Jihadists pose threat to Southeast Asia
Fighters could re- energize militant groups
Ahmad Salman Abdul Rahim left his job at a Malaysian construction company to fight alongside jihadists in Syria for a reason he says is 1,400 years old: The Prophet Muhammad demands it.
Muhammad, the founder of Islam, once advised a companion to fight in the area that makes up modern- day Syria and predicted that Allah would send an “army of mujahedeen” to the region, Ahmad said. He said he’s there to avenge Muslims tortured and killed by President Bashar Assad’s regime.
“We are portrayed as terrorists, but I don’t care, as this affair is between me and God,” U. K.- educated Ahmad, 38, said via Facebook messages from near Kfar Zeta in Syria’s Hama region.
“Many of the end- of- times battles will happen around Syria. That’s among the reasons I am here.”
As nations around the world grapple with the threat of Islamic State, Southeast Asians fighting in the Middle East pose a risk in several ways, security analysts say. They could return and breathe new life into militant groups in a region with a history of extremism and occasional large- scale terror attacks, and they could radicalize friends and family at home via social media, aided by slick Islamic State promotional videos.
“It’s not ( Islamic State) per se that might pose a danger to the region, but rather, its extreme militant ideology as well as the skills, battleground experience and international networks that southeast Asian jihadists got from Syria and Iraq,” said Navhat Nuraniyah, an associate research fellow at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies who looks at terrorism and radicalization.
“If even a small minority of them do return, they’ll be highly respected by existing local groups,” she said. “If they do intend to continue their mission they will have no problem finding recruits and support.”
The total number of southeast Asians fighting alongside Islamic State is estimated by governments and police to be a few hundred. The violence and brutality committed by terrorist groups in Iraq and Syria poses a threat to the Middle East and — if left unchecked — the world, the 10- member Association of Southeast Asian Nations said in a recent statement.
Among those overseas is Akel Zainal, the drummer from a 1990s Malaysian pop group known for songs such as You’re the Only One. From Syria, he solicits requests from Facebook followers to write their names on mortar shells, printing their names — as many as five per shell — next to the words “Malaysian Citizens Together with the Islamic Revolution.”
The counter- terrorism division of Malaysia’s police force has identified Ahmad and Akel as among those who have gone to Syria and Iraq to fight, said Ayob Khan Mydin, deputy chief of the unit. As many as 40 Malaysians may be there and police haven’t identified them all.
Terror attacks in Southeast Asia — home to about 15 per cent of the world’s 1.57 billion Muslims — have declined as security forces arrested or killed militants from regional groups like Jemaah Islamiyah. That group orchestrated the deadly 2002 nightclub bombings on the island of Bali, where tourist arrivals, a driver of the economy, fell 22 per cent the following year.
Islamic State- trained militants could re- energize groups like Jemaah Islamiyah, which was formed in the early 1990s by jihadists returning from Afghanistan with the goal of setting up an Islamic state across parts of Southeast Asia. Returnees also may form their own groups and seek to interrupt efforts to bring stability to areas such as Mindanao in the southern Philippines.
“Jemaah Islamiyah was very much weakened after Bali, but now you can see these groups are reviving because the Syrian and Iraq conflict has given them political oxygen,” said Rohan Gunaratna, head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
Amir Mahmud is an Islamic studies teacher in the central Java city of Solo who said he founded the Islamic State Supporters Forum in July so that Indonesian jihadi groups could harness interest in the “heroic movement” happening in the Middle East. He said early meetings drew several thousand people, though the group since stopped its gatherings.
“I don’t see anything wrong with people here showing support for ( Islamic State),” Amir said. “There’s no harm in expressing ideas that will always grow in Indonesia.”
Amir, who spent three years in Afghanistan in the 1980s, said he doesn’t support using violence to spread the ideology in Indonesia, though he understands why Islamic State has used it in Iraq and Syria.
“You cannot spread your ideology, movement with words if you are at war.”