Terror dividend for Southeast Asia
Yesterday's annual ASEAN meeting, attended by Colin Powell, led to a new antiterror declaration.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell's swing through Southeast Asia this week has been all about terror.
Mr. Powell thanked Thailand Monday for "fighting with us in the campaign against terrorism." In Malaysia Tuesday, Foreign Minister Syed Hamid told reporters after meeting Powell that the two countries were working "effectively and strongly" on counterterrorism.
Wednesday in Brunei, Powell and the foreign ministers of 10 Southeast Asian nations agreed to increase antiterrorist cooperation through information-sharing between national intelligence agencies and stopping terrorist money laundering and funds transfers.
Powell's rigorous focus on the antiterror message is a sign of how much the bilateral equation has changed for Southeast Asia since Sept. 11. In short, it's been a great war for the region: US criticism of human rights records and demands for economic reforms have been muted. And military and financial aid have increased.
Instead, the Bush administration's foreign policy blueprint is starting to look a lot like American policy during the cold war, when staunch anticommunist allies such as Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand received US assistance with little interference in their internal affairs.
"Sept. 11 put Southeast Asia back on the map," says Ralf Emmers, a political scientist at Singapore's Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies. "The feeling is that the fight against terrorism is really the main concern in Washington right now. They've set a lot of those other issues aside.''
Powell has told regional leaders that the US is making a greater military commitment to Southeast Asia, something that pleases countries like Singapore and the Philippines, which see the US as a strategic counterbalance to China's rising economic and military might.
After the attacks, it was inevitable that US attention would shift here. The region is home to a third of the world's Muslims. While Southeast Asia practices a mostly tolerant and inclusive brand of the religion, there are also militant groups with links to Al Qaeda.
Late last year, Singaporean and Malaysian officials arrested members of Al Qaeda sleeper cells plotting to blow up the US Embassy and other western targets in Singapore. US and regional intelligence officials have also uncovered the trail of Al Qaeda agents in Indonesia and the Philippines.
The Bush administration's response has been to beef up military ties and sign intelligence-sharing agreements, particularly with its old allies in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Wednesday's meeting, which continued Thursday, was the annual conference between the group's 10 foreign ministers and 13 other Pacific powers, including China and Russia. In addition to information-sharing, the new document pledges signatories to doing a better job of tracking down Al Qaeda bank accounts, and cracking down on lax immigration enforcement that has made for porous borders.
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