Terrorism in Southeast Asia: expert analysis, myopia and fantasy
- 2005
Most of the major studies of terrorism in Southeast Asia emphasise international terrorist links and religious ideology, while more locally-embedded accounts draw attention to historical and political context. This article discusses the way four issues are dealt with: terrorist networks and knowledge about them, Islam, the United States and the causes of terrorism. While individual studies vary in their treatment of these four issues, fantasy and myopia characterise much of the field. The fantasy comes in the form of uncertain conjecture posing as reliable information, as well as in images of an 'Islamic' threat; the myopia relates to a refusal to accept some very obvious observations and points of comparison. These tendencies are even more striking when terrorism is located in the context of imperialism and global political conflict.