Fear Moves East: Terror Targets the Pacific Rim
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Joshua Kurlantzick
Fear Moves East: Terror
Targets the Pacific Rim
A lthough the brutal military junta in Rangoon has many en-
emies, the Burmese embassy in Bangkok was lightly guarded, as usual. On
October 1, 1999, the typical two sentries protected the embassy, which local
intelligence had identified as one of the missions in Bangkok most at risk of
attack. One guard left the premises. While he was gone, five armed men
stormed the embassy. They were linked with anti-Rangoon groups, God’s
Army and the Vigorous Burmese Student Warriors. The anti-Rangoon insur-
gents took 32 hostages, triggering a protracted crisis that was resolved only
when Thailand flew the hostage-takers to a hiding spot along the Burmese-
Thai border and released them there, unharmed. Three months later, fight-
ers affiliated with the same groups seized a hospital in western Thailand and
held more than 700 people hostage for two days.
The Burmese embassy siege is both instructive and foreboding. It is but
one example of the burgeoning terrorist threat in East Asia. Globalization in
the Asia-Pacific region has included not only the opening of economies and
polities but also the development and spread of pernicious ideologies, orga-
nizations, and tactics.
Socioeconomic liberalization in East Asia, defined here as the region
spanning from Burma to Fiji, has intensified the marginalization of some
groups while breaking down controls on these marginalized and potentially
extremist sectors of society. Given Asia’s increasingly porous borders and
rapidly improving communications, transport, and information infrastruc-
ture, these extremists now are able to develop closer political and financial
links with militants, arms suppliers, drug dealers, and other shadowy forces
Joshua Kurlantzick is Bangkok correspondent for Agence France-Presse and contribut-
ing correspondent for The Washington Quarterly. The author thanks David Schenker of
the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and Reuven Paz of the International
Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism for their contributions to this article.
Copyright © 2000 by The Center for Strategic and International Studies and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Washington Quarterly • 24:1 pp. 19–29.
T HE WASHINGTON QUARTERLY ■ WINTER 2001 19l Joshua Kurlantzick
in South Asia and the Middle East. There, terror kingpins such as Osama
bin Laden have recognized and rewarded the abilities of East Asian radicals
to wreak havoc.
This mix of socioeconomic marginalization, loosening political controls,
and vanishing borders has created a time bomb in East Asia. Terrorist at-
tacks have been on the rise since 1990 and, as the Burmese embassy fiasco
illustrates, East Asia is poorly prepared to counter this threat. Barring sig-
nificant changes in the way East Asian nations individually and collectively
battle militant groups, the Pacific Rim will become terrorism’s next bloody
battleground.
A Safe Place
Terrorism was not unheard of in East Asia before the 1990s. Insurgents
fighting for a Muslim state in the southern Philippines, such as the Moro
National Liberation Front (MNLF), were using terrorist tactics well before
the end of the Cold War. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, separatists in
southern Thailand, such as the Pattani United Liberation Organization,
planted bombs in Bangkok and in the south of the country. Pariah nation
North Korea allegedly funded several terrorist attacks in the region, includ-
ing the 1983 Rangoon bombing of South Korean president Chun Doo
Hwan’s traveling party, in which 17 people were killed.
Yet until recently, East Asia suffered fewer terrorist attacks than Europe
or the Middle East. Unlike the Middle East, where many terrorist groups
loosely collaborated to fight Israel, Asia had no unifying enemy that mili-
tants could agree to hate. Unlike Western Europe, where democratic values
and relatively open immigration policies gave militants room to operate,
centralized rule in China, Indonesia, and other East Asian states suffocated
ethnic conflict and largely prevented individuals and groups with grudges
from using terror to achieve their aims. In one case, Tibetan separatist in-
surgents trained by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency waged a low-inten-
sity war against the Chinese government in western China. Yet the Tibetans
were no match for China’s internal security forces, which cracked down on
the separatists and essentially destroyed their armed movement.
Even in more open East Asian states, traditional hierarchical social struc-
tures and norms of conformity hindered the development of radical groups.
Although the intense social pressure to conform in Japan and South Korea
probably alienated some Japanese and Koreans, this pseudo-authoritarian
social culture also made it difficult for people moving against the cultural
grain to gain critical masses of supporters—whether performance artists, en-
vironmental activists, or terrorists.
20 T HE W ASHINGTON Q UARTERLY ■ WINTER 2001Fear Moves East: Terror Targets the Pacific Rim l East Asia’s development also helped blunt the anger of the radicals. From the 1960s until 1997, the Pacific Rim was the fastest-growing region of the world. For example, between 1990 and 1996, the total value of Thailand’s manufactured exports increased 13 percent per year, an astonishing annual growth rate.1 Not everyone shared the wealth, as several key regions did not receive their fair slice of development; but, until the financial crisis that detonated in 1997, the majority of urban residents of newly industrializing Asian states benefited from the region’s skyrocketing growth. These new middle and upper classes often showed little compassion for poorer citizens who did not fare as well in the boom times. By 1998 terrorism had begun to plague the Pacific Rim, yet many East Asian states clearly did not view terror as a primary threat. Between its founding in 1967 and its annual summit in 1998, the Association of South- east Asian Nations (ASEAN), a regional group of major Southeast Asian states, met to discuss automobile tariffs and fishing rights, among other top- ics. Yet, in that 31-year period, the organization never established a high- level working group on terrorism. Exclusion East Asia can no longer afford to bury its head in the sand. Throughout the Pacific Rim, the tension level is rising at embassies, financial centers, govern- ment buildings, and other potential targets. In the Philippines, the radical southern Muslim group Abu Sayyaf, a more violent offshoot of the MNLF whose chilling name means “bearer of the sword,” has raided resorts, taken tourists hostage, captured Christian villages and slit the throats of residents, and allegedly blown up Manila shopping centers. In China, Uighurs from the western Xinjiang Autonomous Region have attacked targets in Beijing and elsewhere. In Thailand, the Tamil Tigers may have established a base in the south of the Kingdom, and God’s Army, a group operating along the Burmese border and led by chain-smoking 12-year-olds believed to possess magic pow- ers, has precipitated two major hostage crises.2 In Japan, Aum Shinrikyo, the cult that launched the March 1995 sarin attack on the Tokyo subway, has ag- gressively rebuilt its financial architecture. Even tiny, landlocked Laos has re- cently been rocked by a string of explosions that damaged government buildings in the capital, Vientiane, and killed or injured more than 25 people. At the recent G-8 summit in Okinawa, Japan, high-ranking intelligence spe- cialists from the major industrialized nations spent several hours worriedly dis- cussing security—or lack of it—in the Asia-Pacific region. The recent explosion (no pun intended) of East Asian terror is the result of several interrelated factors. During the economic boom, a number of T HE WASHINGTON QUARTERLY ■ WINTER 2001 21
l Joshua Kurlantzick
groups—in many cases, ethnic or religious minorities—were either pur-
posely or unwittingly excluded from development. In the majority-Catholic
Philippines, the heavily Muslim southern island of Mindanao has 15 of the
country’s poorest provinces and its lowest life expectancy. In Laos, the eth-
nic Hmong minority in the north has been forced to move out of its moun-
tain habitats, allegedly to accommodate Vietnamese logging companies. In
Indonesia, Jakarta has siphoned off much of the revenue-generating oil and
gas deposits in Aceh—a devoutly Muslim province in the west that has had
long-standing separatist ambitions.
The economic and political desperation of
B arring significant these areas has fostered the hatred that bred
separatist and splinter organizations willing
changes, the region to use terrorist tactics to achieve their goals.
will become Abu Sayyaf, the Uighur rebels, Free Aceh
terrorism’s next separatists, and the Malaysian Islamic sect
Al Ma’unah are a few examples of this trend.
bloody battleground. Al Ma’unah on July 2 raided army installa-
tions, stole more than 100 assault weapons,
and took two hostages, whom it later killed.
After the economic crisis hit Asia, the
ranks of these terrorist groups swelled. When East Asian economies
melted down in 1997, the region’s poor were decimated. In the early
1980s, the average income of the top 10 percent of Thailand’s households
was 17 times that of the bottom 10 percent. After the economic crisis, the
gap between the top and bottom had widened by more than 37 times. 3
Indonesia’s national employers association estimates that the country’s
formal unemployment rate at the end of 1999 was 24 percent nationwide
but much higher in outlying areas such as Aceh. 4 Throughout Southeast
Asia, millions of newly unemployed city dwellers moved in with rural rela-
tives, stretching family rice bowls in such outlying regions as the southern
Philippines and western China.
Thousands of impoverished East Asians were embittered by an economic
crisis they did not understand and encouraged by leaders such as Malaysian
prime minister Mahathir Mohamad—the same leaders who would then decry
the region’s terrorist groups—to believe that foreigners had destroyed their
lives. With little to lose, they searched for ways to halt the encroachment of
globalization and centralization and to regain their self-respect. For some
Asians living in historically marginalized areas, the crisis confirmed that they
would always suffer most from downturns and that working with the central
government and with foreign states was an untenable proposition.
To these increasingly desperate outsiders, groups such as Abu Sayyaf now
looked like the only ones committed to fighting the combined influence of
22 T HE W ASHINGTON Q UARTERLY ■ WINTER 2001Fear Moves East: Terror Targets the Pacific Rim l the West and their respective central governments and to looking out for the interests of the impoverished. Before the Philippine Army launched a recent offensive against the group, in the past year Abu Sayyaf’s ranks had swelled tenfold to 3,000 allied fighters, at least in part because the group has used some of its funds to build mosques and health centers in depressed communities. In Malaysia, intelligence services believe that Al Ma’unah has spawned copycat armed Islamic sects inclined to commit terrorist acts. In lawless northeastern Burma, volunteers are signing up to join the narco-ter- rorist organization United Wa State Army (UWSA). It virtually prints money by flooding the Thai market with cheap yaaba (“crazy drugs” in Thai) amphetamines and then uses some of the drug profits to construct local schools and clinics. Since the crisis began, Asian militants also have made inroads outside their traditional bases of support. Uighur radicals appear to have developed closer ties to minority communities in Beijing and other eastern China cit- ies, making it easier for the Uighurs to evade Chinese police. Abu Sayyaf has gained a small number of Muslim adherents in Manila who have alleg- edly helped the southern terrorists plant the explosive devices that recently shattered the peace of the Philippine capital’s high-rent Makati district. Hmong and ethnic Lao rebels, who may be responsible for the bombs in Vientiane, reportedly have strengthened links with Laotian exile communi- ties in Thailand and the United States.5 Diffusion and Integration The Pacific Rim’s integration into the wider world has not only helped trigger the economic crisis—indirectly giving a boost to militant groups— and contributed to a loosening of sociopolitical controls, but it also al- lowed Asian extremists to join the diffuse terrorist internationale that is evolving. The end of the Cold War prompted certain states to remove support for client terrorists (North Korea has not been conclusively linked to a terrorist attack since 1987), pushing extremist groups to interact more closely with one another. 6 The dramatic improvements in Asia’s Internet and satellite telephone technology and the proliferation of inexpensive Asian air carriers have facilitated this interchange among terrorists and allowed weapons technology to be transferred quickly. Geographically isolated on the western tip of Indonesia, Free Aceh militants nonetheless have been able to funnel arms to and from Islamists in Malaysia. Hunkered down in Mindanao and the widely scattered Sulu islands, 550 miles south of Manila, Abu Sayyaf and fellow Muslim radicals, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, have man- T HE WASHINGTON QUARTERLY ■ WINTER 2001 23
l Joshua Kurlantzick
aged to establish links with financiers in the Persian Gulf as well as North
Africa and to propagate their message through Web sites.
In the absence of state sponsorship, several terrorist groups, most notably
the UWSA in Burma, have also established closer ties with organized crime.
Through these collaborations, organized crime outfits are trained in para-
military weaponry and strategy, while terrorists learn to launder money and
traffic drugs, a vital source of capital for some extremist groups.
The post-Soviet era also has witnessed the rise of the Afghan Arabs, a
loose grouping of Islamists who fought to-
gether against the Soviets in Afghanistan in
T he Pacific Rim is the the 1980s. The thousands of Muslim volun-
least prepared region teers who flocked to Afghanistan to fight the
Soviets have attempted to sustain the mo-
(save Africa) to mentum of that victory by lending their stra-
combat extremists. tegic support and firepower to national and
religious disputes around the world.7
East Asian militants have not escaped the
watchful eyes of such Afghan Arabs as bin
Laden. Uighur Muslims have established limited ties with Afghan Arabs op-
erating in Pakistan and Kazakhstan. Last November, several Chechen Mus-
lim rebel leaders, who are believed to have trained in Afghanistan at the
same time as a group of Malaysians, made a covert visit to Southeast Asia to
confer with Islamist groups and attempt to recruit Malaysians and Indone-
sians to the war in Chechnya.
Most notably, Philippine Muslim terrorists have longstanding links with
key Afghan Arabs. Many MNLF and Abu Sayyaf leaders—including Sayyaf
founder Abdurajak Janjalani—trained in terrorist camps in Afghanistan.
There they met militants such as Ramzi Yousef, the World Trade Center
bomber who plotted with Abu Sayyaf to assassinate the pope and blow up
dozens of U.S. commercial airplanes. After kidnapping tourists from the re-
sort island of Sipadan this spring, Abu Sayyaf demanded that Yousef be re-
leased from the maximum-security U.S. prison where he is incarcerated.
The Philippine military believes that bin Laden’s brother-in-law has been
funding Abu Sayyaf through the International Islamic Relief Organization
since 1992 and that bin Laden himself recently gave Abu Sayyaf and the
MNLF $3 million to buy weapons. In return, Abu Sayyaf provides “sanctu-
ary and other forms of assistance” for foreign Islamic militants, said a secret
Philippine military briefing paper leaked to the press.8
Finally, the breakup of the Soviet Union has given terrorists access to far
more sophisticated and destructive weapons. In such newly independent
states as Ukraine, where militaries are flush with arms and explosives but
short of hard currency, massive amounts of weapons are smuggled out of the
24 T HE W ASHINGTON Q UARTERLY ■ WINTER 2001Fear Moves East: Terror Targets the Pacific Rim l country. These weapons are then sold to the highest bidders in the arms markets of central Asia and the Caucasus, which host terrorist buyers from around the world. Few former Soviet countries have the resources or the po- litical will to prevent this proliferation. Complacency Some of the factors that have facilitated a rise in terrorism in East Asia have also contributed to an increasing terrorist threat in other regions. But the Pacific Rim is the least prepared region (save Africa) to combat extremists in the twenty-first century. In the next 100 years, the most dangerous groups will not be those with powerful state patrons. They will be those desperate enough to die for their cause, so tied into the terrorist internationale that they have the resources to attack anyone, and so loosely structured that they are nearly impossible to trace. East Asia’s historic dearth of terrorist attacks has bred complacency. Few nations in East Asia allocate as much of their defense and law enforcement budgets to counterterrorism as developed states in Western Europe and the Middle East do. Virtually no East Asian state possesses an Internet terrorism task force able to anticipate and prevent major hacker attacks. This glaring inadequacy was highlighted when the “love bug” virus, which paralyzed hundreds of thousands of the world’s computers, was allegedly launched from a squalid room in Manila. East Asian security organizations have made little effort to address terrorism. But, at the last meeting of the security working group, the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) participants reached a consensus on the bold statement that “governments participating in this fo- rum are united in their opposition to international terror.” Compared with some fortress-like embassy compounds in the Middle East, North America, and Europe, many diplomatic missions in Bangkok, Beijing, or Seoul are protected only by small forces. This light security was evident during the Burmese embassy siege in Bangkok and the 1999 riots in Beijing, in which students, incensed over the U.S. bombing of China’s embassy in Belgrade, breached security at the U.S. mission in Beijing and destroyed part of the building. Security in Jakarta is even more lax. This July, militants alleg- edly linked to the MNLF mounted a powerful bomb attack on the diplomatic envoys of the Philippines in the Indonesian capital, a blast that killed two people and left the Philippine ambassador soaked in his own blood. Most important, although the sociopolitical liberalization that has oc- curred in some East Asian states in the past two decades has produced sig- nificant political and economic rewards, these changes have also confused Asian antiterrorist squads and limited their room to operate. T HE WASHINGTON QUARTERLY ■ WINTER 2001 25
l Joshua Kurlantzick
Mindful of their relatively weak democratic political cultures and insti-
tutions, some liberalizing East Asian states are understandably wary of us-
ing force to limit civil rights. In newly democratic Indonesia, reformist
president Abdurraham Wahid appears loath to crush massive rallies in
which thousands of machete-wielding Indonesians threaten to launch a
“jihad” against Christians in the strife-torn eastern Maluku islands, where
sectarian clashes and terrorist incidents have killed more than 2,000 in
the past six months alone. In Thailand, which has grown from a thuggish
dictatorship into the freest state in South-
east Asia, immigration policies have be-
Future bombings will come extremely lax, creating sieve-like
borders. Thai customs officials failed to
cause more fatalities catch either the Tamil Tigers sneaking into
and greater damage. the Kingdom to build submarines or Ramzi
Yousef sneaking out of the Kingdom to plot
more mayhem. In the Philippines, Japan,
and other democratic Asian countries, ter-
rorists have utilized the freedom given to nongovernmental organizations
to set up front companies—usually “charities”—that launder money, pro-
cure weapons, and recruit fighters. In this way, East Asian terrorists are
copying Middle Eastern radicals, who frequently set up front companies in
Great Britain, Luxembourg, and Switzerland.
In several newly industrializing Asian states, political systems have been
transformed so rapidly that the kind of efficient, civilian-run counterterrorism
squads one finds in Germany, Japan, or the United States (the Federal Bureau
of Investigation’s (FBI) Joint Terrorist Task Force, for example) have not been
developed. Thailand’s experience highlights the region’s pressing need for
more efficient and professional counterterrorism forces. In states with long
histories of military intervention in politics and where special forces units
have often led the coups, today’s civilian-run ministries of defense are under-
standably wary of giving too much power to the counterterrorism divisions of
the special forces. These special forces units have expertise to share, however,
and defense ministries in states such as Thailand have gone too far by castrat-
ing the staff rosters of military counterintelligence and completely preventing
them from contributing to the nation’s security.
Thailand’s new counterterrorist squads were too quickly stripped of their
links to the military which, despite its flaws, forced all intelligence agencies to
work together in a hierarchical structure. These squads, culled from several
branches of intelligence, spend inordinate amounts of time squabbling con-
fusedly among themselves. Today “there is a lack of coordination among the
Thai government agencies responsible for the nation’s security ... allowing se-
curity bodies to be caught off guard,” argues Don Pathan, security analyst for
26 T HE W ASHINGTON Q UARTERLY ■ WINTER 2001Fear Moves East: Terror Targets the Pacific Rim l The Nation daily newspaper. With no coherent antiterrorism policy, Thailand often must resort to “nagging [militants] until they pack up and leave.”9 A Glimpse Ahead East Asia is only going to become more dangerous. East Asia’s borders will become more permeable as various regional free-trade agreements that have been signed go into effect. The black market in international arms is boom- ing, and terrorists are upgrading their weapons technology at a frantic pace, guaranteeing that future bombings will cause more fatalities and greater damage. Some counterterrorism experts believe that bin Laden cells or other equally well-trained militants could possess fissile material within two years. Often working in cooperation with international organized crime rings, some terrorist groups have developed sophisticated support and fi- nancing networks. The ethnic cleavages in East Asia that fuel these groups show no signs of healing. Most notably, the Indonesian archipelago, the fourth most-populous nation on Earth, threatens to implode and disinte- grate into numerous smaller nation-states. As the region becomes more perilous, East Asia must establish and fund a multinational, multi-agency task force on terrorism that would convene on a regular basis to facilitate cooperation in counterterrorism intelligence. Despite concerns about the role of special forces in some East Asian states, this task force should utilize the expertise of the special forces while simultaneously supporting efforts to depoliticize the armed forces around the region. Once this task force is set up, it would work to facilitate the extraditions of wanted terrorists, help nations coordinate their counterterrorism strate- gies, solicit assistance from national intelligence services experienced in fighting terror (the Mossad, for example), share information about sus- pected extremists and bomb-control technologies, and develop multina- tional classifications of terrorist acts. In the United States, officials can classify an organization as a terrorist group; once it has done so, U.S. law en- forcement has specific guidelines that prescribe the measures it can take to fight that group. Such clearly stated definitions and guidelines would help East Asia create a more consistent counterterrorism strategy. East Asian leaders also should enlist their citizens, the majority of whom abhor terror, in the ongoing battle against extremists. States could offer re- wards to average citizens who provide essential information about wanted terrorists. This strategy helped the FBI capture Yousef. More important, Southeast Asian nations must halt radical Islamism before it gains many ad- herents. Fundamentalism has made some inroads in Aceh, the southern Philippines, and northwestern Malaysia. In these regions, it has become T HE WASHINGTON QUARTERLY ■ WINTER 2001 27
l Joshua Kurlantzick
linked with separatist ambitions. Yet the traditional, syncretic Islam of
Southeast Asia, which has been suffused with animist, Buddhist, and Hindu
traditions, is not the most fertile soil for Islamism, and it is unlikely that
fundamentalism will sweep the region. By co-opting extremists and devolv-
ing some political and economic power to local authorities, Southeast Asian
leaders could diminish the bases of support of the radicals. In Indonesia,
Wahid has enjoyed limited success with these strategies. A moderate Mus-
lim, he works with more strident politicians such as Amien Rais, a former
firebrand who has softened his rhetoric since becoming chairman of parlia-
ment. Although Indonesia remains wracked by violence, Wahid has prom-
ised Aceh significant autonomy. Because some Aceh residents believe the
president is serious about devolving power, enthusiasm for a free, Islamist
Aceh has recently waned.
The United States does not play a large
W ell-trained militants counterterrorism role in such places as Sulu
could possess fissile or Aceh, but it must remain strategically en-
gaged with East Asian counterterrorism intel-
material within two ligence communities. Extremists based in East
years. Asia have targeted, and will continue to tar-
get, U.S. interests, embassies, and citizens.
Recognizing East Asia as a breeding ground
for anti-U.S. radicals, Washington should of-
fer significant financial and technical assistance to the proposed East Asian
task force on terrorism as well as to national counterterrorism forces.
East Asia today faces a grave danger, a danger it did not anticipate and still
seems to care little about. Terrorists are slipping across borders, establishing
lines of communication, and collaborating with one another. At the same
time, they remain loosely organized, increasing their threat level and giving
states little chance to respond to their actions. State actors must take a cue
from these extremists. East Asian leaders must cooperate more effectively
with one another, with their citizens, and with Europe as well as the United
States if they are to have any chance of stalling terrorism’s advance and pre-
venting the region from becoming terrorism’s next bloody battleground.
Notes
1. Far Eastern Economic Review, Asia 1999 (Hong Kong: Review Publishing, 1999),
187.
2. “Mini Submersible Surfaces in Southern Shipyard,” Bangkok Post, June 2, 2000, p. 1.
3. Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit, Thailand’s Boom and Bust (Chiang Mai, Thai-
land: Silkworm Books, 1999), 284–285.
28 T HE W ASHINGTON Q UARTERLY ■ WINTER 2001Fear Moves East: Terror Targets the Pacific Rim l
4. Indonesia Employers’ Association, Seminar Paper for1999 ILO/Japan Asian Regional
Tripartite Seminar on Industrial Relations and Globalization.
5. Songpol Kaopatumtip, “Bordering on the Ridiculous,” Bangkok Post, July 9, 2000, p.
P1.
6. Rohan Gunaratna, “Terrorist Threats Target Asia,” Jane’s Intelligence Review, July 1,
2000.
7. Reuven Paz, academic director at the International Policy Institute for Counter-
Terrorism, interview with the author.
8. Cecil Morella, “Radical Brand of Islam Spreads in Southern Philippines and Be-
yond,” Agence France-Presse, April 26, 2000.
9. Don Pathan, “Outmoded Thai Policy Still the Best Way Out,” Nation, June 6, 2000,
p. A5.
T HE WASHINGTON QUARTERLY ■ WINTER 2001 29You can also read
