Stretching the 'war on terror'
 
Philip Bowring IHT
Wednesday, August 14, 2002
Southeast Asia
 
HONG KONG The "war on terror" in southeast Asia is looking increasingly muddled, despite the recent pledge by 22 countries at the ASEAN regional security forum to step up the fight.
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The International Crisis Group, a conflict resolution group headed by Gareth Evans, a former Australian foreign minister, has concluded in a detailed report that contrary to most impressions given in the media, there is scant evidence of links between Al Qaeda and a long-established network of Indonesian radicals. A witch-hunt of nonviolent fundamentalists was more likely to incite sympathy for their cause.
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Meanwhile last week the United States declared the New People's Army in the Philippines to be a terrorist organization. This classification of one of Asia's oldest Communist rebel groups followed Secretary of State Colin Powell's visit to Manila. It pleased President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who is eager for U.S. backing for her recently announced "war" on the NPA, which has been growing in strength.
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However, Arroyo was criticized by Vice President Teofisto Guingona, who favors continuation of dialogue with the National Democratic Front, the NPA's political wing. Where all this leaves the dialogue is unclear. The NDF's leader, Jose-Ma Sison, who lives in the Netherlands, responded to Arroyo with suggestions that the NPA step up attacks on government and military installations. With the Philippines split on how to deal with the NPA, U.S. involvement in this particular "war on terror" may not be wise.
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The renewed attention to the NPA has underscored how preoccupation with Abu Sayyaf has benefited the larger and more ideological rebel movements. The NPA, which reached its peak in the last days of the Marcos era, has seen its fortunes revive. Under Presidents Joseph Estrada and Arroyo, military attention has been diverted to Muslim areas - and hopes that democracy would lead to alleviation of rural poverty have been dashed. Some leftists who had abandoned the gun for the ballot box are again espousing revolution.
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Meanwhile in the south, the effort needed to pursue Abu Sayyaf, a small gang confined to the Sulu archipelago, has enabled the Moro Islamic Liberation Front to consolidate its hold over a large area of western Mindanao. The MILF has now recovered the ground lost to Estrada's offensive against it.
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Pinning terror labels on rebel groups will help Manila get U.S. material support. But it is highly unlikely that the Philippines military will succeed in crushing them, and closer involvement of the U.S. could make political solutions or extended truces more difficult.
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Independent observers are taking a cynical view of aspects of the Philippines-U.S. relationship. The ICG report accuses Manila of planting explosives on an Indonesian radical, Agus Dwikarna, who was arrested in March. It also notes that there is limited evidence to link Al Qaeda with members of the "Ngruki network" a loose Indonesian group founded by the preacher Abu Bakar Baasyir.
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The ICG report traces the roots of the network to the Darul Islam movement of the independence era. Suppression of Islamic state proponents in the 1980s took Baasyir into exile. Back home after Suharto's downfall, Baasyir has been advocating an Islamic state and a vague idea for a revived caliphate. This not illegal.
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The United States has urged the arrest of Baasyir, but the ICG report argues that "preventive arrests without hard evidence could be counter-productive." While individual members of the network may have committed crimes, association with it is not tantamount to supporting terrorism.
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The ICG report concludes that Indonesia is not a hotbed of terrorism, implicitly rejecting Washington's suggestion that Southeast Asia is the "second front" in the war.
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In Indonesia there are domestic perpetrators of communal violence, some of them well organized. But the ICG report and renewed attention to the NPA both underline the domestic origins of radicalism, peaceful or violent, Islamic, Marxist or separatist, in southeast Asia. Internationalization of them through the "global war on terror" may exacerbate the problems rather than suppress the symptoms.
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International Herald Tribune
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