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War on terror a two-edged sword for
Malaysia
By Anil Netto
Malaysian officials have reacted angrily to a US
travel warning as well as US State Department comments
that it was concerned Malaysia and other Southeast Asian
nations may be hit by terrorist attacks similar to the
nightclub bombings in Bali last month.
What
probably has irked the Malaysian government even more is
that it had gone out of its way to accommodate US
security concerns in recent weeks. It was only last
month that Kuala Lumpur took an immense political risk
by agreeing to a US-sponsored center for
counter-terrorism to be set up in Malaysia next year.
Opposition politicians and political activists had
protested strongly, arguing that the proposed center
would compromise Malaysia's - and the region's -
neutrality and freedom from superpower hegemony.
Another delicate moment came this Monday, when
three US Federal Bureau of Investigation officers
entered the Kamunting Detention Center, north of Kuala
Lumpur, to interview alleged militant Yazid Sufaat.
Yazid is being held without trial at the center for
alleged involvement in the so-called Malaysian Militant
Group (KMM). The center holds some 120 detainees -
including about 70 alleged KMM members - under
Malaysia's harsh Internal Security Act (ISA).
The FBI had reportedly claimed that Yazid had
links with hijackers of the American Airlines aircraft
that was heading for Washington on September 11. His
lawyer, Saiful Izhman Ramli, said the FBI officers
basically wanted to know about Zacarias Moussaoui and
how Yazid came to know him. Moroccan-born Moussaoui, a
French citizen, has been charged in the United States
with conspiring to kill thousands in the September 11
terror attacks and faces the death penalty. He has
denied the charges.
When reporters asked Saiful
if the FBI officers had indicated that they wanted to
extradite Yazid to the United States, he replied that
the officers' questioning "had no association to that".
So a supposedly key figure in the September 11
tragedy is interrogated for only 35 minutes by the FBI,
apparently raising little new information. But analysts
say the larger message was driven home. The sight of FBI
officers in the remote detention center in Kamunting,
grilling an ISA detainee, carried an unwritten but
widely understood political message from Washington: no
place is too far, no person is beyond its reach - not
even inside a country like Malaysia, whose government
has been critical of key aspects of US foreign policy in
the past, but has increasingly fallen under the US
shadow.
The interview with Yazid was also ironic
from a human rights standpoint. In the past, the United
States has criticized the use of the ISA, which denies
the right of detainees to a fair trial. But here were
FBI officials actually trying to extract information
from an ISA detainee on Malaysian soil.
For
obvious domestic political reasons in Muslim-majority
Malaysia, the Yazid interview was largely downplayed in
the local media. The top-selling English daily, The
Star, for instance, tucked its short report on the FBI
interview at the bottom of page 10. Accompanying the
report was a picture of detention center officers
conducting security checks on the visiting FBI officers
upon their arrival at Kamunting - an attempt perhaps to
indicate that the FBI visit in Kamunting was with
Malaysia's permission.
Washington has
increasingly viewed Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad as
an ally in its war against terror. And so, taken in this
context, the official reaction here to the US state
department's travel warning - publicized on CNN - was
one of outrage and bewilderment, especially since
Malaysia has so far been spared any major bloodshed from
terror attacks.
The US travel warning - along
with others in recent weeks from Australia and Europe -
is likely to have a damaging impact on the Malaysian
tourism industry, already feeling the effects of an
economic slowdown. Even before the Bali blast, beach
hotels in Penang, a major tourist destination, had
posted an average occupancy rate of just over 50 percent
for the first quarter of this year. That's a sharp drop
from the occupancy rate of 67 percent for 2000 and 58
percent last year. And things wouldn't have improved
after Bali.
"From what I have heard, it's pretty
bad," said a well-placed source in travel agency circles
who declined to be identified. "Some beach hotels are
doing really badly though the town hotels seem to be
okay as they mainly cater for local businessmen."
A drive along Batu Ferringhi, a tourist beach
belt along the northwest of Penang island, is revealing.
By 10 pm, business at the night bazaar - with stalls
selling fake watches, trinkets and VCDs - that lines the
road outside a string of adjacent beach hotels, looks
fairly quiet. The determined tourists are still around,
but it's a far cry from the brisk business the stalls
used to enjoy before.
Security in hotels appears
to have been stepped up a little. At one leading hotel,
for instance, a hotel employee stands guard at the
entrance to the car park, which has a new road-hump. At
another hotel, two uniformed police personnel sit in an
almost deserted coffee lounge chatting with each other.
A third hotel has a closed gate next to the guardhouse
along the driveway leading to its front entrance.
Chulia Street in the center of Georgetown,
Penang, where backpackers normally revel at pubs and
roadside eateries, looks similarly subdued. One travel
agent, who deals more with local travelers, said her
business is just as quiet as it was post-September 11.
Another travel agent remarked that Chinese tourists
continue to come. Apparently, the wealth from Chinese
visiting this region, unlike their Western counterparts,
is not so easily deterred by the Bali blasts.
But otherwise, it appears that hotels,
restaurants, shops and stalls here that cater to
tourists will have to turn to alternative sources and
markets, including domestic tourism, if they are to make
up the slack and pull through.
Mahathir calls
the US warning "economic sabotage". He may not be far
off. Officials here have retorted that the United States
had no right to pass judgment on other countries when
that country itself is a dangerous place and not free
from terrorism. It's an argument that is hard to rebut.
But it is also apparent that the Malaysia
authorities' eagerness to portray the KMM as an alleged
security threat with regional links - a theory picked up
by foreign intelligence circles and in the international
media - is now having unanticipated consequences for the
economy.
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