The Fletcher School

Ambassador Yuchengco on the Muslim problem in Southeast Asia

Ambassador Alfonso T. Yuchengco spoke to Fletcher students and faculty on November 25 about his perception of the Muslim problem in Southeast Asia.

Ambassador Yuchengco is currently serving as Philippine Permanent Representative to the United Nations. His presentation to the Fletcher community was the latest in the Charles Francis Adams lecture series.

“International terrorism has become the dark side of globalization – and it has brought our world to a new age of war,” Ambassador Yuchengco said.

“The conjunction of religious fanaticism with technology now enables terrorist networks to threaten even the greatest powers with weapons of mass destruction.

“America has become the primary target of terrorist attack because—to those who regard Islam as just as much a political ideology as a religion— America embodies the intrusive modernizing, secularist, and consumerist force that the West has been, to the rest of the world, over these last 500 years,” he added.

Ambassador Yuchengco said Islamists in the Muslim world today are trying to forcibly unite politics and religion. This effort, he said, is continuing to divide Muslims, just as the issue once divided Christians in Europe.

According to Ambassador Yuchengco, the October 12, 2002 bombings in Bali have been to Southeast Asia what September 11 was for the United States.

“The bombings in Bali—which killed nearly 200 young people—have awakened Southeast Asia to the threat of Islamist terrorism, which our leaders had tended to minimize, because our variety of Islam had seemed more moderate than the Middle Eastern kind,” he said.

In examining the Islamist terrorism threat, Ambassador Yuchengco said grievances have produced Islamist movements in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the southern Philippines and southern Thailand. He attributed these grievances to economic growth and development in Southeast Asia that has left behind some groups.

Ambassador Yuchengco also expressed his belief that state terror has helped form the character of Islamist movements in Southeast Asia. He pointed to the role of repression under Indonesia’s authoritarian rule in radicalizing religious leaders, such as Abu Bakar Ba’asyir – the spiritual leader of terrorist network Jemaah Islamiyah.

He said that while rebellious groups in Southeast Asia were well established before al Qaeda’s expansion into the area in the late 1980s and early 1990s, there has been more cross-border cooperation among local rebellious groups since September 11.

“Heightened activity in the wake of September the eleventh by intelligence agencies in Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia—and, more recently, Australia—has uncovered a regional terrorist network more closely-knit and more wide-spread than governments had thought existed,” Ambassador Yuchengco said

He said Washington is convinced that al Qaeda is using Jemaah Islamiyah to foment terrorism in Southeast Asia.

“The Bali bombings—which for the first time targeted western tourists—bear out this theory,” he said. “Until then, disturbances traced to Islamist groupings have all been on behalf of local causes.”

In Ambassador Yuchengco’s opinion, local Southeast Asian cells probably welcomed al Qaeda’s help in raising funds, acquiring explosives and weapons, training militants, and widening regional contacts.

Furthermore, he said the Southeast Asian region had become crucial to al Qaeda, as an alternative base and training ground, given the dispersal of its Middle East cells. He believes Al Qaeda relies increasingly on national and regional groups to carry out its strategic goals.

While Ambassador Yuchengco was positive about the increased international cooperation in anti-terrorist intelligence sharing, he said Southeast Asian governments continue to treat their internal Islamists groups cautiously as they fear that too aggressive prosecution of terrorism would progressively radicalize increasing numbers of the disparate groupings that make up Southeast Asian Islam.

“Then also, the government that appears too susceptible to US ‘dictation’ risks alienating the nationalist urban middle-class that makes up the modern basis of its rule,” he said.

Ambassador Yuchengco expressed the dangers inherent in Washington’s approach to the war against terrorism.

“American policy—with its “those-who-are-not-with-us-are-against-us” attitude—may also be giving the impression that the United States is not just anti-Islamist but against Islam as a religion and a culture,” Ambassador Yuchengco said.

“This may leave Muslim moderates feeling squeezed between the radicalism of the Islamists and the radicalism of the Bush Administration,” he added.

However, Ambassador Yuchengco said it appeared a backlash against Islamism was building up in Southeast Asia’s pluralist societies.

“These optimistic trends in Southeast Asia’s linchpin state tells us the region can win its war against terror,” he said. “But the conflict will be brutal and protracted.

“We must assume that the local networks are regrouping—and that they have an abundant supply of recruits, from the batches of militants the training camps in Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia had processed over this last decade.

“Not only will the anti-terrorist campaign be divisive for our plural societies. It will also distract our governments from the task of reform and development they must accomplish—if they are to reduce the ranks of Southeast Asia’s poor, which have risen since the successive financial crises that began in 1997,” he said.

Ambassador Yuchengco warned that the story of the Muslim problem in Southeast Asia is far from finished.

“Although the Southeast Asian governments have become fully engaged, they must sharpen their intelligence and police work,” he said.

He concluded by appealing for continued attention and devotion to solving this problem.

“One can only hope the western governments will do all they could to help—for we are all together in this twilight conflict,” Ambassador Yuchengco said.

The lecture was followed by a question and answer session after which Dean Bosworth thanked Ambassador Yuchengco for his comprehensive analysis of this pressing issue.

For the full text of Ambassador Yuchengco's speech.