| When did it become a secret? |
THE three main Southeast Asian Islamic terrorist groups have had a strong, secret alliance for almost 20 years, which continues to train Jemaah Islamiah's bomb-makers, intelligence documents reveal. The documents, compiled from interviews with a senior JI defector and other sources, confirm long-held suspicions that two training camps of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the southern Philippines are the nerve centre of regional terrorism. The former JI leader's admissions defy claims by the Philippines Government and the MILF that militant training in the camps ceased four years ago, at the start of delicate negotiations about autonomy for the Muslim minority in the country's south. But the JI man Mohammed Nassir bin Abbas, formerly a leader of the main camp, has told foreign agents that links have instead strengthened, in particular with the infamous group Abu Sayyaf, renowned for beheading Westerners.
Nassir's first-hand account is seen as a missing link in decades of suspicion about the potential threat posed by the camps and their infiltration by terrorists. "As long as the JI training camps are intact in Mindanao, JI will replenish its human losses and material wastage and continue the fight," said Rohan Gunaratna of Singapore's Institute of Strategic and Defence Studies. "JI's strategic base is the southern Philippines."
The information was provided about the same time an Australian white paper declared that militancy in the southern Philippines posed potentially the biggest security threat to Australia. It also surfaced as John Howard yesterday announced the possibility of pre-emptive strikes against terrorist bases that threaten Australia. Over the past two months, the Department of Foreign Affairs and its spy service, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, have made the region a primary focus of their intelligence gathering. "Initially, the Australian authorities refused to believe that MILF was hosting and training JI members," Professor Gunaratna said. "Today, there is overwhelming proof that JI has been training in the southern Philippines for over 10 years." |