ABSTRACT
Since September 11, 2001, Southeast Asia has been termed by the US as the "second front" in the global war on terror. This view rests on the belief that with its defeat in Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda elements shifted their attention to Southeast Asia. Southeast Asians who trained in Afghanistan returned home where they could respond to the Al-Qaeda leadership's periodic call for terrorist strikes (both low- and high-impact) Southeast Asia offered an attractive home to international terrorism, thanks to a combination of factors. Firstly, its multi-ethnic societies. Secondly, its weak and corrupt regimes with a tenuous hold over peripheral areas. Thirdly, its ongoing separatist insurgencies that lend themselves to exploitation by foreign elements. Moreover in some cases undergoing painful democratic transactions, governments, weakened by the financial crisis; as in Indonesia and the Philippines, could not mobilize public support for security regulations to ensure preventive suppression of terrorist elements.
