Opinion: ISIS ripples in Southeast Asian shores

Opinion piece posted to Business World (Oct 28):  (by Alma Maria O. Salvador, PhD)

THE TRANSNATIONAL NATURE of the ISIS jihadist ideology has reportedly attracted Islamic citizens from Southeast Asia to reclaim “lost territory” to Islam and embroil themselves in the Syrian conflict. The question that security analysts ask of the ISIS’ transborder reach is its impact on Southeast Asian internal security, particularly of Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines where the Muslim population is significant and where political violence is far from being eradicated.

Recent US and Australian assessments have not eliminated the emergent ISIS threat in Southeast Asia. Recently it was reinforced by a YouTube posting of Isnilon Hapilon’s Abu Sayyaf video of the group’s support of ISIS and its condemnation of the US led Syrian intervention. Intelligence findings on the recruitment of Southeast Asian militants revealed varying numbers of Filipino participation in the ISIS conflict -- from more than 200 who underwent training in Iran prior to Syrian deployment, to a hundred who have fled to fight in Syria, and to two who have been recorded as casualties of the conflict. Government reports have also included the return of Malaysian militants to the Philippines with the mission of establishing a Southeast Asian Islamic caliphate.

According to Joseph Chinyong Liow in his Foreign Affairs article “ISIS goes to Asia,” the traction for ISIS support may be attributed to the “ideological,” “sectarian” and “humanitarian” affinities behind the ISIS ideology. Real threat, however, comes from the consequence of a Southeast Asian import of the global ideology in order to further terror objectives at home. Radicalization is also viewed to come from the “inspiration” of participation in trans-Islamic brotherhood and the power of social media to amplify identification.

Are the Philippine security forces ready for the transnational terror threat that ISIS? This question has become more than relevant in the light of the recent phasing out of the US anti-terrorist Joint Special Operations Task Force Philippines, which has found alignment with the Aquino III government’s transition to territorial and external defense.

The impact of the latter in the security sector is great and has translated to a programmatic scenario-building and various levels of transitioning for the military and the police in terms of doctrine, planning, force structure, curriculum, tactics and operations in the larger context of eliminating armed threat in 2016. Readiness in internal security operations (ISO) in the post-insurgency period is defined in terms of the police’s perceptible capability to assume the internal security role that the military will “vacate” when the policy targets of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) would have been met in 2016.

The answer to this question is positive, albeit at the institutional level where counter-terrorism, a second priority to COIN (or counter-insurgency) has been embedded in the national government’s security and development priorities. Legislation through the Human Security Act 2007 has also contributed to this effort. Articulations of the transfer of ISO functions to civilian authorities, reflected in the AFP’s Bayanihan or Internal Security and Peace Plan 2011, reserves the current period when the “lead role in ensuring internal peace and security” is handed “to appropriate government agencies.” In the post-insurgency phase (or when the threat has reached “manageable levels”), ISO would have evolved (and it has incrementally done so) from its previously narrow orientation toward combat (that predated the hearts and minds approach to COIN) to the broader internal security repertoire on intelligence, law enforcement and legal offensives in which the police stands as a frontline ISO actor. Indeed, ISO has found its evolution from the limited search and destroy orientation to the “holistic” approach, to anti-insurgency that enmeshed it in the local development and security nexus.

In both theory and practice, holistic strategizing has resulted in delineated police and military roles, an effort that has furthered the civilianization of anti-insurgency while blurring it with regular policing and law enforcement. The advent of our involvement in the US post-9/11 agenda has also further complicated an anti-insurgency/anti-terrorism/law-enforcement nexus that now directs ISO on the ground.

Because of the huge impact of this on its original mandates, the Philippine National Police, through the Oplan SAMAHAN 2011, has reflected its post-insurgency objectives based on the pursuit of intelligence-led policing (including the deployment of Barangay Peacekeeping Action Teams), intensified legal offensives and “sustained ISO.”

Given the transnationalization of threats, the real tasks in institution-building that are to be undertaken are located at the local level. It involves a buy-back of the ISO convergence discourse by local chief executives. It also entails a serious prioritization and reform of the national, local and mobile police forces.

[Alma Maria O. Salvador, PhD, is former chair of the Ateneo de Manila Department of Political Science. She is an assistant professor of international relations and convenor of the Department’s Working Group in Security.]

http://www.bworldonline.com/content.php?section=Opinion&title=isis-ripples-in-southeast-asian-shores&id=96856