Southeast Asia Remains Fertile for Al Qaeda

Previously, Al Qaeda targeted embassies and official buildings — or symbolic ones like the World Trade Center — but now these are so well protected that Al Qaeda is turning to so-called soft targets, like resorts.

A sketch of Al Qaeda's network in Southeast Asia, how it emerged and what its deadly potential is today, has been pieced together from interviews with intelligence and law enforcement officials in Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore, as well as with American, Australian and European diplomats. Much of what they know comes from the interrogation of recently captured Qaeda operatives.

But as officials begin to establish a profile of the network, they realize there were many warning signs going back to the early 1990's in the Philippines and Indonesia. That is when Mr. bin Laden sent some of his most trusted lieutenants to Southeast Asia, to blend into their communities, often through marriage, while making common cause with radical Islamic groups.

The most wanted terrorist in Southeast Asia today is Riudan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, a Qaeda operative who has been instrumental in just about every terrorist action against the United States in the region in the last 10 years. Since the Bali bombing, which some investigators believe he masterminded, he has became the subject of an intensive manhunt by Indonesian authorities.

Officials are quick to acknowledge that their picture of Al Qaeda in Southeast Asia is incomplete, and it is as much what they do not know as what they now do that alarms them.

For example, hundreds of men in Southeast Asia have been trained at Qaeda camps, not only in Afghanistan, but also in the Philippines. "Who are they? Where are they?" asked an American intelligence official.

Although the camps used by Al Qaeda have been closed, that is little consolation to counterterrorism officials. Qaeda operatives need only a few safe houses to teach how to assemble explosives, said a Philippine intelligence officer, and houses are harder to find than camps.

To some experts, Al Qaeda looks like a multinational company, expanding its reach.

"Al Qaeda is the McDonald's of terrorism," said an Asian official. Mr. bin Laden sent his representatives to Southeast Asia and elsewhere, looking for potential franchisees, the official said. Then Al Qaeda provided the template for terrorist operations, and the local operators "were sent to Al Qaeda University in Afghanistan for training in explosives and weapons."

He described Mr. Hambali as the "managing director" for Southeast Asia. Unlike some corporate executives, he does not sit in his office, but gets out in the field and meets with his teams. As a young Islamic student in Indonesia, Mr. Hambali answered the call to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. Then, in the early 1990's, he moved to Malaysia.

From there, he became a recruiter and travel agent for inexperienced young men who wanted to go off to Afghanistan for training, or for those with experience who wanted to fight in religious wars from Bosnia to Indonesia. He arranged for at least two of the Sept. 11 hijackers to meet in Malaysia, in early 2000, and then travel to the United States. One of his front companies wrote a letter that allowed Zacharias Moussaoui to enter the United States. (Mr. Moussaoui is on trial in Virginia in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks.)

Mr. Hambali was present at the creation of what appears to be Al Qaeda's first major operational base in Southeast Asia, in the Philippines about a decade ago.

"Every major terrorist plot by Al Qaeda against the United States has some ties to the Philippines," Zachary Abuza, a professor at Simmons College, wrote in the recently published "Tentacles of Terror: Al Qaeda's Southeast Asian Network."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/28/international/asia/28ASIA.html?pagewanted=all&position=top