South-east Asia faces the new breed of terrorism

 

Violence is a recurrent theme in the politics of south-east Asia. Separatist movements have been confronted with armed repression. In the Philippines, the government has for years been trying to suppress revolts by different groups in the south of the country. Indonesia, having lost East Timor, has tried to hold on to Aceh in north Sumatra through military force when negotiation has failed.

 

But lately this periodic unrest has started to assume a different character. What is new is the flow of fundamentalist Muslim ideas from the Arab-speaking heartland of the faith to the larger communities of Muslims to its east and south. We have already seen this in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Chechnya and north Africa. The Bali bombings last year and the reported terrorist training camps in Mindanao in the Philippines show how the rot has spread to south-east Asia.

 

The concept, familiar after September 11 2001, of a pyramid-shaped terrorist organisation called al-Qaeda, with the dramatic figure of Osama bin Laden at its apex, was misguided. We are faced instead with a network of local groups that can be closer to the people than the institutions of the legitimate government. They do not need an elaborate system of command and control and are therefore immune from any one paralysing blow. They thrive in the anti-western intellectual atmosphere created by the mistakes of their own pro-western governments and by the policies they attribute to the US and Israel.

 

To me, this creeping fundamentalism was the most significant theme of the recent Shangri-La defence conference in Singapore, organised by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Even the host country, a highly successful secular state, appears not to be immune. One eminent observer of the local scene told me that at the time of the 1991 Gulf war, no Singapore Muslims were interested in Palestine, believed that girls should wear the veil or wanted religion to be decisive in politics. That is no longer the case.

 

The region's governments have reacted in different ways. Thailand's first response was to play down the danger; Singapore and the Philippines confronted it. Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia's prime minister, tries to outwit it with his own critique of the US. Indonesia has been galvanised by the Bali bombing but President Megawati Sukarnoputri has also to wrestle with the myriad other problems of a huge emerging democracy.

 

Given this background, it was wise of Paul Wolfowitz, US deputy secretary of defence, to include a long passage on the Middle East and Iraq in his opening address to the Shangri-La conference. His audience listened more closely than they would have done 10 years ago. They welcomed the "road map" and George W. Bush's new determination to achieve a settlement in Palestine.

 

Mr Wolfowitz gave a sombre account of the security situation in central Iraq, where the US has recently been losing a soldier every two days. Is this the last gasp of the Ba'athist tyranny - as Mr Wolfowitz would have it - or the beginning of popular resentment against a foreign occupying force? He explained the Pentagon's policy of using smaller, more mobile, technically superior military units, no longer needing big bases vulnerable to local hostility. But how does that fit with the need for more US troops to keep order in Iraq - and for years rather than months of occupation - or with the parallel security problems in Afghanistan? You cannot police Baghdad or Kabul with missiles, however smart.

 

In dealing with terrorism, we all wrestle case by case with the tension between political and military techniques. Repressive occupation may produce greater security in the short term but more terrorists in the long term. The long-term benefits of democracy clash with the short-term risks of giving free rein to anti-western opinion.

 

So, in Singapore as elsewhere, there were questions and some disquiet about particular US doctrines and tactics. But this sat alongside relief that Mr Bush is committed to tackling the common problem of terrorism. In Asia the argument between the two sides of the Atlantic about unilateralism and multilateralism seems far away. There is a widespread hope that the president and his advisers have learnt from the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq the importance of local friendship and advice. But if the choice is between US involvement and US detachment, the vote for involvement is overwhelming.