SE Asia gains in terror fight

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 organisation 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. 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,” US 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.

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.

However, in contrast to the Philippines, where the US is backing a more militarised 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.