Islamist militants getting stronger beyond Mideast

It doesn’t mean that the phenomenon is the same, or that the United States’ response to it should be the same, but it does appear that militant Islamist organizations, hitherto predominantly active in Iraq and Syria, have become recently more of a problem in Asia, including in the Philippines and Indonesia.

There is now even talk of the establishment of an Islamic Asian caliphate, parallel to the one theoretically based in Raqqa, Syria.

With generally good reason, Americans tend to think of militant Islam as a Mideast phenomenon. It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that there are important populations of Muslims, susceptible to radicalization, in Asian countries like Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan and the Philippines, not to mention the ‘Stans of the former Soviet Union. These Asian Muslims number an estimated 1.4 billion and most of them are Sunnis, like the Islamic State’s leadership and adherents.

Asian countries like the Philippines troubled by Islamic militants will undoubtedly seek U.S. support in combating them, citing the 2001-vintage so-called U.S. Global War on Terrorism. Organizations like the Philippines’ Abu Sayyaf are not so large nor so powerful that national governments cannot take the necessary measures to contain or counteract them. They should do that. Unlike NATO, this is not a burden that the United States has agreed to share, particularly when the governments of the countries whose populations include them have themselves not made the effort to deal with the problems they present.