Shock at Terrorist Attacks in U.S.

By John Gee

In Southeast and East Asia, the public reacted with horror to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. All the region’s governments issued statements strongly condemning them and expressing their condolences to the American government and people. China, Korea, Japan and Taiwan all lost citizens in the attacks, and the media in Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore carried stories of nationals who had had lucky escapes from the World Trade Center and its vicinity.

In predominantly Muslim Malaysia, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad canceled a planned visit to London. The Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange closed for a day. A hoax bomb threat caused the Petronas Twin Towers, the world’s tallest building, to be evacuated, but the rumor quickly spread that the Malaysian government had ordered the move out of fear that they were also a terrorist target. There were reports—false, as it turned out—that Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri intended to cancel her imminent visit to the U.S., although as the leader of the world’s most populous Muslim country, there appeared to be more reasons than ever for her to go for discussions with American leaders.

Throughout the area, national leaders and newspaper editorials followed up their initial condemnations of the terrorist attacks with words of caution. Comments made about the anticipated U.S. military response in a Sept. 13 editorial in Singapore’s Business Times reflected attitudes common among opinion makers in the entire region: “Any such strike must not be based on uncontrolled fury. The U.S. and its allies should evince objective, credible evidence of culpability before taking action. Indeed, now more than ever, America must act with justice fully on its side. Anything less is likely to just re-seed the beds of terrorism. And whether or not the origins of this horror go to the Palestine situation—as is already being speculated—an international effort must be mounted to resolve that problem; it has festered for too long.”

Just days before the attacks, The Australian newspaper reported that Indonesian and foreign military and government officials were worried that the al-Qa’eda network headed by Osama bin Laden, believed to have perpetrated the terrorist actions, was hoping to use Indonesia as a “launching pad” for operations elsewhere.

“The chances are very high that in the next three years, we will fight terrorism, specifically international terrorism that enters Indonesia,” said Lt.-Gen. Kiki Syahnakri, deputy army chief, in an interview with The Australian. “We also received information from America, as well as other parties, of Osama bin Laden’s presence in Indonesia.”

“Now more than ever, America must act with justice fully on its side.”

This last claim seems to be unfounded. There is no real evidence that Bin Laden has stirred from his hideaways in Afghanistan in the past few years. Nevertheless, it could well be that the network he heads has a foothold in Indonesia and is attempting to rally support: the communal conflicts in parts of Indonesia offer fertile recruiting territory. The most plausible case for a possible link has been made for the Laskar Jihad group, which last year declared a jihad, or holy war, against Indonesian Christians in the Molucca islands.

In the days after the Sept. 11 bombings, local pundits and “anti-terrorism experts” suggested links between Bin Laden and all the armed groups—as well as some unarmed groups—based among Southeast Asia’s Muslim populations. The problem is that Bin Laden has been turned into a sort of Carlos the Jackal for the new millennium, whose hand is seen in a wide range of actions deemed, justly or unjustly, to be terrorist. This may not help outsiders to understand what really is happening when these acts take place, and it can lead to Muslim oppositional organizations all being tarred with the same brush. It could also backfire, by giving Bin Laden a certain credibility as an anti-establishment figure among some people.

Early reports that some Palestinians in the West Bank and Lebanon celebrated the attacks were met with incomprehension and disgust, although Yasser Arafat’s condemnation and the subsequent pictures of him giving blood for victims of the terrorists went a good way toward countering the damage this caused to the Palestinians’ image. Some papers published pictures showing public expressions of mourning both in Palestine and in other Arab countries.

Economic Woes

Southeast Asia was expecting 2001 to be a year in which economic growth slumped, but mid-year bad news from the U.S. and Europe deepened business gloom. The consequences of an economic downturn are likely to be very damaging, but some will be hit harder than others.

The negative impact of a recession is likely to be worst for Indonesia. When Megawati Sukarnoputri finally took the reins of power from former President Abdurrahman Wahid, there was a certain amount of optimism inside Indonesia and abroad that her government would prove more successful than its predecessors in tackling the host of problems facing her country. They include corruption, an over-powerful military, communal conflicts in the Moluccas and Kalimantan, secessionist movements in various regions, particularly in West Papua and Aceh at the eastern and western extremes of Indonesia, and a high rate of unemployment: at the very least, 45 million people are without work in a country of 225 million.

Economic recovery would make tackling most of these problems easier, but the looming international economic slowdown means that, even if Indonesia makes progress in putting its own house in order, the immediate benefits might be very sparse.

During Abdurrahman Wahid’s presidency, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) suspended a $5 billion loan program in response to his tardiness in implementing agreed measures of economic reform. Once Megawati took office, a new agreement with the IMF unlocked that program. One of the chief measures the new government intends to push through, largely in fulfilment of IMF requirements, is the privatisation of state-run industries and the sale of government stakes in various economic sectors. Its target this year is to sell assets valued at $3.7 billion. This will be followed by further sales during the coming years. Sixty percent of the sales’ proceeds should go toward helping reduce the budget deficit, and 40 percent toward retiring some of the high interest bonds used to prop up Indonesian banks after the 1997-98 crisis.

The economic slowdown means that, short of marketing additional assets, the Indonesian government will not raise the money it had hoped to. Buyers have an opportunity to acquire state assets at knock-down prices and will undoubtedly do so. The ultimate losers will be the Indonesian people, still saddled with a debt built up during the years of the Suharto dictatorship and steadily worsening. At present, Indonesia’s external debt amounts to $75 billion. Internally it owes $65 billion, with a further $17 billion owed by state-owned enterprises.

What makes matters worse is that much of the money lent by external institutions was put to improper uses. The World Bank estimates that about 30 percent of the foreign loans extended to the Suharto government was siphoned off by Suharto’s family, cronies and corrupt officials. These fat cats are still sitting on their wealth, while the poor face cutbacks in government spending and subsidies so that the debts their leaders did so much to build up can be serviced.

One important source of income for the poorer countries of Southeast Asia is the remittances sent home by migrant workers abroad. The biggest labor exporter is the Philippines, whose seven to eight million migrant workers remitted nearly $8 billion last year. Saudi Arabia is the biggest employer of labor from the Philippines, and there are fears that up to 800,000 Filipinos may lose their jobs there in the near future. Concerned at rising unemployment among its own people, the Saudi government has introduced tighter restrictions on the employment of foreigners. As of July 21, for example, the Kingdom’s 6,000 jewelery shops were allowed to employ only Saudi nationals in sales, administrative and financial jobs. Moves are afoot to replace foreigners working in supermarkets, furniture and domestic appliance shops and in the cleaning and maintenance departments of government offices. The replacement process may be gradual, however, as unemployed Saudis are not rushing to take on jobs that many of them would consider poorly paid or menial.

After being banned from Saudi Arabia since the early 1990s, permission was given in September for Thai workers to return. The ban had been imposed as a result of the straining of relations between Thailand and Saudi Arabia following the murder of three Saudi diplomats in the Southeast Asian state. The majority of Thais employed in the Middle East are there as unskilled or semi-skilled laborers. When most Palestinian workers from the West Bank and Gaza Strip were prevented from getting to jobs in Israel following the Hamas bomb attacks in 1996, it was largely Thais who took their place as agricultural laborers. Last year, following Israel’s withdrawal from south Lebanon, the border was closed to the Lebanese who used to go from the Israeli-occupied zone to work in Israel. Metulla and a number of other border settlements suddenly found themselves without workers upon whom they had come to depend. Once again, Thais filled the gap. On one occasion, a group of them was working in a field on the border when Lebanese civilians threw rocks at them, which they promptly hurled back. These workers know next to nothing about the people they have replaced or the issues at stake in Palestine. They just know that they needed paid work and it was available in Israel.

Asian Support

Yasser Arafat made a whistlestop tour of a number of traditionally supportive Asian countries at the end of August. He traveled to India and Pakistan, visited China on Aug. 24, dropped into Vietnam that evening, made an unannounced trip to Malaysia on the 25th and, the same day, fitted in talks with Bangladeshi leaders during a stopover in Dhaka on his return flight to the Middle East.

While the public statements made by Arafat’s hosts were very warm and strongly critical of Israeli violence against Palestinian civilians, all endorsed the prevailing international consensus on the bases for a lasting peace—a consensus which embraces the vast majority of states in the world, with the notable exceptions of Israel and the U.S. Vietnamese Premier Phan Van Khai, for example, spoke of the Palestinian people’s inalienable national rights, including the right of self-determination, the right to the return of Palestinian territories occupied by Israel and the right to establish an independent Palestinian state. He spoke of U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 and the principle of “Land for Peace” as the bases for a peace settlement.

Palestinian officials said that the purpose of Arafat’s tour was to brief Asian leaders on the situation in Palestine and to ask for their continued support in trying to end the current violence and secure a measure of protection for Palestinian civilians through the stationing of international observers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Arafat’s hosts all backed him on the latter point.

During Arafat’s visit to Beijing, China and the PNA signed an agreement on economic and technological cooperation.

On Aug. 28, shortly after Arafat’s visit, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzhao issued a statement saying that China “strongly condemns Israel’s assassination Monday of Abu Ali Mustafa,” the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Zhu condemned “any form of terrorism, Israel’s policy of trailing and killing militants and its continual assassination of Palestinian leaders.”

Israel’s conduct since the outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifada, following its bowing to U.S. pressure in August 2000 to cancel the Phalcon spy plane deal, has chilled relations between Israel and China. During Arafat’s Asian tour, news emerged that members of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, had been disturbed to hear that a planned September visit to China by a Knesset delegation had been canceled by the Chinese, who said that they were “too busy,” reported The Jerusalem Post.

John Gee is a free-lance journalist based in Singapore and the author of Unequal Conflict: Israel and the Palestinians, available from the AET Book Club.