ABSTRACT
South-East Asia covers an area of approximately 1.6m. sq miles (4.1m. sq km) and is divided into two regions: Indochina and the Malay Archipelago. Indochina consists of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand and Viet Nam, while Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Timor-Leste (East Timor), fall in the region of the Malay Archipelago. The entire region has a population of more than 593m. Few similar-sized regions in the world are as historically complex and as culturally, ethnically, religiously and linguistically diverse as South-East Asia. Although, historically, it has played an important role in world politics and there is every reason to believe that it may continue to do so in the future, since the end of the Indochina Wars (1947-79) it has not, from a global perspective, been particularly visible. It was not until the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 (known as 9/11) and the aftermath of the 2002 Bali bombing in Indonesia, when the US authorities in Washington, DC, began to describe South-East Asia as the ‘second front’ of its ‘global war on terror’ that the region became once again the focus of world attention. Most of the major recent conflicts in South-East Asia have involved indigenous ethnic and religious regional armed insurgencies rather than inter-state confrontations. The insurgencies are generally the result of a desire for political inclusion on the part of distinct ethnic and religious groups-inclusion in terms of a greater share in socio-economic and political power, regional autonomy or outright independence.
