Dire Straits
BAY, AUSTIN
Dire Straits The war on terror's Singapore front BY AUSTIN BAY Singapore The bumboat ferry from Changi Point to Pulau Ubin may be as close as modern Singapore gets to Joseph Conrad's tropic...
...We pass a bus stop across from the U.S...
...Arab money...
...The tape sounds like a bad outtake from Mission Impossible...
...Shipping containers may be the most frightening potential delivery device for a terrorist's nuclear bomb...
...Yes," Chang smiles...
...embassy, the spot where a JI recon team videotaped the approaches to the American compound...
...He is an "American asset...
...Borneo, Java, Thailand's Krak peninsula, the whole of the Philippines, western and northern Australia shaded in this photocopy...
...But I don't...
...Bali's a Hindu island with Australian tourists...
...It won't be a straight shot, though...
...One sequence focuses on a street drain as the voice, in cold sing-song, muses that it could be "useful...
...Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia—this region's been with this longer than you...
...I ask...
...What unit are you in...
...Not because it isn't Muslim, but because it's a wealthy Chinese island dumped between two predominantly Muslim nations, Malaysia and Indonesia...
...His blue eyes are as hard as gun barrels...
...Home Affairs Ministry spokesman Mrs...
...Central Command is responsible for our security interests from the Horn of Africa into Central Asia...
...Jemaah Islamiyah in Malaysia...
...naval facilities are located...
...Diplomats are in the front line of this war," is his clipped response...
...JI chooses [terror operations] in Singapore for the demonstrative effect," says K. Kesavapany, director of Singapore's Institute of Southeast Asian Studies...
...An Indonesian, Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, was sub"With [oil] money they promote the Arabization of our Islam in Southeast Asia...
...A Muslim who accepts the nation-state system," he replies...
...That's the lingo, which is supposed to say a load without saying much...
...According to the report, markings on a topographical map ISD acquired "identified a strategic kill zone where the channel was narrowest and where the naval ships would have no room to avoid a collision with a suicide vessel...
...The broken tanker spills a million barrels of crude, creating an eco-disaster, Exxon goo lapping pristine south sea beaches...
...I know all about Lee Kwan Yew, the imperious boss of the city-state...
...But after September 11, the far out's too real...
...Translation: He's a mercenary working special security duties for Singapore...
...Pulau Ubin and a handful of other jungle-green islets sit in the Johor Strait, the heavily trafficked northern waterway separating Singapore from Malaysia...
...That would suggest JI's naval operation has moved from talk to active consideration...
...Anew kind of war...
...Outside Gurkhas patrol, inside Marines and plainclothesmen aided by electronics examine every stitch...
...Colonel...
...JI members discussed this attack, but they discuss much...
...In the entrance hallway of the U.S...
...The Straits of Malacca are a chokepoint...
...he says...
...I prod...
...But evidence gathered by Singapore's ISD over the past five years also makes Chang's point: Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia lie first and foremost in JI's geo-strategic kill zone...
...But their secret is no secret...
...They don't like it...
...Chang orders a latte as I study the map...
...But someone in D.C...
...But planned it to the point of carrying it out...
...Since Bali the Indonesian police have been able to act more readily...
...Kesavapany, he comes from a country where JI can get it done...
...military personnel...
...Their object is to undermine moderate Muslims...
...In the 19th century tin and tea and British troops were high-priority shipments...
...Over afternoon tea I get a scholar's take on JI's plans for Malaysia...
...We've been targets longer than you...
...Yes . . . do you know it...
...Australia is an active U.S...
...ISD has a legitimate gripe," Colter replies...
...But you agree a U.S...
...East of Pulau Ubin, one shipping channel swings south from Johor, cutting well to starboard of the bumboat's route...
...Dire Straits The war on terror's Singapore front BY AUSTIN BAY Singapore The bumboat ferry from Changi Point to Pulau Ubin may be as close as modern Singapore gets to Joseph Conrad's tropic island of trade and empire...
...No cockiness, lots of confidence...
...The Yishun tape was acquired by "American assets" in Afghanistan...
...But until the Bali mess, the Indonesian government was publicly denying the threat of radical Islamists in Indonesia...
...With that money they promote the Arabization of our Islam in Southeast Asia...
...has log[istics] support on Singapore, to an extent replacing what we lost when we moved out of Subic [Bay, Philippines...
...Even if it wasn't a U.S...
...Navy aircraft carriers berth occasionally and capital ships stop as they shuttle to and from patrol stations...
...Singapore beefed up its counterterror unit after the 1995 Aum Shin Rikyo sarin nerve gas attack in Tokyo...
...We sat in a CENTCOM office, a world map tacked to the wall (U.S...
...I ask Chang, when I see him again...
...It's money...
...They are clever, yes...
...Jihadis trained with the MILF in the southern Philippines until the Philippine military began overrunning the camps in 2000 and 2001...
...And belief, in that crowd, becomes bombs...
...ally, Islamists don't like the island...
...The bus stop across the street...
...That was October 2001...
...He amuses himself...
...I mention having heard that JI has reconned the approaches to Changi...
...Three weeks after this conversation, the Singapore Home Affairs Ministry released a white paper confirming JI's plans for a sea attack...
...I mention a video I've seen, one shot from the bus stop across the street, the U.S...
...Getting into the embassy to see it, however, is a trick in these post-9/11 days...
...That channel leads to Singapore's Changi Naval Base, where U.S...
...The narrator of the video analyzes the arrival of the connecting bus outside the station and discusses the comings and goings of U.S...
...Given ships in transit and the size of the kill zone, it would require speed, so a dinghy, like the one al Qaeda used on the docked USS Cole in Aden, won't cut it...
...Jemaah Islamiyah's transnational character demonstrates the need to cooperate...
...Our Malacca incident had the plot of a novel, with Indonesian or Malaysian pirates assisting al Qaeda operatives...
...Saudi Arab money...
...Yeah," he replied...
...And we're watching for these guys...
...forces picked up the video in an Afghan location," Colter tells me...
...He's a Muslim and, to paraphrase Mr...
...The arrests of terrorists speak to the threat level, not to police intrusiveness...
...Chang taps the map I've drawn, a black wriggle indicating strait and channel...
...JI jihadis reconnoitered the cargo center on Singapore's Jurong Island...
...Which is the strategic ploy...
...That being said, it's a party town and no police state...
...It's a nice place, First World in the Third World...
...Frank Lavin, U.S...
...I saw a video shot by terrorists from that spot...
...We in Singapore have our guard up, so if al Qae-da and Jemaah Islamiyah could get it done here, a terror strike, they can get it done anywhere in the region...
...As I leave the embassy, a guard with a smile to put a cheshire cat to shame watches, his submachine gun professionally slung...
...All of which makes the ferry ride more than a tourist jaunt...
...Really...
...Chang shows me a copy of JI's dreamland, pulling the map from his brown notebook and placing it on the counter...
...I know what I am told...
...Indeed, JI produced a "green map" where the reach of sharia, as interpreted by JI leadership, extends into the Australian continent and New Guinea...
...Iran has used pesky Boghammers to harass ships in the Persian Gulf— one of those Swedish speedboats might work, as would a Austin Bay is an author and syndicated columnist...
...took credit for the tape as leading to December 2001's mass round-up of jihadis...
...Rumsfeld says it's a new kind of war...
...When were you in the Army...
...As well as very sensitive targets, for example, the embassies...
...Their common foe is Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), al Qaeda's branch operation in Southeast Asia, headed by radical Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir...
...Singapore's a logical choice for a 'super Cole' operation, or something similar," he said...
...Big headlines...
...His real name isn't Chang—not even close...
...Where else but oil does it come from...
...They have an education program...
...He shrugs...
...Ong-Chew Peck Wan tells me, "After September 11, we stepped up our security measures, including tightening border and immigration controls, protecting our key installations, particularly those strategic to us...
...The December 2001 arrests thwarted embassy bombings...
...They believe it," he says...
...But for the clinching evidence putting JI in al Qaeda's bosom, check out the reconnaissance video of Singapore's Yishun metro station, which can be downloaded from the Singapore Ministry of Home Affairs website (www2.mha.gov.sg/mha/detailed.jsp?artid=215&type=4& root=0&parent=0&cat=0&mode=arc...
...Know the terrain, the technology, and the terrorists, and you don't need a Hollywood imagination to peg the channel as a perfect site for an ambush...
...The attack has iconic qualities, underlining Western and Japanese reliance on Mideast oil, producing the sort of propaganda bonanza a terrorist zealot literally dies for...
...The officer and I explored several "ship assault" scenarios, including a tanker scuttled in the straits (this was a year before al Qaeda attacked a French tanker off Yemen...
...Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore—the police cooperate closely...
...ambassador to Singapore, is an energetic and erudite man...
...They talk...
...Well, I'm still in the reserves...
...I start to tell him I'm here as a writer...
...Not as fancy as that MP-5...
...Singapore's ISD was already onto the JI cell when U.S...
...The bell was cast by the Revere works in Boston in the 1840s...
...The biggest roundups were in December 2001 (15 arrests) and in September 2002 (21 arrests...
...Southeast Asia is a major theater of this war, no doubt about that...
...The Bali bombing killed almost 200 people and injured another 300...
...There are other attractive targets," he says, "from their [JI's] perspective...
...I know the press gets clamped occasionally...
...It also demonstrated that al Qaeda was still probing Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia...
...It's Chinese—that's what the radicals say...
...There'll be tugs, armed escorts— From the stern of the ferry, in the noonday sun, I visualize the moment...
...An American officer familiar with U.S...
...Again, no direct attribution...
...Arabization is a highly nuanced term, one used repeatedly among Malaysian and Indonesian Muslims I talk to...
...The fast boat, packed with explosives and a suicide pilot, could slip from an inlet on the Malaysian side, gun its engine, whirl around an islet, perhaps Pulau Tekong, seeking the slate gray side of a carrier...
...Getting cops and counterterror intelligence officers to talk exacts a price, and that price is strict anonymity...
...Merchant freighters move in both directions, as do warships...
...Prime property for 19th-century commerce remains key economic and geostrate-gic real estate in the 21st...
...The U.S...
...The general drift is that it represents a movement toward an aggressive anti-Western, anti-secular, and racially tinged Islam in Southeast Asia, the racial tinge being anti-Chinese...
...What kind of counterterror cooperation exists with Indonesia since Bali...
...Singapore desperately needs an effective political opposition...
...Gurkha Contingent...
...The October 12, 2002, bombing of a nightclub on the Indonesian island of Bali was a "choice target," Colter tells me...
...Chang it's not so new...
...Singapore worries him less than Malaysia because "Singapore police do a serious job of cargo inspection...
...But it isn't...
...Still, seized notes and confessions from arrested JI operatives about an attack on the Jurong complex put a scare in trade-dependent Singapore...
...This is a war with many fronts and requires intense cooperation," he says...
...Undermining the schools "preys on a [strategic] weakness in Malaysia," the scholar says...
...Yes, Mr...
...With a quick click he pops me a salute...
...Yishun is a subway stop near Sembawang, where U.S...
...Maybe, but for Mr...
...A careful investigator, he'd been to my website and elsewhere...
...Chang doesn't reply...
...That's an MP-5," I say, pointing to his weapon...
...Instead of coconut copra the boat's smell is diesel, but the engine chugs at a steam-driven rhythm and the deckhouse is open to the humid air and high noon of the equatorial sun...
...drug runner's Cigarette...
...embassy stands a bell given to the city of Singapore by Paul Revere's daughter...
...When I was in the American Army I had an M-3 .45 caliber sub in my tank...
...Navy security concerns in southeast Asia first tipped me to the aircraft carrier scenario...
...No, Colter isn't his real name, but it should be...
...That is the message...
...I ask...
...Object and you face personal violence...
...Singapore's done a superb job, as good as the U.S...
...New York Times Sunday travel section readers know where Bali is...
...We're an island World Trade Center," Kesavapany adds, as his driver turns the corner to drop me off at my hotel...
...Arrests and convictions of terrorists are a measure of success, and by that measure Singapore has an extraordinary track record for busting terror cells...
...I know about the can-ings (a punishment dating from British colonial days...
...I salute him, then head down the sidewalk to the street, a stretch of concrete that's as much a front line in this strange world war as Wall Street, or the Pentagon, or a minefield in southern Iraq...
...A December 2000 terror attack on the Manila metro sent shock waves through the region...
...That blast was an economic shot at Indonesia...
...America has joined our war...
...I don't say this to insult...
...Then you go find open sources who can confirm chatter," Chang says...
...ally...
...Megalo-maniacal...
...JI hatched plans to attack Singapore's international airport...
...We are in his chauffeured car, driving down Napier Road, a toney, tree-shaded boulevard where the U.S., British, and Australian embassies line up like well-fenced bunkers...
...The short version of JI's "education program" is that terrorist cash muscles out public and moderate Muslim educators in Malaysian villages...
...embassy cased as a target...
...Then I said, "Sink a super carrier...
...After 9/11 only the willfully blind can dismiss the motivating power of such an imperial eschatology...
...Object and you face personal violence...
...I can say Chang has worked with a sophisticated group of intelligence officers and cops, drawing on assets from Malaysia, the United States, and Singapore's Internal Security Department (ISD...
...Al-Ghozi was identified as one of two al Qaeda terror experts who advised the Singapore cell...
...JI has large plans for the whole of Southeast Asia, plans dating from well before 9/11...
...The armor...
...All three, as well as the Israeli embassy, had made JI's target list...
...Navy damage control...
...But we know there could still be an incident...
...It's our second meeting...
...Subways are another choice target...
...Just 60 miles above the Equator—astride the main sea lane between the Indian and Pacific Oceans—Singapore's location is still its raison d'etre...
...A Taiwanese businessman told me about his company's concerns with the safety of shipping containers moving through the Strait...
...Or, rather, it becomes dreams of bombing campaigns...
...His novel The Wrong Side of Brightness will be published this spring by Putnam/Berkley Books...
...I know the government arranges dates for men and women with college degrees because it worries about eugenics and about population decline...
...sequently arrested in the Philippines in connection with planned attacks...
...Not now," he replies...
...Indonesian Islamic militants were implicated in that attack...
...Can you prove that...
...Filipino and other intelligence services had already developed dossiers linking JI to the Philippines' Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF...
...Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation...
...Navy ship is a prime target...
...Drawing on cadres schooled in past radical political movements that used Islam as both a wedge issue and a rallying cause, JI seeks to establish a grand "Islamic state" stretching from southern Thailand through Malaysia, the Philippine and Indonesian archipelagoes, and Australia...
...I ask for his definition of a moderate Muslim...
...Today supertankers nose through the Strait of Malacca, connecting Middle Eastern oil fields to Asia's economic tigers...
...I tell him I'm just a reservist...
...Fanciful...
...What I am trying to say to you, from my experience, is that American vessels and foreign embassies are not necessarily their only targets, Colonel...
Vol. 8 • March 2003 • No. 24
