The British made sure Iraq was kept secular and ruled by the Sunni since l920. It made sure that its prime ministers were Sunni. That was rigorously followed by the leaders who followed. The Americans changed that, and pay the price. The Sunnis – who form a minority in this mosaic of religions – know now they will never get back into power, and destroy what the Americans have not. The oil piplelines are now blown apart. Today, the Americans are on the retreat, do not crow about their 'successes', and are ready to cut and run. It is a failure which has become normal to them: Philippines, Liberia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea, Vietnam. The freed slaves of America were sent to form the government in Liberia; their descendant rulers were machine gunned on the beach by a native revolt. Whether Saddam Hussein is found guilty or not does not matter.

The diplomats New Delhi sends out do not try to understand the local situation, and often is seen by the locals as bulls in a china shop. In the Philippines about 25 years ago, the press ate out of the Indian ambassador's hand. News reports of anything Indian that he or his embassy send out got into the local newspapers. The Philippines government consulted him frequently. All because he studied the Philippines situation before he took his post, made his diplomatic calls according to protocal, when almost every ambassador in the country did not. I had hardly checked into a hotel in Manila when a visitor whom I did not know called me for a cup of coffee. It puzzled me a bit as I had told few outside my contacts in Manila. It turned out the Philippines foreign ministry had told him. This is not what happens today, where an Indian of whatever citizenship visiting the Indian embassy puts him in a bad light.

ASEAN IS A DEAD LETTER. What started as a bang in 1967 will go out in a whimper. It is now beholden to outsiders, especially the United States. The chairman of the ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur which just ended, Malaysian Prime Minister, has made sure of it. The United States papers have said the country need not worry because ASEAN's chairman is a 'friend'. Pak Lah gave interviews with the Wall Street Journal and other Western newspapers, but not to a local. He, like all Malaysian leaders, want to be loved by foreigners, especially from the West. Local journalists write about ASEAN only on public statements, and do not report beyond their brief. But this does not mean they do not have opinions or hear others talk about it. They do. Only they discuss it with the colleagues and does not write about it because they would annoy their editors and more important, the officials. Malaysian officials think therefore that the ASEAN Summit is a success while it is run down. ASEAN foreign mininsters met annually in the past, and the focus of reporting was on what they said, leaving their bosses, prime ministers and presidents enough manouverability to accept or reject what was agreed by the foreign ministers. But not now. The ASEAN Summit, which was orginally held when it had to, is now an annual affair. Next year's will be in the Philippines. But it is now an organisation its members do not control.

THE ASEAN SUMMIT IS OVER. It is held every year now, instead of occasionally as it was agreed in the past. The next one will be in the Philippines. The most important decision it has taken is to fine- tune the East Asian Summit, in which is invited the United States's Sheriff in the region, Australia, and New Zealand, which though has taken an independent stance in the past is always on the side of the West where it matters. ASEAN was once an economic grouping, in which the foreign ministers met annually. It was effective then. Now it is another talking shop, more of interest to the Western academics than its members. It was founded in 1967 in Bangkok to stop Indonesia and Malaysia going to war with each other again. It met annually to discuss common issues. ASEAN was accused then of not pulling its weight, but as more nations became members, it lost its raison d'etre. Indonesia and Malaysia, and therefore Islam, was sideline as the Buddist nations - Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar - joined Thailand to dominate the grouping. It means nothing now. It is more like the European Union now. The presence of 2,000 journalists, and this did not include the 200 that came with the Indian prime minister, Mr Manmohan Singh, and the 300 was in the party of the Japanese prime minister, Mr Junizuro Koizumi, and the academics joined to make this meeting irrelevant.

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.

This is reflected on the ground. Retired operatives are asked to survey the ground in dangerous areas – Mindanao, Aceh, south Thailand. The new spymasters act on instinct and current needs, ignoring policies and plans of the past. When the Mindanao rebel leader, Nur Misuari, whom when I met him in Libya in 1976 travelled on a Malaysian passport, escaped from Mindanano into an island off Sabah early this year, the Malaysian authorities peremptorily handed him back to Manila. He is now in jail, yet another frustrated rebel leader who the Malaysians built up over the years and then deserted. He has revealed the names of every Malaysian officer who had links to him to the Filipino authorities. With one fell stroke, he made all involved in the Mindanao caper useless, their lives in danger should they ever visit the Philippines. Blaming Nur Misuari is neither here nor there: If we thought him dispensible, why should he think we are not?

Malaysia blotted its copy book when the foreign minister, Dato' Seri Syed Hamid Albar, made statements about illegal workers he should not have. It raised temperatures in Jakarta. Bringing in workers from Pakistan, Nepal and elsewhere could help Malaysia's worker shortage in the short term, but it must in the end bring the Indonesian workers back. That would be at a heavy cost. Malaysia's edge in bilateral ties with Indonesia is no more. As with Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines. The new breed of Malaysian diplomats and civil servants does not understand the cultural niceties and run foul of them time and time again. But no attempt is made to right it. This belief that the world must fall in line with Malaysia's local standards is compounded by a diplomacy that has seen better days.

Cabinet ministers in all countries conduct public policy by megaphone, react to press reports, state policies at press conferences. The need for instant and often irrelevant public support is all that matters. In these circumstances, current issues like illegal workers in Malaysia are focussed on particular countries, like Indonesia, when they come from a wider swathe of countries, from the Indian sub-continent to China and the Philippines. But ASEAN leaders when they travel further afield bring their parish pump politics to those shores too. Pak Lah was in Pakistan on what was declared to be an official visit, but it turned out to be no more than to declare open a Malaysian business there. There were no joint statements or joint communiques. The visit was ignored in Pakistan and Malaysia. In the midst of it, the Indian foreign minister arrives, and relegated the Pak Lah visit to greater irrelevance. The news papers in both countries ignored the visit. And it developed into farce when the Indian foreign minister, Mr Natwar Singh, arrived mid-way, and relegated Pak Lah to a tourist.

But when Iraq was invaded as a Christian crusade against Islam, others rose to defend Islam's honour. All it forebodes in Iraq, after next week's election, is a descent into a civil war from which neither Washington nor London could extricate except in defeat. Their actions in Iraq is not so Iraq could survive, but that they should. The Iraqi knows that, and has the numbers to deny that. It is for Washington, the same endgame as in the Philippines at the turn of the 20th century and Vietnam mid-century. It cannot even hope for an honorable exit. The first of three elections on 30 January will only ensare it deeper into a quagmire, if it not already has.

If anything untoward should happen to him now, say what happened to Ninoy Aquino in the Philippines, it could unleash forces beyond the government's control. He weaves in and out of the country throwing his barbs and taunts so forcefully uttered that the government is unable to, or would not, respond. It ignores him, hoping against hope he would go away. But he carves out spheres of influence around the world which forces the government's hands.

The bloody aerial bombing firmed native resolve against the invader. The first use of it as an apparatus of colonial control was in 1911 when the Italians attacked an isolated oasis outside Tripoli and since, an important tactic in the colonial armoury: Kenya, India, Burma, Indonesia, Malaya, the Philippines, Palestine, Vietnam, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Algeria, Indochina. In each, the colonial task became the more hazardous and fruitless and, in the end, lost.

But he has to watch his back. The fear of a political assassination, like Ninoy Aquino in the Philippines, could be real. He could face one in this continuing conflict between money and principle, though it is limited: for one, the reaction now could well be worse than in 1998, the bare details of that could only be deduced through a royal commission; anything that happens to him now could only be played out in public.

When two brilliantly elusive traitors spent their waking hours to destroy an institution its its 58th year of existence, how else could it be otherwise? If the traitors are not reined in, God Forbid, they would go and infect the Opposition. UMNO could not have that, could it? The Opposition could well be the stronger because of it, and the election system could descend to that in the Philippines, where every political party has equal chances to cheat to win the elections. So, other important issues got short shrift. Malay unity, Malay rights, bumiputra privileges, how they interact with the non-Malays upset at this continued mollycodding of the Malay and bumiputra communities, and what this means to the Malaysian polity and community were discussed almost as an aside to the main discussion on the twin traitors.

MALAYSIA IS BEHOLDEN TO the United States more than ever. The prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, after a call on President George W. Bush in Washington, announces a "sufficiently big and not just a token" medical mission to Iraq. But in Paris en route to London shortly after the Philippines Government withdrew its token medical presence from its armed forces in Iraq in exchange for a Filipino truck driver it held hostage and threatened to decapitate.

It was the Tengku in the early 1960s who persuaded the Achenese fighting for independence from Jakarta to transfer its government-in-exile from Holland to Malaysia: its ambassador, in his 80s, lives in quiet retirement in a town outside Kuala Lumpur. With him came 10,000 Achinese, peopled in the Felda agricultural schemes. Kuala Lumpur had also encouraged the Muslim Moros in southern Philippines to secede from its government in Manila, and allowed about 100,000 of them to settle in Sabah. But this interest is half-hearted. Less than four decades later, Kuala Lumpur pulled the plug, sending back Moro and Achinese rebels to certain death or continued rebellion; among the leaders it deserted were Nur Misuari and Hashim Selamat. There is a suggestion that Kuala Lumpur's interest in south Thailand is mired in its political problems with PAS, and therefore one of imminent danger to the Thai Malays, if this equation should change.

THE MALAYSIAN PRIME MINISTER, DATO' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, is due to retire in October after 22 years in office and hosting the OIC summit in Putra Jaya. That is clear as day to all and sundry. Except for a few diehards amongst his supporters who cannot imagine a life without him at the helm. When he spent half his political life as Prime Minister, the withdrawal of his perks can be incalculable. One member of his entourage, now retired, says of the exhilaration he felt when he found himself in Kota Kinabalu without flights and his presence in Kuala Lumpur required in 12 hours. He called a crony business man, who flew with his own plane from souther Philippines, without hesitation, and was on board to make sure he was well looked after. He did it a couple of time after that, and each time it worked. Can one then imagine what his former boss could, as Prime Minister?

DATO' SERI ANWAR IBRAHIM IS irrelevant in Malaysian politics. So believes the Malaysian government, the National Front (BN), UMNO, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. They have not wavered in this belief his conviction and incarcertation for what smacks of political vendetta than criminal intent. He is finished, they repeat ad nauseum, like sembayang hajat, the collective Muslim prayer for a desigened purpose. Yet when his eldest daughter, Nurul Izzah, was married to a Shell engineer, Raja Ahmad Shahrir Iskandar bin Raja Salim, over the weekend at his home in Kuala Lumpur, UMNO stalwarts, several who once believed Dato' Seri Anwar should remain in prison, were on hand to celebrate it. One cabinet minister was there, several sultans, the King of Thailand, the President of the Philippines sent presents and representatives. Dr Mahathir's redoubtable and irrepressible octogenarian sister-in-law, Datin Zaleha Ali, in her wheel chair, was there too. What must anger Dr Mahathir is that several prominent Malaysians asked to attend, and did.

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.

The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, said in New Delhi on 18 October 2002, Malaysia could be the next target following bombings in Bali and the Philippines. He has reason to worry. And he cannot rein in journalists overseas as he can in Malaysia, and he has to answer questiolns lobbed at him. Malaysia supports the United States in the latter's global war against terror, and Al Qaeda. She targets Malaysian groups whom she accuses of having trained in Afghanistan when it was ruled by the Taliban. He does not mention his government once encouraged to do so. He told a news conference during a lightning visit to the Indian capital that "terrorists respect no borders. They can operate in any country. Even the countries least involved might find themselves targets of terrorist attacks."

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