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Islamic Separatism in Southeast Asia: Universal Faith and Unique Homelands
Organizer and Chair: Edward Aspinall, Australian National University
Discussant: Sumit Ganguly, Indiana University
In comparing the four main Muslim separatist insurgencies in Southeast Asia, this panel aims to explore the interplay of local and global forces in identity formation and violent conflict. Each conflict arises from highly specific political, cultural and historical contexts and grievances. In each case, separatist leaders stress that their “nations” are unique cultural entities. Yet some of them also claim to be participating in a wider struggle between a universal umma’ and unbelief. In the Southern Philippines, the rise of a new globally-oriented Islamism has contributed to fragmentation among separatists. In Southern Thailand there is much contention about the role of global jihadi networks, as opposed to purely local factors, in recent violence. In Aceh, by contrast, secular nationalism gradually replaced Islamism from the 1970s as the main form of resistance to the Indonesian state. In Burma/Myanmar, armed Rohingya separatism has been marked by division over the Islamic state goal. In each case, local microfoundations of revolt are crucial, including clan affiliation, familial ties and criminal underworlds. Yet, in this age of a so-called “War on Terror”, the states these movements oppose also draw upon new global security discourses in trying to depict suppression of Muslim separatism as part of that wider international war. Comparing these cases allows us to explore how the universal message of Islam may be meshed into local identity struggles, but also how local conflicts can be reshaped through projection onto a global stage.
Local Clans, Global Jihadis: The Politics of Islamic Identity in Maguindanao
Christopher Collier, Australian National University
Since the most recent cessation of major hostilities in Muslim Mindanao in 2003, sporadic conflict has re-erupted between followers of the area’s pre-eminent traditional ruling clan, the Ampatuans, and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front’s 105th Base Command, led by Ameril Umbra, also known as Commander Kato. This paper examines the backgrounds of these key antagonists in order to shed light on how their contending visions of Islamic identity are implicated in the struggle for local political-economic supremacy, as well as the global “war on terror.” While the Ampatuans control formal institutions of power at municipal, provincial, and – since 2005 – regional level within the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, acting as political brokers in the service of the Philippine state and playing a central role in President Gloria Arroyo’s controversial 2004 re-election, Commander Kato is a suspected Afghan veteran with close ties to Indonesian and Malaysian jihadis based in Mindanao. Rivalry between Kato and the Ampatuans represents the most serious threat to the ceasefire, to internal MILF unity and to the peace process between the MILF and the Philippine government. Any enduring solution to the separatist conflict must involve the authentic empowerment of ordinary Muslims, yet they remain trapped between the patronage politics of traditional clans, and a militant alternative that is antagonistic to local identity and threatens to draw the United States directly into the fray.
Aceh: Islam in Conflict and Peace
Edward Aspinall, Australian National University
One striking feature of the conflict in Aceh over recent decades was a gradual but obvious secularization of the insurgency. In the 1950s, leaders of the Darul Islam revolt aimed to make Aceh part of a broader Islamic State of Indonesia, in which God’s law would be binding. The formation of GAM (the Free Aceh Movement), in 1976 signaled a shift toward separatist nationalism, as well as the beginning of a long-term decline in the open religiosity of Acehnese resistance to the central government. By the early 2000s, GAM leaders routinely denied that their movement had explicitly Islamic goals. Not coincidentally, the central and provincial governments also began to recognize long-standing local aspirations for a greater place for Islam in public life. Now, since a peace agreement was successfully concluded in August 2005, GAM is attempting to transform itself into a civilian political force at a time when the province is undergoing Indonesia’s most ambitious experiment in the implementation of Islamic law, and in circumstances where official politics in the province are more Islamic than at any time for fifty years. This paper has two principal aims. First, it seeks to explain how secularization of the conflict could coincide with Islamization of Aceh’s public sphere. Second, it seeks to explore how GAM and rival political forces are adapting to, exploiting and resisting the new politics of Islam in the province.
Violence in the Muslim South of Thailand: Insurgency or Jihad?
Saroja Dorairajoo, National University of Singapore
Since January 2004, the Muslim-dominated region of Southern Thailand has been rocked by violence, causing the loss of more than 1,300 lives. Many reasons for the violence have been proffered. At present, there is a general consensus among scholars, security officials and local people that separatists or terrorists are responsible for much of it. Other factors commonly cited include a fight over turf between the army and police, local petty criminals and warlords, a millenarian revolt by local people frustrated by poor economic opportunities, and attempts by the Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to bring the opposition-ruled Muslim south under his control. Claims have also been made about international links with Muslim terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda or Jemaah Islamiyah. This paper aims to critically assess this multifarious kaleidoscope of the violence in southern Thailand. While all the above mentioned causes may have contributed to the violence or its escalation, lack of definitive evidence complicates attempts at explanation. In the absence of such evidence, the paper argues that it may be more useful to focus on the nature of the violent acts in order to find clues regarding the aims, actions and agents of the current unrest. Focusing on the acts themselves may help explain why more Muslims than Buddhists have become victims; and may throw light on whether there are links with international terrorist groups that seek inspiration and legitimacy for their violent acts from readings of Islamic texts.
Excluding the Included: the Rohingya Quest for an Islamic Homeland in Myanmar
Khin Maung Yin, International Islamic University Malaysia
The Rohingya resistance movement emerged in Arakan state in 1942 and remains a source of hope for many minority Rohingyas who aspire to establish an exclusive Islamic state. Various Rohingya separatist movements have emerged over time. The Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO) and the Arakan Rohingya National Organization (ARNO) were the two main Rohingya Muslim armed movements which later merged into the Arakan Rohingya Islamic Front (ARIF). In 1998, RSO left ARIF. It is generally understood that the RSO fights to liberate Arakan from Buddhist rule and to establish an Islamic state, while ARNO aims to set up an independent Arakan state, which may not necessarily be Islamic. Today, both the RSO and ARIF are dormant and pose little direct challenge to the Yangon regime. This paper outlines several factors that led to the emergence of Rohingya separatist groups and then to their decline. One key factor has been mistrust and suspicion between Myanmar’s Muslim communities. Rohingya and non-Rohingya Muslims put forward different interpretations of Jihad, and the Rohingya Muslims have attempted actively to exclude other Muslim groups. There is little sympathy or financial assistance for the Rohingya from other Muslims living in Myanmar On the international front, the movement has limited support from Middle Eastern countries, while Bangladesh’s Yangon-friendly foreign policy is another obstacle. Such factors have made the Rohingya resistance movements re-think and re-strategize their goal of setting up an Islamic state in Arakan.