Southeast Asia 'must prepare for threat from IS'

Syria became a home of IS extremists when it became fragmented in the wake of the ‘Arab Spring’ and when the government lost control over many parts of the country, said Jonathan Spyer, a senior research fellow with the Global Research in International Affairs Centre in Israel.

This situation created factions within Syria, opening the door for intervention from regional nations and powerbrokers to play a hand in the infighting, Spyer said. He was speaking at the “Militant Islam and Middle-East Turmoil: Lessons From and Implications for Southeast Asia” form at Chulalongkorn University yesterday.

Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria only controls some parts in the southwest, while the vast majority of the country is controlled by IS. Other groups, such as rebels and Kurdish minority groups, were also taking up arms to fight each other, he said. 

Aside from this fragmentation, sectarianism was also becoming a new language of politics in the region, he said.

Ehud Ya’ari, Lafer International Fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told the forum that IS was a product of the ‘Arab Spring’, which gained momentum in 2012 amid the collapse of nations in the region. Hundreds of thousands of militants were carrying rifles in the region not to gain citizenship in a state, but to create their own “Islamic State” in accordance with their own interpretation of Islam, he said. 

He also noted that IS was not just using guns in the battlefield, but is also waging an intellectual and ideological war against fellow Muslims over the interpretation of Islam. 

“It is okay for Southeast Asia to remain a moderate region, but don’t let the Middle East come to you,” Ya’ari warned.

Endy Bayuni, senior editor of the Jakarta Post, said it was estimated that some 200 Indonesians had joined the IS war in the Middle East, but he did not expect the groups to bring the war home with them. “Indonesia can handle the situation,” he said. 

Mohamed Jawhar Hassan, chairman of New Straits Times Press in Malaysia, said IS should not pose a big problem in his country, because the citizens were unified. 

However, Kavi Chongkittavorn, senior fellow at the Institute of Security and International Studies Thailand, said the Kingdom used to be and would continue to be a harbour for militants. He also warned that alternative media might be used for sparking extremist ideology.