SE Asia govts worry over IS's allure
Play
The Islamic State's jihadist appeal is fanning fears that it could serve as a potent new rallying cry for Southeast Asian extremists who had been largely brought to heel following past deadly terror attacks.
Authorities in Indonesia – the world’s most populous Islamic country – and Muslim-majority Malaysia have watched with alarm as scores, possibly even hundreds, of their nationals are believed to have gone to Syria and Iraq to join the fight for a Muslim caliphate.
Terrorism analysts are increasingly concerned that these volunteers could import the organisation’s violent ideology upon their return, or inspire supporters back home to carry out deadly attacks.
“There are still many breeding grounds for militancy in parts of the region, and if fighters come back they can strengthen these existing groups, and that’s going to be a major problem,” said Bantarto Bandoro of the Indonesian Defence University.
Already, the Philippine Islamist rebel group Abu Sayyaf has threatened to decapitate a German hostage taken earlier this year, recalling the grisly IS beheadings of foreign journalists and an aid worker that caused worldwide revulsion and triggered US air strikes.
Abu Sayyaf last week demanded a ransom and that Germany cease support for the strikes. The demands have been refused, with Manila dismissing the ultimatum as a cynical ploy to exploit the notoriety of IS for profit.
Raising the stakes, the IS group last week called on Muslims across the world to kill citizens of the US anti-IS coalition and other “disbelievers”.
Attacks on foreigners feared
The Islamic State group’s sophisticated use of social media to broadcast its message globally has heightened concerns in Southeast Asia, which has some of the world’s highest rates of social media use.
The Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC) warned last week that foreigners could again become targets in Indonesia, where some extremists have backed the IS exhortation to kill its enemies.
“Members [of the group] could become the vanguard for a fighting force that would reach into Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines,” it said in a report.
IPAC called for tighter prison management, noting that a leading Indonesian advocate of IS –jailed radical cleric Aman Abdurrahman – has been able to disseminate its propaganda from his maximum-security prison cell.
