Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
June 9, 2008
Pg. 1
By Eric Schmitt
SINGAPORE — The deadliest terrorist networks in Southeast Asia have suffered significant setbacks in the past three years, weakened by aggressive policing, improved intelligence, enhanced military operations and an erosion of public support, government officials and counterterrorism specialists say.
Three years after the region’s last major strike — the attacks on three restaurants in Bali that killed three suicide bombers and 19 other people — American and Asian intelligence analysts say financial and logistical support from Al Qaeda to other groups in the region has long dried up, and the most lethal are scrambling for survival.
In Indonesia, since 2005 authorities have arrested more than 200 members of Jemaah Islamiyah, an Islamic group with ties to Al Qaeda. In the Philippines, an American-backed military campaign has the Abu Sayyaf Group, an Islamic extremist organization with links to Jemaah Islamiyah, clinging to footholds in the jungles of a handful of southern islands, officials said.
Indonesia and the Philippines, which have faced the most serious terrorist threat in the region, have taken sharply different approaches to combat it. Each has achieved some success, offering lessons to American and allied counterterrorism efforts worldwide. But there are worrisome signs that the threat could rebound quickly.
A bombing at a Philippine air base in the southern island of Mindanao late last month killed two people and wounded 22 others. Peace talks between the Philippine government and the country’s main Muslim separatist group are threatening to fall apart, which could ignite wider violence, building on deep anger about the country’s military-first approach against Muslims. In February, the head of Jemaah Islamiyah in Singapore slipped out a prison bathroom window, hopped a fence and disappeared.
But senior American officials, government authorities in the region and counterterrorism specialists say that the most serious threats are on the wane — in contrast to American intelligence assessments that Al Qaeda in the Pakistani tribal areas is resurgent and that regional affiliates like Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb are gaining strength.
“The governments out here take it very seriously and, in my opinion, seem to be doing a very good job individually and working together to deal with that terrorist threat,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, a former director of central intelligence, told reporters on June 1 at a regional security conference here.
Senior American intelligence officials began noting progress earlier this year. “Southeast Asia continues to be a concern, although not nearly that which we might have envisioned two or three years ago,” Michael E. Leiter, acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said in a speech in Washington in February.
The United States and Australia, in particular, have played major roles in helping Southeast Asian countries combat terrorist threats in the region.
More than 500 American personnel, including experts from the military Special Operations Forces, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Agency for International Development, are training and working with Philippine counterterrorism forces from a base in Zamboanga, a city in Mindanao.
The Pentagon recently awarded the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia a total of $27 million in coastal surveillance stations equipped with special radar, heat-detecting cameras and computers to help disrupt terrorists plying the Sulawesi sea lanes, according to documents sent to Congress. The Philippines also received nearly $6 million in night-vision goggles, body armor, helmets and radios.
In Indonesia, the Australian police provided sophisticated electronic surveillance capabilities that allowed local security forces to locate within days several militants who carried out an even deadlier bombing in Bali in 2002. The Australians are still helping the Indonesian police monitor telephone traffic, and, along with American officials, have helped train Indonesian lawyers, prosecutors and judges.
In contrast to the Philippines, where the United States is backing a more militarized approach, Indonesia has taken a different tack, in which terrorist suspects are treated well and encouraged to defect or to share information.
Indonesia explains that its friendly handling of detainees will make its government seem less of an enemy of Islam. The Indonesian police are skillful interrogators, their Western counterparts say, and there have been no credible reports of torture being used in Indonesia to break the rings or win the prosecutions.
At the same time, the Indonesian government has been sentencing some prominent captives to long prison terms. Zarkasih, who uses one name and is believed to have been the leader of Jemaah Islamiyah from 2005 until his arrest last year, was sentenced in April to 15 years in prison. Abu Dujana, a deputy who led the group’s military arm and was also arrested last year, was also sentenced to 15 years.
Azhari Husin, one of the most feared bomb makers in Asia, was killed by Indonesia’s elite antiterrorism unit in 2005, but his second in command, Noordin Top, is still at large, American intelligence officials said.
“Overall, the threat is far less in Indonesia than it was two or three years ago,” said Sidney Jones, a senior adviser to the International Crisis Group in Jakarta and an expert on terrorism in Southeast Asia.
Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, voiced cautious optimism to Congress in February about the situation in Indonesia. He noted, though, that the fact that Indonesian authorities were seizing caches of weapons showed that insurgents were still trying to mount attacks.
In the Philippines, the government and the Pentagon say that the threat of the Abu Sayyaf has substantially diminished over the past few years, noting that several of the group’s top officers, including its leader, Khaddfy Janjanlani, have been killed and its ranks have dwindled to about 200 from more than 1,000 in 2001, according to terrorism experts.
But there are clear indications the group can still do damage. In the attack on the Philippine air base on May 29, a cellphone-detonated bomb was apparently concealed in a bag belonging to a civilian commuter waiting to hitch a ride on a C-130 cargo plane outside Edwin Andrews Air Base in Zamboanga, police officials said.
The Philippine government blamed Abu Sayyaf as well as elements of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a separatist group that has been fighting for an Islamic state in Mindanao for decades and that has been involved in peace talks with Manila.
It was not the first time that the Front had been accused of colluding with Abu Sayyaf. In the past, accusations that it had helped the group, as well as Jemaah Islamiyah, had threatened the peace negotiations, with the Front remaining adamant that it had nothing to do with these terrorists. It had said it would withdraw from the negotiations if the government continued its accusations.
An American-supported “civil action” campaign in the Philippines, involving building infrastructure for social services in communities and financing medical missions, has gained some praise. But in general, the government’s campaign against Abu Sayyaf has been dominated by a heavy military approach that is often seen as broadly categorizing all Muslims together as a threat, which terror experts and analysts fear could backfire.
“My real concern is that Philippine government has never had a comprehensive policy with Muslims in Mindanao,” said Zachary Abuza, an expert on terrorism in Southeast Asia who teaches at Simmons College in Boston.
Lumping the Islamic Front with Abu Sayyaf will inflame those Filipino Muslims who are seeking self-determination through a peace effort, and make it harder for the Front to cooperate in fighting terrorism, said Abhoud Syed Lingga, the executive director of the Institute of Bangsamoro Studies, a research organization on Islamic issues in Cotabato City, in Mindanao.
“U.S. forces are strengthening the Philippine military and using civic action to drive a wedge between rebels and the Muslim populace,” said a recent report by the International Crisis Group that referred to the Abu Sayyaf Group. “But if their goal is to defeat the A.S.G. and its foreign, mainly Indonesian, jihadi allies, they are casting the net too widely and creating unnecessary enemies.”
Carlos H. Conde contributed reporting from Manila, and Seth Mydans from Bangkok.
June 9, 2008
Pg. 1
By Eric Schmitt
SINGAPORE — The deadliest terrorist networks in Southeast Asia have suffered significant setbacks in the past three years, weakened by aggressive policing, improved intelligence, enhanced military operations and an erosion of public support, government officials and counterterrorism specialists say.
Three years after the region’s last major strike — the attacks on three restaurants in Bali that killed three suicide bombers and 19 other people — American and Asian intelligence analysts say financial and logistical support from Al Qaeda to other groups in the region has long dried up, and the most lethal are scrambling for survival.
In Indonesia, since 2005 authorities have arrested more than 200 members of Jemaah Islamiyah, an Islamic group with ties to Al Qaeda. In the Philippines, an American-backed military campaign has the Abu Sayyaf Group, an Islamic extremist organization with links to Jemaah Islamiyah, clinging to footholds in the jungles of a handful of southern islands, officials said.
Indonesia and the Philippines, which have faced the most serious terrorist threat in the region, have taken sharply different approaches to combat it. Each has achieved some success, offering lessons to American and allied counterterrorism efforts worldwide. But there are worrisome signs that the threat could rebound quickly.
A bombing at a Philippine air base in the southern island of Mindanao late last month killed two people and wounded 22 others. Peace talks between the Philippine government and the country’s main Muslim separatist group are threatening to fall apart, which could ignite wider violence, building on deep anger about the country’s military-first approach against Muslims. In February, the head of Jemaah Islamiyah in Singapore slipped out a prison bathroom window, hopped a fence and disappeared.
But senior American officials, government authorities in the region and counterterrorism specialists say that the most serious threats are on the wane — in contrast to American intelligence assessments that Al Qaeda in the Pakistani tribal areas is resurgent and that regional affiliates like Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb are gaining strength.
“The governments out here take it very seriously and, in my opinion, seem to be doing a very good job individually and working together to deal with that terrorist threat,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, a former director of central intelligence, told reporters on June 1 at a regional security conference here.
Senior American intelligence officials began noting progress earlier this year. “Southeast Asia continues to be a concern, although not nearly that which we might have envisioned two or three years ago,” Michael E. Leiter, acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said in a speech in Washington in February.
The United States and Australia, in particular, have played major roles in helping Southeast Asian countries combat terrorist threats in the region.
More than 500 American personnel, including experts from the military Special Operations Forces, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Agency for International Development, are training and working with Philippine counterterrorism forces from a base in Zamboanga, a city in Mindanao.
The Pentagon recently awarded the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia a total of $27 million in coastal surveillance stations equipped with special radar, heat-detecting cameras and computers to help disrupt terrorists plying the Sulawesi sea lanes, according to documents sent to Congress. The Philippines also received nearly $6 million in night-vision goggles, body armor, helmets and radios.
In Indonesia, the Australian police provided sophisticated electronic surveillance capabilities that allowed local security forces to locate within days several militants who carried out an even deadlier bombing in Bali in 2002. The Australians are still helping the Indonesian police monitor telephone traffic, and, along with American officials, have helped train Indonesian lawyers, prosecutors and judges.
In contrast to the Philippines, where the United States is backing a more militarized approach, Indonesia has taken a different tack, in which terrorist suspects are treated well and encouraged to defect or to share information.
Indonesia explains that its friendly handling of detainees will make its government seem less of an enemy of Islam. The Indonesian police are skillful interrogators, their Western counterparts say, and there have been no credible reports of torture being used in Indonesia to break the rings or win the prosecutions.
At the same time, the Indonesian government has been sentencing some prominent captives to long prison terms. Zarkasih, who uses one name and is believed to have been the leader of Jemaah Islamiyah from 2005 until his arrest last year, was sentenced in April to 15 years in prison. Abu Dujana, a deputy who led the group’s military arm and was also arrested last year, was also sentenced to 15 years.
Azhari Husin, one of the most feared bomb makers in Asia, was killed by Indonesia’s elite antiterrorism unit in 2005, but his second in command, Noordin Top, is still at large, American intelligence officials said.
“Overall, the threat is far less in Indonesia than it was two or three years ago,” said Sidney Jones, a senior adviser to the International Crisis Group in Jakarta and an expert on terrorism in Southeast Asia.
Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, voiced cautious optimism to Congress in February about the situation in Indonesia. He noted, though, that the fact that Indonesian authorities were seizing caches of weapons showed that insurgents were still trying to mount attacks.
In the Philippines, the government and the Pentagon say that the threat of the Abu Sayyaf has substantially diminished over the past few years, noting that several of the group’s top officers, including its leader, Khaddfy Janjanlani, have been killed and its ranks have dwindled to about 200 from more than 1,000 in 2001, according to terrorism experts.
But there are clear indications the group can still do damage. In the attack on the Philippine air base on May 29, a cellphone-detonated bomb was apparently concealed in a bag belonging to a civilian commuter waiting to hitch a ride on a C-130 cargo plane outside Edwin Andrews Air Base in Zamboanga, police officials said.
The Philippine government blamed Abu Sayyaf as well as elements of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a separatist group that has been fighting for an Islamic state in Mindanao for decades and that has been involved in peace talks with Manila.
It was not the first time that the Front had been accused of colluding with Abu Sayyaf. In the past, accusations that it had helped the group, as well as Jemaah Islamiyah, had threatened the peace negotiations, with the Front remaining adamant that it had nothing to do with these terrorists. It had said it would withdraw from the negotiations if the government continued its accusations.
An American-supported “civil action” campaign in the Philippines, involving building infrastructure for social services in communities and financing medical missions, has gained some praise. But in general, the government’s campaign against Abu Sayyaf has been dominated by a heavy military approach that is often seen as broadly categorizing all Muslims together as a threat, which terror experts and analysts fear could backfire.
“My real concern is that Philippine government has never had a comprehensive policy with Muslims in Mindanao,” said Zachary Abuza, an expert on terrorism in Southeast Asia who teaches at Simmons College in Boston.
Lumping the Islamic Front with Abu Sayyaf will inflame those Filipino Muslims who are seeking self-determination through a peace effort, and make it harder for the Front to cooperate in fighting terrorism, said Abhoud Syed Lingga, the executive director of the Institute of Bangsamoro Studies, a research organization on Islamic issues in Cotabato City, in Mindanao.
“U.S. forces are strengthening the Philippine military and using civic action to drive a wedge between rebels and the Muslim populace,” said a recent report by the International Crisis Group that referred to the Abu Sayyaf Group. “But if their goal is to defeat the A.S.G. and its foreign, mainly Indonesian, jihadi allies, they are casting the net too widely and creating unnecessary enemies.”
Carlos H. Conde contributed reporting from Manila, and Seth Mydans from Bangkok.