Introduction: Terrorism and the State

On 11 September 2001, the United States of America awoke to horrifying images of airplanes ?ying into the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers. Within a span of forty-five minutes, the Twin Towers were reduced to rubble, killing 2752 people (www.cnn.com, 29 October 2003), and the United States was set on a path by George W. Bush’s Administration to defend itself from the threat of terror. On 20 September 2001, President Bush addressed a joint session of Congress and delivered a speech that began with these words:

The State and Terrorism: National Security and the Mobilization of Power

By Joseph H. Campos
Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2007

Contents:
Introduction: Terrorism and the State
1. The State in a Time of Terror
2. National Security Discourse on Terrorism in Cold War Presidential Rhetoric
3. National Security Discourse on Terrorism in Post-Cold War Presidential Rhetoric
4. Once They Were Human
5. State Versus Terror
6. Language, Knowledge, and Power in the Name of the State

The Regional Dimension: Jemaah Islamiyah

Background

JI is an active jihadist terrorist group with purported historic links to al-Qaeda. The group currently enjoys a concerted presence in Indonesia and, to a lesser extent, the Philippines and is known to have had established cells in Malaysia and Singapore. It has also tried to entrench an operational and logistical foothold in both southern Thailand and Cambodia. The United States designated JI a foreign terrorist organization in October 2002, shortly after the first Bali attacks (discussed later). The group was subsequently added to the United Nations’ (UN’s) list of proscribed entities, a move that requires all member states to freeze its assets, deny it access to funding, and prevent its cadres from entering or traveling through their territories (Manyin et al., 2004, p. 5).¹

The Evolving Terrorist Threat to Southeast Asia: A Net Assessment: Introduction

Terrorism is not new to Southeast Asia. Indeed, for much of the Cold War, the activities of a variety of domestic ethnonationalist and religious militant groups posed what was arguably one of the most signifcant challenges to the internal stability of several countries across the region. Tese violent organizations arose in reaction to the unwillingness of many Southeast Asian governments to acknowledge or recognize the right of minority self-determination. Such reticence essentially owed itself to an implicit fear that acceding to even limited ethnonationalist demands would result in an unstoppable secessionist tide, challenging the very basis of statehood that underscored Southeast Asian post-colonial identity (Acharya, 1993, p. 19; see also Christie, 1996; Jeshurun, 1985; Joo-Jock and Vani, 1984; D. Brown, 1994; Findlay, 1996; and Nathan, 1997).

The Evolving Terrorist Threat to Southeast Asia: A Net Assessment: Summary

The Current Terrorist Threat

Overall, the terrorist threat to the countries covered in this monograph remains a serious but largely manageable security problem. In Tailand, while the scale and scope of Islamist-inspired violence in the three southern Malay provinces of Yala, Pattani, and Narathiwat have become more acute since 2004, the confict has (thus far) not spread to the country’s majority non-Muslim population nor has it taken on an anti-Western dimension.¹ Indeed, at the time of this writing, outside demagogues and radicals had singularly failed to gain any concerted logistical or ideological foothold in the region, which suggests that Tailand’s so-called “deep south” is unlikely to become a new hub for furthering the transregional designs of fundamentalist jihadi elements.

The Evolving Terrorist Threat to Southeast Asia: A Net Assessment

Peter Chalk, Angel Rabasa, William Rosenau, Leanne Piggott
RAND Corporation 2009

Contents

Preface

Summary

1. Introduction
2. Malay Muslim extremism in Southern Tailand
3. Muslim and Communist extremism in the Philippines
4. Terrorism and National Security in Indonesia
5. The regional Dimension: Jemaah Islamiyah
6. Counterterrorism and National Security in Tailand
7. Counterterrorism and National Security in the Philippines
8. Counterterrorism and National Security in Indonesia
9. National Security in Southeast Asia: The U.S. Dimension
10. Conlusion

The Talibanization of Southeast Asia: Losing the War on Terror to Islamist Extremists: Introduction

Behind the Veil of Successful Counterterrorism

Prior to the September 11, 2001 (hereafter the 9/11 Incident), attacks on the United States, governments and security planners in Southeast Asia had already been preoccupied with the threat posed by religious extremism and terrorism. There is a long history of both secular and religious-oriented terrorism in the region. In particular, the region has long been threatened by Jihadists, armed Islamist groups who declared war against various central governments with the goal of either gaining greater political autonomy, as was the case in southern Thailand and the Philippines, or outright secession, as was the case in Aceh, Indonesia.

The Talibanization of Southeast Asia: Losing the War on Terror to Islamist Extremists: Preface

Southeast Asia had been afflicted with the danger of terrorism, long before the United States and the Western world became aware of the threat in the wake of September 11, 2001 (hereafter referred to as the 9/11 Incident), attacks on New York and Washington. Various enduring factors such as historical developments, nature of geography, ethnic-religious makeup, accessibility to external forces, the role of extraneous actors in dominating the politics and economy of the region, and the nature of regimes in the region have entrenched terrorism, particularly associated with religious extremism in the region. This was evident in Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, and the Philippines since the end of the Second World War in 1945.

The Talibanization of Southeast Asia: Losing the War on Terror to Islamist Extremists

Bilveer Singh
Praeger Security International, London, 2007

(Bilveer Singh is Associate Professor of Political Science at the National University of Singapore. A former Fulbright Scholar, he is also the author of nine books, including Succession Politics in Indonesia: The 1998 Presidential Elections and the Fall of Suharto (2000), Defense Relations between Australia and Indonesia in the Post-Cold War Era (2002), and Politics and Government in Singapore: An Introduction (2007))

Contents

Preface

Abbreviations

Glossary of Key Islamic Terms

Chronology: The Al-Jama’ah Al-Islamiyyah in Southeast Asia

Introduction: Behind the Veil of Successful Counterterrorism

1. Religious Extremism and Terrorism: A Conceptual Framework
2. Southeast Asia’s Experience with Old and New Islamist Extremism and Jihadism
3. The Rise of Al-Jama’ah Al-Islamiyyah as Southeast Asia’s Leading: Transnational Terrorist Organization
4. Counterterrorism in Southeast Asia: One Step Forward, Two Steps Backward?

Conclusion: Southeast Asia’s Failure in Its War on Terror against Islamist Extremism and the Road Ahead

Appendix 1: General Guidelines on the Struggle of Jama’ah Islamiyyah

Appendix 2: ASEAN Agreements on Combating Terrorism

Appendix 3: ASEAN’s AJAI Operatives Who Have Been Detained, Released, or Killed (as of June 2007)

America’s War on Terrorism: The Spoils of War: Afghanistan’s Multibillion Dollar Heroin Trade

CHAPTER 16
The Spoils of War: Afghanistan’s Multibillion Dollar Heroin Trade

Since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, the Golden Crescent opium trade has soared. According to the US media, this lucrative contraband is pro-tected by Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, as well as, of course, the regional warlords, in defiance of the “international commu-nity”. The heroin business is said to be “filling the coffers of the Taliban”. In the words of the US State Department:

America’s War on Terrorism: War Criminals in High Office

Part 4: The New World Order

Chapter 15
War Criminals in High Office

Under the Bush administration, torture has become an official US Government policy. The orders to torture POWs in Iraq and Guantanamo emanated from the highest governmental levels. Prison guards, interrogators in the US military and the CIA were responding to precise guidelines.

The President directly authorized the use of torture including “sleep deprivation, stress positions, the use of military dogs, and sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc.”(1)

The Deportation of Civilians to the Guantanamo Concentration Camp

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER 14
The Deportation of Civilians to the Guantanamo Concentration Camp

by Leuren Moret

In November 2001, during the Holy Month of Ramadan, a contingent of ten missionary members from Pakistan made a Tableegh Dora, routine preaching visit to the Northern Afghanistan Province of Kunduz. Among them was Mr. Sagheer, 54, a religious man from Phattan, a town in Pakistan near the border of Afghanistan, who had traveled as a preacher on other Tableegh (preaching missions). During this visit he was swept up and arrested with thousands of others by Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, the area Northern Alliance commander, “on the instructions and orders of the US Government/Army…in a hunt against Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, the Taliban and [Taliban leader] Mullah Umer”.(1)

Mr. Sagheer was transported from Kunduz by truck with other prisoners in containers where many died, some who were injured were buried alive, others held in jails in Afghanistan, and finally he was transported by the US military to Guantanamo Bay.(2) There he was held like other prisoners in small cages, subjected to torture, humiliation, violation of religious prohibitions, denied legal rights, beaten and interrogated at Camp Delta.

America’s War on Terrorism: Protecting Al Qaeda Fighters in the War Theater

Chapter 14
Protecting Al Qaeda Fighters in the War Theater

In late November 2001, the Northern Alliance, supported by US bombing raids, took the hill town of Kunduz in Northern Afghanistan. Eight thousand or more men “had been trapped inside the city in the last days of the siege, roughly half of whom were Pakistanis. Afghans, Uzbeks, Chechens, and various Arab merce-naries accounted for the rest.”(1)

Also among these fighters, were several senior Pakistani military and intelligence officers, who had been dispatched to the war theater by the Pakistani military.

America’s War on Terrorism: Providing a Face to the Enemy: Who is Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi?

Chapter 13
Providing a Face to the Enemy: Who is Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi?

The “war on terrorism” requires a humanitarian mandate. It is presented as a “Just War” to be fought on moral grounds “to redress a wrong suffered”.

The Just War theory defines “good” and “evil”. It concretely portrays and personifies the terrorist leaders as “evil individuals”.

America’s War on Terrorism: 9/11 and the Iran-Contra Scandal

Chapter 12
9/11 and the Iran-Contra Scandal

The Bush administration accuses people of having links to Al Qaeda. This is the national security doctrine behind the anti-terrorist legislation and Homeland Security. It is not only part of the Administration’s disinformation campaign, it is also used to arrest thousands of people on trumped up charges.

Ironically, several key members of the Bush Administration who were the architects of the anti-terrorist agenda, played a key role in supporting and financing Al Qaeda.