A bloody border conflict between Thailand and Cambodia looks set to dominate an Asean summit in Indonesia this weekend, casting doubt on the bloc's rhetoric about regional integration by 2015.
Analysts and diplomats said the fighting, which has left at least 18 people dead since April 22, is expected to be a key topic at the two--day summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) in Jakarta from Saturday.
Current Asean chair Indonesia has been leading mediation efforts, but although the fighting has eased the situation remains tense and deadly firefights break out almost daily.
"The Thai--Cambodia border dispute poses a definite challenge to Asean's credibility and its objective of creating an Asean Community by 2015," said Professor Carl Thayer of the University of New South Wales in Australia.
"Asean's failure to broker a political solution will have a very negative impact on Asean's credibility as a viable regional organization," he told AFP.
But Thayer said Indonesia can use the opportunity to play a "continuing proactive diplomatic role" while other Asean states can pressure Bangkok and Phnom Penh to negotiate a settlement.
A diplomatic source said ASEAN leaders would call on Bangkok and Phnom Penh to resolve the conflict, which has displaced 85,000 civilians on both sides.
The warring neighbours agreed at a special Asean ministerial meeting in Jakarta in February to accept Indonesian military observers at the border.
At the time, Asean Secretary General Surin Pitsuwan hailed the agreement as a "historic day" for the 10--nation bloc, but more than two months and a lot more fighting later, the observers remain in Jakarta.
"You must give credit to what Asean is trying to do," Surin told AFP on Wednesday, adding that February's meeting of foreign ministers and his personal mediation efforts were unprecedented for the trade--focused grouping.
"We are, I think, turning a page. We are making a giant leap forward by taking those steps. It's not going to be easy, it's not going to be resolved tomorrow."
A diplomatic briefing paper for one summit participant said Asean risked putting its "community--building efforts in jeopardy" if it fails to respond adequately to such bilateral disputes.
The paper said inter-regional clashes would not go well for "Asean's peace and stability or its credibility". How it responds is a "litmus test" for Asean's "ability to contribute to international peace and security", it added.
US--based Southeast Asia specialist Ernest Bower said the Thailand--Cambodia conflict "undercuts the Asean leaders' vision for regional integration by 2015".
Asean, which groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, is aiming for an integrated community by 2015 covering economic, cultural, political and security ties.
Bower cautioned the bloc against using the Thai--Cambodia spat as an excuse for slow progress on "hard issues key to real economic integration".
"The conflict also belies Asean's hope of projecting a cohesive region to potential international investors," said Bower, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Asean members are bound by a Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, which forbids the threat or the actual use of force in inter-regional disputes.
The bloc's first charter, or constitution, which came into force with much fanfare in 2008, has provisions for settling rows which are being sorely tested by the ongoing border spat.
"What Asean does now will impact on its role in dispute settlement among its members for a long time to come," Thayer said.
Asean's hands are often tied by its core principle of non--interference in members' domestic affairs, which means the group can only intervene with the consent of the involved parties.
In the Thai--Cambodia dispute, "Asean has to walk on eggshells" so as not to be seen as interfering, Thayer said. AFP
Scenes of rejoicing in Washington and New York accompanied the news that Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had been killed by US special forces on Sunday. But in Pakistan, many remained glued to their television sets, wondering what this event means for their nation's security and sovereignty. The killing of bin Laden signals to the Pakistani public that the United States can act with autonomy and impunity on their territory. However, if the US government acknowledges and addresses the valid concerns of the Pakistani public, bin Laden's death could prove a high point in American diplomacy.
For most Pakistanis, news of the terrorist leader's death was overshadowed by questions of what role their country's government and military had played in the operation. In his address to the nation, US President Barack Obama stressed that "counterterrorism co-operation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding." However, senior White House officials insisted that the United States acted alone, and that Pakistani authorities were only alerted once the operation had commenced. On Tuesday, Pakistan President Asif Zardari clarified that the strike had not been a joint operation.
International media coverage has focused on the fact that the United States' unilateral action emphasizes its lack of trust in Pakistan's security establishment. Conversely, the bin Laden operation has further weakened Pakistan's ability to trust the United States and its stated regional intentions. The strike follows a meeting last month between the directors of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI). The ISI reportedly asked the CIA to reduce its footprint in Pakistan, and demanded greater oversight over US intelligence operations on Pakistani soil.
In recent months, US officials have stopped giving Pakistan advance warnings of drone strikes against militants in tribal areas. Moreover, the Pakistani public has still not come to terms with the detention and subsequent release of Raymond Davis, a CIA contractor who shot and killed two Pakistani men in Lahore in January this year.
The perception that the United States can act with impunity in Pakistan will fuel a sense of insecurity. On social networks, Pakistanis are asking whether bin Laden's killing is the "beginning of the endgame in Pakistan", in other words, the start of open confrontation rather than cooperation between the United States and Pakistan. They fear that one unilateral strike within Pakistan's borders can only lead to more: a statement on Monday by US House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers that at least a dozen senior Al Qaeda leaders are based in Pakistan has led many to wonder whether the United States is preparing for a series of strikes that would violate Pakistan's national sovereignty. These concerns are exacerbated by the recent appointment of General David Petraeus as the incoming Director of the CIA; the general has vehemently criticized Pakistan for maintaining ties with militant groups and tolerating terrorist safe havens.
To be clear, Pakistanis are equally concerned about the internal security situation of their country. They dread retaliatory attacks, which the Taliban vowed to carry out barely hours after the news of bin Laden's death broke.
Many are also unnerved by the fact that bin Laden was uncovered in Abbottabad, home to a Pakistani military base and the prestigious Pakistan Military Academy. The fact that the terrorist leader could hide in plain sight of Pakistan's security establishment is an alarming thought. The other possibility – that bin Laden was being sheltered by Pakistan's intelligence agencies – is even more terrifying, given that over 30,000 Pakistanis have been killed in terror-related attacks in recent years.
Given the sense of vulnerability that now prevails in Pakistan, this is not a time for American triumphalism. Indeed, if handled properly, bin Laden's death could be the turning point in a faltering bilateral relationship. It can be an opportunity for increased transparency in US-Pakistani relations as the modalities of the operation are explained, and a reminder that while the two allies' strategic priorities for the region diverge, they are nevertheless complementary. And if, as has been suggested, bin Laden's death facilitates US plans for withdrawal from Afghanistan, this could also be a time of unprecedented collaboration between Washington and Islamabad.
By Huma Yusuf journalist and researcher from Karachi. She is currently the Pakistan Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
Bin Laden's execution was a police operation that calls into question the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
It appears that it wasn't the guns, tanks or Tomahawks of the Global War on Terror, as George W Bush named it, that were responsible for the extermination of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. If the version of events we are getting is true, it was old-fashioned police work – gathering intelligence, getting leads and following them up painstakingly.
By bagging their most wanted man finally not with an army but a squad of special operatives, the US may have unwittingly exposed as unnecessary a decade worth of ground warfare in two countries. At the cost of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars, neither Iraq nor Afghanistan destroyed Osama bin Laden, a team of Navy Seals backed by the CIA's intelligence did.
Osama's lieutenants who have been brought to bay or eliminated – and there have been plenty of them – have mostly been caught by the CIA or intelligence forces from other countries. In this case, there may have been some help from elements inside of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence Bureau that either took a bribe or decided Osama was no longer worth the effort.
Osama and his jihadi compatriots, in bringing down the World Trade Center in New York almost 10 years ago, impelled the United States and its allies – but mainly the United States – into fighting two wars lasting 10 years that were probably unnecessary.
The broader war on terror also resulted in widespread violations of prisoner rights and the use of torture that has undermined America's reputation for rule of law and respect for human rights. Despite protestations by some that water-boarding and other tortures inflicted on Kahlid Sheikh Mohammed produced the initial lead that eventually led to Osama, US Sen. Diane Feinstein and others have said it wasn't torture at all that worked. Kahlid, who gave up the identity of a vital courier, did so after the torture stopped and US agents had gained a measure of his confidence.
So far in Iraq, according to the Brookings Institution Iraq Index, US$900 billion in direct costs were approved through November last year, not counting ancillary costs for continuing medical care and other issues that are expected to push the final tab into the trillions. As of April 27, some 4,444 US troops had been killed and 32,051 wounded, 20 percent of those seriously. Another 316 coalition forces have been killed. Some 146 journalists have been killed. Of those 14 were killed by US forces.
The cost to Iraqis dwarfs those figures. The most conservative estimates, included in military documents released in October 2010 by WikiLeaks, are that 100,000 civilians were killed. Some estimates go as high as 600,000. The cost to Iraqis is rarely mentioned in the US press. Iraqi refugees in Syria and Jordan are estimated as high as 2 million. Some 40 percent of the country's professionals have left. The democracy bequeathed to the country on American orders appears riddled with corruption and dominated by the Iranian Shiites from next door.
The Afghan war so far has cost another US$455 billion and taken the lives of more than 2,340 coalition men and women. Untold thousands of Afghan civilians have died as well, far too often killed by "friendly fire," misplaced drone attacks or targeted assassinations in revenge for assisting the coalition.
When Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry, in his 2004 campaign stump speeches, advocated a "nuanced approach" to the prosecution of the campaign to find Osama, Vice President Dick Cheney ridiculed him. But in fact, although we are a long way from learning what really happened in Abbottabad in the middle of the night on May 1, it was a nuanced campaign that got the Al Qaeda leader. This was cop on the beat stuff – gathering intelligence, bribery, coercion and keeping track.
Given the trauma and horror surrounding the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Bush's initial instinct to send the troops into Afghanistan to try to get Osama was understandable. US and British Special Forces, backed by massive US air support, drove the mullahs from power in the following month and left them fleeing for the Pakistani border. It appears they just missed getting Osama at that time, possibly from reluctance to fire on what appeared to be the convoy bearing him and Taliban No. 1 Mullah Omar to safety in the Tora Bora mountain range.
At that point, the United States had the sympathy of most of the world, with the exception of those who believed then and continue to believe that the CIA engineered the collapse of the Twin Towers. But with the unprovoked and unrelated attack in Iraq, which had nothing to do with trying to catch Osama, the US lost an enormous amount of friendship and sympathy in the Islamic world and beyond.
From that point forward what in the chilling parlance of Washington-speak was called the GWOT, global war on terror, looked to many millions of Muslims like a war on their religion.
"I doubt that this killing is going to be a lasting victory with the entire Arab region in turmoil, US allies being toppled," said a Muslim friend in Kuala Lumpur. "I think generally the Muslims are quite affected. They kind of feel sorry for his death, more so at the hands of US forces."
Few Muslims agreed with the destruction of civilian targets by Al Qaeda and other splinter organizations, he says.
"But what they see now is US and Western aggression against Muslims as unceasing and the manipulation of Muslim nations as unending. For Obama to make mention that this is not a war against Islam means he knows that that's exactly what most Muslims think it is."
The fact that Americans in 1991 put their lives on the line to protect Muslims in Kuwait, and again in 1999 in Bosnia and Kosovo, has been buried. If they acknowledge those campaigns at all, it is to say that in Kuwait's case they were protecting oil supplies and in Bosnia and Kosovo they arrived with too little, too late to save thousands of dead Muslims.
With Osama killed in his villa and now somewhere at the bottom of the Arabian Ocean and with vast amounts of computer data collected that should allow the police work to continue, the best thing the Americans could probably do in both Iraq and Afghanistan is declare victory and just get out. Hamid Karzai, the corrupt puppet that the Americans installed in Kabul, would be glad to see them go. They should take him up on it.by John Berthelsen
History remembers Japanese martyrs of China's revolution
On May 22, 1907, a revolutionary uprising near the port of Chaozhou in Guangdong had its final days. Surrounded by Qing troops, the ringleaders were hiding in a cave, eating red berries.
One dressed his comrades in the suits of Japanese businessmen and bluffed their way through the Qing lines to reach a Japanese cargo ship in the port, which took them to the safety of Hong Kong.
The man who saved the life of his conspirators was Nagatomo Kayano, one of the many Japanese who were inspired by Dr Sun Yat-sen and devoted themselves to his revolution. They gave him their careers and their assets -- and some their lives.
In this year, the 100th anniversary of the Xinhai revolution and the Republic of China, the story of these Japanese supporters shows another face of their country. If their advice had been followed, the history of the 20th century would have been different.
"The Japanese who fought for China's revolution were inspired by the fervor of Dr Sun," wrote Kayano in his memoirs. "When I talked with him, I realized he would fight until the end. So I decided to join his struggle, to live and die with him."
Kayano and his compatriots were inspired by Sun's vision of a democratic and republican China that would end the country's decline and ally with Japan in opposing the western powers. They wanted China to follow the example of their own country -- to modernize, industrialize and earn its independence.
After the Qing government forced the Macau government to expel Sun from the city in 1894, he spent the next 17 years in exile, in Europe, the United States, Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand and mainly Japan, which he visited 10 times and where he spent nearly 10 years. He built up a support base of 300 Japanese.
One of them, Toten Miyazaki, believed that Sun could change China and introduced him to senior politicians who gave their approval for him to remain in Japan and set up his operational base there.
It was in Tokyo on August 20, 1905 that Sun formed the Tongmenhui, the Chinese Revolutionary Alliance (CRA), which seven years later became the Kuomintang. It was the foundation of the Xinhai revolution. Eight Japanese were members, including Kayano and Shokichi Umeya, who had met Sun earlier that year in Hong Kong, where he ran a photographic shop.
Umeya was also inspired by Sun's vision of a prosperous East Asia and freedom and equality for its citizens and threw himself wholeheartedly into the struggle.
Umeya rented an office for the CRA in the Yurakucho district of central Tokyo and borrowed money to finance its newspaper, the Voice of the People. Over the next 20 years, Umeya raised billions of yen to pay for Sun's travel and living expenses, weapons and ammunition for the uprisings and, in 1915, a flying school in Japan to train Chinese pilots.
After Sun's death, Umeya commissioned four large bronze statues, up to 2.5 meters high and each weighing a ton, and sent them to China. They remain today where he donated them – Sun's mausoleum in Nanjing, the Huangpu Military Academy and Zhongshan University in Guangzhou and the Sun Memorial Home in Macao.
Umeya also commissioned dozens of small busts but ran out of money. So he used funds set aside for his daughter's wedding. When she protested, he replied: "many Japanese respect Mr Zhong-shan. These busts will ensure that his thinking lives on for ever."
He even planned a temple in Sun's memory. After the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in 1931, he publicly criticized the government and was interrogated by the military police; the newspapers called him a 'traitor'.
A sick man, he went to Tokyo to petition the Prime Minister in person but collapsed at the city's railway station and died on November 23, 1934, aged 66.
The Umeya family still runs the Matsumoto Hotel overlooking Hibiya Park in central Tokyo, close to where the CRA held its inaugural meeting. In a room in the hotel is a small exhibition devoted to Sun, including a piano played by his wife.
This year the Modern History Research Centre of the China Academy of Social Science has commissioned a copper statue of Umeya, which it will donate to his native place in Nagasaki, in memory of his friendship with Sun.
Of Sun's Japanese supporters, Kayano was the closest to the front line. Born in Kochi in 1873, he moved to Osaka in 1890 and became a reporter for the Jiji Press, one of Japan's two biggest news agencies. He became interested in the city's democratic movements and was under surveillance by the police.
In 1892, he moved as a reporter to Shanghai, where he quickly became fluent in Mandarin. He wore Chinese clothes and a pigtail, which he did not cut off until October 1910. He became indistinguishable from a Chinese.
As a journalist, he saw at first hand the weakness and inefficiency of the Qing government and the contempt with which the Caucasians held the Chinese. During a visit to Hong Kong in 1895, he met Sun and pledged his support.
He joined the CRA in Tokyo and set up 'Revolutionary Review', a Japanese-language magazine to promote Sun's ideas. His office attracted revolutionaries from China as well as Vietnam, Poland and Russia.
In 1907, under pressure from the Qing, the government expelled Sun; Kayano accompanied him to Hong Kong, where they planned the Huanggang uprising. After its failure, Kayano returned to Japan and raised enough money to purchase from the Osaka arms market 2,000 rifles, 3,000 pistols and 20 military swords, which he put on a Japanese cargo ship for Shantou.
In October 1910, he was in Wuchang to take part in the uprising that finally overthrew the Qing. Sun invited him to attend the proclamation ceremony for the Republic of China in Nanjing and he followed Sun for the next 15 years of struggle until his death in 1925.
Kayano also played a major role in negotiations that could have averted a war between Japan and China. In December 1931, the Japanese Prime Minister, a personal friend, sent him to Shanghai to negotiate secretly with the government over Manchuria, occupied by Japan's Kwantong army two months before.
Through personal contacts with the government, Kayano reached an agreement to negotiate the withdrawal of the Kwantong army, with senior figures from China and Japan to meet in Manchuria on January 10. But the Japanese military and Foreign Ministry found out about the negotiations and torpedoed them.
Prime Minister Tsuyoshi Inukai, 76, wrote a despairing letter to the chief Chinese negotiator. "I am deeply worried by the troubled situation of which you speak. I wish to take this occasion to work out an extensive plan for the prosperity of all Asia. This was the foremost wish of Dr Sun Yat-sen and it is my wish as well. It is my hope that you may do something great for the yellow races."
The Mainichi Shimbun newspaper commented that, had Kayano's peace mission been successful, war with China could have been averted and Japan's history would have been different.
But the forces of hatred and militarism triumphed. Kayano died on April 14, 1947 aged 74, a deeply disappointed man, having seen the ideals that had guided his life destroyed in the most terrifying war in history
The first Japanese martyr of the revolution was Yoshimasa Yamada, who was killed by Qing troops in a failed uprising in Huizhou in 1900, at the age of 32.
Born in 1868, he went to Shanghai to work in the office of a Japanese trading company in 1890 and improved his already excellent Mandarin. There and in Beijing, he saw the pitiful conditions of ordinary Chinese and met Kang Youwei (???)?who advocated peaceful reform.
In July 1898, he met Sun in Tokyo and swore allegiance to him. In the spring of 1900, he went to work as a teacher at a Japanese-funded college in Nanjing. In October, he joined the uprising which cost him his life.
His work was continued by his cousin Juntaro, who became Sun's secretary in 1906 and helped him to negotiate a loan of 120 million Chinese dollars from the Mitsui Company. His home in the French concession of Shanghai became a centre for Sun's revolutionary activities.
In 1916, a political rival shot dead an ally of Sun who was staying in the house. Terrified by the sound, the maid holding Yamada's baby daughter dropped her to the ground, causing an injury to her chest, which left her crippled for life.
Juntaro lived in Shanghai until 1948, working as a teacher and publisher of newspapers and magazines. After returning to Japan, he set up a museum of materials on the Chinese revolution and promoted ties between the two countries. He died in Tokyo in 1960, at the age of 85.
Another martyr was Shintaro Kaneko, a Japanese infantry officer who joined the Chinese revolutionary army in Wuhan in October 1911 and was killed in battle, at the age of 47.
The wife Sun left behind
One of the least known episodes of Sun's life in Japan is his marriage to a 15-year-old schoolgirl named Kaoru Otsuki in 1903. They had a daughter, Fumiko, born on May 12, 1905. She did not learn until the 1950s that her father was the founder of the Republic of China.
This liaison remained secret for decades because neither Taipei nor Beijing wanted the world to know that a national figure they held in such reverence had had a second marriage with a teenage foreigner and abandoned her when she was expecting.
The two first met in 1898, when they were living in the same building in the Chinatown district of Yokohama. At that time, Sun already had a wife, Lu Muzhen, from his native village in an arranged marriage in 1886, who had borne him a son and two daughters.
In 1902, Sun asked Kaoru's father for her hand but he refused, citing the 22 years difference in age and the fact that she was so young. He later relented and the two married the next year.
Before Fumiko's birth, Sun had to leave Japan. Unable to contact him and with little money, Kaoru had their daughter adopted by a brewing family in Yokohama named Miyagawa when she was five and gave them the engagement ring which she had received from Sun. She never saw her husband again.
Kaoru later married the brother of a wealthy banker; but, when he found a letter from Sun in the house, he divorced her. Then she moved far away to Tochigi prefecture, married the manager of a temple and had a son by him.
Fumiko's grandfather told her only in 1951 who were her birth parents. She had a son named Toichi. Earlier this year, he spoke to Chinese-language Asiaweek, his first interview to a Chinese media. He said that, in 1956, mother and son went to the temple to see Kaoru for the first time. "She was a beautiful old woman, short in stature and with a light smile. She said that they had chosen Fumi, because its pronunciation was very close to the Chinese 'Fumei', to show that she was the daughter of Sun Yat-sen." Kaoru died in 1970, at the age of 83.
He told the magazine that, in June 1977, he had accompanied his mother on a visit to Taipei where they visited the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall. Fumiko closely examined the statue of her father and said that her narrow face and deep eyes were a legacy from him.
In November 1980, the two were invited to the mainland, where they visited Beijing and Shanghai. They saw Sun's mausoleum in Nanjing where they were moved to tears. "During my life I never saw my father," said Fumiko. "I was never so happy as I am today and have no regrets. My mother had no alternative but to give me to be raised by another family." She died in May 1990; associations in Japan connected to Sun sent wreaths to her funeral.
Chen Fu-po, president of the Japan Sun Yat-sen Memorial Association, said that, according to long-term research they had conducted with elderly Chinese inhabitants of Yokohama, it was a historical fact that Sun had married Kaoru Otsuki. "In the past, both Taiwan and China wanted to hide or avoid this piece of history but there is no need to now. The strength of great men in history lies in the truth. Sun Yat-sen was a man, not a god." Asia Sentinel
Full report at http://www.balidiscovery.com/update/update764.asp
IN THIS UPDATE
» Flooding in Bali's Mountain Lake District
» Settling in for a Long Stay in Paradise
» King of the Road
» Stray Dogs or Stray Darts
» Bali's Best Arrangements
» Bali Hai is Calling
» A Bad Trip of 18 Years Duration
» Working for the Yankee Dollar
» British Woman Receives Light Sentence
» Anand Krishna Ends Hunger Strike
» Best Western Kuta in Bali Posted and Closed
» Raising a Stink in Bali
» Coming to an Understanding
» I've Got the World on a String
» Garuda Numbers Soar
» Kids: Don't Leave Home without Them
» Bali's Galloping Gourmets
» Patterns of being: home in Bali
» Regalia – The Enchanted Forest
» Freedom of Feeling
» A Basis to Move Ahead
» The Need for Train Service in Bali
» A Change of Commanders at the Bali Police
» Monumental Labor Unrest
» Bali Tourism Officials Await their Legal Fates
Islamabad. Pakistani television stations on Monday withdrew an image broadcast of the purported body of Osama bin Laden after his killing not far from Islamabad overnight, saying the picture was a fake.
Several private channels showed what they called an "unverified" picture of bin Laden's bloodied face after the United States said he had been killed.
"It was a fake picture, it was on the Internet in 2009," Rana Jawad, Islamabad bureau chief of Geo television, told AFP.
"When we checked we found it was fake and we pulled it out," he said.
Pakistani channels earlier showed the image of a face sporting a bushy and black beard with less of the white or grey hair detected in the most recent video footage of bin Laden when he was alive.
There were extensive blood stains on the forehead and left temple. The right eye was shut but the white of the left eye was visible. AFP
News of the death of Osama bin Laden reverberated strongly in this corner of the world, particularly in Indonesia, where ties between Al Qaeda and local terrorist groups date back more than three decades.
It was the ideas of Jordan-born scholar Abdullah Azzam that would inspire many Muslims around the world to fight as volunteers against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Bin Laden met Azzam during his time as a student at King Abdulaziz University in Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden, who was from a wealthy family, agreed to finance Azzam’s dream of setting up a camp for mujahedeen, or Islamic warriors, from around the world.
Another figure attracted to Azzam’s teachings was Abdullah Sungkar, a co-chairman of the Indonesian rebel group Darul Islam who later founded Jemaah Islamiyah, a radical Southeast Asian terrorist network with the goal of unifying the region under one Islamic state.
At the beginning of the Soviet invasion, Sungkar was serving a four-year sentence for advocating against participating in Indonesian elections. Despite being incarcerated, he was able to recruit members of Darul Islam to be sent to Afghanistan.
Among the first to be sent to Afghanistan was Abu Rusdan, who would later become a JI leader; Muchlas, who later acted as the coordinator for the first Bali bombings in 2002; and Abu Tholut, later the financier behind several bombing in Indonesia.
The three men spent three years in Afghanistan, from 1981 to 1984, fighting the Soviets under the banner of Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, a supporter of Azzam who later led the Taliban.
Rusdan said they would meet Azzam and Bin Laden each Friday at his camp in Sadda, Afghanistan, but did not build a strong relationship with the pair.
It was another Indonesian, Hambali, who eventually secured the trust of Azzam and Bin Laden and established a close relationship with Ayman Al Zawahiri, who later became Bin Laden’s right-hand man after the establishment of Al Qaeda between 1988 and 1989.
When the war in Afghanistan ended in 1989, Sayyaf argued that the training camp should stay open and be used as a jihadist school for Muslims worldwide.
Bin Laden sought refuge in Sudan from 1992 to 1996. His Al Qaeda organization was responsible for attacks on American aid workers in Somalia in 1993 and the US Embassy in Kenya in 1998.
In Indonesia, Sungkar formed Jemaah Islamiah in 1992 with Abu Bakar Bashir, with whom he had established the Al Mu’min boarding school in Ngruki, Central Java, in 1972. Sungkar continued to send his disciples, all recruited from Al Mu’min, to Sayyaf’s training camp in Afghanistan.
They included Ali Imron, Imam Samudra, Amrozi and Dulmatin, who all participated in terror attacks here. They were all trained by Hambali, who would later help finance their bombings.
Bin Laden returned to Afghanistan in 1998, where he was reunited with Sayyaf and Hambali. Hambali later became his middleman for contact with Jemaah Islamiyah and coordinated plans for the Bali bombings in 2002. Hambali was arrested in 2003 and sent to the Guantanamo Bay detention center. Jakarta Globe
