Posted on: Sunday, November 14, 2004
THE RISING EAST
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By Richard Halloran
Like ink stains, blots of extremist Islamic terror are spreading across Southeast Asia, with southern Thailand as the latest target, and with spurs reaching out to Australia in the south and South Korea in the north.
The rise of an Islamic insurgency in Thailand's Kra Isthmus, where a Muslim separatist movement has been simmering for 20 years, has the marks of a classic maneuver by al-Qaida, the Islamic terrorist network led by Osama bin Laden. He is still at large, and broadcast a vitriolic message to Americans just before the Nov. 2 presidential election.
David Longstreath • Associated Press "We're watching it closely," said a U.S. official with access to intelligence reports, "and we're hoping to learn more."
Within the last two months, Muslims extremists have repeatedly attacked Thai government offices, police stations, security forces, homes of local officials and village chiefs, and markets. Since the beginning of the year, the insurgents reported that they have killed 360 people.
In response, Thai police have cracked down, killing 85 rioters in a raid that drew protests from the king of Thailand and the U.S. government for being excessive. That crackdown led, in turn, to revenge bombings by the insurgents and the beheading of a Buddhist village leader.
Further escalation of the violence is expected and no end is in sight, even though Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has vowed to stamp out the insurgency.
The insurgency in southern Thailand has strained relations between Thailand and next-door Malaysia. The Thai government has alleged that Malaysia has provided a haven across the border for the Muslim insurgents, who are ethnic Malays. Malaysia has denied that and accused the Thai government of oppressing the Muslims in southern Thailand.
Analysts have noted that Al Jazeera, the Islamic broadcast network based in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar, has played up the Thai insurgency, suggesting growing links with other Islamic terrorist networks.
Meanwhile, Australian intelligence agencies have identified Muslims who were trained by al-Qaida in Afghanistan before the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Australia is home to about 340,000 Muslims, 4 percent of the population, a third native-born.
Far to the north, al-Qaida has threatened terrorist actions in South Korea in response to the dispatch of 3,600 South Korean soldiers to Iraq alongside U.S. and other coalition troops there. At least two such threats have been posted in recent weeks, and a potential target would be U.S. forces stationed there.
About 500,000 Muslims live in South Korea.
Islamic extremist networks in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and wherever else they operate are said not to be aligned in a tightly-knit, hierarchical organization but rather to be loosely affiliated with one another as they draw financial and logistical support from al-Qaida.
In Southeast Asia, the leading unit within this network is Jemaah Islamiya, which numbers anywhere from several hundred activists to 5,000 members. Formed in the late 1990s, its avowed goal is to establish an Islamic state that would include Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, southern Thailand and the southern Philippines.
While Muslim terrorist cells are believed to exist in Malaysia, the Malaysian Special Branch (counter-terrorist operatives) is said to have drawn on the experience of its predecessors who defeated Chinese guerrillas in the 1960s to keep today's potential terrorists at bay.
The government of the city-state of Singapore, which is home to citizens of Chinese, Malay, Tamil Indian and European ancestry, is especially nervous about being swamped in a Muslim sea.
That underlies the frequent plea from Singapore leaders to the Americans: "Stick around, don't go home."
Singapore has been quietly supportive of the U.S. war on terror.
Jemaah Islamiya was responsible for the bombing on the Indonesian island Bali in October 2002, and is still active there despite the capture of its leader, Riduan Issamudin, usually called Hambali, in Thailand in August 2003.
Moreover, the Philippine government has been unable to make progress against Muslim insurgents known as Abu Sayyaf, an organization which has seized several foreign tourists and held them for ransom. The U.S. State Department has more than once warned Americans to stay away from there.
Richard Halloran is a Honolulu-based journalist and former New York Times correspondent in Asia. He wrote this article for The Advertiser.
Al-Qaida did not start the Muslim insurgency in overwhelmingly Buddhist Thailand but waited until it was well under way, and then may have injected training, weapons and money into the movement through its Southeast Asian affiliate, Jemaah Islamiya.
Buddhist monks made their early-morning rounds Tuesday in Pattani, Thailand, begging under the watchful eye of a soldier. Islamic militants beheaded a Buddhist laborer in Thailand's south, police said Tuesday, the second such killing in retaliation for the deaths of 85 Muslims by security forces last month.
