‘Southeast Asia making headway vs terrorism’

Southeast Asia is making headway against the threat of regional terror, backed by close cooperation and sharing of intelligence, the commander of United States forces in the Asia-Pacific said yesterday.

"We have made a great deal of progress on terrorism in Southeast Asia over the last 18 months," Admiral Thomas Fargo told a news conference, adding that about 140 members of the Muslim militant group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) had been arrested.

Washington says the JI, which seeks a strict Islamic state across parts of Southeast Asia, has links to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network that is blamed for the attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.

"Certainly, the arrests that have been made in places like Singapore and Malaysia and Indonesia and other countries for that matter, including the Philippines, have been very important in diminishing the capability of Jemaah Islamiyah," Fargo said.

"As a result of those arrests, we are gaining a bigger picture of the JI and their operational planning, their ability to conduct terrorist acts."

But Fargo cautioned that the threat has not been eliminated entirely.

"We haven’t completely solved the problem with the JI and they do have the capability to conduct further attacks," he said.

Fargo expressed confidence that "the very close cooperation that I’m seeing right now in the countries of this region, sharing information, sharing in intelligence, is really making a difference, and that ultimately we’ll achieve the kind of success that is most important to our security throughout Southeast Asia."

Indonesian police have linked the group to bombings on the resort island of Bali in October that killed nearly 200 people, mostly foreign tourists.

Fargo is on a three-day visit to the Philippines, a former US colony and close ally of Washington, to discuss security issues with local officials. He attended the 45th meeting of the US Mutual Defense Board (MDB) at the general headquarters of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in Camp Aguinaldo, Quezon City.

He admitted that at the moment, the US is still beginning to understand the JI’s relationship and linkages with other Islamist and terrorist groups in the Southeast Asian region, such as the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Abu Sayyaf.

"What we know is that they are not the typical tight command and control relationship that we see in the military. There are probably loose confederations but we need more and better knowledge about these linkages," Fargo said.

He said he has no specific information on allegations by Manila and some of its neighbors that the MILF, the biggest separatists guerrilla group in the southern Philippines, was hosting terrorist training by foreign JI militants in its camps.

The meeting of the MDB, co-chaired by Fargo with AFP chief of staff Gen. Narciso Abaya, focused on the changing security environment after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks in the US.

US and local military officials also expanded the civic action and humanitarian assistance components of the anti-terror campaign by helping improve the living conditions of residents of strife-torn areas in the Philippines. A special engineering unit from the Philippine military has been trained and equipped for that purpose.

There will be more interaction between US and Philippine troops, according to the MDB, in terms of more military exercises and other related endeavors such as engineering and construction work conferences, personnel exchanges, ship visits, security assistance activities, as well as workshops and symposiums.

Abaya said the MDB created a communication committee and an information operations subcommittee that aim to enhance communication security and interoperability between the armed forces of both countries. — AFP, Mike Frialde and Roel Pareño