MEDIA RELEASE

A NATION ON ALERT AGAINST NEIGHBOURHOOD TERRORISM

Dr Rohan Gunaratna

The proliferation of South East Asian-based Islamist terrorist groups with cells in Australia poses the single biggest threat to Australian interests in the immediate to long term future, one of the world’s foremost terrorism authorities has told the third Charles Darwin Symposium.

The nature and scale of that threat had changed significantly during the past decade, due to developments in the international political environment and Australia's involvement in international politics, keynote speaker Dr Rohan Gunaratna said.

Dr Gunaratna is Head of Terrorism Research and Associate Professor at Singapore’s Institute for Defence and Strategic Studies, and has 18 years of worldwide operational, policy and academic experience in counter terrorism. He is also Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, University of St Andrews in Scotland and Honorary Fellow at Israel’s International Policy Institute for Counter Terrorism, Israel. He authored the international best-seller, Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network on Terror.

Dr Gunaratna told the symposium the contemporary threat to Australia stemmed from two categories of cells - Australia-based support cells at the risk of mutating to attack cells, and terrorist infiltration into the country from both Afghanistan/Pakistan and Australia’s immediate neighbourhood, South East Asia.

He gave a chilling insight into the Al Qaeda terrorist organisation and its post September 11 status, warning that despite the impact of the ongoing US-led global hunt, it remained a formidable threat through its links with disparate Islamist groups around the world.
The war on terrorism had seen Al Qaeda suffer the destruction of its state-of-the-art training and operational infrastructure in Afghanistan, the 60-70% of its core operational leadership, and the capture of 3200 operatives in 102 countries, he said.

“Despite the dismantling of its training and operational infrastructure in Afghanistan, it is adapting by seeking to establish bases elsewhere and therefore remains a serious immediate and direct threat to its enemies. In its new role, Al Qaeda is unifying, inspiring, instigating and coordinating attacks with disparate Islamist groups located in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the Caucuses.”

Dr Gunaratna said two dozen Islamist terrorist groups were active in South East Asia and the biggest regional threat was presented by JI which had about 400 Al Qaeda trained members.
“With the exception of Afghanistan and Pakistan, South East Asia is the home of the single largest concentration of Al Qaeda trained active members in any given region. The presence of 240 million Muslims, emerging democracies, corrupt governments, weak rulers and lack of security is making South East Asia a new centre for Al Qaeda activity.”
Commenting on the risk to Australia, he said that before Al Qaeda targeted Australians overseas, it established a support network in the country, using its South East Asian arm, JI.
“At the invitation of the JI Australia, JI founder leader the late Abdullah Sungkar, his successor Abu Bakar Bashir and operations commander Hambali visited Australia a dozen times,” Dr Gunaratna said. “Furthermore, JI penetration of local Muslim groups led to a significant generation of propaganda within Australia, aimed at politicising and radicalising Australian Muslims.”

He added that several Asian-based terrorist groups – notably the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia – had stepped up activities at home an abroad, presenting an increasing risk to Australia. As well, half a dozen groups with links to Al Qaeda perceived Australia as an enemy.

Dr Gunaratna said that until the Bali bombing, there was a poor understanding of the terrorist threat to Australia. He urged Australia and South East Asia to improve cooperation in a bid to strengthen security in the Asia-Pacific. He also suggested that as a technologically advanced country with significant economic, political, diplomatic and a military capability, Australia could assist South East Asian countries, including Indonesia, to improve their capacity to fight terrorism.