The Australian, December 27, 2003
There goes the neighbourhood
By Greg Sheridan
In the southern Philippines, in territory controlled by the Muslim separatist Moro
Islamic Liberation Front, there exists a freestanding training camp for Jemaah
Islamiah, the Indonesian-based terrorist group.
JI is the group behind last year's Bali bombings in which 88 Australians were killed. It
is almost certain that in that training camp in the southern Philippines, terrorist
operations are being planned with Australians as their target, in South-East Asia or
Australia.
That this could be happening now, at the end of 2003 - that terrorists and future
terrorists could be moving back and forth between Indonesia, Malaysia and the
Philippines to undergo training in explosives, combat, ideological indoctrination,
operations planning and the rest - after everything the region has been through with
Islamist terrorism, demonstrates just how tenacious and persistent this terrorist threat
is.
And how much trouble it's going to give us in the future.
The ramshackle Philippines Government, which barely survived an aborted military
coup last July, does not have anything like control in the southern Philippines, which
has become one of the regional epicentres of Islamist terrorism. In many ways it is
more worrying than Indonesia.
But there is plenty to worry about in Indonesia, too.
In 2004, Australia faces perhaps its greatest range of security challenges - deadly
threats might be a better term - than at any time since World War II. It is shaping up
as the classic year of living dangerously, to borrow Indonesian president Sukarno's
immortal phrase. It is going to be a tough, demanding, difficult year for national
security. We will be very lucky indeed to get through it unscathed.
Consider what we know for sure is coming up in the next 12 months. Between now
and probably next September, there will be more or less permanent election fever in
Indonesia. In April there will be parliamentary elections. In July there will be the first
round of presidential elections. If no candidate gets more than 50 per cent of the vote,
there will be a run-off presidential election in September.
The Indonesian election process poses three dangers for Australia.
In all of that period, there is likely to be a significant degree of anti-Australian
sentiment voiced as candidates look for any electoral advantage. If this comes from a
main presidential candidate or becomes widespread, it could harm the bilateral
relationship.
Second, the political system is likely to make some compromises in its war on
terrorism, as anti-Americanism is a powerful and popular sentiment in Indonesia. It will
not be popular to be seen taking tough action against JI's jailed spiritual leader, Abu
Bakar Bashir, or his associates. The question is how debilitating these compromises
will be and whether they will last beyond the election period, taking the intensity of
political will against terrorism back to its indolent pre-Bali levels.
And the third danger is that the whole experiment with democracy in Indonesia will be
at some risk. That General Wiranto and Siti Hardiyanti Rukmana, better known as
Tutut, the daughter of former dictator Suharto, could be credible presidential
candidates shows how powerful the sense of nostalgia for the undemocratic but stable
Suharto days is in parts of the Indonesian electorate.
For Indonesian democracy to be crushed in a conflict between militant Islam and a
resurgent secular military would be by no means unprecedented.
The Philippines will also hold critically important elections in the first half of next year.
On May 10 it will hold presidential elections. The four main candidates so far are the
incumbent, Gloria Arroyo; a former education secretary, Raul Roco; a former police
chief, Ping Lacson; and a B-grade movie actor, Fernando Poe. From Australia's point
of view, probably the best of them is Arroyo, but even under her the Philippines has
not come to grips with the terrorists in its south. Poe and Lacson threaten a return to
a Joseph Estrada-style presidency of chaotic misrule and profoundly disturbing
presidential associations.
The quality of governance at all levels in the Philippines is in decay. A nation of 80
million, its birthrate suggests it will double its population in the next 30 years. The
Philippines presents the potential for radical crises beyond imagining today.
In the attempted coup in July, the young navy officer who led it, Antonio Trillanes, had
a record of trying to expose the pervasive corruption of the armed forces of the
Philippines. In papers he had published before the attempt, he detailed case after
case of the armed forces taking bribes to allow supplies, including weapons and
ammunition, through to the MILF terrorists in the southern Philippines.
This is one reason regional analysts do not believe the Philippines military will come
to grips with the security threat posed by the MILF - too many Filipino soldiers make
money out of it.
But this means that Islamic terrorists in our region have a continuing safe refuge and
hinterland of support, greatly assisting their survival as a coherent force. We know for
sure that these terrorists want to kill Australians. JI killed 88 Australians in Bali.
There is also a clear pattern that shows us that al-Qa'ida has a long, well established
interest in Australia, and as the frequent statements of Osama bin Laden have shown,
a hatred of Australia.
This interest is evident in the people al-Qa'ida has sent here and the people who are
already here whom it has trained in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Terrorist suspect Willie Brigitte may be part of that interest. Ultimately, one of those
people is going to get through, and bad things, really bad things, will happen on
Australian soil.
Other regional elections also will have consequences for terrorism and for Australia.
Early in the new year, possibly by February, Malaysia will have its first post-Mahathir
election.
The prospect is that new Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi's coalition Government will
be comfortably returned. But this election, too, could see some anti-Australian
sentiment voiced and the main challenge to the Government will come from the
resolutely anti-Western Islamic fundamentalist party, PAS.
Although PAS does not support terrorism, if it significantly increases its vote that
would be a very bad sign indeed as to who is winning the battle for the soul of Islam in
South-East Asia.
Other elections, only slightly further afield, may well give us security headaches. In
Taiwan, there will be a presidential election in March. The incumbent, Chen Shui-bian,
was trailing badly in the polls until he started a campaign of greater assertiveness
vis-a-vis mainland China, which claims sovereignty over Taiwan.
Chen proposed a referendum for his island nation, not on formal independence as
such, which China has said could lead to war, but to denounce Beijing's missile
build-up across the Taiwan Strait.
This led US President George W. Bush, who faces an election himself next year, to
make an unprecedented statement recently that he opposed either Beijing or Taipei
taking any action to change the status quo, and that some of Chen's actions might
fall into that category.
This US statement was designed to rein in Chen and get the mainland Chinese to
refrain from aggressive bullying of Taiwan. Should Chen keep on with his referendum
proposals, Beijing is likely to react. But the US would not allow China to take serious
military action against Taiwan. This dynamic could force a China-US crisis even
though Washington and Beijing desperately want to avoid it.
And no outside country, except Japan, would be more likely than Australia to get
mangled in the wringer of a China-US conflict.
India will also hold elections next year and Pakistan's role in the Islamist terrorism in
Kashmir, and elsewhere in India, will be an important issue. But Pakistan looks to be
one gunshot away from disaster. Its military dictator, General Pervez Musharraf, this
month survived two assassination attempts, one this week. Whatever Musharraf's
failings, a successor chosen in the circumstances of his assassination would almost
certainly be from the military and more Islamically extreme than Musharraf. And he
would control Pakistan's nuclear weapons.
The implications of that for Afghanistan, for Kashmir and India, for the whole war on
terror and even the central strategic balance don't bear thinking about.
According to traditional strategic thinking, that is the circumstance in which Australia
is most likely to get into trouble, if there is disturbance in the central strategic balance
and trouble in our own region as well.
Disturbance in the central strategic equation could come from many quarters. The
North Korean crisis is on a slow-burning fuse. Washington seems to have decided
that it just cannot cope with too many crises at once, so it is simply defining North
Korea as not an acute crisis right now.
But time is not necessarily on the side of stability in North Korea. Western
intelligence believes the North Koreans have not reprocessed a significant number of
the spent nuclear fuel rods at their Yongbyon reactor. If they did so, it would mean
they were producing nuclear weapons material and this would cross a red line for the
Americans.
However, the North Koreans have also admitted they have an illegal uranium
enrichment program. Much less detail is known about this by Western intelligence.
Although the cause of non-proliferation has just had a great boost from Libya's
decision to abandon nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and long-range
missiles, US and British officials were also shocked by the Libyan experience, finding
how far down the path towards a nuclear weapon Libyan scientists had gone.
North Korea would significantly increase its bargaining power if it possessed nuclear
weapons material in large quantities and may well sell it on to its friends in the Middle
East. This is a crisis that could blow up at any time.
Then there is the question of what happens in Iraq. The capture of Saddam Hussein is
a great victory for Bush and the coalition of the willing. It has also furnished a treasure
trove of intelligence material. But it is likely the US will still face a tough time in Iraq in
the year ahead. Many coalition troop deployments will be coming to an end about the
middle of the year. It is highly likely that Australia could face serious US requests for
further troop deployments in Iraq next year.
On this score, the Howard Government has been shrewd. The number of troops we
still have in Iraq or adjacent territories is about 800. This is a relatively sizeable
deployment, which should allow the Government to fend off US requests for anything
more. But it is also reasonably low profile and the troops operate in relative safety.
The lack of sheer numbers of soldiers is likely to be Australia's greatest force
structure vulnerability in the next 12 months. We are through the most intense military
phase of the Solomon Islands deployment, but there is still tough work ahead and it
could go sour any time.
More important is the new commitment to sorting out Papua New Guinea. This will
take our total aid vote to PNG to $500 million a year, a staggering amount, and will
include the deployment of hundreds of Australian diplomats, officials and police in the
most violent and lawless society in our region.
Although this all represents the most generous and comprehensive commitment that
any country could possibly make to PNG, it has stirred deep resentment, what
psychologists call the syndrome of hostile dependence.
Indeed, until the last minute, the Australian operation appeared to be going ahead in
the face of the opposition of PNG Prime Minister Michael Somare.
The potential for Australia to get caught in political, security and just plain human
tragedy in PNG is all too obvious. It's right to make the commitment to PNG, but it
carries huge risks.
On top of that, we are going to need to make ongoing security arrangements for East
Timor after the official international peacekeeping deployments end next year.
It's easy to imagine simultaneous crises in the Solomons, PNG and East Timor,
combining perhaps with a terrorist incident or alert in Australia, which would leave us
acutely embarrassed by our lack of soldiers.
But, taken more broadly, all of the above represent vast security uncertainty and
challenge. It means that national security is going to have very high salience, perhaps
utterly dominance, next year. Politically, it will favour the incumbent, John Howard, in
an Australian election year. But it holds risks for absolutely everybody.
© The Australian
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