Military

DATE=10/17/02

TYPE=INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

TITLE=Wright-Neville -- terrorism

NUMBER=3-390

BYLINE=Ward

DATELINE=

INTERNET=

/// Editors: This interview is available in Dalet under SOD/English News Now Interviews in the folder for today or yesterday ///

HOST: Authorities in Indonesia and Malaysia are focusing on possible links between a suspected terrorist group with alleged links to al Qaida and Saturday's deadly bombings on the resort island of Bali.

David Wright-Neville is the senior research fellow at the center for Global Terrorism at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Until earlier this year, Mr. Wright-Neville was a senior terrorism analyst in the Australian intelligence community. He tells News Now's Rebecca Ward that recent arrests in Malaysia are part of an ongoing investigation into terrorist activities in the region.

MR. NEVILLE-WRIGHT: The Malaysians have been especially vigilant since September the 11th. And when it was revealed that a number of the hijackers had perhaps met together in Kuala Lumpur in January 2000, since then the Malaysians have been monitoring very closely the activities of a number of militant Islamic groups in that country.

MS. WARD: Let me ask you about a key leader of Jamaah Islamiah who is in Indonesia, Abu Bakar Bashir. He has denied that his group has any terror links. The United States says it does. I think Indonesia says it does. Why hasn't he been arrested, and who is he?

MR. NEVILLE-WRIGHT: He is probably the spiritual leader of the Jamaah Islamiah, and his denial of any membership with the Jamaah Islamiah, or indeed any links with terrorist groups, is belied by the testimony of a number of Jamaah Islamiah cell members who have been arrested in Singapore and Malaysia. He is the spiritual leader of the group. He runs a religious school in central Java. And the reason he has not been arrested I suspect has more to do with a fear by the administration of Megawati Soekarnoputri that any move against Bashir will inflame Islamic sentiment across the Island and call into question the cooperative arrangement with Muslim parties that she needs to hang on to power.

MS. WARD: So has Indonesia been reluctant to go after suspected terrorists?

MR. NEVILLE-WRIGHT: It certainly seems that way. I think they have tried to do as much as they can. In the middle of this year, for instance, they handed over a middle-level al-Qaida operative, a Kuwaiti, Omar al-Faruq, but they have been a lot more reluctant to go after native Indonesians who might be involved. And once again, I think it is political concern rather than a lack of evidence.

MS. WARD: Now, where does South Asia, and Indonesia in particular, where do they go from here? How much more do they need to do to crack down on these Islamic militant groups?

MR. NEVILLE-WRIGHT: Well, there are really two responses they need. In the short term, they need to be prepared to cooperate more fully with each other, but also with Western intelligence and security services. In the past, I think there has been a tendency for the intelligence cooperation arrangements to be overly politicized, mainly on the Southeast Asian part, to use information that might be gleaned from Western intelligence services to target people who might not be terrorists but who are perhaps more accurately described as just simply activists or opposition groups. So there needs to be a situation cultivated whereby there is less inclination to politicize intelligence.

In the longer term, they also need to address the root causes for why people will consider attacks like this a legitimate form of political expression. And I think it is a sad fact that many Indonesians will actually buy the argument that Abu Bakar Bashir is putting about that the attacks were in fact part of a U.S. conspiracy.

Now, there is not a scintilla of evidence to suggest that is the case. In fact, it is laughably a ridiculous statement, but the current environment in Indonesia and in much of Southeast Asia will incline some people to believe that sort of conspiracy theory. So we need to start addressing the root causes for this sort of anger towards the West. And that unfortunately comes back to those age-old problems of opportunity, development, and basic living standards for people.

Host: David Wright-Neville is the senior research fellow at the center for Global Terrorism at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Until earlier this year, Mr. Wright-Neville was a senior terrorism analyst in the Australian intelligence community.

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