Framing Security Agendas: U.S. Counterterrorist Policies and Southeast Asian Responses 9789812308672

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Framing Security Agendas: U.S. Counterterrorist Policies and Southeast Asian Responses

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Patrick Barron and Adam Burke

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Policy Studies 49

Framing Security Agendas: U.S. Counterterrorist Policies and Southeast Asian Responses Rosemary Foot

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Copyright © 2008 by the East-West Center Framing Security Agendas: U.S. Counterterrorist Policies and Southeast Asian Responses by Rosemary Foot East-West Center in Washington 1819 L Street, NW, Suite 200 Washington, D.C. 20036 Tel: 202-293-3995 Fax: 202-293-1402 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.eastwestcenter.org/washington Online at: www.eastwestcenter.org/policystudies The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the Center. Hardcopies of publications in the series are available through Amazon.com. In Asia, hardcopies of all titles, and electronic copies of Southeast Asia titles, co-published in Singapore, are available through: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies 30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace Pasir Panjang Road Singapore 119614 E-mail: [email protected] Website: ISEAS Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Foot, Rosemary, 1948– Framing security agendas : US counterterrorist policies and Southeast Asian responses. (East-West Center Washington policy studies, 1547–1349 ; PS49) 1. Terrorism—Prevention—Government policy. 2. Terrorism—Southeast Asia. 3. United States—Foreign relations—Southeast Asia. 4. Southeast Asia—Foreign relations—United States. I. Title. II. Series : Policy studies (East-West Center Washington) ; 49. DS51 E13P no. 49 2008 ISBN 978-981-230-866-5 (soft cover) ISBN 978-981-230-867-2 (PDF) ISSN 1547-1349 (soft cover) ISSN 1547-1330 (PDF) Typeset in Singapore by Superskill Graphics Pte Ltd Printed in Singapore by Seng Lee Press Pte Ltd

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Contents List of Acronyms

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Executive Summary

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Introduction

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The Focus on Southeast Asia

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The Broader Security Context

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U.S. Counterterrorist Policies

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Reshaping Global Security Agendas

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Southeast Asian Perceptions

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Indonesia

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Malaysia

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Rosemary Foot The Philippines

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Singapore

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Southeast Asian Approaches to Countering Terrorism

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Laws and Legacies

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Intercommunal Relations

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Larger Implications

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Repercussions for the China Question

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Conclusion

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Endnotes

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Bibliography

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List of Acronyms AFP APEC ARF ASEAN ASG CIA CPP HDR HRW ICG ICJ IISS ISA JI KMM MHA MILF MNLF NATO NGO NPA

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Armed Forces of the Philippines Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation ASEAN Regional Forum Association of Southeast Asian Nations Abu Sayyaf Group Central Intelligence Agency Communist Party of the Philippines Human Development Report Human Rights Watch International Crisis Group International Court of Justice International Institute of Strategic Studies Internal Security Act Jemaah Islamiyah Kumpulan Militan Malaysia Ministry of Home Affairs Moro Islamic Liberation Front Moro National Liberation Front North Atlantic Treaty Organization nongovernmental organization New People’s Army

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Rosemary Foot NSCS NSS PAP PAS STAR UMNO UN

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National Security Coordination Secretariat National Security Strategy People’s Action Party Parti Islam SeMalaysia (Islamic Party in Malaysia) Secure Trade in the APEC Region United Malays Nationalist Organization United Nations

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Executive Summary After the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001, the Bush administration tried by rhetorical, political, and material means to convince other governments and peoples around the globe to accept that international terrorism was the major threat facing their countries. As the United States moved against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan for its hosting of the Al-Qaeda presence in that country, then intervened in Iraq, reorganized its bureaucracy at home, and militarily and politically geared up for what it described as a “global war on terror,” other governments determined the extent to which their policies would come into alignment with those of the George W. Bush administration. The difficulty in calculation varied from country to country, but was especially troubling to governments in the region that housed the world’s most populous Muslimmajority country, together with other states that have Muslim majorities or sizable Muslim minorities—namely, Southeast Asia. The calculations were also difficult because it was the most powerful state in the global system that had so dramatically reassessed its threat perceptions: more than any other state in the global system, the United States had the material means at its disposal to influence the perceptions and actions of others. Unsurprisingly, the U.S. expended a great deal of effort persuading and coercing other political actors to join the struggle in all of the venues where the U.S. presence could be keenly felt: within global

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Rosemary Foot organizations such as the United Nations and G-8, in regional organizations such as Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, and in relations with individual governments. Some governments moved in advance of these efforts and joined Washington in its struggle, either rhetorically or concretely. They did this either because they believed America to be right in its calculations, or because they thought there was little choice. Others were not so convinced because of other pressing security concerns, including the impact such an alignment could have on their domestic societies. More than seven years after 9/11, the policy responses of particular governments and societies are better defined, and thus the extent to which the United States has been able to reframe security agendas around the world can better be assessed. This monograph asks whether Washington’s fight against terrorism is matched in parts of Southeast Asia—more particularly in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore. Choosing to focus elsewhere, such as on South Asia or the Middle East, would not have been helpful to this kind of investigation, it is contended, since the local responses would likely have been overshadowed by the proximity of U.S. involvement in major wars in those regions. Southeast Asia, in contrast, is more distant from the central focus of U.S. military activity, yet has direct experience dealing with transnational terrorist groups, some with connections to Al-Qaeda. Thus an investigation of security priorities in this part of the world is relevant to the central research question. The study investigates whether these particular Southeast Asian governments regard the terrorist threat as the major threat facing their country. It also probes what these governments deem to be the most effective means of dealing with that violence, whatever their threat perception. It is apparent that 9/11 has shaped security perceptions as well as security behavior in all four countries, though to a greater extent in the Philippines and Singapore than in Indonesia and Malaysia. Yet in each case, this monograph shows how the domestic lens acts as a powerful filter for the policy response. Involvement in the U.S. decision to give overwhelming attention to counterterrorist action has sharpened the focus on longstanding security concerns, especially those connected with the security of a political regime or unity of a society. The contribution of this study is primarily threefold. First, it allows for a fuller depiction of and comparison among the contemporary security ideologies of these four states than has hitherto been available in much of

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Framing Security Agendas the literature on the regional response to developments since 9/11. It brings together some of the writings of area specialists as well as those focusing on terrorism in Southeast Asia, augmenting these with a range of policy interviews. In addition, it places those writings and responses within a framework that is sensitive to the security perspectives of smaller or weaker states. Second, in contextualizing the security frameworks of the individual states, the monograph casts light on the range of security concerns these countries face, from the traditional to the nontraditional. For example, the approach taken here allows for some exploration of local attitudes to what is often said to be the major traditional security concern facing the region: the rise of China. Finally, and more prominently, the study demonstrates the hold that long-standing security ideologies still have in these countries, and shows how those ideologies influence policy choices with respect to the United States as well as local methods for dealing with the threat of terrorist violence. The study contends that it is simplistic to describe U.S.-Southeast Asian relations, and Southeast Asian policy responses, as deriving straightforwardly either from fears of a resurgent China or as a result of a correspondence between the United States and Southeast Asian perceptions regarding the centrality of the terrorist threat. A major consequence of the U.S. decision to award terrorism primary place in its security agenda has been to expose the fissures and frailties within these Southeast Asian societies and to reaffirm the importance of the domestic level in policy analysis. In conclusion, in light of these domestic preoccupations this study suggests why the individual states and their peoples still perceive U.S. policies as being predominantly short-term in character and too punitive in approach, despite U.S. attempts to utilize a fuller array of policy tools in support of its antiterrorist security strategy.

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Framing Security Agendas: U.S. Counterterrorist Policies and Southeast Asian Responses The ideological contest between the two superpowers during the Cold War altered the course of many long-evolving struggles for social change in other societies and internationalized and magnified what were often domestically rooted conflicts. In the contemporary era, where the United States materially outranks all actual and potential state competitors, a U.S. administration’s security priorities—now focused on the “global war on terror”—appears once again to be shaping security perceptions elsewhere and diverting attention and resources from other significant threats to the well-being of states and their peoples.1 Certainly since the terrorist attacks in the United States in September 2001 and the Bush administration’s declaration that America is at war, the U.S. government has attempted to refocus the security agendas of states throughout the world, as well as those of regional and global organizations to respond to what Washington views as since [9/11] the U.S. the primary, and existential, Al-Qaedagovernment has attempted to inspired terrorist threat. As a further signal of its resolve, Washington has refocus the security agenda also transformed the structure of its own government, creating new departments and additional bureaucratic positions, as well as adopting

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Rosemary Foot antiterrorist legislation. These changes have also been accompanied by a vast expansion in the U.S. military budget and additional military and economic assistance given to those countries deemed centrally important to this struggle. Other countries have been exhorted to follow policy directions similar to those that Washington has adopted, and bilateral and multilateral means have been introduced in order that the United States can monitor whether the expected changes are taking place. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, many countries seemed at first to have responded to the call. “We are all Americans” may have appeared as an editorial headline in the French newspaper Le Monde, but it was a sentiment mirrored elsewhere, not least in Southeast Asia. President Megawati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia, because of an earlier scheduling decision, became the first foreign head of state to visit the White House after 9/11, and on September 17 she pledged “solidarity with the United States in this hour of grief.” President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo of the Philippines also voiced her strong support, offering to “go every step of the way” with the United States. Not unlike during the Cold War, governments had started to operate as though they were willing to allow the major state’s security priorities to shape their own. Some years later, these claims of influence are ripe for further investigation since the characteristics of policy responses have become better defined. Shedding light on the bases of these policy responses is important: as we know from the Cold War critique of security studies, dominant understandings of security constructed by powerful states can easily crowd out analyses of other important experiences of insecurity.2 This monograph analyzes the extent to which the U.S. preoccupation with terrorism since 2001 has been accepted as legitimate elsewhere. It also aims to establish whether the U.S. approach to countering terrorism, including its emphasis on extralegal and militarized means, has affected other governments’ methods. Drawing on the work of specialists on Southeast Asia, together with information gathered from several dozen interviews in the region, the United States, and Australia throughout 2006, this study investigates whether selected Southeast Asian governments regard the transnational terrorist threat as the major threat facing their country. It also probes—whether these countries tend to view terrorism as a primary or lesser threat—what these governments deem to be the most effective means of dealing with terrorism. The overarching goal of these questions is to uncover the security thinking in Indonesia, Malaysia,

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Framing Security Agendas the Philippines, and Singapore during a period when the United States materially is the most powerful state in the global system, and retains a major, and generally valued, security and economic presence in the East Asian region (Goh 2005). The Focus on Southeast Asia The countries of focus are Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore. They are neither so close to the central area of America’s antiterrorist campaign—that is, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan—that local responses would be overshadowed by the experience of military conflict and U.S. penetration, nor so distant from the phenomenon of transnational terrorism that the question would be deemed largely irrelevant. All four governments have stated that the transnational terrorist organization Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) is present in their countries, with its purported links to Al-Qaeda and desire to establish a regional caliphate. Not everyone within the scholarly community accepts the evidence for this terrorist presence or these links. Some, such as Zachary Abuza (2003) and Rohan Gunaratna (2003), argue that the regional connections to Al-Qaeda are strong; others, such as Joseph Liow (2006b) and John Sidel (2007), emphasize the historical and domestic political origins of the region’s experience of religious violence.3 Other analysts have, on occasion, expressed doubt that JI (which means “Islamic community”) is so coherent and well structured that it can realistically be described as “an organization with an identifiable leadership”4 (International Crisis Group [ICG] 2002: 5). Nevertheless, these countries’ governments have stated their belief that those using terrorist violence for political and religious ends have established transregional and even global links with those having similar agendas. Beyond the attitudes of these four governments, both U.S. officials and some Islamist terrorists have designated the region a “second front” in the struggle against terrorism (Gershman 2002; Stanley Foundation 2006). As early [Southeast Asia has been] as November 2001, the U.S. designated…a “second front” deputy secretary of defense, Paul Wolfowitz, already had the struggle against terrorism Indonesia in his sights. As he put it: “going after Al Qaeda in Indonesia is not something that should wait until after Al Qaeda has been

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Rosemary Foot uprooted from Afghanistan” (Sidel 2006: 214). By 2004, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had more agents stationed in Southeast Asia than in any period since the Vietnam War (Simon 2004b: 72). Indonesia, with a Muslim population of some 88 percent, is the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country. Malaysia and Brunei are also both Muslimmajority states, and Singapore, the Philippines, and Thailand have significant—and especially in the latter two cases—impoverished, dissatisfied, and sometimes rebellious Muslim minorities. For these reasons, the four countries chosen from this larger group have attracted the attention of the United States. The Broader Security Context Of course, even prior to 9/11 the United States had critical security interests in Southeast Asia. The region is a key transit point between the Middle East and the Sea of Japan, and some countries have offered facilities that allow the U.S. Navy and Air Force to be resupplied and engage in joint training (Ibid. 2005: 271). Complementary interests, potential and actual, have been magnified for both the United States and some Southeast Asian states as a result of the strategic transformation occasioned by a resurgent China. The consequences of this evolution in the strategic architecture of the Asia Pacific have included a stronger U.S.-Japan alliance in the 1990s and Singapore’s decision at the start of that decade to offer the United States military access arrangements. Moreover, in order to compensate for the closure of U.S. bases in the Philippines in 1992, Singapore built the Changi naval port, which can accommodate a U.S. aircraft carrier. In 2005, Singapore and the United States signed a new Strategic Framework Agreement that further expands security cooperation. The Philippines itself, despite having earlier closed access to what were once U.S. permanent facilities in the country, began to shift its position most noticeably after spats with China over ownership of islands in the South China Sea in the mid-1990s. In 1999 it signed a Visiting Forces Agreement with the United States that allowed for the holding of joint exercises, and in November 2002 the two signed a Mutual Logistics Support Agreement. By 2007 it was reported that U.S. Special Forces had been permitted to establish a “forward operating base” in Sulu that allowed for the prepositioning of military equipment and permanent deployment of some U.S. personnel (Simon 2008).

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Framing Security Agendas While these aspects of U.S.-Southeast Asian strategy need to borne in mind, especially where they spill over to reinforce individual state alignment decisions post 9/11, the focus will be more tightly drawn in the discussion that follows. This monograph is designed to shed light on the particular responses of these countries to the advent of what the United States has promoted as a “global war on terror.” Three related variables are valuable in the explanation that follows. Matters of identity are of prime import, and in many respects subsume the other two variables, which are regime type and Singapore’s discourse broader attitudes toward the United States and…behavior have been as a security partner. Of the four state security responses, Singapore’s discourse shaped most powerfully and its actual behavior have been shaped most powerfully; the terrorist threat has reinforced a deeply held belief in the vulnerability of its society, deriving from its history, locale, and ethnic makeup. The significant U.S. military involvement has affected security perceptions and behavior in the Philippines too; but the evidence of political opportunism in Manila is more striking than in the governments of the three other states. This opportunism makes it unwise to attribute policies entirely to a correspondence with U.S. counterterrorist preferences and perceptions. Other countries in this grouping also have used the opportunities brought by post-9/11 arrangements to “gain leverage in … a variety of domestic social struggles” (Glassman 2006: 222). However, a leadership in Manila heavily dependent on a resource-starved military to stabilize its position in power has had a major influence on the Filipino government’s decision to deepen its ties with the United States, a decision that predates the attacks of September 2001 but that could be more successfully addressed after that date. In Malaysia and Indonesia, on the other hand, officials and other elites accept that they face a terrorist threat, but also perceive that the threat shares the stage with other significant causes of insecurity. This is particularly so in Indonesia, where concerns about national unity, territorial integrity, and the deadly impact of natural disasters are high. Maintaining autonomy in the security sphere also remains a prime goal for the country. In Malaysia, an alleged Islamist terrorist threat has become embroiled with party politics,

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as well as with debates about the character and trajectory of a Muslimmajority but multiethnic state. The security of the regime is under challenge as a result of evolutions in individual and group identity, and these shape the government’s reaction to the antiterrorism campaign. There are several broader implications for these findings. For the security analyst who believes that terrorism is the main security threat facing the globe, then attention to local perceptions will provide a better understanding of which policies are likely to be effective and which are not. There has been a steady drift away from the original sympathy expressed for the United States after the events of 9/11, and the dramatic decline in There has been a steady drift legitimacy of what is still seen as an overly militarized approach on the part away from the original of Washington, even if in Southeast sympathy expressed for the Asia U.S. policies have nonmilitary facets and go beyond military United States after…9/11 assistance. The Pew Global Attitude Surveys have recorded high levels of criticism of the Bush administration and its policies over several years. One in June 2007, for example, found that 66 percent of Indonesians and 69 percent of Malaysians had an unfavorable opinion of the United States (Pew Global Attitudes Survey 2007). Such hostility inevitably serves to frustrate many of Washington’s policy objectives and complicates the policymaking environment for the local governments. For the analyst who regards the priority given to global terrorism as a dangerous diversion, then attention to the local level can be used to reinforce that finding. Although we must be sensitive to the ways in which local elites have used the “war on terror” to pursue their own projects (from enhanced control of domestic opposition to arguments for increases in U.S. military and economic aid), attention to regional voices provides a more textured appreciation of the security environment faced by these states. This is especially important in an era when the United States stands accused of failing to draw lessons from other countries’ experiences with containing terrorism (Cronin 2006), and of being insensitive to causes of despair other than terrorist violence. Analyses that focus on the domestic and regional levels also support scholars who believe that security studies should go beyond a focus on the

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Framing Security Agendas state and “the study of the threat, use and control of military force” (Walt 1991: 212), and that such a narrow approach to security studies will cause us to miss a great deal that is of analytical importance. Furthermore, given the negative effects of the counterterrorist campaign on human rights protections, then maintaining a broader notion of security can help retain some purchase for the idea of human security: the idea that the security of the state should not override the security of the individual, or at least that it is necessary to think of these forms of security as reinforcing one another rather than competing. Finally, regarding the more traditional security agenda, and matters connected with the “rise of China” in particular, the findings here underline the extent to which states of the region have relatively little fear of interstate war, at least in the near to medium term. This is so despite weapons purchases that sometimes suggest the contrary (Hartfiel and Job 2007). Regional relations at times can be tense, territorial and other disputes largely remain managed rather than resolved, and changes in the strategic environment generate a sense of uncertainty. Yet an exploration of local security perceptions shows that there is little or no expectation of violent conflict over such unresolved issues. Any threat that a more powerful China might pose is neither particularly prominent in governmental security thinking, nor deemed something to be concerned about until sometime in the relatively distant future. Few officials, except some in the Singapore government, appear to spend much time thinking about the longer term or have the bureaucratic organizations that allow for such thinking. Moreover, Chinese official statements that emphasize that China’s focus is on domestic development goals and on resolving a whole range of problems affecting its society resonate strongly with states that also remain fixated on complex domestic concerns.

U.S. Counterterrorist Policies Since September 2001, the Bush administration has tried by rhetorical, political, and material means to convince other governments and peoples around the globe to accept that international terrorism is the major threat facing their countries. A few days after the terrorist attacks in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania, the U.S. president reminded “every nation in every region” that it now had “a decision to make: either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.”5 Some five years later, Bush was still

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Rosemary Foot describing the “global war on terror” in apocalyptic and polarized terms: the “war” was the “decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century” and it pitted “those who believe in the values of freedom and moderation” against “those driven by the values of tyranny and extremism.”6 For the Singapore foreign minister, the signs were all too clear: Washington was “quietly determining who its friends and allies” were; and America’s overwhelming power meant there was “no real alternative for any Southeast Asian government than to try to forge good relations with the U.S.” Moreover, it was obvious that such good relations were “not possible unless governments cooperate[d] in the anti-terrorism campaign.”7 Reshaping Global Security Agendas Apart from using rhetoric associated with its fight against terrorism, the United States sought to influence the security priorities of global organizations, seemingly successfully. The United Nations (UN) Security Council, for example, on September 28, 2001, passed Resolution 1373 under Chapter VII provisions. This resolution, largely drafted by the United States, set up the UN Counter-Terrorism Committee, which mandated that all UN member states report regularly on what they were doing to freeze terrorist assets, deny them safe haven, update their laws in order to bring terrorists to justice, improve border security, and stop arms trafficking (Rosand 2003: 334). The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) passage of its Convention on Counter-Terrorism in January 2007, which promises that all member states will become parties to all the international conventions and protocols relating to counterterrorism, was one part of the region’s response to that UN resolution. The work of the UN’s Al-Qaeda/Taliban Sanctions Committee, established under Resolution 1267 in October 1999 (the 1267 Committee), was also energized after 9/11 with a sudden increase in the size of its list of those to be sanctioned for association with terrorism, some of whom came from Southeast Asia. In light of its superior intelligence resources and commitment to the antiterrorist struggle, the U.S. government was the main provider of those names (Ibid. 2004: 746). In October 2002, just after the first bombing in Bali, which killed over 200 people, the Sanctions Committee designated JI a terrorist organization. The Bush administration’s approach to dealing with the terrorism soon revealed itself to be ruthless and uncompromising. U.S. National Security

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Strategy documents produced in 2002 and 2006 emphasized that the United States was at war and that this required a “wartime national security strategy” to defeat terrorism (National Security Strategies [NSS] 2002, 2006). There is little doubt that this use of the metaphor of war, including the idea of a “second front” together with military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, have served to underpin the perception that the United States has adopted a predominantly military approach when it comes to thwarting terrorist aims. Sizable increases in the U.S. military budget—the president requested US$513 billion for fiscal year 2007, on top of supplemental war-related funding of some US$520 billion between 2001 and 2007 (International Institute for Strategic Studies [IISS] 2007: 19)—have reinforced that perception. Pressure on other states to offer military or at least diplomatic support for the two military campaigns forced governments to calculate how closely they should align with these U.S. policies. U.S. domestic bureaucratic and legislative changes, including the creation of the massive Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, as well as the passage of the U.S. Patriot Act giving sweeping new powers to various governmental agencies (powers of surveillance, intelligence gathering, and detention), further signaled the overwhelming priority given to the terrorist threat. The U.S. establishment of places of detention overseas for terrorist suspects, most notably at Guantanamo Bay, and other secret detention U.S. officials drew parallels…between centers run by the CIA, as well as the president’s the “war against terrorism” and the determination that CIA fight against Fascists…and communists interrogators were not to be restricted in the choice of methods designed to extract information from detainees, magnified the sense of the Bush administration’s determination to fight what it deemed the major threat by any means at its disposal. When senior U.S. officials drew parallels in their speeches between the “war against terrorism” and the fight against Fascists in World War II and the communists during the Cold War, this added to the pressure on all states, but especially the weaker and more vulnerable among them, to conform to the U.S. security perspective.

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Rosemary Foot Immediately after the terrorist attacks in the United States, regional organizations in the Asia Pacific, notably the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), similarly shifted their attention. At the October 2001 leaders’ summit in Shanghai, APEC leaders issued a declaration committing the organization to the fight against terrorism. Subsequently, APEC created its own Counter-Terrorism Task Force to coordinate the implementation of this commitment, established the Secure Trade in the APEC Region (STAR) initiative, and promoted the development of APEC Counter-Terrorism Action Plans (Ravenhill 2007). The ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) began holding regular intersessional meetings on “counterterrorism and transnational crime.” The 16th Asia-Pacific Roundtable held in June 2002 in Kuala Lumpur, a “track two” meeting of security analysts working on the region, decided it would spend nearly 50 percent of its time examining the strategic implications of 9/11 and the nature of the overall terrorist threat; and the 7th ASEAN summit held in Brunei in November 2001 also devoted considerable attention to the topic (Nathan 2003: 250). Given the U.S. labeling of Southeast Asia as a “second-front,” ASEAN and particularly its individual member states quickly emerged as essential partners in the counterterrorist campaign. In July 2002, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell visited six ASEAN members to, as the Los Angeles Times put it, “press for tougher action and new cooperative pacts on the ‘second front’ in the counter-terrorism campaign” (quoted in Ramakrishna and Tan 2003: 14). This resulted in the signing on August 1 of the U.S.-ASEAN Joint the Philippines and Declaration for Cooperation to Combat International Terrorism, which pledged Thailand were designated that signatories would improve intelligence “major non-NATO allies” sharing, step up border controls, and cooperate to freeze terrorists’ assets. Admiral Dennis Blair, as commander in chief of the Pacific Command, and U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, also began making regular stops in the region, and from an early stage they acted vigorously to ensure that relations were reinforced or reestablished with the Filipino and Indonesian militaries. Both the Philippines and Thailand were designated “major non-NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] allies” of the United States, which has given

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Framing Security Agendas them privileged access to U.S. weaponry and training. Beyond the enhancement of bilateral military ties, the United States offered support to build capacity to track down and thwart terrorist activities through financial monitoring, police operations, and intelligence gathering. In financial terms, Indonesia and the Philippines have benefited most substantially among the four states analyzed here. Between 2002 and 2004, for example, the Philippines received US$122.88 million in assistance to the military, together with economic assistance of US$243.11 million. During a meeting between Bush and Arroyo in May 2003, her government received a further pledge of US$340 million in social and economic assistance. By 2007, military aid had reached nearly US$400 million (Simon 2007a). Aid to Indonesia, for reasons mainly connected with the human rights restrictions that the U.S. Congress has placed on the reestablishment of full military-to-military ties as a result of Jakarta’s failures to deal with its armed forces’ past abuses, has not reached these levels. However, in August 2002 the U.S. secretary of state announced a US$50 million package, most to go to the police, with US$16 million set aside for the establishment of a special counterterrorism unit and US$4 million for counterterrorism fellowships to train the Indonesian military (U.S. State Department 2002).8 Military-to-military relations were finally normalized in November 2005. Beyond the security realm, Indonesia has received health, education, and development assistance. During Bush’s three-hour stopover in Bali in October 2003, for example, he confirmed that the United States would contribute US$157 million to support Indonesian schools (Congressional Research Service [CRS] 2004: 14). Thus, U.S. attempts to shape the threat perceptions and to align other governments’ policies more closely with their own seemed to be achieving some success. The United States has a variety of foreign policy tools at its disposal and participates in a range of venues where it can promote its foreign policy aims. In the last few years it has used these tools and opportunities to influence the Southeast Asian security environment.

Southeast Asian Perceptions A perusal of public and academic records, together with a series of interviews in Southeast Asia, offered opportunities for me to probe these issues in greater depth. In particular, my interviews were designed to investigate whether certain Southeast Asian governments, as well as those outside of

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Rosemary Foot government, have in fact designated transnational terrorism as the major threat that their countries face, or whether they have simply added the terrorist threat to the list of major security challenges or concluded that the U.S. government’s concentration on global terrorism is basically irrelevant to the security challenges that are at hand—even while they may take advantage of some of the largesse that is on offer. Through these interviews, I was able to uncover the local states’ reactions to U.S. demands that they give priority to the terrorist threat. They also shed light on how much regional political actors have been influenced by the approach the U.S. has championed. The desire of Southeast Asian elites to construct a state identity— including identification with or differentiation from their neighbors and from the United States—as well as their own self-identity, is helpful in explaining the differing positions of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore. These features are explored in the individual country discussions that follow. Questions relating to regime type—whether the states are democratizing, semi-authoritarian, and the like—also help explain their respective responses to dealing with the phenomenon of religiousbased violence. Indonesia As noted earlier, President Megawati used the occasion of a previously scheduled trip to Washington to offer her support to the United States. But she soon backtracked from this after the reactions at home. At the time of the U.S. attack on Afghanistan she began to speak out against the U.S. use of violence in promoting its campaign. Few in Indonesia believed that the attacks Few in Indonesia believed on the Taliban were justified, and there that the attacks on the was little or no support for the 2003 U.S. intervention in Iraq. These sentiments Taliban were justified have not translated, however, into a governmental unwillingness to accept U.S. assistance for counterterrorist and other security efforts. And, steadily, a number of the restrictions on aid to the Indonesian military, in place on human rights grounds, have been lifted. A clear willingness to criticize America’s overwhelming focus on the countering of terrorism and on the way Washington has conducted its campaign, including the use of

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Framing Security Agendas Guantanamo Bay and its treatment of detainees, though, has marked Jakarta’s approach, especially in the period since 2004. This criticism and reluctance to accept too readily that Indonesia itself faced a severe terrorist threat of a kind that might be of interest to the United States is perhaps surprising. In October 2002, the Indonesian government acknowledged that JI had been behind the first Bali bombing, and that JI had a well-established presence in Indonesia and a connection with Al-Qaeda (Sebastian 2003: 358). That major assault in 2002, which killed more than 200, was followed by a number of other bombings that deliberately targeted foreigners, including Bali again in 2005, and the explosions at the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta in August 2003 and at the Australian embassy in September 2004 (Sidel 2006: 7). Several related factors help to explain the more qualified Indonesian reaction to terrorism. First, since the mid-1990s, according to John Sidel, Indonesians have experienced three discernible phases of violence, most of it going unremarked outside the country.9 The first, between 1995 and 1998, which he terms “riots,” occurred in towns and provincial cities and primarily targeted significant buildings. Later on, people were attacked, especially in 1998 and at the time of the severe collapse of the Indonesian economy. In that year, gang rapes, crowd lynchings, gang warfare, and “armed assaults” on neighborhoods and villages Jihadi terrorism began to manifest scarred the landscape. The period 1999–2001 saw the itself [in Indonesia] from 2000 advent of “pogroms” in places such as West and Central Kalimantan, Maluku, and Poso in central Sulawesi.10 Jihadi terrorism began to manifest itself in the country from 2000, resulting in such acts as the August bombing of the residence of the Philippine ambassador to Indonesia and explosions at Christian churches around the country in December of that year. By late 2001, these bouts of violence had also exhausted themselves and were replaced by a “new form of violence crystallizing under the sign of jihad” with its signature use of suicide bombing techniques (Ibid.: 6–7). The shift to the bombing of Western targets, coming after the September 2001 attacks, generated global attention, whereas the earlier actions had not. This caused many to ask what was so special about these

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particular outrages in a country that had experienced violence of different types and for different reasons—secessionist, religious, and criminal— since the state’s inception? Second, if violence was hardly a new phenomenon in Indonesia, neither was Islamic radicalism, nor evidence that governmental authorities might take action to restrict its revival. In the 1950s, for example, a movement called “Darul Islam/Tentera Islam Indonesia” was willing to use armed force to try to transform Indonesia into an Islamic state, a pattern that was to be repeated by other groups throughout the Suharto era. Most such challenges were put down forcefully by the New Order government; in one case in 1984 the military fired directly at Muslim protesters. The repressive treatment meted out to radicals at the hands of the authorities often served to deepen that radicalism and to generate new recruits even if during certain periods they went underground or overseas and their activities were temporarily quashed (Sukma 2003: 343). Supporters of a democratizing Indonesia, following President Suharto’s forced resignation in 1998, feared that the repressive activities associated with his rule would make a speedy comeback if the terrorist attacks began to receive higher governmental priority. Third, the country’s political transition was turning out to be painful and difficult, and it was realized that democratic practices, if they became established at all, would take a long time to be fully consolidated. Democratization was leading to a gradual if uneven dismantling of the repressive levers of the state and to the enhancement of accountability mechanisms: for example, the antisubversion law of the Suharto era had been repealed. Democratization was leading to a However, under specific and gradual…dismantling of the direct pressure from the United States, and some three months repressive levers of the state before the 2002 Bali blasts, the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights in the government of President Megawati submitted an antiterrorist bill to Parliament. It attracted significant opposition from civil society groups, Muslim organizations that feared they would be specially targeted, and nationalists who claimed that Megawati was “a pawn of U.S. interests” (Sebastian 2003: 361). Although the Indonesian president explained that

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Framing Security Agendas UN Resolution 1373 required all UN member states to pass such legislation (ICG 2002: 19), the provenance of that Resolution did nothing to undermine the argument that the United States had leaned on her government. Similar problems beset the attempts to pass a new intelligence bill drafted by Megawati’s administration in 2003. There was very little trust that intelligence agencies would not use any new-found powers in abusive ways, and the bill was blocked.11 Finally, a reluctance on the government’s part to openly admit that the Bali events and others like it had globalized Jakarta’s security environment stemmed in part from a belief that the ruling authorities would be undermined and would lose the support of Muslim organizations, political parties, and voters by too close an association with U.S. interests. In addition, the country had long been a leading member of the NonAlignment Movement and those sentiments associated with nonalignment remained strong. Waves of public protests took place in Indonesia after the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan in October 2001, protests that were to become more extensive still with the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Shortly after her return from Washington in the fall of 2001, President Megawati, at a gathering at the State Mosque Istiqlal, issued a statement that refrained from criticizing the U.S. action in Afghanistan but did abhor the use of violence in combating terrorism. From the start of the indications that the United States would soon move against Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, she made it clear that she could not support Washington (Hafidz 2003: 386–87). Over the years since the Megawati period, Indonesia’s leaders have articulated their position more forcefully, in the summer of 2006, for example, criticizing the Bush administration’s support for Israel in its latest incursion into Lebanon. In addition, they have been increasingly outspoken about U.S. attempts at interference and at certain of the efforts to direct Indonesia’s counterterrorist activity. As Indonesia’s defense minister, Juwono Sudarsono, stated during a press conference in Jakarta, with Secretary Rumsfeld present, it would be far better if the United States left the “main responsibility of antiterrorist measures to the local government in question, and not be too overly insistent about immediate results arising from your perception about terrorists.” He went on: “It’s important to us because, as the world’s largest Muslim country, we are very aware of the perception, or misperception, that the United States is overbearing and overpresent and

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Rosemary Foot overwhelming in every sector of life in many nations and cultures.”12 If Indonesia wanted to accept U.S. assistance for its police and military forces, then the government would project the idea that this aid was designed to make Indonesians better able to take care of their own security, on land and sea. Acceptance of aid should not be read as a signal that Jakarta’s worldview had come into closer alignment with Washington’s. A variety of factors have contributed, then, to skepticism toward and wariness of adopting too directly or openly the security paradigm dominant in the United States since September 2001. This is not to suggest that there is not a problem with terrorist violence in the country or that movements that desire to establish an Islamic state through violent means, if necessary, do not pose some level of threat to Indonesians, as well as to their neighbors. An ICG analysis of May 2007, for example, estimates that there is a solid core of about 900 JI members across the country involved in military training “to build capacity to take on Islam’s enemies” (ICG 2007b). Nevertheless, notwithstanding the presence of religiousbased violence in the country, which the Jakarta government has worked assiduously if quietly to reduce, that threat of terrorist action exists alongside—and for some is clearly even subordinate to—other kinds of threats facing the country. In Jakarta’s view, two features of the threat environment are particularly prominent and are generally given a higher priority than terrorism.13 The first relates to questions of national unity and the territorial integrity of this archipelagic nation; and the second to the prevalence of natural disasters— earthquakes, tsunamis, mud flows, and the like—that are regular occurrences. A further nontraditional security issue, Avian influenza, hovers as a future great crisis with the potential to inflict severe damage on the country’s people and economy. Mobilization of Indonesian resources on a large scale, and mostly requiring a central role for the security services, have been (and will continue to be) required to deal with these issues. It is no surprise, of course, that Indonesian elites should focus on territorial integrity and national unity as primary security threats, given the heterogeneity of the population, its many distinct languages and cultures, and other centrifugal pressures. Separatist movements in Aceh and Papua have acted as potent reminders of these frailties. Neither is it surprising that the government should doubt its ability to control and prevent encroachment upon an archipelagic state, made up of over 16,000 islands, many of which are vast distances from the capital, Jakarta. Geography has long been seen

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Framing Security Agendas as a “major source of weakness and vulnerability,” leading to a perception that “national unity can never be taken for granted” (Anwar 1999: 200– 01). Dutch imperialists had benefited from the geopolitical factors that made the archipelago easy to conquer. In more recent times, the breaking away of East Timor, and secessionist struggles in Aceh and Papua, as well as elsewhere, are constant reminders that the national motto, “Unity in Diversity,” is difficult to sustain (Aspinall and Chauvel 2007).14 A 2002 International Court of Justice award of the islands of Ligatan and Sipadan to Malaysia, in part because it could not be proven that there had been a continuous presence of the Dutch and Indonesian navies in the vicinity of the islands, has reinforced this sense of vulnerability and the need to deal with the current inadequacy of its naval power.15 The threat from natural disasters has almost been given equal status to that of national unity as defining moments for the nation in many official public and private statements over recent years. The first substantive paragraph of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s State of the Union Address in 2006 recalled the massive earthquake and resultant tsunami disaster that devastated Aceh in December 2004 (with some 150,000 deaths), as well as the other earthquakes later affecting Yogyakarta and Central Java.16 The year 2007 saw a series of disastrous floods in the country. The seriousness with which these issues are taken, and the security threats they pose, was pressed home to President Bush during his brief visit to the country in 2006. Reports of the meeting emphasized that Bush and Yudhoyono signed a joint agreement to cooperate in developing a detection system for early warning of natural hazards such as tsunamis, and also focused on U.S. help with fighting Avian flu—which has claimed more lives in Indonesia than in any other country.17 Finally, there is the matter of poverty, now interpreted as a human security issue, especially after the Asian financial crisis in 1997–98. Death rates after the economic collapse and subsequent government reduction of subsidies on food, fuel, and electricity climbed steadily, as did the number of ethnic and religious conflicts (Hadiwanata 2006: 209–12). In 2001, poverty levels began to return to precrisis levels, but in 2006 still remained at 17.8 percent: that is, nearly 40 million people in Indonesia live in conditions of poverty (World Bank 2007). The terrorist threat thus has to compete with numerous other major security concerns that Indonesia faces, all of which have resulted in significant loss of life and livelihood. Religious violence is hardly a new phenomenon;

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Rosemary Foot threats to the unity and territorial integrity of the country are real, and are seen, obviously, as existential; and poverty and natural disasters regularly result in deaths and casualties on a stupendous scale. Malaysia Prime Minister Mahathir’s initial reaction to the terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001 was sympathetic and supportive. Immediately after 9/11, he visited, for the first time, the U.S. embassy in Kuala Lumpur to sign the condolence book. In the months after that, U.S. government officials heaped praise on Malaysian leaders. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, in the Malaysian capital in April 2002, lauded Malaysia as a moderate Islamic country that was playing “an important role in the global war on terrorism and is a beacon of stability in the region.”18 In May, on a visit to the United States, the Malaysian minister of defense, Najib bin Tun Abdul Razak, referred to the long-standing and strong defense ties between the two countries, enumerating fifteen to twenty U.S. naval visits per year and some joint military training. These ties, he said, had reached an “elevated level of cooperation” after September 2001. Najib also made great efforts in that speech to impress on his audience that Malaysia was “at the forefront in prosecuting terrorists” and that Prime Minister Mahathir, due to arrive in Washington some two weeks after Najib, would “talk more about our common battle to eliminate terrorism.”19 During that later prime ministerial visit, Mahathir was thanked publicly “for his strong support in the war against terror.”20 Also in May the two countries signed a “Declaration on Cooperation to Combat International Terrorism” designed to enhance the exchange of intelligence information. Mahathir’s goal to improve relations with the United States, which prior to this had been under considerable political strain, especially as a result of the arrest and imprisonment of Mahathir’s former deputy Anwar Ibrahim, had borne fruit.21 Concrete actions on the Malaysian side supported these signs of verbal cooperation Malaysian security forces between two countries. The Malaysian security forces moved swiftly to arrest moved swiftly to arrest terrorist suspects, frequently making use terrorist suspects of the country’s preventive detention system—the Internal Security Act (ISA). It appeared as if JI had a well-established network in the country and had

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Framing Security Agendas provided important recruits to the cause, not least Noor Din Mohamed Top, a Malaysian explosives expert and graduate of the Malaysian Technical Institute. He was later alleged to have helped to plan the Bali and Marriott hotel bombings. Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, later indicted in Jakarta for involvement in the bombings, had retained links with Malaysia, the country to which he had fled in 1985, having come under threat of arrest from President Suharto. Terrorist cell members living in Malaysia were also alleged to have coordinated the plot to attack U.S. installations in Singapore (see below). The Kuala Lumpur government additionally claimed that two of the 9/11 hijackers had visited JI cell members in 2000 and that the Malaysian police had videotaped their activities. Many of the arrests in Malaysia, in fact, predated the attacks on the United States, and suggested ways in which “the global war on terror” could and would be used to support domestic political objectives. Some suspects detained in August 2001 were said to belong to a hitherto unknown organization, Kumpulan Militan Malaysia (KMM). The Mahathir government asserted that KMM had links not only with the main opposition Islamic Party in Malaysia, Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS), but also with the JI regional network. (One specialist, however, has described the evidence of such links as “inconclusive” [Liow 2004: 248]). Thus, Malaysian officials made the argument that their country was at the center of much transnational terrorist activity (ICG 2003), and this helped cement a closer alignment between security perceptions in Washington, D.C., and Kuala Lumpur. However, as in Indonesia, these similarities in perspective soon proved difficult to sustain, although in this instance sometimes for rather different reasons. It has been politically difficult for a majority-Muslim country— nearly 60 percent of the country is Malay Muslim—to align too openly It has been politically difficult with the United States. Mahathir soon returned to outspoken for a majority-Muslim criticism of U.S. foreign policy country...to align too openly actions—in Afghanistan, Iraq, and toward Israel and the Palestinians— with the United States on one occasion at such a pitch that it nearly led to the recall of the U.S. ambassador. Mahathir’s successor, Prime Minister Badawi, similarly criticized the Bush administration for the Iraq operation,22 together with its failure to rein in Israel’s attack on Lebanon in the summer of 2006.

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Rosemary Foot Although Badawi’s personality means that the tone of his criticism tends to be less shrill, even he has promised to continue to speak frankly to the U.S. president. The most prevalent of the arguments made in Malaysia is that it is these Western actions that have made Malaysia a potential target of terrorist attack, and that local jihadis’ anger at these external events is the source of the violence. It is contended that, when Western facilities come under attack in their country, the causes are rooted in U.S. foreign policy— particularly with respect to the Palestinians—whereas the serious consequences of the bombings or of being labeled a terrorist haven are primarily borne by Malaysians themselves.23 In addition, and similar to Indonesia, it is widely understood in Malaysian society that a number of the Islamist movements have deep roots and have on other occasions been in conflict with the ruling party. The 1970s saw the advent of groups willing to use violent jihad to overthrow the government and set up an Islamic state. The opposition party, PAS, also has been singled out on earlier occasions and accused of harboring militants in its midst. In 1985 security forces stormed the compound of a PAS religious leader, resulting in the death of eighteen and 160 arrests (Liow 2004: 243–44). The ISA was used in 1987 against civil society and Islamist movements, and again in 1994 against members of the Darul Arqam (Othman 2003: 128). This history is at the basis of a suspicion inside and outside the country that political motives and a concern to maintain the security of the political regime, rather than a genuine belief in a new kind of terrorist threat, are the reasons behind many of the arrests. Why the Malaysian government, led by the United Malays Nationalist Organization (UMNO) since independence in 1957, should still experience this sense of insecurity is based on the continuation of ethnic, cultural, and religious challenges faced by the ruling party. More broadly, these challenges are rooted in the country’s “unwieldy” geography, the lack of a single “common point of reference” that could have developed if Malaysia had experienced a “heroic anticolonial revolution.” Above all, there are the difficulties associated with sustaining a dominant Malay model incorporating privilege in the face of demands from other major ethnic groups (about 30 percent are Chinese Malaysians) that Malay special rights be brought to an end (Milner 2005: 122). These factors generate “an unresolved tension in nation-making … [which] enhances the sense of the nation state as an ongoing and contested project, formulated and re-formulated over time,

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Framing Security Agendas never permanently anchored, always vulnerable—a project in constant demand of attention” (Ibid.: 155).24 Particularly critical to this ongoing and contested project in the past twenty years or so has been the role of Islam in what has been described as a gradually desecularizing Malaysian society. The central question has become whose political voice best represents the authentic voice of Islam: UMNO or PAS? Norani Othman records the Islamization policies “conscientiously undertaken by the state from the mid-1980s” in order for the government to “legitimate itself as Islamic against the claims of traditionalizing or neo-traditionalist Islamic forces.” Mahathir and his deputy Anwar Ibrahim (until the latter’s removal from power in 1998) were “crucial in shaping contemporary Malaysian understandings of how Islam, democracy and modernity were defined.” Othman goes on to describe “the underlying assumption of the Islamization policies formulated” as “the legitimacy of the state and its religious authorities to unilaterally define the kind of Islam best suited to Malaysia.” It was during this mid-to-late 1980s period that major changes to the constitution were made, including dividing the civil from the Shariah courts, “notably deciding substantially in the latter’s favour” (Othman 2003: 125–27). Joseph Liow substantially agrees with this analysis. As he has aptly put it: “Since the early 1980s, the Mahathir administration has been engaged with the opposition PAS party in an ideological contest over representations of authenticity. Given the increasing prominence of Islam as the frame of reference for Malaysian politics, Islamic discourse lies at the heart of the political contest between UMNO and PAS” (Liow 2004: 252). The ruling party has been determined that it be recognized as victor: hence Mahathir’s populist claim in September 2001 that Malaysia is an Islamic state, although that statement was immediately contested by other ethnic and political groups and has not been resurrected by Mahathir’s successor, Prime Minister Badawi.25 Mahathir also introduced the concept of deviance as the “ideological cornerstone of the … counter-offensive against militant Islam.” This conceptual claim involves a strategy of discrediting interpretations of Islam that no longer fit with the state-sanctioned version, and an attempt to portray PAS as extremist (Ibid.). In 1995, the government established a “rehabilitation center” for what it called Muslim deviants, defined in such a generalized way that it “could easily be misused to silence discussion and debate of the legal or religious measures introduced by the state” (Othman 2003: 128).

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Rosemary Foot Liow goes on to argue that this strategy of claiming some practices and interpretations as “deviant” is another way of attempting to weaken the political challenge led by the Islamic opposition. But its effects have been to increase doubts among some parts of the population that the arrests from 2001 are justified and have been based on impartial and credible evidence (Liow 2004: 249–52). The KMM, because they were charged under the ISA, are not required to be brought to trial. Hence those doubts are difficult to assuage. Reports that some of these detainees, as well as others arrested as terrorist suspects, have been subjected to serious abuse add to the dismay of PAS sympathizers and political reformists in the country (HRW 2004). In response to such assessments of contemporary Malaysian politics, some nonofficial elites argue that the major threat facing Malaysia is not terrorism per se, but the impact of the governmental response to oppositional challenges and sometimes violence, as well as the effects of Western, and particularly U.S., actions on Muslims’ sense of self. The perception that the faithful are under attack, a perception bolstered by Western warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the long-standing failure to seriously address the Palestinian cause, is believed to be increasing loyalty to a panIslamic religious identity and a weaker identity with the state. The government has chosen to respond with draconian measures that some believe are making matters worse.26 A survey produced in 2005 seems to vindicate the point about conflicting loyalties, to some extent. When Muslims in Malaysia were asked which identity they would choose if only one were available to them, 73 percent chose Muslim, 14 percent Malaysian, and 13 percent Malay.27 Unsurprisingly, many officials, though not those outside the government, are reluctant to discuss these matters, even in confidential interviews. When asked about their threat perceptions, they focus more readily on the matter of immigration, especially illegal immigrants from Indonesia, currently reckoned to number about 1 million people. They also make frequent reference to weaknesses in capacity, especially that associated with Malaysia’s porous borders and the technical difficulties associated with proper border surveillance. Many official public statements have also defined the matter of illegal Indonesian immigration as a threat to national security. In some respects, these arguments resonate with both the issue of the terrorist threat and the question of identity in Malaysia. For many decades, and until the financial crisis of 1997–98, immigration from Indonesia was

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Framing Security Agendas positively encouraged for both economic and political reasons. The political factors behind this encouragement came even more prominently to the fore after the May 1969 race riots in Malaysia, which sparked two things: policies of positive discrimination in favor of Malays, and stronger ties with Indonesia. The logic for the latter was spelled out in a Malaysian political affairs report of 1967–68: “Good relations with Indonesia have overriding significance because, to the Malays, Indonesia represents their ultimate source of strength in a region under the heavy shadow of communist China and with large overseas Chinese populations of unpredictable loyalty” (quoted in Liow 2006a: 46). The economic takeoff of Malaysia in the 1970s, as well as labor shortages in the 1980s, provided further opportunities for Indonesian migrants. Only more recently are these migrants viewed in a distinctly negative light, blamed for a wide array of crimes, denoted as originators of the JI terrorist network, and accused of spreading “‘deviant’ Islamic teachings within the Malay-Muslim community” (Ibid.: 49). The initial alignment of U.S. and Malaysian counterterrorist rhetoric and policy after 9/11 has exposed far deeper issues connected with the evolution of Malaysian society and the perceived insecurity of the political regime. These questions of representation and identity, though affected by the government’s methods of dealing with the terrorist menace, have resulted in the exposure of a multidimensional and interrelated security ideology. However, that ideology is predominantly domestically oriented, especially as it relates to the security of the UMNO-led party’s perceived right to rule and to determine the nature of Islam in modern-day Malaysia. Any threat that transnational or local terrorist forces are seen to pose is filtered through that domestic lens. The Philippines As noted earlier, after 9/11, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo announced that, for moral and interest-based reasons, her government was prepared to “go every step of the way” with the United States in Arroyo allowed the U.S. its fight against transnational terrorist military to use Filipino forces. She also claimed that her own country’s battle against terrorism was ports and airfields intimately linked to that global struggle. Arroyo allowed the U.S. military to use Filipino ports and airfields to support operations in Afghanistan and offered

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Rosemary Foot airspace and refueling facilities to aid the U.S. intervention in Iraq. A small Filipino police and medical contingent was also sent to Iraq after the first stage of the fighting was over (CRS 2007a: 1).28 Soon after September 2001, U.S. military assistance started to flow into the country, with an initial grant to the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) of US$93 million and a total of US$400 million given by 2007. It was not long before hundreds of U.S. troops deployed to the south of the country. Coupled with that military assistance in 2001 were trade credits, tariff reductions, and debt cancellation (Capie 2004: 233). In May 2003, during Arroyo’s state visit to Washington, the Philippines attained the status of major non-NATO ally, giving Manila greater access to U.S. military equipment and supplies. It also received a further pledge of US$340 million in social and economic assistance. The Arroyo government established the Inter-Agency Anti-Terrorism Task Force in March 2004, which pushed strongly for the passage of an antiterrorism law (Banlaoi 2006: 257) and finally passed one amidst much controversy in 2007.29 Manila seemed particularly proud that, as a nonpermanent member of the UN Security Council in 2004 and 2005, it was present and able actively to support the passage of a number of major UN counterterrorist resolutions (ARF 2006: 73). Arroyo’s decision to align closely with the United States reflected longstanding problems in the Philippines with secessionist and insurgent groups and the ineffective ways in which they had been dealt with over several decades. In addition, broader security goals, connected with disputes with China in the 1990s over sovereignty claims in the South China Sea and catalyzed by China’s occupation of Mischief Reef (a reef within the area claimed by the Philippines), had led Manila by the late 1990s to seek to reactivate security ties with Washington.30 Thus post-9/11 policies were designed to address a number of security concerns. However, the most significant of these have been internal to the state. Although it has been independent since 1946, the Philippine state has not completed its nation-building project or established an “effective monopoly of the means of coercion within its boundaries” (Morada and Collier 1998: Internal security was 550). Internal security was President Arroyo’s priority, and she recognized an President Arroyo’s priority opportunity to address, through U.S. material support, weaknesses in the Philippines’ political and military efforts to end its several serious domestic

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Framing Security Agendas conflicts. Use of the argument that some of these insurgent and secessionist groups apparently had established ties with JI as well as with Al-Qaeda, as a consequence of their common involvement in the fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, was designed to legitimize her acceptance of the American discourse on global terrorism. But this was only convincing in some quarters. The Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) became a particular focus of U.S. attention in part because Washington believed it to have these associations with Al-Qaeda, and because the ASG had been involved in the kidnapping of three American tourists in 2000, one of whom was beheaded while in captivity and another killed during fighting designed to gain their release (CRS 2007a: 3–4, 11). Moreover, the ASG’s use of violent bandit tactics revolted many in the Philippines. In November 2001, the Filipino military received its first major injection of funds and in February 2002, 1,300 U.S. troops engaged in joint operations with the AFP (although supposedly in a noncombat role) against the ASG on the island of Basilan in the southern part of the country. U.S. offers of a direct combat role for its forces involved in these operations—for example, in November 2001 and again in February 2003—foundered on both occasions because of the controversy these offers stirred up among Filipino nationalists as well as among Filipino Muslims.31 The suspicions surrounding the U.S. military presence continue because it has always been difficult to distinguish neatly between U.S. training and assistance and the actual involvement of U.S. forces in combat. This distinction has become particularly critical to maintain, however, as, over time, the joint operations have extended beyond Basilan, become larger in size, and in general edged closer to the conflict area in which the Muslim Liberation Front organizations (the MILF [Moro Islamic Liberation Front] and MNLF, discussed in more detail below) retain control. One exercise in the Sulu Islands in 2006 involved 5,500 U.S. military personnel. Another in 2005 focused on western Mindanao (Ibid.: 13–14). An operation in December 2005 in Sulu resulted in the death of twenty-five ASG members, but some in the area believe that the fighting deliberately targeted the MNLF rather than ASG camps. This targeting, together with the displacement of hundreds of residents, according to some reports has served to alienate the local population (Banlaoi 2006: 258). Despite this U.S. focus on the ASG and a growing concern with other Muslim-led liberation organizations, many other groups in the Philippines

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Rosemary Foot have at times resorted to terrorist tactics as well, including the military wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP)—the New People’s Army (NPA)—which possibly still has a strength of over 10,000 fighters. For the Filipino military, it is the NPA that represents the major threat to the country’s security (Abuza 2005: 41).32 The continuing support for and centrality of the CPP and NPA to Filipino political and military security reveals another major fracture within the society: the persistent inability of successive governments to tackle the high levels of poverty in the country, which many would argue is the major threat that its citizens face. These political forces continue to draw adherents because of the persistence of large socioeconomic inequalities in the country. The NPA has defined many of the activities of the AFP over several decades; some military commanders have fought them for the whole of their military careers. The NPA was one of the justifications that Ferdinand Marcos used for declaring martial law in 1972, a consequence of which was the NPA’s mobilization of a militant student movement in its support. The Filipino military began to receive increased levels of U.S. military assistance, and its defense budget grew nearly tenfold between 1972 and 1977. But as further evidence that neither martial law nor greater AFP military strength was going to provide answers to the NPA problem, the NPA steadily built up its membership. NPA regular forces grew from 1,320 in 1972 to 22,500 in 1985, developed a countrywide presence, and were perceived to have the capacity to seize power (Morada and Collier 1998: 555). Irrespective of the lessons that might be drawn from this history, in June 2006, President Arroyo instructed the AFP to go all out once and for all to cripple this organization, setting a deadline of 2010 for its final eradication. Apart from the communist insurgency, there has also been a longstanding rebellion in the south of the country among Filipino Muslims— the Bangsamoros––on the island of Mindanao and the Sulu island chain southwest of that island. The depth of grievance here is great, according to Liow, deriving from “a string of dubious land registration policies enacted by various colonial administrations [which] divested Bangsamoro of their ancestral lands.” Compounding this sense of injustice was the experience of marginalization as a result of “later, postcolonial Manila’s policies of ‘Filipinization’ of the islands of Mindanao and Sulu, which legitimized the state-orchestrated relocation of Christian settlers in the Muslim lands in the south” (Liow 2006b: 9). These policies fueled a Moro rebellion from the early 1970s led by the MNLF.

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Framing Security Agendas Negotiations between the MNLF leadership and the Filipino government eventually led to a split in Moro ranks and to the formation of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). The MILF has concentrated on forging an Islamic identity that would underpin the demands to establish an independent Bangsamoro Islamic state (Ibid.: 11–13). Since 2001 it has publicly renounced the use of terror; its leader wrote to President George W. Bush in May 2003 repeating this renunciation and arguing that his principal aim was “security safety of the life and properties of the Bangsamoro people” (Ibid.: 21). Support for the MILF grew extensively over the 1990s, but it too began negotiations with the Filipino government in an effort to move toward a final peace agreement. These negotiations remain stymied over the issue of what precisely constitutes ancestral lands. The Filipino government (unlike some sections of the military) has been committed to trying to keep these negotiations in play and has never agreed to U.S. requests that the MILF be placed on a terrorist watch list, even as some perceive the possibility of renewed links between certain members of the MILF, ASG, and JI (ICG 2004 and 2005).33 (This is not so with the NPA and the ASG: with Manila’s support, the United States designated both as terrorist groups in 2002.) Thus, while AFP and U.S. joint operations have weakened the ASG, that weakening may have led to growing cooperation between Abu Sayyaf and some within the MILF who are disillusioned with the negotiating strategy. And its new links have resulted in an increase in the number of bombings in the Philippines since 2002, including three simultaneous explosions in Makati, Davao, and General Santos cities in February 2005 and an explosion on Superferry 14 that killed 116 in 2004 (Banlaoi 2006: 256).34 The new U.S. military role in western Mindanao is also heightening the risk of confrontation between U.S. military forces and the MILF. Its presence has attracted a protest march by Muslim civilian groups associated with the MILF, as well as a warning against further encroachment from an MILF central committee official (CRS 2007a: 15–16). Despite the attempts to reach a final agreement with the MILF, the divisions between Muslims and the predominantly Catholic Filipinos remain deep, and have been deepened still further by the increase in bombings and military activity. Some non-Muslims are only too willing to believe that there is little daylight between any of these religious secessionist groups or between their methods. To this day, the level of discrimination against Muslim Filipinos remains extremely high, substantiated by opinion surveys

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Rosemary Foot in which 55 percent of non-Muslims claim to believe that “Muslims are more prone to run amok.” In addition, large pluralities apparently think that “Muslims are terrorists or extremists (47 percent), believe they harbor hatred toward non-Muslims (44 percent), and do not consider themselves Filipinos (44 percent)” (Human Development Report [HDR] 2005: 13). At best, a mixed picture has resulted from an intensification of Filipino relations with the U.S. military, including both the military operations directed at the ASG in the south and a more aggressive approach toward the communist insurgency. And the shadows that these actions have cast are deepened by two additional factors. First, the closer military relationship has reinforced the prominence of the military in Filipino life and politics in an era when the institution is supposed to be submitting to civilian control (Beeson, Bellamy, and Hughes 2006: 461; Beeson and Bellamy 2008). Moreover, it has added new dimensions to the corrupt practices for which the security services have long been well known: for example, there is evidence that some of the bombings in Mindanao were staged by top AFP officials in an attempt to ensure that U.S. military assistance continues to flow.35 Even the Filipino Armed Forces Chief, General Narciso Abaya, in August 2003 voiced his alarm at the levels of “graft and corruption” that were present in the AFP, including black market sales of military equipment, some of which had reached the MILF, and the recovery of U.S.-supplied M-16s in Abu Sayyaf camps (Simon 2004a: 69). Second, the more intense fighting against insurgent and secessionist groups has further split an already fractious Filipino society, endangered some members of its civil society, and raised fears that legislation associated with the antiterrorist struggle portends a return to a Marcos-style authoritarian era.36 Some Filipino nationalists resent the greater U.S. military presence in their country, believing that counterterrorist cooperation represents an underhand attempt to reestablish permanent military bases in the Philippines. U.S. Special Forces activities in Sulu do nothing to weaken this perception (Ibid. 2008). Other members of civil society fear that antiterrorist legislation and rhetoric that focus on a terrorist threat have been used in ways that indiscriminately target Muslim communities as well as more generally against other critics of a politically fragile regime. Indeed, there is some basis for this fear. One of the most lamentable consequences of the advent of a political regime in the Philippines that has advocated a more punitive military struggle against political opponents has been the greater number of extrajudicial killings and disappearances of

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Framing Security Agendas anyone suspected of “leftist” tendencies. Such attacks became prevalent with the beginning of the Arroyo period and have targeted human rights defenders, journalists, trade union organizers, church workers, and farmers’ representatives. Although the actual number of violations is contested, it is agreed that their number increased substantially after the controversial 2004 election results, which many believe to have been fraudulently conducted, and in 2006 after Arroyo declared a state of national emergency in the country in February (even if it was only in place formally for one week). Arroyo’s weak political standing has led the government to concentrate on these domestic political threats to her regime and to all-out attempts to eradicate them. The killings and disappearances have attracted worldwide attention and have further exposed the weak domestic political consensus inside the country. Domestic and overseas human rights organizations, plus an investigation by the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, has reinforced suspicion of AFP involvement in the political assassinations.37 The AFP on the other hand has blamed the deaths on NPA internal purges, although its release of a compact disc in 2005 that describes legitimate church and journalist organizations, along with the CPP-NPA, as “enemies of the state” gives insight into its perceptions (HDR 2005: 8). President Arroyo herself ordered an investigation and claimed that she was determined that the killings should stop, but many believe she is unable to follow any findings through to their logical conclusion—that is, significant arrests among the military and paramilitary groups—because her administration has been too close to some sections of the military that helped bring her to power and supported her in the face of two coup attempts since 2001. As Simon has recorded, the director of a program on the Philippines at the U.S. Institute of Peace explained to the U.S. Senate in March 2007 that, “ever since her controversial reelection in 2004, Arroyo has relied on military and provincial leaders to prevent her impeachment and in exchange has given them a green light to deal with the communist New People’s Army…however they choose” (Simon 2007a: 67). That seems to have involved targeting anyone suspected of NPA sympathies. Some of the unintended consequences of the period since 2001 have been, then, to magnify the negative impact of the military on different parts of society, and to reinforce the centrality of the military in the political process, even though there has been a policy since the mid-1990s of reforming the security sector, including placing it more firmly under

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civilian control (Beeson and Bellamy 2008). In addition, there have been potent reminders of the Marcos era, in the advent of unexplained killings and disappearances, the declaration of a state of emergency, and the introduction of security legislation that many see as reflecting the repressive mindset of that earlier period. The labeling of the NPA as a terrorist group subject to all-out attack has diminished opportunities for a negotiated settlement. It is notoriously difficult to have the label “terrorist” removed once it has been applied. Stepped-up operations in southern Mindanao have also reportedly encouraged the formation of links between more militant sections of the MILF, JI, and ASG and increased the strains on the government’s peace negotiations with the MILF as joint U.S.-AFP military action has moved closer to MILF strongholds (ICG 2005: 20). U.S. policies in the Philippines go well beyond military support for the country’s armed forces—for example, U.S. AID has allocated some $250 million in funding for Mindanao and Sulu over the period 2000–06 (U.S. AID 2007). U.S. forces also engage in civic action in the U.S. policies in the Philippines go Philippines, “providing medical and dental care for local well beyond military support populations, building roads, schools, and improving sanitation” (Simon 2008: 59). However, Filipino perceptions hardly seem to register this largesse in the context of large joint military operations, higher levels of threat to the personal security of many civilians, and outspoken Bush administration support for a discredited Arroyo presidency. Internal security issues that constitute threats to the political regime, and to the political and national unity of the country, predominate in the Philippines, indicating an inability to consolidate the democratic changes introduced after 1986, as well as a failure to find solutions to conflicts that between 1986 and 2004 affected 91 percent of Filipino provinces (HDR 2005: 3). A coincidence of interest between the U.S. and Filipino governments after September 2001 and the rhetoric of joint involvement in the “global war on terror” has to some extent masked what are essentially domestic preoccupations, especially threats to the political regime. Singapore Of the four countries surveyed in this study, Singapore’s position has been more outspokenly convergent with that of the United States than any

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Framing Security Agendas other. The overall official view is that terrorism is the major threat that Singapore faces; and what is more, the threat comes from, as Prime Singapore’s position has been Minister Goh Chok Tong categorically described it in 2004, a more outspokenly convergent “transnational terrorist brotherhood with that of the United States of disparate Southeast Asian groups linked by a militant Islamic ideology to each other and to Al-Qaeda” (Goh 2004: 7). That same year he argued that the “geopolitics of the post-Cold War world was the geopolitics of terrorism”—that is, it was the era’s defining feature, much as communism had defined the Cold War period (Ibid.: 1). The Singapore government’s 2004 National Security Strategy to deal with the terrorist menace noted that because of the “strong stand” it had taken in the global and regional effort against terrorism it would remain “a prime target” (NSS for Singapore 2004: 7). In consequence, Singapore reorganized its bureaucracy and established the National Security Coordination Secretariat (NSCS), which brought several agencies together under the chairmanship of the prime minister. It also has cooperated with UN and APEC counterterrorist efforts. By any standards, these acts represent a close emulation of U.S. bureaucratic practices and security perceptions. The 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States had led the Singaporean intelligence establishment to look more closely at what might be going on inside its own society.38 In December 2001, Singaporean officials detained under the ISA fifteen men suspected of planning terrorist offences, fourteen of whom were Singaporean. Eight months later another twenty-one were placed in detention on similar grounds. Some thirty-two of those in detention were described as members of JI (Tan 2003: 242). The government revealed that many had participated in the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan or had received training in Al-Qaeda camps in more recent times. Their intended targets of attack in Singapore allegedly were several Western embassies, the Israeli embassy, Western commercial targets, and the Singapore Ministry of Defense. Other potential targets surveyed by the group included the Changi naval base, the international airport, and several underground train stations (Desker 2003b: 503). Most counterterrorist specialists who have written on these events have concluded that Singapore has now broken the back of the JI cell in the country, and there have only been a handful of arrests over the years since then. However, the fear of

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Rosemary Foot terrorist attack remains strong because of Singapore’s close relations with the United States, its open society, its locale, and the large amounts of sea and land traffic—difficult to police—that passes by or docks at its ports of entry.39 Apart from the verbal promise that it would take a strong stand with the United States against the global terrorist threat, Singapore backed up these comments by becoming the first Southeast Asian state to participate in the U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative designed to keep weapons of mass destruction out of certain state and nonstate hands. This initiative is controversial elsewhere because of its potential to breach international law and the challenge that it represents to state sovereignty. Singapore has also assisted with the Iraqi reconstruction effort and with the training of the Iraqi police force (Simon 2004: 71). In addition, and unlike its neighbors, it supported the U.S. intervention in Iraq and has never favored a U.S. withdrawal before Iraq could be seen to have stabilized. As Prime Minister Goh put it in 2004, in a statement that matches sentiments expressed by President Bush himself: “the central issue is America’s credibility and will to prevail. If that is destroyed, Islamic extremists everywhere will be emboldened” (Goh 2004: 17). Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said much the same thing during a visit to the White House in May 2007.40 Of course, Singapore has been a long-standing supporter of the U.S. global and regional security role, its officials constantly arguing that U.S. administrations have contributed significantly over the decades to East Asia’s peace and stability, and that everything should be done to encourage America to stay around to fulfill that role in the future.41 Particularly as a result of the Philippines Senate vote in favor of the closure of the U.S. bases in the country in 1991, Singapore moved to pick up some of the pieces in order to ensure a continuing U.S. presence in Southeast Asia. The early 1990s witnessed the steady increase in U.S. naval and air force deployments to the country. Singapore designed its Changi naval base specifically to accommodate a U.S. aircraft carrier, and in March 2001 the USS Kitty Hawk berthed in the newly completed port (Ross 2006: 391). It also has collaborated with Washington in research and development, has participated in joint exercises, and has received training for its air force. In 2005 it signed a Strategic Framework Agreement designed to further deepen these ties. This steadily expanding cooperation has occurred in full knowledge that it has increased the vulnerability of Singapore to attack and put

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additional strain on community relations.42 Its ties with Israel, for similar defense training reasons, have had a similar effect. However, rather than reduce that alignment with U.S. preferences, it has stepped up surveillance, not only of its citizens and others entering the country, but also of strategic targets such as borders, ports, and military installations, and beyond that to underground stations, shopping malls, and the like. The government has also devoted enormous energy to strategies designed to bolster “interethnic harmony,” described in more detail in a later section of this study. Why Singaporean government officials should have put such store by the maintenance of close ties with the United States derives from a longterm sense of strategic vulnerability. This belief owes much to the country’s origins, locale, ethnic makeup, and political system. As Michael Leifer put it, its small size, predominant ethnic-Chinese identity, and location “wedged between the sea and airspace of two larger neighbours” and with which it has shared a difficult history, is at the root of that sense of unease (Leifer 2000: 1). Its unexpected expulsion from Malaysia in 1965 has generated a “culture of siege and insecurity” (Ibid.: 4). So too has the People’s Action Party (PAP) government’s belief that, despite all of the country’s Singapore…has looked for accomplishments, Singaporeans still have a weak sense of identity, and that external protection Singapore—according to Prime Minister while…seeking to build Goh—is a “fragile society and not a nation.” Moreover, Malays have sometimes national resilience been accused of demonstrating questionable loyalty to the state: according to Lee Kuan Yew, they are too often receptive to blandishments from across the causeway.43 The fact that one party, the People’s Action Party, has been in power since 1959, and still is influenced by the worldview of its first leader and now senior mentor, Lee, accounts for the continuities with past perceptions of the need for an external guarantor amidst continuing internal and external vulnerability. Indeed, Singapore has long been obsessed with defense and internal security (Stockwell 2005: 213). It has perceived itself as the “Israel of the East” and like Israel has looked for external protection while at the same time seeking to build national resilience. The government constantly reminds Singaporeans that national cohesion remains an ongoing project and that the racial harmony of the present

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Rosemary Foot should not be taken for granted. The race riots of 1964 and 1969 are “an integral part of the Singapore story.” Lee Kuan Yew has read these earlier disturbances in part as an attempt by UMNO in Malaysia to reestablish its political sway over Singaporean Muslims (Lau 2005: 227–33). Religion added to ethnicity is viewed as a particularly potent brew, and the capacity of religion to shape “social and political values that it cannot control” has made the government “highly sensitive” if not “apprehensive” of religion’s potential. One consequence has been that the government has policed and intervened strategically in the religious communities “whenever it deemed necessary” (Chua 2005: 65). The Singaporean concept of “total defense” includes the idea of social defense. The social aspect of security is designed to “combat the social and political evil of ‘communalism,’ the regression of Singaporeans into their original ethnic communities: Chinese, Indian, Malay, or Eurasian.” To prevent religious “regression” Parliament passed in 1990 the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act, a law that “permits the arrest of religious professionals and volunteers who engage in illegal ‘political’ activities.” “Total defense” also includes a psychological dimension, which aims to deepen patriotic sentiment toward the country so that, in the face of any disaster, Singaporeans will maintain confidence in the government and stay and fight for the country’s preservation (Deck 1999: 258–59). Thus, while Singapore responded forcefully to the evidence of a JI presence in the country because it “threatened Singapore’s reputation as an effectively governed state, a haven for foreign investment and a secure location for the use of Singapore naval and air facilities by the United States” (Desker 2003a: 427), its reaction went far deeper than that. It also represented fears that any demonstrated loss of the loyalty of the country’s Malay minority, some Singapore responded forcefully 15 percent of the population, would to the evidence of a JI presence result in serious interethnic and religious unrest. Official sentiment expressed soon after the arrests and actions taken subsequently point to the prominence of these fears. Prime Minister Goh stated that his “immediate concern” when he first heard about the arrests “was to maintain social cohesion in Singapore,” implying not only that Chinese in Singapore might see Malays as a dangerous threat, but also that Muslims in the country might believe that they had been

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Framing Security Agendas unfairly treated. It was this latter fear that prompted the government to meet with “Muslim leaders in a number of closed-door sessions to share details of the investigations and to explain that the arrests were not targeted against the Singapore Muslim community or Islam” (Goh 2004: 11). The government produced a White Paper in 2003 on the terrorist plot in order to assuage the doubts of Muslims who were never going to see the evidence brought out in open court, given that those arrested were detained under the Internal Security Act.44 And the authorities continue to stress the need to maintain national unity: as one NSCS advertisement in the Straits Times put it on October 23, 2006, “The true test of our pledge to Singapore will come in times of crises, in confronting terrorism or other challenges. Let us remain united as one people always” (my italics; final sentence in red in the original). As one analyst has argued, the government’s domestic strategy has been to try to maintain trust between the communities, and to get them to view “inter-communal trust as crucial to national security” (Tan 2003: 246). The Singaporean government’s perception of the threat that terrorism poses is therefore less that personal and physical destruction could be caused by bombings on the tiny island—dreadful though the results might be—and more that an attack would have serious consequences for the global image and national unity of Singapore, with the latter being more serious than the former. The possible repercussions of interethnic tensions and hostility would threaten Singapore’s separate identity and its quality as a harmonious multiracial society and safe haven in a region where ethnic and religious grievances, together with weak governmental capacities, have sometimes led to violence. While the Singaporean government undoubtedly values its close relations with the United States because their strategic and economic interests often coincide and it believes that the United States holds no territorial ambitions in the region (Leifer 2000: 26), their close ties since 2001 have posed difficult dilemmas for Singapore. The balance that Singapore has tried to strike between its concerns for its external and its internal vulnerabilities is a precarious one. The methods it has used to try to strike that balance are discussed in the following section.

Southeast Asian Approaches to Countering Terrorism In all four countries it is apparent that 9/11 has shaped security perceptions as well as security behavior, to a greater extent in the Philippines and

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Rosemary Foot Singapore than in Indonesia and Malaysia. However, what is also clear is that the focus on threats to domestic order since 2001 has been sharpened, and the fears deriving from domestic societal or political fragility have been heightened. These domestic concerns, above all, have had a major influence on the methods that the individual countries have utilized for dealing with actual or potential terrorist violence inside their countries. Three of the countries have demonstrated a strong preference for criminalizing terrorism. In the Philippines, however, there is a primary focus on the military tactics of kill and capture, for while numerous suspects have been arrested since 2000, “very few” have been brought Three of the countries have to trial, and many cases have been delayed for over four years (Human …criminaliz[ed terrorism] Rights Watch [HRW] 2007). The resulting assumption that the military approach, in conjunction with U.S. forces, has been predominant is therefore understandable. Anyway, as one official put it in a confidential interview, this was unsurprising because it was “all the Philippines knew.”45 Laws and Legacies In Indonesia and the Philippines, treating terrorism as a crime has been especially difficult because of severe weaknesses in police capacity and lack of an independent judiciary, together with the political difficulties that surround the passage of new terrorist-related legislation, such as an intelligence bill in Jakarta and an antiterrorism law in Manila. Manila’s failure to bring cases to successful prosecution fuels the belief, particularly among the Moro community, that the Filipino forces themselves are often behind the bombings in order to sustain their access to military resources (HRW 2007). These sentiments about the law derive from a lack of trust in state institutions and a fear in particular that these countries’ security services will use any newly established powers arbitrarily. The return of a central role in governance for the Indonesian military is recognized as a serious potential consequence of focusing on terrorism. Memories from the authoritarian Marcos and Suharto eras remain vivid, and active media and civil society organizations in both countries work vigorously to ensure that there will be no return to an authoritarian past. In both countries, but more so in the Philippines than in Indonesia, these fears have been magnified when reform activists are terrorized, “disappeared,” or killed.

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Framing Security Agendas Both countries have embarked on security sector reform. Again, this has been tackled more energetically in Jakarta than in Manila, one result of the latter’s militarized approach to countering its various insurgent and secessionist groups. The year 2004 saw the final departure of all Indonesian army officers previously eligible to sit in the country’s legislative assembly. A civilian leads the Ministry of Defense, and the police and military have had their functions differentiated and redefined. Although the extraction of the armed forces from political life and the reduction of their institutional privileges is under threat from several directions, not least because of the continuing fears in Indonesia for the territorial integrity of the country (Mietzner 2006), perhaps Donald Emmerson gets it right when he states that the army’s political role has at least shrunk from “dominance to relevance” (Emmerson 2005: 17). Security sector reform in Indonesia is part of a much larger reform effort that involves driving down the amount of corruption, enhancing protections for human rights, embarking on legal reform, and boosting economic development. In addition, political power has been decentralized and electoral politics show signs of having been consolidated. In a formal sense, the country “has made great strides toward establishing a rightsbased democracy, best reflected in an impressive series of constitutional amendments.” Apart from reforms to reduce the military’s propensity for intervention in civil and political matters, this has included “a robust charter on universal human rights; independent judicial and constitutional commissions…; the restriction of presidential powers…; the bolstering of parliament’s authorities…and decentralization” (Davidson 2007: 78). Roadblocks have been erected deliberately to slow the pace of these reforms, and many try to safeguard their entrenched interests; for every example of positive movement there are others that reinforce a sense of skepticism.46 Nevertheless, Davidson notes the willingness of “citizens and citizen action groups born out of these attendant disappointments [to] fight on” (Ibid.), and the president himself seems committed to institutionalizing the changes. The government of President Yudhoyono, in power since 2004 and with a substantial mandate, also appears determined to continue to tackle terrorism as a crime that has to be dealt with by the courts. Although there are some in the police and elsewhere who advocate the passage of an Internal Security Act, that view does not dominate. And whereas others note the continuing weaknesses in judicial proceedings and in the prosecution’s capacity to present credible evidence, the government seems

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Rosemary Foot determined to stick to the judicial approach. As one senior official put it, Jakarta’s decision to use the courts for dealing with terrorist suspects may have been costly in the short run, but it was better for the society’s long-run goals of supporting the rule of law, human rights protections, and democracy.47 This approach may not have won plaudits in the United States, particularly with the release from prison of Abu Bakar Ba’asyir after his defense submitted new evidence (U.S. State Department 2006a), but it has won them from some ASEAN officials and specialists on Indonesia.48 Indeed, one interviewee from a nongovernmental organization (NGO) went so far as to state that Indonesia might be one country in the world where human rights protections have shown some signs of improvement since 2001.49 In addition, Indonesia-specialist Sidney Jones of the ICG has praised the government for opting “to avoid large-scale preventive detention in the interests of strengthening democracy,” despite the ramifications of that decision. “The police will only make arrests,” she states, “when they believe they have enough evidence to have a reasonable chance of conviction in court, and that operations to capture suspected perpetrators require lengthy preparations.”50 Indonesian political elites have worked hard to project a new postSuharto identity as a country that is democratic, rights abiding, adaptive, and tolerant. Terrorist activity inevitably places that identity under some strain, as do secessionists who resist peaceful negotiation. Nevertheless, these attempts to establish a new democratic identity would be seriously challenged if Indonesia were to respond to U.S. criticism of its counterterrorist program by adopting more aggressive and extralegal measures. Unlike in Indonesia, neither political nor legal reform is on the agenda in either Malaysia or Singapore. This is not to argue that there has not been some change in Malaysia under Prime Minister Badawi: a number of civil society groups believe the press is a little freer than under Mahathir and that there is greater space for some civil society organizations.51 However, there has been very little change in the approach to dealing with terrorism, and Badawi oversaw the introduction of new counterterrorist legislation that has been criticized by human rights organizations, domestic and transnational, for its lax human rights protections. Both Singapore and Malaysia have made use of their Internal Security Acts, which allow for

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Framing Security Agendas detention without trial. Attempts in Malaysia to reform or remove its ISA were stopped in their tracks in September 2001, even though the country’s National Human Rights Commission had already drawn up a raft of suggestions for its improvement and then final removal. If some of the domestic pressure for change has been reduced, so too has that from outside the country. Previous U.S. calls for Kuala Lumpur to reform the ISA have been quietly dropped, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary for East Asia and the Pacific noting in March 2003 that, while in the past it had been “used to stifle domestic opposition,” a distinction had to be made “between that use and its current implementation in a counterterrorism context” (Foot 2004: 59). Malaysia is also reliant on its long-standing intelligence links with Singapore, dating from the period of communist insurgency, as well as those with the Philippines and Indonesia, to flush out suspects. Moreover, it has increased its powers of surveillance in order to make operational its concept of “deviancy,” referred to earlier. Through its ulama (the learned of Islam), the government has barred “interpretations of the religious tenets and texts that differ from the official rendition.” Liow also notes that very few mosques operate outside government control, and that every week the imams appointed by the government’s religious department read the sermon prepared by that department (Liow 2004: 253–55). For those who choose to step across these official boundaries, the ISA can be brought into swift operation. Singapore too has stepped up its surveillance and revamped its levers of control. The country has a variety of laws on its books, including the ISA, which it has drawn upon in countering terrorism. As Cherian George has noted, the “non-communist nationalists who led their countries to independence…inherited both the tools for controlling insurgency and a hypersensitivity towards organized dissent” (George 2007: 132). Apart from the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act, it has a Sedition Act, a press licensing system, and a system of registration for societies; it also uses proxy servers to restrict Internet use. The pervasiveness of the state in Singapore is undeniable, but this prominent role does not appear to be under strong challenge. And where once it attracted the criticism of the United States for its human rights practices—not least in the vigorous support it gave for the concept of “Asian values” and for economic development to take precedence over concerns about civil and political

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Rosemary Foot rights—the view of President Bush is that bilateral relations are “very strong” and Singapore’s support in Iraq and Afghanistan represents a “strong commitment.”52 However, for reasons alluded to earlier, in reference to perceived societal fragility, Singapore’s preventive measures and apparent backing for the U.S. counterterrorist approach do not reflect the entirety of its position. Intercommunal Relations As pointed out throughout this monograph the fear of interethnic and religious discord is reflected in each government’s policies. Increased acceptance of religious values in these societies raises questions in each state about matters of loyalty and identity. The turn of events since 9/11 has reinforced doubts expressed since independence about the depth of identification the fear of interethnic and with the state, and it has religious discord is reflected in underlined the complexities of governing a multiethnic, each government’s policies multireligious community. ASEAN declarations on terrorism, of course, represent the compromise position, but they nevertheless tend to emphasize themes that reflect the domestic preoccupations in these societies: the need to adopt a holistic approach, to identify and address the root causes of terrorism, and to reaffirm that terrorism should not be associated with any particular religion or ethnic group.53 Individual countries have concentrated on one or more of these admonitions, the Philippines and Malaysia being particularly associated with the “roots of terrorism” idea, with the former focusing publicly on the causal role of poverty and deprivation and the latter on Western foreign policies and the domestic blowback that results from them. Interfaith dialogue has also been prominent in Singapore, the Philippines, and Indonesia. The Indonesian Foreign Ministry and the Department of Religious Affairs have worked hard to magnify the voices of their mainstream Muslim organizations domestically and globally, and have organized several interfaith programs and projects. Many events have been held jointly with other countries—the U.K., Norway, and Australia, for example (hence the Foreign Ministry involvement)—and are representative of Jakarta’s desire to play a larger global diplomatic role in matters connected with the

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Framing Security Agendas struggle against terrorism.54 Internally, NGOs, such as the two largest Muslim organizations in the country (Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah), have been encouraged to initiate their own activities. Attempts to do something similar in Malaysia soon foundered, however. A Malaysian Bar Council effort in 2005 to create an interfaith commission to promote better understanding and respect among the religions was attacked by groups claiming to represent mainstream Islam. Their grounds for attack were that such a commission would “weaken Islam.” In response to the controversy, the Badawi government accepted that such a commission was unnecessary, but that nevertheless it did want to encourage interfaith dialogue (U.S. State Department 2006b). Given the centrality of the Singaporean state in many aspects of life and especially on questions of religion and ethnicity, it is not surprising that vigorous efforts have been made in that country to sustain what it considers a national security issue: intercommunal trust. The government moved quickly to establish what it called “Inter-Racial Confidence Circles” in schools and workplaces. Other initiatives have followed, including in 2006 the launch of a Community Engagement Program “to strengthen our resilience and our ability to maintain social harmony in the event of a national crisis.”55 In October 2006, it opened the Harmony Center to promote interreligious dialogue and, as Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong put it, “to explain the true teachings of Islam.”56 Leaders of the Muslim community are expected to take a prominent role in initiating such events, because the PAP government is only too well aware that PAP, as a secular organization, has no influence on the religious values of that community. Perhaps the most striking of the programs that Singapore has introduced is the Religious Rehabilitation Program: that is, “counseling” for JI detainees and their families. Indonesia operates in a somewhat similar way inside its prisons (ICG 2007a). Singaporean officials initially approached two local religious teachers to provide an assessment of the roots of the detainees’ religious beliefs. There are now nearly forty people involved in counseling and in oversight and administration of the program, the core goals of which are to correct “misinterpretations of religious concepts”; to generate feelings of repentance for the terrorist acts that were contemplated; to work with families in order to “break the cycle of violence”; and to “impress upon them that they have a role to play in preserving national security.” There is little desire in Singapore to place the names of any of those detained on a terrorist list, as the 1267 Committee and the U.S.

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Rosemary Foot government have sometimes requested. The grounds are that once in detention these individuals no longer pose a threat and economic sanctions would affect the families’ well-being to the detriment of the rehabilitation efforts. This program apparently has had some success, and detainee participation has contributed to decisions to release some on bail and others on restriction orders, with the ISA held in the background should this not be seen to be working out in the way intended.57 One way to interpret the extensive efforts being made in Singapore is to see them as a means of compensating for foreign policy decisions—close alignment with the United States in the struggle against terrorism—that have made the island state more of a target than it might otherwise have been. The programs and initiatives described briefly above reflect its determination to keep the relationship with Washington sweet in order that the United States remain engaged with Southeast Asia, economically and militarily; but they also show a continuing fear about the fragility of Singaporean society and its shallow adherence to the Singaporean identity.

Larger Implications This monograph points out in its introductory pages that U.S. relations with some Southeast Asian states had begun to be consolidated in the security domain prior to 9/11, mainly in response to a perceived need to balance the power of a resurgent China. In addition, certain of the local states, as well as U.S. administrations, had been seeking for some time to maintain facilities that allow the U.S. Navy and Air Force to project power into other regions of strategic significance to America. The argument is that the provision of these benefits helps to underpin U.S. interest in the fate of Southeast Asia. Repercussions for the China Question The discussion of threat perceptions in the individual countries impinges directly on the China question. That discussion explains their threat perceptions in the security priorities and suggests how the immediacy of some threats individual countries impinge takes precedence over concerns directly on the China question about the potential longer-term threat from China. None of the governments in this study expressed the fear that China’s rise poses a direct

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threat to their countries in the near future. Officials interviewed for this monograph regularly spoke of the China issue as being “on the back burner,” or as something that might be of concern in some ten to twenty years’ time, but was unlikely to be a source of major unease much before that. China’s argument that it will long be focused on domestic development goals seems to be accepted in the region, and to resonate with states that are also concerned with economic progress and social change. China’s major “external” concern is seen to be the prevention of a call for independence by the governing authorities on the island of Taiwan, and its military modernization is largely understood as a response to that issue (at least for the present). All four countries have stepped up their levels of security cooperation with China over the last few years, including naval ship visits, training, defense ministerial exchanges, and some weapons sales at modest levels (Thayer 2007). And in order to deal with longer-term uncertainties, including but not necessarily confined to the rise of China, all four Southeast Asian states offer the United States some formal or informal basing arrangements and regular participation in joint military exercises. It is therefore too simple to interpret the greater defense cooperation between each of these countries and Washington in the past few years as either primarily related to the China factor (Ross 2006) or reflecting a close correspondence between American and Southeast Asian perceptions of the terrorist threat. In the Philippines, closer ties reflect the Philippine government’s desire to satisfy a military that has been starved of resources and that has interfered several times over the years in the political process. Manila also has taken a tough approach Beijing...seems to have been to its long-standing secessionist and able to reassure Manila of insurgent struggles inside the country. And although the government was its benign intentions seriously concerned by China’s assertiveness with regard to the Mischief Reef incident in 1995, Beijing lately seems to have been able to reassure Manila of its benign intentions because of the way its officials have operated within regional organizations and through agreements reached with the Philippines itself. Manila, for example, initiated in March 2005 the signing of an agreement between the two countries’ national oil companies (later joined by Vietnam) to engage in joint prospecting for oil and gas in the South China Sea.

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Rosemary Foot For Indonesia, the reestablishment of military ties with U.S. forces reflects a desire to fulfill previous military purchase agreements and to acquire spare parts as well as technologies helpful in securing this archipelagic state. During U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s visit to Jakarta in February 2008, there was discussion of U.S. help in updating Indonesia’s fleet of military transport aircraft as well as the purchase of F-16 jet fighters.58 Important to Jakarta too, especially since it has begun more energetically to promote its reform agenda, is its desire via restored ties to mark the fact that its military has reduced its pariah status in Washington connected with past human rights abuses in East Timor, Papua, and elsewhere.59 Malaysia, on the other hand, since the 1980s has had unbroken defense ties with Washington, which it has tried to obscure.60 This cooperation hardly compares with that in place between the United States and Singapore, but it helps to cement a predominantly economic-based relationship. The relations are controversial domestically, not least because the government in Kuala Lumpur has been so outspoken on many aspects of U.S. foreign policy, especially toward the Palestinian issue, and more recently on the Bush doctrine of the preventive use of force. Nevertheless, Kuala Lumpur is likely to continue with its distant political, but reasonably close economic, defense, and intelligence cooperation. Finally, Singapore, while it has devoted far more attention to the longterm strategic picture—in which China clearly figures prominently—than most other regional governments, it too appears “cautiously satisfied” with how responsive China has been to its and ASEAN’s engagement strategies (Goh 2005: 12). Closer alignment with the United States since 2001 is in part determined by the long-term insurance policy that it has in place with respect to China. More immediately, however, it reflects two related matters. The first is fear of the perceived growing Islamization of states that surround it. The post-9/11 environment has aroused the trope of being a “small Chinese-majority state surrounded by the large Muslim-majority states”— states that might become ruled by those who see secular Singapore as worthy of attack “not because of what we do, but because of who we are” (Ibid.: 14). Second, Singapore fears a breakdown in intercommunal and interreligious harmony, which might provide opportunities for its neighbors to take some advantage of what is perceived as the fragility of Singaporean identity.

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Framing Security Agendas Conclusion During the Cold War, the field of security studies demonstrated a preoccupation with the security concerns of the major states in the global system. Matters relating to the central balance of power, including that of the nuclear balance, took center stage. If attention was directed toward the developing world, then the focus tended to be on how issues there— related to war, regime instabilities, and regime type—would affect that central balance. These developing countries, however, were frequently and overwhelmingly concerned with nation building, and especially with the many manifestations of state weakness. Secessionist struggles and other forms of political rebellion were prevalent among this grouping, and attempts to create a national as opposed to local identity absorbed a great deal of political attention. In these circumstances, neighbors and other external actors were often perceived as threats to the extent that they might take advantage of internal strife. The fact that these experiences were often ignored damaged the quality of security studies as a part of the discipline of international relations. More important, it led to a great deal of ignorance about the insecurities felt in large parts of the world, an ignorance that contributed to the brevity of the peaceful phase of the post-Cold War era. These types of security concerns in the post-1945 era similarly marked out Southeast Asia in the years following independence. Over time, these fears—in some states at least—did begin to diminish as a result of economic and political developments, together with the reconciliation process generated by ASEAN. However, these countries are still fixated on their domestic environments and on preventing societal fragmentation. This fixation has often been crucial in explaining the individual state responses to post-9/11 pressures. With Indonesia, we have seen an unwillingness to place the terrorist threat above other significant threats facing the country and its people. A developing world [Indonesia] is in the security agenda remains prominent: questions midst of fundamental relating to territorial integrity, national unity, and the struggle to find the resources to cope political reforms with a raft of disastrous natural and economic challenges. The country is in the midst of fundamental political reforms, the intent of which seems to be to privilege

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and construct a new democratic identity. Its method for dealing with terrorism is intended to reflect that aim. Malaysian political processes, long dominated by UMNO, appear under challenge and preoccupy the ruling party, whatever the individual election results. The governing authorities are attempting to maintain control of the political and religious direction of the country, and this has complicated efforts to sustain good ties with the United States and the depiction of global terrorism as a primary security concern. In addition, Malaysian political processes there is suspicion within the wider society of governmental motives given …appear under challenge the politically opportunistic way in which it has used the antiterrorist agenda. The government states that it has the short-term terrorist threat under control; but larger questions associated with multiethnicity and the growing identification among Malays with the pan-Islamic world persist as long-term challenges. The Philippines has decided, predominantly for reasons of political opportunism, to throw in its lot with the United States and fight its struggle against insurgency and secession mostly by military means. Its regime and state-based security perspective coincides with the “global war on terror,” but it is not primarily determined by it. Its decision to align with the United States is controversial in a society that is fragmented on a range of [The Philippines’] decision issues—economic, political, ethnic, and religious—and on the methods that might to align with the United be chosen to deal with them. States is controversial In Singapore, we see the difficulties of managing close alignment with the U.S. security paradigm and maintaining societal cohesion. It has come to regard transnational terrorism as its primary threat, a view that is fed by a deep sense of insecurity deriving from location, ethnic makeup, and secularity. Enormous resources have been put into ensuring the societal cohesion the authorities perceive as being under challenge. In the U.S. National Security Strategy of 2006, the U.S. government avers that its use of military force represents a short-term approach in the

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Framing Security Agendas fight against terrorism, and that long-term measures to defeat the terrorists require winning the battle of ideas (NSS of the United States 2006: 9). In addition, it agrees that the “full array of political, economic, diplomatic and other tools” is required for the defeat of “tyranny” (Ibid.: 6). Undoubtedly, in these four countries the United States has used a range of tools beyond military force: intelligence cooperation, police training, economic assistance, and the like. Yet these alternative and longer-term approaches have been overshadowed for three main reasons: first, the language of that 2006 NSS is infused with references to war and the fighting that lies ahead; second, the continuing U.S. presence in Afghanistan and Iraq, together with a Bush doctrine of preventive use of force, everywhere colors understandings of U.S. priorities and approaches; third, and directly related to Southeast Asia, the Bush administration has criticized Indonesian attempts to use legal means to bring those using violence to justice, and has simultaneously focused on restoring military ties with Jakarta. In addition, the apparent desire to further strengthen relations with the Filipino armed forces has attracted high levels of attention, including preparations for a longer-term U.S. military presence, suggestions that U.S. forces should take on a larger combat role, and offers to help with the fight against the NPA. President Bush’s singling out of President Arroyo for praise at the APEC summit in Sydney in 2007 for her government’s aggressive targeting of the ASG reinforced the perceptions of those who see harsh measures as being at the heart of the U.S. administration’s broader approach to its national security. For these reasons, many officials, publics, and analysts in all four Southeast Asian countries continue to be skeptical of the Bush administration’s claim that its counterterrorist strategy has evolved. That strategy is still depicted as too narrowly conceived and too punitive in its methods. U.S. actions since 2001 have had significant consequences for these states’ domestic environments even where an individual government might not perceive the threat from terrorism as its primary security U.S. actions since 2001 have had challenge. A major outcome of significant consequences for these the U.S. decision to give pride of place to countering the states’ domestic environments transnational terrorist threat has been to expose and exacerbate the fissures and frailties within these Southeast Asian societies and affirm

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Endnotes I conducted semi-structured interviews with senior officials, scholars, and members of civil society organizations. I would like to record my grateful thanks to all those who agreed to an interview or a confidential discussion. I would also like to thank the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (now the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies) in Singapore for hosting my stay in the region. The director of the Institute, Barry Desker, and his colleagues were enormously helpful in arranging interviews in Singapore and elsewhere, and more than willing to share their insights. I would also like to extend my warm thanks to Dr. Hadi Soesastro, together with his colleagues at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta, for facilitating discussions at the Centre and arranging a set of important interviews; to Razak Baginda for his invaluable help in making similar arrangements in Kuala Lumpur; and to Professors Herman Kraft and Carolina Hernandez for their assistance in a similar capacity during my time in the Philippines. It would have been impossible to complete this study without the assistance of these colleagues. These interviews in Southeast Asia were supplemented by ones with regional specialists in Australia working in government and at the Australian National University and Australian Defence Force Academy. I am very grateful to Dr. Brendan Taylor of the ANU for organizing these interviews and discussions. I also conducted interviews with country representatives at the United Nations in New York, and with U.S. specialists on counterterrorist policy. I thank these individuals for their willingness to share their insights. Finally, the British Academy, through its research grants scheme, generously agreed to fund my research expenses, for which I am also grateful. 1. The Philippine Human Development Report of 2005 notes, with almost a jaundiced tone: “In the early years of this new century, ‘security’ has suddenly become the watchword. Ever since rich societies and powerful governments themselves came under threat—particularly after the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001—security has become the overriding global

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2.

3. 4.

5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11.

12. 13.

14.

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preoccupation. …For people in poor and developing countries including the Philippines, however, little of this is really new” (HDR 2005: chap. 1, p. 1). I am referring here in particular to the work of Mohammad Ayoob (e.g., 1995) and his explication of the Third World security problematic, as well as that of others in the field of critical security studies. See, for example, in addition to Ayoob (1995), Williams and Krause (1997), and Fierke (2007). For a powerful critique of the working methods of a number of the counterterrorist specialists who have written on Southeast Asia, see Hamilton-Hart (2005). In later ICG reports, however, it has been put somewhat differently: “The information emerging from the interrogation of JI suspects indicates that this is a bigger organisation than previously thought, with a depth of leadership that gives it a regenerative capacity. It has communication with and has received funding from al-Qaeda, but it is very much independent and takes most, if not all operational decisions locally” (ICG 2003). George W. Bush, Address to a Joint Session of Congress, September 20, 2001 (www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html). George W. Bush, Address to the American Legion National Convention, August 31, 2006 (www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/08/20060831-1.html). S. Jayakumar, “Remarks on the Strategic Situation in the Region by Minister for Foreign Affairs,” Singapore Government Press Release, May 16, 2002. See also Sheldon Simon’s discussion of expanded military cooperation between the U.S. and Indonesia, including dealing with disaster relief and training troops for UN peacekeeping operations, but not as yet for countering terrorism (Simon 2007b). Religious violence since independence is also discussed in Woodward (2007). For the latter, see also ICG (2008). A civil society group called Pacivis has been established in Jakarta to facilitate the coming together of working groups made up of civil society organizations. The group’s work has been directed toward producing an intelligence bill that contains strong human rights safeguards. See www.pacivis.or.id/. New York Times, “Indonesian Scolds U.S. on Terrorism Fight,” June 7, 2006. As one interviewee put it, he had rethought what constituted a security threat in recent years, reminding himself constantly that Indonesia had no state enemies, and that the threats now were all nontraditional (interview with government official, October 9, 2006, Jakarta). An Indonesian official Defense White Paper in 2003 also noted that traditional security threats from other countries were “highly unlikely”; but unlike the civilian officials with whom I spoke, this paper put the terrorist threat first in a long line of nontraditional threats that Indonesia faces. The list reads: “terrorism, separatism, cross border crimes (smuggling, illegal fishing, pollution and destruction of the eco-system, illegal migration, and piracy), radicalism, communal conflicts, and the impact of natural disasters” (Indonesia 2003: 7). In view of the Australian involvement in East Timor after the 1999 vote in favor of independence, as well as its more recent provision of sanctuary to forty-two asylum seekers from Papua, Australia and Indonesia signed a new security treaty in November 2006, the main feature of which is a statement that both countries will respect each other’s territorial integrity and not offer support to separatist

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15. 16.

17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24.

25.

26. 27.

28.

29.

movements. BBC News, 2006. “Australia and Indonesia Sign Pact,” November 13, 2006 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr-/2/hi/asia-pacific/614932.stm). Interviews with high-level government officials in Jakarta in October 2006 alerted me to the need to take note of the serious perceptual impact of this ICJ decision. A fuller list comprises the tsunami of December 2004, the Nias earthquake of March 2005, the May 2006 earthquake in Yogyakarta and Central Java, and the July 2006 earthquake and tsunami in West Java. New York Times, “Bush Ends Trip at Careful Stop in Indonesia,” November 21, 2006; Straits Times, “Jakarta Media Plays Down Bush’s Visit,” November 25, 2006. Associated Press, “Mahathir Welcome in United States as Washington Shifts Focus,” April 15, 2002. Najib bin Tun Abdul Razak, “U.S.-Malaysia Defense Cooperation: A Solid Success Story,” May 1, 2002. “Remarks by the President and Prime Minister of Malaysia in Photo Opportunity,” White House news release, May 14, 2002 (www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/ 2002/). Further details on these moves to improve relations prior to 9/11 are in Foot (2004: 55–58). Several of Badawi’s statements are covered in Storey (2005). A number of interviewees in Kuala Lumpur in September 2006 made arguments of this kind. Milner adds to this complexity in reference to the “scaffolding of the nation-state” in important ways. As he puts it: the unresolved tension includes in Malaysia’s case “the plural society (balancing the divergent interests of communities having little in common), the experience of British colonialism, the ‘Malay’ vision (including the archipelago-wide ‘Malay’ vision) of radical nationalism, the autochthonous sovereignty of the sultanates, and the transcendent claims for the Islamic umat” (2005: 155). A year later, Mahathir admitted that Malaysia was not officially constituted as an Islamic state, but he added that “Malaysia is a model for other Islamic nations and has a responsibility to portray the religion as tolerant and moderate” (Kheng 2005: 111). I draw on some of my interviews in Kuala Lumpur, September 2006, for this section. Sun Daily (Malaysia), “Poll Shows 73% Think We Are Islamic State,” September 5, 2006 (www.sun2surf.com/article.cfm?id=15352). However, as the academic who administered the random survey noted: “The growing orthodoxy that came through in the survey does not mean that Peninsular Malaysia Muslims are growing less open to diversity in the country.” After the kidnapping of one Filipino in 2004, the small contingent was withdrawn, a clear example of domestic pressures outweighing U.S. government pressures in shaping Arroyo’s policy. That law has also attracted the attention of outside experts. In March 2007 the UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism asked the Philippines to reconsider its new counterterrorism law since it “could have a negative impact on human rights in the country and undermines the rule of law.” The rapporteur

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30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

36.

37.

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pointed to the “overly broad definition” of terrorist acts, the undermining of judicial discretion in sentencing, and the role of the executive, rather than an independent judicial body, in reviewing an individual’s pre-charge detention. United Nations, “UN Special Rapporteur Calls for Changes to the Philippines’ Human Security Act,” Press Release, HR/07/36, March 12, 2007. As Goh (2007/08: 135) puts it: Arroyo admitted that “prior to the terrorism focus, U.S. military training of the Philippines armed forces had been focused on defending Filipino claims in the Spratlys against China.” As David Capie notes, it was a striking U.S. offer because it “suggests Washington has crossed an important psychological divide, and for the first time since the Vietnam War is prepared to commit troops to fight on the ground in Southeast Asia” (Capie 2004: 241). For more on the controversy see Abuza (2005: 43–44). Indeed, one government official informed me that Filipino officials in Washington had told U.S. government interlocutors that they faced a communist threat, only to be told that terrorists were what mattered to the United States. Interview in Manila, September 7, 2006. The ICG has argued that “[t]errorist alliances in the Philippines are in flux in a way that could affect the peace process. …The MILF is distancing itself from partnership with the extremist Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), pushing individual JI members increasingly toward the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG). MILF members unhappy with concessions by more moderate leaders may seek to join militant alliances” (ICG 2005: 1). A Human Rights Watch report of July 2007 records 1,700 civilians killed in bombings and attacks since 2000—more than in neighboring Indonesia or in “Morocco, Spain, Turkey, or the United Kingdom” (HRW 2007). Noel M. Morada, “The Philippines: Security Context and Challenges,” paper presented at the Third Europe–Southeast Asia Forum, Berlin, December 13–15, 2004. This has been said to be the source of an unsuccessful rebellion in July 2003 by junior officers. The country’s National Human Rights Commission has been particularly exercised, complaining that the proposed definitions in the bill were too “broad, vague or loose.” National Human Rights Commission, the Philippines, 2005a. The National Human Rights Commission has also issued human rights advisories deploring the arbitrary killings that have involved the “military and/or paramilitary arms of the government.” National Human Rights Commission, the Philippines (2005b). In June 2007, human rights experts from the European Union began a ten-day mission to help Manila root out these abusive practices, which European experts also believe involve state agents. Financial Times, “EU Mission to Stop Killings,” June 19, 2007. In the president’s State of the Nation address in July 2007, she called on the legislative branch to pass laws that would impose harsher penalties on those in the police or army who had been involved in political assassinations. But in a further indication of the lack of trust in political figures the report also noted that, outside the legislative building, protestors burned an effigy of the president, called for her resignation, and accused her of “condoning extrajudicial killings to frighten off political opponents and critics.” Financial Times, “Macapagal Presses for Laws to Reduce Toll of Political Killings,” July 24, 2007.

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Framing Security Agendas 38. Interview with Foreign Ministry official, October 9, 2006. 39. As one senior Defense Ministry official put it in an interview on October 11, 2006, the “wave” that terrorism had produced had “not crested yet, and we have yet to see how high that wave will be and who it will sweep away in its wake.” 40. “President Bush Welcomes Prime Minister Lee of Singapore to the White House,” White House news release, May 4, 2007 (www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/ 05/20070504-3.html). 41. For one commentary that questions this perspective, see Acharya and Tan (2006). 42. As Singapore’s foreign minister put it in his speech to Parliament in May 2002, good relations with the United States required that governments cooperate in the antiterrorist struggle, “but many Southeast Asian governments will also have to find ways of assuaging the anxieties of their Muslim ground which may be uneasy or unhappy about U.S. policies while at the same time taking firm action to neutralise extremist Islamic elements in their societies” (Jayakumar, “Remarks,” May 16, 2002). 43. For example, private opinion polling of Malay sentiment by the Singaporean government with respect to the visit of the Israeli president to the country in 1986 showed the extent to which opposition to the visit among Singapore’s Malays had apparently been stoked by the criticisms voiced publicly in Malaysia (Leifer 2000: 93–94). 44. Interviews in Singapore confirmed this reasoning. The minister of home affairs, in a statement posted on the MHA website, put it somewhat more obliquely. The release of the White Paper, he said, was “intended to create greater common understanding among our people across the communities about the terrorist threat, and how it can undermine the inter-ethnic peace and harmony that we have built up over the years.” Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), “Minister for Home Affairs’ Comments on Why the White Paper,” Singapore, January 4, 2003 (http:// app3.mha.gov/sg/news). 45. Interview with government official in Manila, September 7, 2006. 46. As one senior Defense Ministry official put it, there are “islands of integrity in some localities,” but spreading those across a larger part of the country remains a severe challenge. Interview in Jakarta, October 20, 2006. 47. Interview with senior Defense Ministry official in Jakarta, October 20, 2006. 48. Confirmed in interviews. See too Michael Vatikiotis, “Rights and Wrongs of Asia’s ‘War on Terror,’ ” who praises the successes of the police-led effort in Indonesia compared with the lack of success of an “over-hyped U.S. military-backed effort in the southern Philippines.” Asia Times, April 6, 2007. 49. Interview in Jakarta, October 20, 2006. 50. Sidney Jones, “After Abu Dujani and Nuaim,” Tempo, June 19, 2007. One governmental representative working for Jakarta’s UN Mission told me that this was the reason why, in some cases, the government was reluctant to allow names to be added to the UN’s list of terrorists under Resolution 1267 procedures. It could stymie ongoing and complex investigations. Interview in New York, May 2006. 51. Interviews in Kuala Lumpur, September 19, 2006. 52. White House news release, May 4, 2007. 53. ASEAN Convention on Counter Terrorism, January 13, 2007 (www.aseansec.org/ 19250.htm).

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Rosemary Foot 54. This is shown also in its successful effort to be elected as a nonpermanent member of the UN Security Council. 55. “The ASEAN Regional Forum Inter-Sessional Meeting on Counter-Terrorism and Trans-National Crime,” Ministry of Home Affairs Press Release, Singapore, May 3, 2007 (http://app3.mha.gov.sg/news). 56. Sunday Times (Singapore), “PM: Step Up Interaction between Faiths,” October 8, 2006. 57. Briefings and discussions in Singapore with academics and officials from the Ministry of Home Affairs in October 2006 form the basis of this assessment, but see too ASEAN Regional Forum, report of Senior Minister Ho Peng Kee’s opening address to the ARF Inter-Sessional Meeting, May 3, 2007. 58. Reuters, “Pentagon Seeks Stronger Defense Ties with Indonesia,” February 25, 2008. 59. There are serious problems here, however, since the courts that have investigated military figures for abuses in East Timor have too readily handed out acquittals. 60. Defense Minister Najib joked in Washington in May 2002 that he had considered subtitling his talk on Malaysia-U.S. defense cooperation “The Untold Story.” Goh (2007/08: 136) lists these ties as “port call arrangements, ship repair facilities, the use of jungle warfare facilities, and low-visibility naval and air exercises.”

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