The Shadow Over The Summit
As leaders meet, Southeast Asia gets serious about its terrorists
Thailand's freewheeling capital, Bangkok, is undergoing a kind of urban lockdown this week. As many as 10,000 soldiers and cops are being deployed across the city. Overhead, F-16 fighter jets will patrol the skies. Even the city's taxi drivers and hotel clerks are being trained to spot suspicious characters. The reason: the October 20-21 summit of 21 presidents and prime ministers from around the Pacific Rim, including President Bush.
The unprecedented security is but the latest sign that the region is finally taking terrorism seriously. While Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network is on the run in much of the world, it has sunk deep roots in Southeast Asia and has officials there on edge. "I cannot think of another region where there is such a large number of members, sympathizers, and supporters of al Qaeda and its network," says analyst Rohan Gunaratna, who advises governments on terrorism. Malaysia and the Philippines have played key roles in al Qaeda's most ambitious plans, serving as a base for the plotters of 9/11 and other attacks. Al Qaeda's camps in Afghanistan trained hundreds of Southeast Asian jihadists, and they have returned home to foment terrorism and insurgency.
U.S. officials say that "extreme measures" are being taken to guard President Bush and his entourage throughout a trip that includes stops in Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, and Australia. They believe the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit itself will be secure but worry about so-called soft targets, such as western businesses and tourist spots. Adding to the unease: reports that al Qaeda has smuggled a half-dozen shoulder-fired missiles into Thailand. The reports are unconfirmed, but intelligence sources note that al Qaeda operatives had sought similar missiles in neighboring Cambodia late last year.
Bloody record. At the heart of al Qaeda's work in the region stands Jemaah Islamiyah, an ambitious homegrown network with cells that stretch from Thailand and Indonesia down to Australia. Singaporean officials believe JI has some 5,000 members, with a hard core of several hundred operatives. Founded around 1995 by veterans of the anti-Soviet Afghan war, JI calls for formation of a pan-Islamic state encompassing the region's 200 million Muslims.
JI's record is a bloody one. Its bombings last October in Bali, Indonesia, murdered 202 people and wounded hundreds more in the worst terrorist attack since 9/11. The group is blamed for an August 5 blast at a Marriott hotel in Jakarta, which killed a dozen others. And JI is now believed to have been behind the "Christmas Eve bombings" in 2000--a wave of attacks against nearly 40 Christian churches and priests across Indonesia that killed 19 and wounded 120. Security officials believe they have thwarted dozens of attacks, including plots to bomb U.S. and allied diplomatic posts and to crash a hijacked Aeroflot plane into Singapore's international airport.
Until a year ago, Washington's warnings about JI and al Qaeda fell on deaf ears through much of the region. Indonesian officials finally got the message after the Bali bombings, which crippled the nation's tourist trade. Thai officials, too, proved reluctant partners until this summer, when they found one of al Qaeda's top terrorists plotting attacks from just outside Bangkok. With local authorities finally on board, a sustained crackdown has produced over 200 arrests of JI members. In recent weeks, Indonesian courts have sentenced three defendants in the Bali case to death by firing squad and meted out stiff prison terms to 13 others. Once considered untouchable, Abu Bakar Bashir, the 65-year-old cleric thought to be JI's spiritual head, was slapped with four years in jail for sedition. "They're having to devote considerable resources to not getting caught," says CIA veteran Paul Quaglia, director of PSA Asia, a Bangkok-based security firm. "They're on the defensive."
Despite the progress, JI remains a lethal and unpredictable force, officials say. Most of those arrested have been foot soldiers, and many of its key operatives--including the group's top bomb makers--remain at large. "They are patient, determined, regrouping and rebuilding their network," warns Prof. Zachary Abuza, author of Militant Islam in Southeast Asia.
Once in custody, JI's fanatics have proved surprisingly talkative. Their interrogations have led to a better understanding of the group's structure--and to alarm among some officials. The organization is bigger than previously thought, with "a deep bench" that may be able to quickly replace key leaders. The debriefings have also confirmed what officials long suspected: that JI's leadership and funding are closely entwined with those of bin Laden's organization. Many of its top members trained at al Qaeda's Afghan camps. And in the past year, officials say, much of JI's cash has come from al Qaeda, including $80,000 for the bombings in Bali and Jakarta. But JI's structure is so loose that much about it remains unknown. "We still don't know exactly what the cell structure is or whether we have really crippled them or not," says a senior counterterrorism official.
Equally troubling are revelations about ties between JI and like-minded Islamists across the region. JI's reputed spiritual leader Bashir leads the Mujahideen Council of Indonesia, an alliance of some 100 radical and militant groups. JI also has links to Abu Sayyaf, a Philippine group that purports to have an Islamist agenda but has descended into criminal gangs of kidnappers and thieves. JI instructors have given Abu Sayyaf groups training in weapons and tactics, say Philippine military sources.
Training camps. But it is JI's ties with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front that has officials most concerned. With as many as 12,000 guerrillas, the MILF is the region's largest insurgency, and it has waged a 25-year-long fight for an Islamic state in the southern Philippines. Until Philippine troops in 2000 overran its major training base, Camp Abu Bakar, the facility served as a kind of mini-Afghanistan, training militants from across Southeast Asia. JI and al Qaeda not only provided funds for MILF, but JI's Afghan veterans ran two of their own camps at Abu Bakar. Intelligence reports suggest that MILF and JI have now established smaller training camps in the region. The close ties prompted U.S. officials this month to warn MILF it may be cut out of $30 million in U.S. aid pledged as part of a peace pact between it and the Philippine government.
As it has worldwide, success for America's terrorist hunters has come through dogged detective work and close work with local authorities. In August, a joint CIA-Thai Police Special Branch team tracked down the region's most wanted man: Riduan Isamuddin, better known by his nom de guerre "Hambali." The Indonesian served as JI's operations chief, held a seat on al Qaeda's ruling council, and was tied to a half-dozen plots going back to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Investigators traced the wily operative through his fake Spanish passport, first to a travel agent handling his visa renewal, then to a courier who met his bodyguard in a Bangkok mosque, and finally to Hambali himself at a safe house an hour away.
Despite such successes, cracking down on JI remains a daunting task. Corruption and crime are rife throughout the region, giving militants ready access to smuggling routes, weapons, and fake identity papers. Investigators have uncovered a network of charities and front companies that have moved money to JI and al Qaeda, but, says Abuza, "Authorities are getting almost nowhere on the money." Among the problems: weak laws, poorly funded investigators, and a lack of political will. "In Malaysia, where most of their front companies have been identified, they won't shut them down because the Malaysians fear a backlash," Abuza says. "In Indonesia, they won't even look."
Several captives have fingered a leading Saudi charity, al Haramain, as the major conduit for al Qaeda's funds in Indonesia. Another Saudi charity, the International Islamic Relief Organization, was raided in the Philippines for its alleged terrorist ties. Despite moves to close the two groups, each has reopened under different names, sources say. Al Haramain, moreover, has worked closely with KOMPAK, an Indonesian charity with 13 offices nationwide, according to Abuza. At least two of KOMPAK's offices are allegedly run by senior JI members, he says, but local authorities are reluctant to investigate. (KOMPAK officials refused a U.S. News request for an interview.) "Acknowledge the links to KOMPAK, and all of a sudden you taint an organization seen as clean by a whole range of the Muslim elite," says Sidney Jones, who studies JI for the International Crisis Group. "If you take one step beyond JI, you get into the center of the Muslim establishment."
Such close ties suggest that pulling out the roots of radical Islam in the region will not be easy. "Everybody wants to think of Southeast Asian Muslims as the cuddly moderates, and for the vast majority it's true," says Abuza. "But the ranks of the radicals are growing."
SOUTHEAST ASIAN TERRORISTS
With its traditions of moderate Islam, Southeast Asia has been slow to recognize the spread of radicalism. This week, President Bush flies to the region for an economic summit and other meetings.
ACTIVE ISLAMIC TERRORIST GROUPS
JEMAAH ISLAMIYAH
The region's best-organized terrorist group, closely tied to al Qaeda. With some 5,000 members and hundreds of hard-core operatives.
AL QAEDA
Osama bin Laden's terrorist network has deep roots in Southeast Asia, drawing on hundreds of Afghan war veterans. Al Qaeda operatives plotted the 9/11 hijackings and other big attacks from the region.
KUMPULAN MUJAHIDEEN MALAYSIA
KMM calls for the overthrow of the Malaysian government and creation of an Islamic state. Its 70 to 80 members are accused of bombings, robberies, and assassinations.
MORO ISLAMIC LIBERATION FRONT
The MILF is the largest Islamic separatist group in the Philippines, with up to 12,000 members. Responsible for numerous bombings and a sustained guerrilla war.
ABU SAYYAF
Abu Sayyaf calls for an Islamic state, but its 200 to 500 members have descended into criminal gangs engaged in extortion, murder, and kidnapping for profit.
Stops on the President Bush's Southeast Asian trip, October 17-23:
Thailand
Malaysia
Singapore
Philippines
Indonesia
[Map is not available.]
THAILAND
Capital: Bangkok
Active terrorist groups: Jemaah Islamiyah; Al Qaeda
MALAYSIA
Capital: Kuala Lumpur
Active terrorist groups: Jemaah Islamiyah; Al Qaeda; Kumpulan Mujahideen Malaysia
SINGAPORE
Active terrorist groups: Jemaah Islamiyah; Al Qaeda
PHILIPPINES
Capital: Manila
Active terrorist groups: Jemaah Islamiyah; Al Qaeda; Moro Islamic Liberation Front; Abu Sayyaf
INDONESIA
Capital: Jakarta
Active terrorist groups: Jemaah Islamiyah; Al Qaeda
[Other labels]
SUMATRA
JAVA
PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Pacific Ocean
South China Sea
Stephen Rountree--USN&WR
With Anthony Davis, Paul Dillon and Chitra Ragavan
This story appears in the October 20, 2003 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.