WITH the Marawi conflict in southern Philippines coming to an end, what next for Islam-driven extremists in Southeast Asia?
One easy answer: more Marawi. Not another attack on the devastated city in central Mindanao. Rather, turning the mammoth propaganda value of the extremist siege, with cell-phone videos, TV news clips and war stories galore, to extol IS-driven bravery, ferocity and sacrifice, to raise funds and fighters for the caliphate.
Each and every one of the 653 terrorists killed in Marawi as of last Thursday, and dozens more to die in the final assault by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), will be extolled as martyrs in the eyes of kin, kith and community. And it would be no surprise if every dead terrorist spurs two youths to join the IS-driven Maute, Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), and Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF).
IS financiers, as well as potential recruits would be shown battle footage, especially AFP troopers pinned down or picked off by terrorist snipers, Catholic churches demolished and burned, Christian images desecrated and destroyed, and money and valuables looted in Marawi. Of course, the almost four-month siege shows the potency of the terrorist force. So, funders get immense bang for their buck, and vice versa for fighters.
Already, IS-driven groups have staged sporadic attacks, killings and kidnappings in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, which encompasses Muslim-majority provinces and cities from Lanao del Sur, whose capital is Marawi, all the way to Sulu and Tawi-tawi islands in the far west.
The AFP is mounting offensives in selected terrorist lairs, and giving artillery and other support to the Moro Islamic Liberation Force (MILF), the Philippines’s largest rebel group. The MILF has attacked the BIFF, which splintered from it when it signed a peace agreement with the government in 2014, giving up its secessionist goal.
In sum, the IS-driven terrorist rebellion in Mindanao continues, with the Marawi siege used for propaganda to recruit fighters and raise funds.
Now, the Buddhist front
LOOKING elsewhere in Southeast Asia for Muslim grievances to fuel caliphate aspirations, the IS eye will likely turn to the decades-long persecution and violence inflicted on Rohingya Muslims by Myanmar’s Buddhist Burmese majority in its northwestern Rakhine State, bordering Bangladesh. A remnant of British colonial rule over the Indian subcontinent, the Rohingya are denied Myanmar citizenship, but barred from going back to their ancestral homeland in Bangladesh.
The animosity of Burmese toward the Rohingya is so entrenched that even State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi, for all her Nobel-awarded rights advocacy, did not denounce the communal conflict, which have led to countless deaths and driven thousands of Rohingya to brave sea journeys in rickety boats in search of peace.
That sounds like a cause Muslim fighters can’t refuse, and indeed, since October, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (Arsa) has launched attacks against police and army units. Arsa assaults intensified late last month, with an estimated 1,000 killed, 30,000 people displaced and 300,000 Rohingya driven to Bangladesh by the army counteroffensive.
Going further south, another conflict surely on IS radar festers along the Thai-Malaysian border. “The Malay-Muslim separatist insurgency in Thailand’s south has little in common with jihadism, but persistent instability could provide openings for foreign jihadists who thrive on disorder,” the International Crisis Group think tank warned.
Some 7,000 have been killed in fighting since 2004. With Malaysia brokering, Thailand’s ruling junta has held talks with a coalition of militant groups. But there are doubts if the insurgent leaders in dialogue control the fighters on the ground. And with no junta concessions on the cards so far, there are no great hopes for peace anytime soon.
As for Malaysia and Indonesia, these Sunni-majority, Muslim-ruled nations continue to be rich recruiting grounds for IS fighters, and possibly, some fund-raising among Islamist quarters. IS would probably avoid mounting attacks, and not only to avoid crackdowns under stringent colonial-era internal security laws.
The bigger strategic reason is to avoid turning Malaysians and Indonesians against their Islamist parties, which actually wield decent political power and could win more. The 72-year-old Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS, by its Bahasa initials) has 14 seats in Parliament. It rules Kelantan State in the north, has 14 of 32 seats in Terengganu, just three short of the country’s ruling Barisan Nasional coalition; and is part of the opposition Pakatan Rakyat coalition ruling two more states.
In Jakarta, meanwhile, conservative Islam scored a double victory, with the blasphemy conviction of its erstwhile governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, the first Christian chief of the 10-million-strong capital city in half a century; and the victory of Anies Baswedan, backed by the hardline Islamic Defenders Front (FPI, by its Bahasa initials). The party has also boosted its nationwide clout at the expense of the moderate Muslim group, Nahdlatul Ulama.
Plainly, there is much to lure IS to Southeast Asia.