SOUTHEAST ASIA: THE EVOLVING NATURE OF THE SECURITY THREAT

The situation in Southeast Asia has evolved remarkably – and some might say dramatically – since the beginning of the 2000s. Ask any security expert or practitioners in government at the time, and they would have said that the number one security threat was terrorism. This was understandable : the 9/11 attacks, followed quickly by the discovery of cells of the regional al-Qaeda affiliate, the Jemaah Islamiah (JI), meant that interdicting terrorist activity and understanding radicalization were critical issues in the minds of security planners.  This mindset was reinforced by the terrible and tragic attacks carried out by the JI in Bali in October 2002 (and on several subsequent occasions in Indonesia).

Terrorism and the activity of extremist groups remains of course a key concern : witness the siege of Marawi, which took place from May-October 2017, which saw the clan-based Maute group, believed to be backed by a small number of foreign fighters professing allegiance to the Islamic State (IS), hold out against Filipino security forces for five months. Separately, there has also been an outflow of individuals from Southeast Asia to join the IS in Syria, particularly from 2014-2017. A small number have returned; but the fate of many (besides males, many women and children made the journey too) will likely not be known for years. The majority may be dead. But some may remain. Of these, some may be disillusioned and want nothing more to do with the cause the IS stood for. But it is possible that a small number remain deeply committed, and remain bent on carrying out the agenda of IS which includes attacks on what it sees as legitimate targets in Southeast Asia.