The "likely targets" are Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia. Another information transcribed ahead also suggests "Thailand, which has a small but persistent separatist movement on its southern border with Malaysia, and Singapore". http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/10/international/asia/10INTE.html New York Times October 10, 2001 GLOBAL LINKS American Action Is Held Likely in Asia By TIM WEINER WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 — Terrorists tied to Osama bin Laden's network and based in the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia are among the likely targets of future covert and overt American actions, United States officials said today. The officials gave no timetable; they said the campaign against the groups linked to Mr. bin Laden and his group, Al Qaeda, is global and may last for years. But they said that the East Asian groups have expanded their operations in recent years, exchanging money, personnel, materiel and experience with the bin Laden organization and its allies, and that they pose a clear and present danger to American institutions overseas. "There has been a concerted effort by bin Laden and his people to expand their activities in East Asia, not only in the Philippines but in Malaysia and Indonesia," a United States official said. "The Philippines have become a major operational hub, and it's a serious concern. People linked to bin Laden are not only in Manila but elsewhere in the Philippines." The groups have thrived in the political and economic instability in the Philippines, a predominantly Roman Catholic country, and in Indonesia, which is predominantly Muslim; street protests against the airstrikes on Afghanistan took place today outside the American embassies in both countries. In recent years, the fundamentalist groups have gained adherents in the name of a holy war against American institutions and influence, officials said. The United States ambassador to the United Nations, John D. Negroponte, told the Security Council on Monday that the United States, acting in self-defense after the Sept. 11 attacks, may take "further actions with respect to other organizations and other states." Mr. Negroponte, an American ambassador to the Philippines in the 1990's, cited no groups or states by name. But administration officials have said repeatedly that Mr. Bin Laden has adherents and allies all over the world, and that the war against them will range far beyond Afghanistan. East Asia, and particularly the Philippines, officials said, is an area where terrorists who have struck the United States before are known to have planned their attacks. Militant Islamic groups in East Asia — chief among them, the Abu Sayyaf group, based in the Philippines — are high on the list of American counter-terrorism targets to come, officials said today. Hundreds of Abu Sayyaf fighters are battling the Philippine army on Basilan, an island in the south. The group has taken two American hostages: Martin and Gracia Burnham, missionaries from Wichita, Kan. The Burnhams were celebrating their 18th wedding anniversary in May, when they and a third American, Guillermo Sobero of Corona, Calif., were kidnapped from a resort on Palawan, a large western island of the Philippine archipelago. Mr. Sobero may be dead, officials said. The Abu Sayyaf group, which is on the official United States list of terrorist organizations, has obtained millions of dollars in ransom from kidnapping tourists, missionaries and resort workers. Libyan representatives played a role in the release of some hostages for ransom, State Department officials said. The group has used ransom money to buy weapons and speedboats, to pay recruits and to bribe Philippine soldiers, American officials suspect. Members of Abu Sayyaf, which says it is fighting for a separate Islamic nation,have links to the bin Laden organization, officials said. The leader of the group is known as Abdujarak Abubakar Janjalani. He is a Filipino Muslim who has said he fought alongside the Afghan rebels battling the Soviet invaders of Afghanistan during the 1980's. Al Qaeda's connections in the Philippines include Islamic schools and charities through which millions of dollars have flowed to support the group and its allies across South and East Asia, officials said. They include the International Islamic Relief Organization office and Al Makdum university in Zamboanga, a city on the island of Mindanao, just north of Basilan island. Mr. bin Laden's brother-in-law, Mohammed Jalal Khalifa, was an administrator at both institutions. Neither is operating any longer, and Mr. Khalifa was arrested by the Saudi government after the Sept. 11 attacks. Also since the attacks, Philippine intelligence officers have arrested two suspected Abu Sayyaf commanders and several men they described as foreigners carrying bombs. Malaysia has charged the son of a leading opposition politician with plotting to overthrow the government. Indonesia has imprisoned two Malaysians in connection with a series of bombings. In Indonesia, armed Islamic fundamentalist groups have received money, men and arms from the bin Laden group and its allies, officials said. One group, Laskar Jihad, they said, has been reinforced by Taliban guerrillas. Another, the Islamic Defenders Front, is threatening violence against American officials and organizations. Some members of Al Qaeda have transited through the international airport at Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, officials said. One of the Sept. 11 hijackers, Khalid Al-Midhar, was videotaped at a terrorist meeting in Kuala Lumpur in January 2000. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines said recently that "traces of relationship" exist between the Abu Sayyaf guerrillas and the Sept. 11 attack plotters. She has offered the United States airspace and the use of two large former United States military installations, the Clark Air Base, and the Subic Bay naval base, for transit and staging operations. The offer was secured in a meeting at Subic Bay two weeks ago between Adm. Thomas Fargo, commander of the Pacific Fleet, and Rolio Golez, the Philippine national security adviser, both 1970 graduates of the United States Naval Academy. President Bush is scheduled to discuss the counter-terrorism campaign with the presidents of the Philippines and Indonesia and the prime minister of Malaysia in Shanghai on Oct. 19 at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting. Terrorists aiming to attack the United States have been based in the Philippines for years. Ramzi Yousef, a convicted ringleader in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, plotted in Manila to blow up 11 jumbo jets headed for the United States. He was arrested in Pakistan at a rooming house financed by Mr. bin Laden. His roommate in Manila, Abdul Hakim Murad, had a commercial pilot license and plotted to crash a jet into the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Virginia. And Mohammed Saddiq Odeh, convicted in the 1998 bombing of the United States Embassy in Nairobi, was a student in the Philippines when he first came to the bin Laden organization. ################################### New York Times September 21, 2001 Militant Islam Unsettles Indonesia and Its Region By SETH MYDANS ANGKOK, Thailand, Sept. 20 — Southeast Asia knows what havoc militant Islam can create. With mass kidnappings in the Philippines, "holy warriors" in Indonesia and armed cells in Malaysia, governments have learned they can never relax. With the terrorist attacks in the United States, some Western diplomats are expressing heightened fears that these groups may be cooperating and may be receiving increased support from militants in the Middle East. None of the Southeast Asian nations seem to be at risk of a militant Islamic takeover any time soon. But the economic slump of the past four years and the ensuing political instability have created fertile ground for recruitment, infiltration and indoctrination by outside groups. "There is a small group of trained jihad warriors that have moved in and out of these areas," said Carlyle Thayer, a Honolulu-based expert on Asian security. "Whether they are masterminding command and control is still being debated." The extent and nature of any terror network is hard to assess. But there is a spreading fear that an American retaliation for the attacks last week in New York and Washington would ignite a stepped-up and possibly coordinated activity aimed at American interests in Asia. In Indonesia, experts and diplomats say, there is reported involvement by Osama bin Laden, who has been blamed by the United States for last week's terror. An American diplomat said this week that Mr. bin Laden was tied to a serious security threat that caused the embassy in Jakarta to close for several days last fall. The embassy remains on alert. Last week, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines said "some traces of relationship" exist between Islamic separatist fighters in the southern Philippines and the perpetrators of the attacks in the United States. The countries most concerned are Indonesia, a nation with 210 million people; the Philippines, with an intractable separatist insurgency in its partly Muslim southern islands, and Malaysia, where radical Muslim groups are taking advantage of a time of political flux. Worries also exist in Thailand, which has a small but persistent separatist movement on its southern border with Malaysia, and in Singapore where ethnic Chinese make up the main part of the population of the city-state, which is surrounded by Muslim neighbors. Some experts said there is little question that these separate movements have been in contact with each other and that several are being tutored by Middle Eastern groups. Several leaders in the insurgencies share a background as fighters in Afghanistan, these experts said. Most worrisome to diplomats and security experts is Indonesia, where poverty has spawned widespread discontent, new political openness has given latitude to extremist groups and disarray in the security forces has weakened law enforcement. In the oil-rich province of Aceh, warring separatists seek to create a strict Islamic state. In the Moluccas, a radical Islamic army called Laskar Jihad has recruited openly and joined in a Moslem-Christian war that has taken thousands of lives in the past three years. "The head of that organization, I think he's Yemeni, fought in Afghanistan and was trained in Yemen by an offshoot of the bin Laden group," a Western diplomat said. "He has knowingly brought in hundreds of foreign mujahedeen, hundreds of them, to the Moluccas." Harold Crouch, an expert on the Indonesian military with the International Crisis Group, questioned reports like this, asking why no Arabs had been found among the dead in the Moluccas. Other hints of outside involvement in Indonesia include a mysterious bombing that wounded the Philippine ambassador at his residence in Jakarta last August may have been carried out by terrorists from Malaysia or the Philippines, said one expert. Among several other unexplained bombings last year is a grenade attack, also in August, on the Malaysian Embassy that caused no injuries. Last December, a series of bombings in both the Philippines and Indonesia took several lives and could have been related, the expert said. In the Philippines a centuries-old Muslim separatist war on the southern island of Mindanao has flared in the past two years. The government is now engaged in peace talks with the main separatist group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. But a splinter group called Abu Sayyaf has committed a series of kidnappings, including those of dozens of foreigners, and continues to evade military offensives. In a recent raid, two Indonesian passports were found in an abandoned Abu Sayyaf camp. But the extent of cooperation between these and other groups remains unknown. ################################### http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/19/international/asia/19INDO.html New York Times September 19, 2001 Bush Meeting With Indonesian to Focus on Islamic Militancy By SETH MYDANS ANGKOK, Sept. 18 — When the presidents of the United States and Indonesia meet in Washington on Wednesday, they will share an urgent concern: the threat of militant Islamic violence. Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, with 210 million people, is going through a time of turbulent change. Groups and power blocs of all kinds are trying to redefine the nation in their image. President Megawati Sukarnoputri, in office for just two months, represents the moderate, "nationalist" majority. Her visit to Washington has come under criticism from some more extreme Muslims, who are angry in advance over any American retaliation for last week's terror bombings. They warn that any attack by the United States on a Muslim country will cause a violent backlash. Indeed, one long-term result of the new conflict could be to strengthen the hand of Islamic radicals in Indonesia. Those radical groups remain a small minority in a nation that has been largely tolerant as far as social and religious practices are concerned. But in the last four years, since the end of President Suharto's strongman rule, they have drawn disproportionate attention. Some have formed vigilante bands to attack nightclubs, deface billboards that advertise alcohol and threaten Americans. Others have taken up arms in a small army called Laskar Jihad, and joined in a Muslim-Christian war that has continued for several years in the Moluccas. Though those groups appear to be receiving aid from some political groups, they do not represent the ideals of the great majority of Indonesians. A strain of anti-Americanism does affect some Indonesians who resent the economic and political influence of the United States. The terror attacks last week seemed to have created a Muslim-American polarity and aroused several public figures to anti-American statements. Vice President Hamzah Haz, the leader of the nation's largest Islamic political party, implied that the United States deserved what it got in the terror attacks. "Hopefully, this tragedy will cleanse the sins of the United States," he said, even as Mrs. Megawati prepared to leave for Washington. His stance demonstrates the fragility of the ideologically divided coalition government. It was Mr. Haz who led a group of Muslim political parties two years ago to block Mrs. Megawati's parliamentary election as president, arguing that under Muslim law a woman should not be a leader. That coalition then agreed to support Abdurrahman Wahid, a Muslim cleric who had forged political success partly by speaking on every side of an issue. His presidency lasted 21 months, until he was devoured by his political enemies. But he remains as unpredictable as ever. He chose this week to join the anti-American chorus, saying the United States has no moral right to retaliate because it too is a "terrorist nation." Another political leader went so far as to suggest that the attacks were carried out by Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, in an effort to discredit Muslims. During their meeting, President Bush was expected to press Mrs. Megawati to crack down on hard-line Islamic groups in Indonesia. But since Mr. Suharto's departure, the security forces have had little success in controlling a variety of local and sectarian conflicts or curbing bomb attacks on mosques and churches. _______________________________________________ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
