many parts of Asia. Many Asian leaders,
including Malaysia's Mahathir, the Philippines' Arroyo, and Indonesia's Sukarnoputri,
have expressed concern about the growth in the number and severity of terrorist
acts in their own countries, and the region. That is why there is now open discussion
among Asia's leaders about sharing information and intelligence about terrorists
and their networks.
Even in countries where the problem has not surfaced, such as Singapore,
leaders have expressed concern. Singapore's Senior Minister Lee has said that
if terrorist networks take root in Indonesia and Malaysia, Singapore is clearly
vulnerable.
As for Asia's contribution to the Al-Qaeda network, during the 1990s, Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) stations in Asia and the Middle East followed the
movements of hundreds of Asians who left their home countries to study in Syria,
Iran, Egypt, and Pakistan. It has been estimated that 30 to 40 percent of these
individuals never reached their final destination.
Where did they go? Some simply fell through the information networks, completed
their studies, and returned home, quietly. Others, it appears, became radicalized.
It may not be widely recognized, but hundreds of Southeast Asians have fought
in Afghanistan, either as Mujahideen fighting the Soviets or as guerrillas with
the Taliban. It has been reported that thousands of these former fighters have
returned to Southeast Asia and maintain active links with Al-Qaeda.
The Governments' Challenge
Asia's governments' challenge is to identify the individuals who belong to
terror networks, monitor their activities, and control their actions. The fact
that many of these individuals are citizens of Asian countries makes it difficult
to prevent the proliferation of these organizations in the region. However,
a compounded problem is the generally lax immigration procedures that exist
in many Asian countries, which place an emphasis on promoting tourism rather
than identifying individuals who could pose a threat to national or regional
security. As a result, as long as a visitor to any number of Asian countries
does not have a criminal record, he/she is unlikely to be identified as a potential
source of danger.
The threat of domestically sourced terrorism is also an increasingly difficult
problem for authorities to grapple with. When a country has an indigenous opposition
force to address, it may be less inclined, or have fewer financial resources,
to concentrate on external threats.
Yet another challenge is the porous nature of the borders of many Asian countries.
The Philippines and Indonesia, for example, contain thousands of islands—ideal
places for people or organizations to hide. The difficulty the Philippine military
has had in finding the kidnapped tourists from Palawan from several months ago
is due in part to this problem (the Abu Sayyaf, who have claimed responsibility
for the kidnappings, have links to OBL and Al-Qaeda).
The diverse ethnic and religious groupings that exist in many Asian countries
only compound the problem. With so many groups of people comprising a national
population, identifying and tracking extremist elements becomes doubly difficult.
Concslusion
Clearly, Asia's governments need to do a better job of collecting and sharing
information with one another. The battle against global terrorism has a critical
Asian link. Asia's governments cannot afford to hesitate any longer in devoting
the resources necessary to combat this growing problem. Success in the war on
global terrorism will ultimately depend on the coordinated effort of all the
governments of the civilized world, and Asia has a major role to play.
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