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| Southeast Asia |
| SE Asian Muslims turning to radical clerics |
| 2005-09-29 |
| SUPPORT for terrorism among previously moderate Muslims in Southeast Asia is increasing, according to Australian Federal Police intelligence that warns Australian interests will remain vulnerable for at least a decade. The AFP's counter-terrorism manager, Ben McDevitt, told a conference of army chiefs that the successes of police and intelligence forces around the region in disrupting operations of groups such as Jemaah Islamiah - responsible for the Bali bombings in late 2002 - were not replicated in the "war of ideology". Mr McDevitt told the conference that in the eyes of al-Qaeda "Australia is a clear and perhaps vulnerable target". "It seems more likely than not that Islamist terrorism in Southeast Asia will impact on the region for at least the next decade," he said. "Terrorism in the region appears to be self-sustaining and it could be argued sympathy for the terrorists, if not for their methods, seems to be growing." Mr McDevitt said appeal for the extremist Islamic ideology was growing among Muslims who saw modernisation as a threat to the traditional values of Islam. He said claims that the war on terror was actually a war on Islam appeared to have found favour in the region. Intelligence on terrorist groups showed that they were becoming looser alliances with global support networks. But he said police forces could get clues to a potential terrorist act because terrorists had to commit crimes in the lead-up to the act in order to prepare and fund themselves. "Investigators working on money laundering, drug trafficking, people smuggling and other crimes need to constantly be sensitive to any possible indirect or direct links to terrorism," he said. Mr McDevitt's comments were supported by a new study on radical Islam in Indonesia that found, despite the decimation of the JI leadership, that it continued to pose a significant threat to Australians. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute study, Local Jihad, finds that in Indonesia JI is now deeply split between those who favour large-scale jihadist attacks and supporters who want to return to the organisation's roots and the long-term campaign for an Islamic state in Indonesia. "It would be wrong to assume that a divided JI would mean a greatly reduced terrorist threat," ASPI concludes. "If JI is fragmenting, this may result in a more diffuse pattern of terrorist activity, rather than one focused on a single terrorist organisation." The ASPI study, written by Greg Fealy from the Australian National University and ASPI's Aldo Borgu, argues that the global terrorist challenge requires flexible policy responses from the Australian Government. They say that as much as JI sees itself as part of the global jihadist movement, it also regards itself as the heir to Darul Islam, the radical Indonesian group that fought for an Islamic state from the late 1940s and helped inspire JI. "The global war on terror has limited application in determining what our response should be to counter extremist Islamist terrorism in Indonesia," they say. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 A return to orthodoxy, eh? |
| Posted by: gromgoru 2005-09-29 04:02 |