History repeating itself in South-east Asia, and US must act now: Shanmugam

SINGAPORE — It might not appear urgent at the moment, but dealing with Islamic State’s (IS) build-up in South-east Asia is something the United States has to get involved in now, said Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam yesterday.

Speaking at a seminar in Washington DC, Mr Shanmugam said the security challenge the Middle East poses to the US today stemmed from fighters from that region who went to Afghanistan during the time of the Soviet invasion to take up arms and then returned home with the techniques and ideologies to fight against the government.

The same scenario is being repeated in South-east Asia with IS, he added, noting that about 1,000 fighters from the region have already gone to Syria and Iraq.

“Today in Syria and Iraq, history is repeating itself. People are going there, they are learning, they are trained in the latest techniques, and then they are going to come back to various parts of the world, including South-east Asia,” said Mr Shanmugam, who was speaking at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

“There is an area of the world where things are happening but people are not paying enough attention. By the time it demands attention, it will be too late. So it is best to try and deal with the problem before it gets to that stage.”

IS has openly targeted South-east Asia — in particular, Indonesia, Malaysia and parts of the southern Philippines — as among its prime locations to establish caliphates.

The availability of online material, money from the Middle East that goes into funding kindergartens and schools here, as well as preachers who are schooled in a school of thought contrary to the moderate form it has been practised in the region have led to rising “political Islam”.

This, in turn, makes the ground much more fertile for radicalisation, said Mr Shanmugam.

A sizeable portion of the population in Indonesia and Malaysia already favours Syariah law, and when the socio-economic and political environment shifts, there is a risk that people could become “more and more ‘extremist thinking’, or adopt a version of religion that encourages or creates a climate where a number of people within the population might then be prepared to take further action”.

He noted that Indonesia does not have laws allowing detention of individuals who are serious security threats. Worse, a lot of radicalisation takes place in Indonesian prisons, with some attacks being planned by inmates.

Mr Shanmugam added that foreign preachers who are wanted or banned in some countries travel freely in some South-east Asian countries. He cited Zakir Naik, who has urged Muslims not to vote for non-Muslims regardless of their calibre, and Mufti Menk, who said Muslims should not wish Christians a Merry Christmas.

All these developments boiling beneath the surface have significant consequences down the road, Mr Shanmugam pointed out.

“A lot of countries have focused on downstream consequences. They are very good at taking out terrorist leaders, they dismantle organisations, they deal with their finances. But if we do not deal with the underlying philosophy and the underlying causes, in the end, as long as you do not deal with that, as long as you do not deal with people’s views which need them to be radicalised in the first place, all you will be doing is cutting out their heads and new heads will come up,” he said.

“So there has got to be a more concerted international strategy to deal with the underlying causes and reasons why these things happen; why people get into these; how populations are becoming more radicalised.”

Mr Shanmugam also cautioned that Islamophobia is a risk to try to avoid even as countries try to tackle these developments.

He said: “If you get into Islamophobia, it will make your populations feel anti-Muslim, anti-Islam, that just feeds the terrorists. It’s a big risk. We need to guard against that, and fight it. The vast majority of Muslim populations in most places are moderate and peaceful.”