The ASEAN organisation does not deal with individuals. It does not interfere in each other's affairs. It should not deal with the Thai Malays. But it issued in its Summit communique its concern for internal affairs: it brought out its concern for one individual that the United States supports: the Myanmarese lady, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. But it could have delayed its extinction if it had also reported on other internal issues – the Thai Malays, Acheh and the Moluccas in Indonesia, Mindanao in the Philippines, even Sarawak and Sabah in East Malaysia, for example. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi heads one of theposition groups in Myanmar, abeit one the United States supports. Do we want to be unable to establish links with Mynamar if the 'wrong' opposition group takes over power. Malaysia supported the wrong part in Afghanisation by establishing diplomatic ties with the group in power, in which 'our' man, Gulbudeen Hikmatyar, was Prime Minister, but it was swept any in the round-robin of governments the country is famous. Malaysia once had links with Afghanisation, but not any more.

The US wants to spread its influence in the Middle East. It gains that influence by talking of, for example, democracy at home and corruption at the target country which can take many forms. It bribed the senior advisers of the Shah of Iran with residences in the US and with money, but when the crunch came, even the Shah was not allowed in the United States. Iran is now an Islamic state, Shi'ite, and one of the countries the Americans want to control. It was the time of the Cold War, and it wanted countries on its side in the Great Battle with the hated Soviet Union. So all this was fair game. And it sang its praises by favourable press notices. The conduit was news organisations, mostly Western but Third World as well. The information war was won by the US because it had the most resources. A continuing gripe in the 1960s of US foreign service officers was the growing influence in the region of Agence France Presse, the French news agency. Now that the Cold War is over, its new enemy is Islam. But it and the West uses Cold War officers to fight the battle, and fall flat. The difference is education. The farmers children in the Third World are educated. Those who were educated in the Soviet Union were derided in the Free World and those educated in the best universities of the Free World were given pride of place. But they got education, and they learned to think. Some found that the United States was superior to the others, while others thought that all foreign imperialisms were a menace to their countries. In the Cold War, there was the cushion for either the United States or the Soviet Union of the Non-Aligned bloc. But post-Cold War, there is no cushion. In the Cold War period, a meeting with the Soviet Union and the United States ambassadors at a neutral country can affect the war in Vietnam. Not now. Not yet. The Muslims all over the world are angry. And the enemy to the West comes from every where not just in the Middle East. So the war in Iraq has its effect in southern Thailand or Mindanao. The governments of Thailand and the Philippines have to take up the cudgels to prevent the Islamic insurgency from boiling over.

The intelligence services are not what they once were. It is clueless to what happens in south Thailand, south Mindanao, Aceh – the three Muslim regions where in the past they had important outposts. The counter-terrorism chief in one intelligence agency is a 27-year-old lady who has just obtained her Ph.D in an American university. She has no practical experience, and no doubt can spout theory and assumptions from published material. Her analysis, however good, must therefore be suspect. This insistence that all intelligence agents must, where possible, be Malays reduces their role even more. The infighting within the services adds to the misreporting and confusion. Meanwhile, the intelliegencies discuss such irrelevant issues as if the US would attack Iran and how.

Malaysia can at best pick up the pieces after the fact. As with Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines. There is no standard policy on anything: it shifts with prime ministers, cabinet ministers, official, local warlordly reaction to official policy: the water issue with Singapore is one example; Malaysia sending in peacekeepers, at Manila's request, to Mindanao, where Kuala Lumpur has sided in the past with Muslim leaders fighting for autonomy from Manila. I met Mr Nur Misuari, the local Muslim leader at odds with Manila, in Tripoli, Libya, in 1976; he was travelling on a Malaysian passport.

Malaysia opposes paying ransom to kidnappers. He would not allow it. Malaysia is not involved in any way. But when the Abu Sayyaf rebels in Mindanao held Malaysians and foreign tourists to ransom, Kuala Lumpur paid it through intermediaries. There was more to it than was reported. The the rebels would only discuss the release of the hostages with a federal deputy minister since promoted to the cabinet and a former Sabah chief minister, with whom they had had dealings in the past. Kuala Lumpur had to deny it because the tourists were from countries which would not negotiate with terrorists.

But the fence mending Mr Thaksin undertakes in the four provinces underscores another puzzle. Who started the crisis? Investigators, from Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur, found one striking characteristic: in this normally poor corner of Thailand, youngsters ride brand new motorcycles, and paid 1,500 bahts (about RM150) a day; so widespread is this that it is taken for granted. This is too widespread to be dismissed off hand. Who paid and is paying them? Other developments are equally disturbing. Three Malaysian tycoons, fishing to benefit from the oil wealth of southern Thailand, are active. Their names do not appear, but the three have lost their political clout in Malaysia and seek new alignments. There is persistent talk of one high ranking UMNO leader involved in this, and the plan to buy small holdings of land along the Thai-Malaysian border. One of the three was aligned with this UMNO leader in southern Mindanao during the Abu Sayyaf episode. Whether they act on their own or do so at the behest of foreign powers is not known. Whether it is part of a widespread plan to benefit from the oil and gas industry of southern Thailand or for a hidden national or political purpose is not for me speculate.

Malaysia is caught in its own machinations. With good reason. In the 1970s, Malaysia was a transhipment point when Libya transferred weapons and cash to the Moros in southern Mindanao. They were invariably transhipped on 17 December every year in the 1970s, a week before Christmas, so that the arms could arrive in Mindanao with little fuss and official intrusion. Tun Abdul Razak, Malaysia's second prime minister, tacitly supported it, and the conduit was the Sabah chief minister of the day, Tun Datu Mustapha bin Datu Harun. News of this was well kept under wraps, but the discovery of a US$1 million Citibank draft from its Hong Kong branch to Tun Mustapha, raised more questions than answers. The money was widely believed then to be of Libyan origin, and it caused the same confusion in Kuala Lumpur in the 1970s as now. At the time, a Belgian television journalist went to Mindanao and shot some good footage of the Mindanao rebels in action, including shooting down of a Philippine Air Force fighter plane. I did the English voice-over for it, and we travelled to Tripoli in 1976 and to Europe two years ago to market it. NBC TV bought it, and aired a five-minute segment on its regular news programme.

Senator Zainal Rampak exemplifies it: he could not get a Dato'ship in Malaysia, so he bought one from the non-existant sultanate of Mindanao. Bought, did I say? Yes. A man who does not deserve a dato'ship in Malaysia can get on with a judicious spreading of his largesse in the right direction. Now the Paku Buwono ("The Nail which Holds the World") of Solo has joined the practice of enobbling misguided and rich individuals seeking the heirs of a long-disappeared sultanate needs cash to keep body and soul together. And of course a luxury car. And an unlimited expense account.

Ten "heavily armed and dangerous" Abu Sayyaf rebels have fled Jolo Island in Mindanao, southern Philippines, and headed for Malaysia where they can be assured of a safe haven. Symbiotic, and tribal, ties between the Mindanao rebels and prominent Sabah and Malaysian politicians have existed for decades, with blood lines for centuries, would ensure it. When in April 2000, the Abu Sayyaf rebels captured for ransom Western tourists and Malaysian workers at a tourist resort in the disputed island of Sipadan off the coast of Sabah, a former chief minister of Sabah and the present deputy education minister flew to southern Philippines to negotiate their release. A huge ransom was paid. One does not how much, but many believe loot was shared with parties in Malaysia. The Abu Sayyaf and other Muslim irredentist groups in southern Philippines could always count on Malaysia for financial and other support. Many travelled for years on Malaysian passports.

So it does not matter if Mr Howard meant what he said or said what he meant, that Canberra considers it fair game, in present circumstances, to order pre-emptive strikes on other countries harbouring terrorists. The countries he had in mind are not Iraq or Afghanistan or Iran or even Pakistan. Nor South America nor Africa. Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines took Mr Howard to task, but spoiled their case in needless rhetoric. In this hysteria, Malaysia and Indonesia are accused of harbouring Islamic terrorists; Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines have Islamic irridentists fighting for their own homeland -- in southern Thailand, Acheh and Mindanao, respectively. Australia's security fear for decades have been the unwashed Asian hordes in countries to its north who, it believes in its simplistic and racist view, to unsettle its middle class values and existence. The fear is raised a notch by now targetting the Muslim terrorist hordes.

It is an academic's search for truth from primary sources but revised, usually to propel a self-fulfilling conclusion, to fit into current thinking to make nonsense of it all. So, if you go by what Malaysia did, and has done, with what are now groups linked by Washington to the Al Qaida network, the Malaysian parties mentioned becomes, ipso facto, terrorist groups. But are they? In the long standing dispute between Malaysia and the Philippines over Sabah, both Manila and Kuala Lumpur encouraged anti-national sentiments and activities in the other's terrority. The Philippines sent armed irregulars into Sabah as Malaysia into Mindanao, where a festering Muslim irredentist movement had kept Manila preoccuped for half-a-century and more. But in today's idiom, what the Philippines did is to protect its territorial integrity; what Malaysia did an act of terror.

But those who espouse this war on terror use it to contain secessionist pressures within its borders that has nothing to do with terror: Britain, with its cancerous sore of the IRA; Russia and Chechnya; India and Kashmir; the US and al-Qaeda; Israel and Palestine; China and Tibet; the Philippines and Mindanao, to name a few.

So, military intelligence was involved in this. Buying arms from Latin America and Africa and flown to Bosnia, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Mindanao. Many army officers were involved in this, many retired early to continue with it. The Philippines government accused one director of military intelligence of involving in the Mindanao imbroglio. To make Malaysia more acceptable to the Middle East, Arabs and Muslims from Africa could come into the country with few checks, and had carte blance to do as they pleased. It made very easy for plotters like those who crashed jets into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington to gather here. One head of military intelligence, now retired, is said to orchestrate the arms shipments, and remains a special adviser in the government after retirement.

Moscow is annoyed with Kuala Lumpur's continuing and active support for the Chechen rebels. Malaysia has over the years backed numerous Muslim separatist groups, helped actively the Muslim Mindanao rebels fighting for their home state from the Philippines. All of this is not officially revealed, and come to light when Malaysian cabinet ministers and UMNO officials reveal them to score points or to make themself more important than they are. His on-the-tun policy on terrorism gets too complicated even for him, and he now faces pressure from all sides. His most pressing concern though is the Malaysian hand in the 11 September attacks.

But the Prime Minister's world view is not believed by his flock. This does not mean that he cries wolf yet again. Far from it. What he says could well be true, and this Islamic revolutionaries pose a fundamental threat to one's way of life, as we were once told the Communists did. Why is it then that most people who do not, like sheep, accept the official explanation and ask embarrassing questions? One is if Nur Misuari is as dangerous an Islamic fundamentalist rebel to the Philippines as Ustadz Nik Aziz Nit Mat's son is to Dr Mahathir, why is one treated with kid gloves and the other with the mailed fist? Has it to do with the unpalatable fact that in the current definition of terrorism, Malaysia supported a terrorist group as it indeed it did when it backed for decades the Misuari plan for Muslim Mindanao to secede from the Philippines?

The Malaysian and Philippine governments are in a bind over the ousted governor of the Austonomous Muslim Mindanao Region, Mr Nur Misuari. He fled his post mid-November after Manila accused him of fomenting a rebellion, landed in a Malaysian island off Sabah last week, an embarrassed Kuala Lumpur announces it captured him 48 hours later after denying he was in Malaysian terrorial waters. What this meant to the politics of the two countries was clear almost immediately. The Malaysians gave the impression it acted swiftly to contain a terrorist, then became coy about how to deal with him. He is accused of illegal entry, but the deputy prime minister and home minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, would rather send him back and let Manila do the dirty work. Manila, on the other hand, wants Kuala Lumpur to deal with him. For action against him would tie the hands of who acts. A strange reaction indeed over how to deal with an acknowledged terrorist!

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo arrives here for a three-day official visit today (07 August 01). She is here more to initial the pact between her government and the Moslem fundamentalists in Mindanao. Bilateral ties improve, but the Sabah claim is alive in the Philippines as it is not here. It should be left as it is.

His yeoman efforts to get the Malaysian hostages released from the Abu Sayaff rebels in Mindanao were so murky he could not get the wide coverage he would have liked. His illness during the Umno divisional elections did not help.

The Abu Sayyaf kidnappers played their cards well, raising the ante until the first European country cracked and agreed to pay. But it was a dangerous precedent. Both Manila and Kuala Lumpur now admit that the kidnaps were finally motivated. The Philippines spokesman Ronaldo Zamora said "the more you pay in ransom the more you pay in kidnapping". The Malaysian deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, believes it could be "financially motivated". The waters around Sabah, especially in the area off Semporna, is breeding ground for pirates, who can hit-and-run with remarkable agility, with little threat from police or military reaction. The presence of a half-million Filipinos in Sabah, mostly from the southern Mindanao area and its environs, mostly Moslems, adds a security element which if all but officially ignored. The Sipadan kidnap is widely believed to have been a political show of force in which, Sabah sources say, involved the Mindanao governor, Mr Nur Misuari, and Malaysian politicians. It backfired.

Closer home, there is the Sipadan kidnap, and the Grik arms heist. Both are sandiwaras. No doubt about that. There is more than meets the eye. When the Philippines stood firm about conducting the negotiations for the release of those kidnapped -- as they must for the Malaysian writ does not run in Mindanao, nor even Manila's as fully as it wishes -- the Prime Minister allowed it to be turned into a sandiwara: now a Philippines newspaper reveals a retired general shut off the radar just before the kidnap. One does not know if this specific allegation is true or false, but the Malaysian armed forces' active involvement in southern Mindanao affairs is an ill-kept secret. The only retired general I know who married a Filipina is Lieut.-General Raja Rashid bin Raja Badiozaman, the younger brother of Raja Tun Mohar and grandson of the Sultan Abdullah of Perak who signed the Pangkor Treaty in 1874, which brought the British colonial presence in the Malay states and who two years later was implicated in the murder of the first British Resident of Perak, Mr J.W.W. Birch, at Pasar Salak two years later; he was also director-general of military intelligence until his retirement earlier this decade. He is now a business man. He was at Sandhurst with the Myanmar finance minister, Brig. Gen. Abel, in the 1960s.

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