TIME: Will They Strike
Again?
Monday, November 25, 2002
By
NELLY SINDAYEN / MANILA; ANDREW PERRIN / BANGKOK;
SIMON ELEGANT / KUALA LUMPUR; LISA CLAUSEN /
SYDNEY;
MICHAEL WARE / KABUL; TIM
McGIRK / ISLAMABAD; MEENAKSHI GANGULY / NEW DELHI
At first sight, the video might be a routine tv ad
for a luxury hotel, the camera dutifully following a
waiter as he arrives at a room carrying a tray. But
when the guest opens his door, the waiter whips out a
pistol and calmly proceeds to blast the head off a
papier-maché dummy. In other scenes, masked fighters
abseiling down the walls of the "hotel" with grenades
leave no doubt what this is: a training manual for an
assault on a resort complex. The video, one of a
batch of al-Qaeda tapes found outside Kabul this
month, is a chilling reminder of the range of targets
al-Qaeda and its proxies like Jemaah Islamiah are
preparing to attack. With each new arrest -- last
week Indonesian investigators nabbed Bali bomber Imam
Samudra while the U.S. announced it had apprehended
al-Qaeda's Persian Gulf chief Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri
-- authorities learn more about how to thwart global
terrorism. TIME consulted intelligence officials and
security experts for this survey of Islamic terrorist
networks and the threat level in Asia's possible
target countries.
PHILIPPINES: High tension
Rocked by a slew of recent explosions and bombarded
by warnings of more to come, the Philippines these
days has something of a siege mentality. Even the
gala Dec. 15 opening of the new, $500-million Ninoy
Aquino International Airport Terminal has been
indefinitely postponed by a worried President Gloria
Macapagal Arroyo. "The need to take extreme security
measures cannot be overemphasized," Transportation
and Communications Secretary Leandro Mendoza said in
a statement.
Filipinos need no reminding that they are squarely in
the sights of Jemaah Islamiah (JI), and the presence
of U.S. troops may have made the archipelago an even
more tempting target. A year ago, an explosion rocked
the Metro Railway Transit, killing 22 and injuring
hundreds of others. The attack was carried out by
Indonesian Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, a self-confessed
JI member with links to the Philippines' two major
Islamic guerrilla groups, the MILF and the Abu
Sayyaf. After his January capture in Manila, al-Ghozi
said he carried out the bombings on the orders of JI
operations commander Riduan (Hambali) Isamuddin.
Equally worrying, recent Mindanao bombings suggest
that Abu Sayyaf has returned to its roots as a purely
terrorist organization rather than a
kidnap-and-extortion gang.
Apart from obvious sites such as foreign embassies,
Philippine intelligence officials say concerns about
possible JI targets focus on a huge oil depot located
in the heart of the city, not far from Malacanang,
the presidential palace. The hit list also includes
the Philippine Stock Exchange, major shopping malls
and flyovers in Manila. Meanwhile in the south, where
the overwhelming majority of the country's more than
3 million Muslims live, hardly a week goes by without
some form of deadly attack.
How best to stop the terrorist attacks? National
Police Superintendent Robert Delfin is surprisingly
optimistic. "No matter the extent of their network,
we can monitor them. We know the personalities."
Parouk Hussin, Governor of the Autonomous Region for
Muslim Mindanao, is less sanguine. "Personalities may
come and go," he warns. "The idea's harder to kill."
By Nelly Sindayen/Manila
THAILAND: Soft targets
Thailand has many. They read like a roll call of
Asia's most popular tourist destinations: Phuket,
Pattaya, Koh Samui. Thai authorities have been quick
to hose down speculation that the kingdom is under
threat of a Bali-style attack and have criticized
Western governments for issuing travel advisories
warning their citizens to avoid, or to take extreme
caution, in areas where foreigners congregate. Yet
the country is taking anti-terrorism measures. Bar
patrons are being frisked, police patrols have been
stepped up in places like Phuket, and soldiers are
boarding boats for searches off southern Thailand.
Even the World Organization of the Scout Movement
(WOSM) has left nothing to chance. In late December
more than 24,000 scouts will arrive in Thailand to
take part in the 20th World Scout Jamboree, to be
held at a naval base. More than 1,000 officers from
Thailand's army, navy and police force will provide
security during the two-week long Jamboree. "Though
we do not consider it very likely, we have done our
utmost to prevent a terrorist attack," says Lutz
Kuhnen, assistant director of WOSM's risk-management
unit. "But nothing is 100% safe." The government is
most worried, say security analysts, about the
country's lucrative tourism industry, which sees the
arrival of more than 10 million visitors each year
and contributes invaluably to the country's bottom
line. There is no doubt that the embassy travel
warnings have stung the industry. On the island
resort of Phuket bookings are down 15% on the
previous year and hotel cancellations are on the
rise, a trend reported countrywide.
Fueling the unease is a spate of troublesome reports
from the country's Muslim-dominated south. The region
has been blighted this year by a series of bomb and
arson attacks on schools and hotels and a rash of
hits on local cops. Both government and intelligence
agencies believe the violence is linked to the
region's extortion and smuggling rackets, not
international terrorists groups. But no one is taking
any chances. While publicly dismissing the
possibility of an imminent strike the government has
at the same time bolstered security in some of the
most popular tourist haunts, at airports and around
its porous borders. "We are not a target for
international terrorists," insists government
spokesman Sita Divari, but he adds: "We are conscious
and prepared."
By Andrew Perrin/Bangkok
SINGAPORE: Strict measures
Singapore's much-vaunted internal security apparatus
still hasn't quite recovered from the shock of
discovering a well-advanced al-Qaeda plot to detonate
seven large truck bombs at embassies and other key
sites in the city-state late last year. "They were
absolutely horrified at how close the plan was to
execution," says a source who has worked closely with
the Singapore authorities on terrorism issues. Not
that the authorities didn't swing into action with
characteristic efficiency once the plot was
uncovered. With nearly 40 alleged militants now in
prison, Singapore officials insist there is no longer
"any credible threat" from Jemaah Islamiah cells
inside the island republic. But as terror expert
Zachary Abuza points out, ultimately, a successful
attack in Singapore remains top of the wish list for
JI, even if achieving that takes years. "Singapore
has enormous symbolic importance as the capitalist
center of the region," says Abuza.
Such concerns were highlighted earlier this year when
Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong revealed that Mas
Selamat Kastari, the "most dangerous" of the 12 or so
members of the Singapore Jemaah Islamiah cell who
escaped arrest and fled the country, had been
planning an attempt to crash a plane into Singapore's
Changi Airport. The airport is now reportedly
protected by anti-aircraft missiles, as are the huge
refinery facilities on the island's southwest section
of Jurong, where multinationals such as Shell and
Exxon Mobil maintain large facilities. In mid-October
Singapore deployed units of its armored division
around the area as further safeguards.
By Simon Elegant/Kuala Lumpur
MALAYSIA: Meeting point
Malaysia can justifiably boast that it's ahead of the
pack when it comes to cracking down on Islamic
militancy. A month before the Sept. 11 attacks,
police began making arrests, to date rounding up some
63 alleged terrorist wannabes. But while there's no
doubt that Kuala Lumpur is now committed to crushing
militancy within its borders, it is Malaysia's dirty
little secret that years of turning a blind eye to
the activities of radical clerics like alleged Jemaah
Islamiah head Abubakar Ba'asyir allowed Islamic
radicalism to put down deep roots in the Malaysian
Muslim community. There is no arguing, either, with
the fact that Malaysia was used by the likes of
Abubakar and his alleged henchman Hambali as their
haven for over a decade and eventually as a
rendezvous for both regional and global militant
conclaves organized by JI. Most notorious was the
January 2000 meeting attended by up to 12 key JI and
al-Qaeda figures, including Tawfiq bin Atash, top
suspect in the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen in
October 2000, two of the Pentagon hijackers, another
key al-Qaeda figure Ramzi Binalshibhwho was captured
in Karachi on Sept. 11 this yearand, of course,
Hambali himself.
With the arrests continuinga senior militant was
detained on Sept. 27 and police say they are still
pursuing scores of othersthe authorities in Malaysia
are "reasonably confident they have taken all
possible measures to minimize the danger of an
attack," according to one official source in Kuala
Lumpur. A Western diplomat points out, however, that
Malaysia's past record and continuing role as a
meeting place for Islamic radicals (the country's
policy of not requiring visas for visitors from
Islamic countriesaimed at boosting tourism from the
Middle Easthas yet to see any substantial changes)
may ironically provide it some measure of protection
against terrorism. The diplomat comments: "These
people are not stupid. They've got a good thing going
in Malaysia. They don't want to mess that up by
bombing some expat hangout."
By Simon Elegant/Kuala Lumpur
AUSTRALIA: Southern front
"I'm a wrecknervous and shaky," one woman told the
media after police wearing flak jackets and goggles
raided her neighbors, a Muslim family living in the
Perth suburb of Thornlie. Her jitters have been
contagious in the uneasy weeks following the Bali
attacks. First came the early November raids on
houses around the country, part of an Australian
Security Intelligence Organization push to uncover
possible connections between Australians and Jemaah
Islamiah. That was followed on Nov. 18 by the
charging of one of the men raided, a west-Australian
convert to Islam, with conspiring to blow up Israeli
diplomatic missions in Australia. Jack Roche has
protested his innocence, despite giving remarkably
frank interviews to The Australian newspaper before
his arrest describing his training in Afghanistan in
the use of explosives and a meeting in Malaysia with
terrorist chief Hambali to discuss the recruitment of
JI operatives back home.
But it was the Australian government's upgrading of
the state of alert, the day after Roche's arrest,
that raised awareness of the domestic terror threat.
The government of Prime Minister John Howard said its
new informationlinked neither to the raids nor to
Roche's casewas "general and non-specific as to
target and timing" but suggested a terrorist strike
could hit Australia over the next few months. In what
is normally a wind-down time of year, with the summer
holidays approaching, Australians are now being urged
to stay ultra vigilant.
By Lisa Clausen/Sydney
AFGHANISTAN:
Square one
Terrorism lives on. Peacekeepers in Kabul repeatedly
stumble on banks of rockets aimed at their bases, the
airport or the U.S. embassy. A week ago, Afghan
security forces scuppered an attempt to destroy the
main power station. American bases are rocketed an
average of three times a week; four were recently
attacked in one night. Yet another special forces
convoy was ambushed on Nov 21. Two cabinet ministers
have been assassinated this year, and on Sept. 5 an
attempt was made on President Hamid Karzai's life.
All this is happening because al-Qaeda fighters are
venturing out from training camps just over the
border in Pakistan and from toeholds inside
Afghanistan, and Taliban remnants are regrouping.
Meanwhile, rural Afghans have grown disenchanted with
empty promises of increased aid. Living conditions
have improved little since the Taliban's collapse,
providing fresh recruits for al-Qaeda and Taliban
sanctuaries in Pakistan. Until the harsh economic
conditions are alleviated and Karzai's vision of a
new, democratic Afghanistan is fulfilled, terror will
persist.
By Michael Ware/Kabul
PAKISTAN: Den of terror
In Pakistan, al-Qaeda is thriving. Its tactic has
been to contract out its terror work to local
hirelingsand there are a multitude. Police are
investigating links between Osama bin Laden's network
and a spate of anti-Western attacks this past year:
the kidnapping and murder of American journalist
Daniel Pearl, bomb attacks in Karachi on the U.S.
consulate and on a bus full of French submarine
technicians and massacres of Christians. President
Pervez Musharraf pledged full cooperation to the U.S.
in its search for al-Qaeda. But those orders are not
always trickling down to the middle-ranking officers
in his army and intelligence corps who sympathized
with, and had close ties to, the Taliban regime.
For now, Pakistan is probably more of an actual
terrorist sanctuary than a prime terrorist target.
(Among other wanted extremists, Indonesian Hambali,
Jemaah Islamiah's operations chief, has also
reportedly sought refuge there.) The last thing
al-Qaeda and its local supporters want is for
Musharraf to have an excuse to crack down on the
Islamic radical parties. After the strong showing in
the Oct. 10 general elections, the religious parties
will control Baluchistan and Northwest Frontier
Provinceshideouts for al-Qaeda and Taliban fugitives.
These radical clerics may either put a stop to the
FBI's investigations in these provinces outright, or
at least thwart raids on al-Qaeda strongholds by
refusing to let local police take part.
By Tim McGirk/Islamabad
INDIA: Watching and waiting
Indian investigators say the country is always at
risk because al-Qaeda needs an existing support
structure for communications and sanctuary, easily
provided by Pakistan-based extremists fighting a
jihad in Kashmir. The failed attack on Parliament
last December, which ended with 14 dead including the
five suicide terrorists, was an example of Kashmiri
separatist terrorism. Now, security agencies are
bracing for the next big strike, which they fear
could target Western government or business
interests. "We don't know what and where it will be,"
says an Indian intelligence official, "but it will
certainly be dramatic."
There is another possible impetus for an attack.
Gujaratis go to the polls in mid-December, and the
ruling Hindu nationalist BJP party's agenda is a
barely disguised campaign against Muslims. A strike
would serve as a warning that Muslims will not be
cowed. "Once an attack happens, we will all say,
'That is so obvious, why didn't we think of it,'"
warns the official. "That is what people are saying
about Bali now."
By Meenakshi Ganguly/New Delhi