• This Day (Nigeria) aagm: Political Economy of Sustainable Democracy in Nigeria (2)

aid to the Philippines increased from $2 million in 2001 to $80 million per year in 2002-03 (Klein 2003). Moreover, the response to the supposed ASG threat has included joint military operations that have no clear purpose in relation to the terrorist threat and which conform instead to the imperatives of the pre-9/11 US agenda for the Philippines. Beginning in 2002, the US military conducted expanded war games and joint training exercises with the Philippine military. These exercises were the largest US military operation in the Philippines since the Philippine-American war that led to Philippine colonization (International Peace Mission 2002,17). Moreover, these war games and training exercises were unlike any previously conducted in that they included "training" in actual combat sites and went on for more than six months (International Peace Mission 2002,1). Eventually, in early 2003, they were halted because of public outcry in the Philippines after a Pentagon spokesperson announced that US troops would "actively participate" in combat during the exercises-a different story than that told by the Arroyo administration and an act that would violate Philippine law (Pastrana 2003). Immediately after this, however, there was an increase in terrorist bombings on Mindanao, and both the Arroyo administration and the US government have evinced a desire to use this as a pretext for restoring the expanded joint exercises (Klein 2003).
The report of the International Peace Mission to the Philippines during 2002 raises pertinent criticisms of the US military's supposed war on terrorism in the region.5 First, as the report notes, if terrorist activity in the southern Philippines was a deep and abiding concern this would scarcely sanction sending to the region large numbers of young and inexperienced American troops when the Philippine military itself has extensive experience in successfully combating regional separatist organizations. Moreover, if more dramatic steps need to be taken to counter terrorist threats then the evidence of complicity by actors in the Philippine military with ASG operations and actions of other separatist groups suggests that the place to begin strengthening anti-terrorism activities is through an internal investigation and reform of the Philippine military (International Peace Mission 2002). To this it should be added that no evidence has been produced by Washington suggesting that ASG or other Islamic groups in Mindanao played a central role in the events of 9/11 themselves, so the pretext that intensification of US military operations in the region is designed to combat terrorist threats is then whether that threat is advertised as being to the Philippines or to the United States.
The far more plausible explanation for expanded US military operations in the Philippines is that 9/11 has simply provided a convenient pretext for the expansion of operations already stated as a policy objective across the spectrum of Washington elites. The fact that the US military has been able to forthrightly state its desire for renewed access to the Philippines and to gain such access on the basis of the 9/11 pretext is in part a function of the US government's continued influence in Manila (Roberts 2003c). Such influence has to do with colonial and neo-colonial legacies, as well as the ongoing dependence of the Philippine elite-and the minimally successful economy they sit astride-on foreign direct investment from the West and access to US markets (including for labor migration). The role of these elites in endorsing the expansion of joint US-Philippine military exercises cannot be overlooked: 9/11 not only provided US elites with a pretext for re-assertion of a neo-colonial presence; it also provided Philippine elites who have battled against widespread nationalist sentiment with the opportunity to sell their own collaboration with the US government as a project in the national interest. In spite of this pretext, however, the renewing of strong military relations with the United States was politically dangerous for Arroyo (even if financially lucrative to some of her military commanders), given continuing hostility to any US military presence on the part of many Filippinos (Pastrana 2003). It is in this sense that I characterize the US imperial agenda in the Philippines as neo-colonial. That is, while it enlists (to their own benefit) a small number of Philippine elites, it is fundamentally in the service of the US government's own project in the region and can be imposed-in spite of substantial antagonism within the Philippines-because of the US government's continuing power and influence vis-à-vis its former colony.
One specific incident that occurred after 9/11 summarizes well this neo-colonial relationship. On 16 May 2002, a bomb exploded in a room of the Evergreen hotel, Davao City, badly injuring the room's occupant, US citizen Michael Meiring. Investigations of the incident suggest that while Meiring had claimed to be a treasure hunterperhaps carrying dynamite for his work-his trail of connections and activities betray a more curious story, one that has unsurprisingly aroused suspicion that he was working for the CIA. Without recounting the complexities of the Meiring story or attempting a judgment regarding his activities, I simply note how what happened in the aftermath of the explosion speaks to the US neo-colonial role in the Philippines. While Meiring lay recovering from his injuries in a Davao City hospital US National security Council agents appeared and moved him to a hospital in Manila, where he was not allowed visitors except for his US Embassy-appointed doctor. Shortly after this, Meiring was quietly whisked off to the United States by FBI agents. Given that Meiring's carrying and (inadvertent) detonation of illegal explosives demands an investigation and possible criminal charges under Philippine law (irrespective of what Meiring was doing), the unilateral removal of Meiring from the country by US agents has incensed the Mayor of Davao City, Rodrigo Duterte, who lashed out at the US actions as "arrogant" and "an affront to Philippine sovereignty" (Arguilas 2003; Zum el-Sicat 2002a, b, c).
By itself, the Meiring case means little, but in the context of US actions in the Philippines it speaks eloquently to the character of the US "re-engagement" with Southeast Asia through US-Philippine "joint" activities. Given historical relations between the two countries, it is not especially surprising that such unilateralism would be most evident in the Philippines. In other parts of Southeast Asia, though, the US has of necessity carried out its broad designs for re-engagement in a slightly different fashion.
US Imperialism in Indonesia: A Sub-Imperial Ally
In Indonesia, though the US has broadly similar designs to those it has for the Philippines, the situation is substantially different and has necessitated a different form of engagement with national elites. In particular, there is little possibility for the US military to gain basing rights anywhere in the archipelago, given fierce nationalist opposition to this in Indonesia, so the goal is rather to insure tight and supportive relations between the US military and the TNI. The fact that most TNI members are Muslim, and that the overwhelming majority of Indonesians are as well, makes the use of post-9/11 rationalizations of US actions a much more delicate matter in Indonesia than in the Philippines. Indeed, immediately after 9/11, Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri was unwilling to openly participate in a "war on terrorism" to the same extent as Arroyo and spoke out publicly against characterizing Islam as a dangerous enemy of either the US or Indonesian states.
It is against this background that I want to consider the US project of rekindling ties with the TNI while playing up the threat to Indonesia putatively presented by JI. As with ASG, uncertainty and speculation surrounds JI and the nature of its operations. Indeed, even though JI operatives have been tried in Indonesia courts and found guilty in the October 2002 bombing of a BaIi nightclub, there is still suspicion as to the possible involvement of people within the Indonesian military (Roberts 2003a, d, g, h). I do not intend to try to pronounce on such uncertainties, but fortunately there have recently been detailed reports on JI by the International Crisis Group (ICG).6 The reports, though focused on establishing personal linkages and wanting in social or political analysis, provide a useful picture of aspects of JFs operations, a picture that would substantiate its credentials as a terrorist threat within Indonesia. At the same time, as I will indicate, the reports make it impossible to cast the JI threat in the Manichean and selective terms that are central to the "war on terrorism." Moreover, the way that the US and TNI response to the JI threat is being played out conforms less to a legitimate project for undermining JFs influence than to a very different project of the TNI (with backing from the US military) for subduing regional rebellions such as those in Aceh and West Papua.
The ICG's reports on JI, based on depositions (some of questionable reliability) and interviews with JI members held imprisoned in Indonesia and elsewhere, make several crucial points. First, JI is not an organization that is unique or has come into existence de novo. Rather, JI is part of a broader political Islamist tendency that dates back to the Darul Islam rebellions of the 1950s, and indeed many JI members draw ideological inspiration from those struggles, while contemporary Darul Islam members have cooperated in JI activities (ICG 2002b, 2-3,7,21, 25; 2003c, 2,12-4,22-3). second, JI is not merely a terrorist organization created out of al-Qaeda's global aspirations. Indeed, the ICG states unequivocally that "JI is not operating simply as an al-Qaeda subordinate" and that "[virtually all of its decision-making and much of its fund-raising has been conducted locally," while its focus "continues to be on establishing an Islamic state in Indonesia" (ICG 2003c, 1 ; cf. 2003c, 15). Moreover, as an embedded part of the Indonesian social and political landscape, JI has built itself around Islamic schools that are an integral part of Indonesian culture (ICG 2002b, 3, 25; 2003c. 26-7). Third, precisely because it is embedded in a social and political landscape that is pervasively Islamic, JI is not a simple, unified, or regionalized phenomenon. Since Islam mediates and articulates virtually all political positions taken in Indonesia, the sharing of a broadly Islamist agenda has not resulted in uniformity of opinion among self-identified JI members. Consequently, there have been significant splits within JI over strategic and tactical issues. Indeed the reputed co-founder and leader of JI, Abu Baker Ba'asyir, put on trial in Indonesia, appears to have fallen out with JI leaders who favored the BaIi bombings and was in all likelihood not a party to this particular operation (ICG 2002b, 2, 3-4; Roberts 2003c). Beyond this, even if JI is considered to be a coherent organization with a clear identity-something denied by Ba'asyir (Roberts 2003a, d, g, h)-it is scarcely singular or unique, and the ICG reports indicate the existence of a large number of other Indonesian organizations with overlapping but sometimes conflicting agendas.
Fourth, and finally, just as the ICG reports show that JI is not a distinctive, isolated, or homogeneous organization standing apart from the rest of Indonesian society, it shows that JI is by no means a straightforward antagonist of the TNI or Indonesian elites. ICG investigations in fact found that JI members have worked on the side of the TNI in its struggle against Acehnese rebels, attempting to woo and utilize defectors from the Acehnese independence movement, Gerakan Aceh Merdeka (GAM). In particular GAM defector and JI associate Teungku Fauzi Hasbi-who has been quoted as saying he treats famed JI operations head Hambali like a son-is also close to Indonesian army special forces (Kopassus), and particularly to Major General Syafrie Sjamsuddin, as well as National Intelligence Agency head Hendropriyono (ICG 2002b, 7, 8,9). Remarkably, Hasbi's telephone number was found on the cell phone of a would-be December 2000 JI bomber, yet an Indonesian army intelligence officer interviewed by ICG also had Hasbi's number programmed into his cell phone and called him in ICG's presence (ICG 2002b, 9). In addition, the Indonesian government has reportedly worked with members of a GAM breakaway faction (MP-GAM), including Teuku Idris Mahmud, whose name has come up as a member of JI in Malaysia, as an associate of Hambali, and as a member of the JI inner core (ICG 2002b, 8). Similarly, Edi Sugiyarto, convicted of participation in the December 2000 bombings, has a long history of Kopassus ties, and when his wife was asked at his trial to name some of his friends, she exclusively named army officers (ICG 2002b, 9). Indeed, because of these kinds of connections, the ICG concludes with regard to the December 2000 bombings that "it is hard to avoid the suspicion that someone in the armed forces must have known that at least the Medan part was in the works and saw the possibility that it could be blamed on GAM..." (ICG 2002b, 11). Here, the resonance with Rumsfeld's planned Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group is palpable.
Links to the TNI are not exclusive to JI members in Aceh or Sumatra. In Poso and Maluku, JI has supported the military organization Laskar Mujahidin, which has links to the army in Maluku (ICG 2002b, 19-20). Furthermore, JI has regularly cooperated with, and included among its ranks, various prenian (criminals, thugs), who have connections to government intelligence. The commander of Laskar Mujahadin in Ambon, Abu Dzar, is a former preman known by JI members as someone with connections in the army (ICG 2003c, 25).7 Indeed, as ICG reports note, connections to the Indonesian military appear central to JI's operations since these connections allow them access to large caches of weapons (ICG 2003c, 25; cf., ICG 2002b, 23, 25-6).8
TNI connections with groups like JI are by no means unusual. During the massive blood-letting of the 1960s, the Suharto regime utilized right-wing Islamic groups to attack Communist Party members and sympathizers, while more recently the TNI has utilized the military Islamist organization Laskar Jihad as part of its operations in West Papua (ICG 2002a; Roberts 2002). In short, the organizations that are being portrayed internationally as the core of an Islamic terrorist threat to Indonesia-first and foremost, JI-are not only integrated into Indonesian society (even if not representative of the desires of most Indonesians) but are connected with the very organization now being charged with fighting them, the TNI.
In this context, it is not especially surprising that the "war on terrorism" in Indonesia seems to have shown little in the way of success on the internal security front. Even after the Bali bombing and the increased backing from the US military that this helped legitimize, the TNI has seemingly been unable to curtail high profile terrorist activities. The latest evidence of this is the summer 2003 bombing of the Jakarta Marriott (Symonds 2003b). Indonesian intelligence had supposedly been prepared for this bombing-having found maps of the area of the Marriott in a raid on JI headquarters several weeks earlier-yet it was miraculously unable to stop the act from occurring, even though it quickly produced claims regarding JI's involvement, including claiming that it found near the scene of the blast the severed head of the JI operative putatively responsible (ICG 2003c, 11).
While Indonesian intelligence has not been able to eliminate terrorist activities even under the heightened state of emergency imposed in the "war on terror," the TNI has used national security rhetoric to legitimize stepping up its operations in West Papua, playing on domestic fears about separatism in the wake of East Timor's independence. For example, in November 2001, Indonesian security forces murdered Papuan independence leader Theys Eluay (ICG 2002a; Roberts 2003b, i). Subsequently, the TNI sent more troops into the province and reversed many of the slight modifications in policy introduced under the Wahid regime in order to reduce political tensions (ICG 2001, 2002a; Roberts 2002). In this context, TNI-backed forces also appear to have killed three employees of a school run by the Freeport-McMoRan mining company, hoping to lay the blame on the Free Papua Movement (OPM) and to use this as justification for further military activity against OPM (ICG 2002a; Roberts 2003f). Finally, in 2003, Megawati's administration further exacerbated tensions by putting into place a special autonomy law that would divide West Papua into three provinces, hoping by doing so to divide the independence movement but risking further conflict (ICG, 2003a). During 2003, moreover, TNI actions indicated the continuing will of the Indonesian government to suppress independence forces by any means necessary. For example, according to the Indonesian National Commission on Human Rights, in April, seven West Papuan civilians were killed, 48 tortured (with an unspecified number claimed to have been raped), and 7,000 forcibly evacuated from their homes in Wamena, near the border with Papua New Guinea, when Indonesian troops searched the area for weapons allegedly stolen from the TNI by members of the OPM (Roberts 2003i).9
Meanwhile, the TNI has also used national security rhetoric to legitimize waging an intensified and merciless war on the GAM. Beginning in May 2003, the TNI launched a "shock and awe" campaign against the GAM and its supporters, sending in 30,000 troops and another 13,000 police and paramilitaries to take on the GAM's 5,000 fighters (Symonds 2003a). The campaign continued throughout 2003 and into 2004, with appalling results, including hundreds of civilian casualties, the forced evacuation of at least 100,000 people during the first three months of martial law alone, and the burning by Indonesian forces of as many as 500 schools (Divjak and Conachy 2003; ICG 2003b).
In summary, whatever the precise realities of JFs threat to Indonesian security, the US "war on terror" has seemingly done little to undermine the possibility of terrorist actions in Indonesia, while at the same time its re-engagement of the TNI has enabled the TNI to embark on newly intensified rounds of state terrorism in outlying regions. Like the US re-engagement of the Philippine military, this is understandable as part of a broader design for strengthened US-Indonesian military ties and for the suppression of regional separatist struggles endorsed by reports like those of the RAND authors. In this sense, US re-engagement of the TNI has enabled the TNI's sub-imperial project in Aceh and West Papua, an outcome the US government has been willing to facilitateincluding through renewed training of Indonesian military officers and the release of funds for combating terrorism-as the price for its own imperial project in the region.
But if sub-imperialism has been a major theme in Indonesia and a lesser one in the Philippines, it is not in all cases the most salient dimension of local Southeast Asian realities. Thus, for other countries, the US response to 9/11 may be less significant as the herald of newly intensified regional military campaigns than as the herald of a more generalized societal militarization. It is this theme that I turn to in examining the impact of the US "war on terrorism" in Thailand.
US Imperialism in Thailand: Quasi-Hegemony?
Thailand's position as a US ally in the "war on terrorism" was solidified after the arrest in Ayutthaya of reputed JI operations leader Hambali, in August 2003 (Nakashima and Sipress 2003). The arrest received international attention, as Hambali was spirited out of Thailand by US officials and off to unknown destinations-unknown, apparently even to Thai and Indonesian officials, despite the fact that he is accused of masterminding terrorist operations for which he would be tried in Indonesia and of plotting to bomb the October 2003 Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings in Bangkok (Wassana 2003; Nakashima and Sipress 2003; also see various reports in the Bangkok Post 16-19 August and 30 August 2003). This US act, rather like the removal of Michael Meiring from the Philippines, displayed the neo-colonial dimensions of US policy towards Thailand, an orientation that has some roots in the US Cold War relationship with the Thai military (Supawadee 2003).
At the same time, there is a sub-imperial dimension to the Thai government's relationship with Islamic groups in southern Thailand, a dimension with a long history, yet one that has seemingly become more salient over the past few years. Immediately after 9/11, various senior Thai military officials seemed to be pushing for an escalation of military activities in southern Thailand against criminal gangs-in the name of antiterrorism. At the time, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra proved somewhat resistant to participating in the game, instead engaging in an unannounced personal visit to the south to meet with Muslim leaders, designed to reduce tensions and re-direct public discussion from terrorism issues to issues of the soulh's development. Still, leading military figures-and, increasingly, Thaksin himself-have approached southern Thailand as an international terrorism problem, implementing martial law in various places since the middle of 2003 and arresting several Islamic figures on questionable grounds to show commitment to the US agenda for the region (Crispin 2004).
As during the Cold War, when militarization of the development agenda in rural areas led directly to growth of Communist activity because of popular disaffection with military heavy-handedness (Morell and Chai-anan 1981), so it may well be that military heavyhandedness in Southern Thailand is today adding to local grievances and fueling the movement of some youths into political Islamist organizations (Crispin 2004). Moreover, the intensification of conflict in the South takes place against a background of rampant corruption and banditry in the region, fueled by border traffic in guns, drugs, and other contraband-much of it apparently organized by the police and military-making sudden, unpredicted and sometimes relatively mysterious outbreaks of violence eminently possible.
In this context, the past year has seen an increase in violence. On 4 January, an unidentified group-claimed by military officials to be an umbrella organization of separatist groups from the South called "Bersatu"-burned 20 schools in southern provinces and attacked a military camp, seizing more than 300 weapons and killing 4 soldiers. Over the next several months, at least 45 people were killed in small-scale attacks on police officials, schoolteachers, and Buddhist monks, again with no organizations announcing responsibility for the attacks (Crispin 2004). Then, on 28 April, Thai soldiers carried out coordinated attacks in various southern provinces, killing over 100 Muslim men, most of them teenagers, claiming that the victims of the ambush were killed after they attacked police stations and checkpoints to try to obtain arms. In Pattani province, which had the largest number of deaths, Thai soldiers killed 32 young men by lobbing hand grenades into the mosque in which they sheltered, the military having reportedly refused an offer by local clerics to mediate (Roberts 2004).
Yet, even with the arrest of Hambali and the intensified militarization of the regional conflict with Islamic groups, Thailand's participation in the "war on terrorism" is partly a sideshow for the current regime, and Thaksin Shinawatra's government appears to have been egged on into participation for some time before the arrest of Hambali, including via promises of a free trade agreement in exchange for participation (Hewison and Rodan 2004, 15). Indeed, the arrest was preceded by many months of US hectoring over the purported terrorist threat to Thailand, including a constant string of news articles in the English-language papers featuring the dangers to Thailand of regional terror networks and the likelihood that they would commit some Bali-like atrocity.10 Even after Hambali was arrested and taken out of the country, news stories based on foreign experts' assessments continued to pour out asserting a continuing threat to Thai security from JI operations (see Dawson 2003; Wassana 2003; Wassayos 2003; and various articles in the Bangkok Post 19 and 23 August 2003). Moreover, even after the attack of 28 April, Thaksin vacillated in his representation of the problem: having earlier followed the official script of the "war on terrorism" and blamed Islamic separatists for violence in the South, he blamed the activities that led to the 28 April ambush on drug addicts and criminals (Roberts 2004).
Thus, in spite of substantial prodding from the Bush administration and its close I collaboration with US intelligence, I would argue that Thailand has participated in the "war on terrorism" in a somewhat different fashion than have the Philippine or Indonesian governments-a fashion that is of great significance in assessing the overall impact of the "war on terrorism" in Southeast Asia.
To understand this form of participation it is necessary to note the orientation of the current regime. Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai (TRT, Thai Love Thai) party came to power in early 2001 on a populist and putatively "nationalist" platform that has wide support because of the impacts of the economic crisis and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) structural adjustment program imposed by the previous government (Pasuk and Baker 2002; Hewison 2003). During TRT's first year in power, Thaksin's faction consolidated its position and waited on the decision of an anti-corruption commission regarding whether or not Thaksin had illegally concealed personal assets and should thus be barred from office. During this period, the party put into place a series of spending measures that modestly boosted the fortunes of some groups hurt by the crisis and the IMF program (Pasuk and Baker forthcoming). Yet having consolidated his position and won the verdict of the anti-corruption commission, Thaksin began during 2002 to reshuffle the governing coalition and to move the party more firmly in the direction of not only his own interests but those of dominant political and economic elites that provide crucial backing for TRT (Glassman 2004a, 55).
Of particular significance in this regard has been the change in relations between TRT and popular organizations that supported it during the election campaign. TRT had made various promises to such organizations, including Thailand's broad umbrella network for popular struggles, the Assembly of the Poor (AOP), and during 2001 relations between TRT and AOP were basically amicable, if for no other reason than that TRT was less hostile to the AOP than the outgoing government. Yet by 2002 TRT leaders had decided that the AOP and other popular organizations made demands that TRT was unable or unwilling to accommodate, including demands for land reform in Northern Thailand that would challenge some local elites in Thaksin's home base and demands for abandonment of various energy-generating projects-including the Pak Moon dam in Northeast Thailand, two coal burning power plants to the south of Bangkok, and a gas pipeline from Malaysia that would run across Southern Thailand. Thus, during 2002 Thaksin asked foreign donors that supported Thai NGOs connected with the AOP to suspend their support, while simultaneously bringing 53 former military officers into his cabinet as special advisors on security issues, a warning to popular organizations that state relations with "civil society" groups were returning to their modal, antagonistic orientation (Hewison 2003; Glassman 2004a, 54-58; Pasuk and Baker forthcoming).
The antagonism was made especially clear through the TRT government's actions towards southern protestors against the Thai-Malaysia gas pipeline. During a