The next front

It’s fine for leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to declare that terrorism won’t prevail in the region that is now being seen as the next front in the war on terror. But can they back the tough talk with action?

Indonesia’s Megawati Sukarnoputri, for one, is becoming a poster girl for the argument that women don’t make good national leaders. That’s supposed to be according to the Prophet Muhammad. This was pointed out by Abubakar Bashir, the Muslim cleric believed to be the spiritual leader of the Islamist group Jemaah Islamiyah, shortly before Megawati ordered his arrest for the church bombings in Indonesia on Christmas eve 2000 and involvement in an alleged plot to assassinate her.

I asked some Muslims recently if Muhammad really said women make bad leaders. I’m sure Britain’s Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher would disagree. A prominent Muslim woman told me the Prophet said women should not take key leadership positions. The woman asked me not to identify her.

Farhan Ahmad Nizami, director of the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies in Britain, sidestepped my question and said what mattered was that Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim nation, was led by a woman. Other Muslim countries such as Pakistan have also had women leaders, Nizami pointed out.

And Saleh M. Al-Ghamdi, the affable ambassador of Saudi Arabia, wanted to know what all the fuss was about since the Philippines isn’t a Muslim country anyway so it didn’t matter if the President is a woman.

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Yesterday Megawati reportedly gave assurance that tourists could now return to Bali. We want to feel reassured, but first we’ll see what happens in the streets of Indonesia in the coming weeks. Bashir looks unbowed and his supporters are fighting back. And Megawati is being ridiculed for ineffectual leadership.

Why should we care what happens to Indonesia? Because the terrorism attributed to Jemaah Islamiyah and al-Qaeda is transnational, and JI supposedly wants to carve out a Pan-Islamic state that includes a chunk of the Philippines. As long as the Islamists find a welcoming environment in Indonesia, our region will be seen as a terrorist haven, and there will always be the threat that JI could strike again in the Philippines.

And as long as the threat is there, those travel advisories aren’t going to be revised or lifted. The US State Department said yesterday that terrorism, not the advisories, is scaring away travelers from Southeast Asia, and that it is any government’s duty to warn its citizens of dangers abroad.

There is the other argument that the presence of US troops in the region is a magnet for terrorists. To some extent this may be true. But why Bali?

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I don’t know how many travel advisories our government has issued, but I don’t think Filipinos heed such warnings. I remember a travel ban to Israel when the latest intifada erupted, but I know Filipinos who still embarked on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land after the ban was imposed.

Filipino overseas workers also shrug off terrorist threats in host countries. Even when the suicide bombings escalated in Israel, OFWs in that country refused to go home. The looming war in Iraq has not triggered an exodus of Pinoys from the Middle East. If war erupts, I think the bigger worry for OFWs won’t be their safety but losing their jobs. Even the deportation of Pinoys from Sabah has not stopped Filipinos from going to that island. Thousands of those deported have applied for legalization of their status in Malaysia.

And you don’t hear of Filipinos returning home en masse from the United States after those terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. What could discourage Pinoys from traveling to the United States are the hassles of entering that country these days, especially after the Philippines has been tagged as part of Jemaah Islamiyah’s sphere of operations.

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What can we do to persuade the world that the Philippines is safe? How can we guarantee that there won’t be a terrorist attack here on the scale of the one in Bali?

Of course we can’t; even American security officials are warning that another attack worse than those on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon are likely in the United States. That’s the country that can send an unmanned spy plane to Yemen and zap six al-Qaeda suspects, one of them reported to be a top aide of Osama bin Laden, with a Hellfire missile. And it can’t guarantee foolproof security for its people against terrorist attacks.

All we can do is show the world we’re doing our best to thwart terrorists. We can also send the message that the Philippines is no more dangerous than New York or Washington, which are the prime targets for every terrorist and crackpot on the planet.

One problem is if we are compared with Malaysia and Singapore, which have also had brushes with Jemaah Islamiyah but have managed — so far — to arrest suspected terrorists before they can go on a bombing spree.

Our lawmen will be quick to point out that the two countries have draconian laws that allow authorities to pick up and detain without formal charges anyone on mere suspicion of plotting to create trouble.

"Give us the tools and we’ll do our job," one ranking intelligence officer told me.

Sorry, I doubt if such draconian laws will ever be passed in this country.

But we can improve the performance of security officers. No matter how much the military and law enforcement agencies protest, their intelligence gathering can use a great deal of improvement.

Better cooperation and coordination among these agencies will also help, although inter-agency rivalry in law enforcement and security is a problem in many countries.

Even the acquisition of properly trained bomb-sniffing dogs will go a long way. Like many aspects of law enforcement, however, even the K-9 corps is dogged by scandals.

Unless our cops and soldiers do their job, those travel advisories are here to stay.

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BACK ON THE JOB: As for the workaday "terrorists" in our midst, I received calls last night from irate motorists whose cars were again attacked by those armies of young wash-your-windshield boys near the Coastal Mall in Parañaque. The boys disappeared for several weeks after Deputy Director General Reynaldo Velasco, Metro Manila police commander, promised to deal with the problem. I planned to praise him if the campaign lasted through the New Year. Well, good things never last.