ABSTRACT
The tragic events of 9/11 in the United States and the Bali bombing on 10/12 have become an important turning point for the ASEAN Regional Forum. Specifically, 9/11 made counter-terrorism a priority issue on the Forum’s agenda and united all ARF states against a ‘common enemy’. The Bali bombing in 2002 and the subsequent series of terrorist attacks in the Philippines and Indonesia made Southeast Asia a ‘second front’ in the global war against terror, at least in the view of some ARF participants. Glosserman (2002), a chapter contributor in this volume, back then argued that because it had become the primary multilateral venue for dialogue on terrorism in the region, the ARF ‘has finally come of age’ and that ‘its longheld reputation as “talk shop” that is long on rhetoric and short on action, is at an end’. An opinion-editorial in the Japan Times (2002), meanwhile, recognized that although terrorism had brought the ARF back to life, ASEAN’s ‘readiness to join the war on terrorism is proof that it understands that words must lead to action’. It characterized the ARF’s meeting in Brunei in 2002 – where strong statements against terrorism were made – as ‘a good start, but it is only that’. For his part, Indonesian analyst Bantarto in an opinion piece on the same ARF meeting called for the creation of an ARF task force on terrorism in order to move the Forum to its preventive diplomacy stage (Bandoro 2002). He called on the ARF to change, ‘otherwise it will sink deeper into a long and winding road, without any certainty . . . whether [it] will emerge as a security guarantor in the region’. This chapter examines the extent to which the ARF as a cooperative security framework has effectively played a role in combating terrorism. Specifically, it looks into the common perceptions within the ARF about the nature of terrorism as a security problem and what activities its participants have undertaken since 9/11 in response to this problem. In examining the perceptions of ARF participants about terrorism, it is important to give special attention to the responses of ASEAN to the tragic events of 9/11 and 10/12, it being a driving force within the ARF. This chapter demonstrates that ASEAN’s pronouncements on terrorism and transnational crimes have
for the most part been re-articulated in ARF statements. Arguably, ASEAN and the United States both saw the ARF as an important platform to pursue multilateral security cooperation in counter-terrorism. However, following the American invasion of Iraq in March 2003 (initially on the pretext of containing Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and given the link made to terrorism), the ARF became a venue for ASEAN and other participating states to oppose U.S. unilateralism and its continued occupation of that country. Even so, the occupation of Iraq did not sidetrack the ARF participants in pursuing cooperation in counter-terrorism and combating transnational crime. The chapter also attempts to identify the challenges and constraints faced by the ARF in dealing with terrorism and related transnational crimes.
