Asian Transformations in Action - Api-fellowships.org

158 REFIGURATION OF IDENTITIES AND FUTURES IN TIMES OF TRANSFORMATIONThe greed/economic issueA terrorism expert, Gunaratna, maintains that “moneyis the terrorist’s lifeblood” (Time Asia 2003). This is notan exaggeration in the JI and ASG cases of Indonesiaand the Philippines, respectively, as Table 2 shows.Some of JI’s funds mentioned in the table below may beoverlapping while others are untraceable. However, it isclear that huge amounts of money were funneled by alQaeda to JI. With such flows of money, Time Asia (2003)argues that Al Qaeda was subcontracting its “projects”to JI. To raise more funds, JI also carried out in-countryfundraising activities through robberies, as seen in Table2. In total, regional intelligence officials estimatedthat “at one point in 2002 Hambali had as much asUSD500,000” (Time Asia 2003). The “business” sizeof JI was, however, outnumbered by that of the ASG.While JI ran a hundred thousand dollar “business,” theASG ran a multi-million dollar “business,” drawingfrom foreign sources (e.g., Al Qaeda), kidnappings, drugtrafficking, extortion, blackmail and taxing peasants,fishermen, coconut growers, businessmen and teachers(Ressa 2003; Bale 2003).A Filipino journalist maintained that “the Abu Sayyafbegan making money from everyone—starting withjournalists. I saw the learning curve and the greed ofthe Abu Sayyaf grow” (Ressa 2003, 113). One defectorfrom the ASG, Ahmad Sampang (a pseudonym),maintained that during its formative years, the ASGreceived a great deal of support from foreign sources.“Even our uniforms came from abroad. We were evenissued bulletproof vests,” said Sampang. He admittedthat in the past the ASG members kidnapped peoplebecause they did not have enough money to buy arms,bullets and food. Realising that the group’s orientationlater changed, Sampang left the ASG. He said, “I leftbecause the group lost its original reason for being. Theactivities were…for personal gratification. We abductedpeople…for money” (in Torres Jr. 2001, 41). He left theASG in December 1998; thus, he recognized this changein orientation before a series of high profile kidnappingsin 2000-2001. An American woman, Gracia Burnham,who was kidnapped on May 27, 2001 and spent morethan a year in the ASG’s hands, observed that “thebottom line was money” in the ASG kidnappings (inRessa 2003, 111; see also Burnham 2003).In the Thai case, there are only intelligence reportsmentioning that “the southern Thailand insurgentsare being funded by the Saudi Arabia-based Islamicfundamentalist Wahhabi movement.” (World PoliticsWatch 2007) Another report says an association ofThai students in Indonesia (PMPIT) “takes care ofthe finances of the insurgency” through its fundraisingactivities overseas (Bangkok Post 2007). However, thereis no hard evidence on the exact amount of moneyused to finance the terror attacks. What is clear, byassessing their use of cars and motorcycles as bombcarriers, their constant supply of explosives, weapons,and bullets, and the commando-style training coursesthey have received in the jungle and plantations, is thatthey certainly need funds. In one case, a professionalbomb maker confessed that he had been chargingthe militants THB2,000-5,000 per bomb from 2004until his capture in July 2007 (The Strait Times 2007).The availability of funds can also be inferred from thestatement of Patani United Liberation Organization(PULO) leaders (in Malaysia and Sweden) who offereda bounty of THB90,000 (USD2,250) to those whokilled any governors or prominent officials of Pattani,Yala and Naratiwat (Gunaratna, Acharya and Chua2005, 83). In addition, BRN-C has five units, and oneof them is the economic and financial affairs unit whosemain task is to collect and manage funds.In short, money plays an important role for the ASG andJI in carrying out their operations. It is not exaggeratingto say that money is the lifeblood for their activities.The difference is that while the ASG wrapped theirsilent force of greed within the discourse of grievance,JI seemed to use the money for its operations and forthe costs of its members’ personal living. In the Thaicase, it is certain that they need funds to finance theiroperations. Whether the funds are also used for livingcosts are unclear.Disrupting the financial networks of terror financing isthe responsibility of the state. If the perpetrators of theviolence are full-time “workers” in resorting to violence,it is also the state’s responsibility to bring jobs, and it isthe responsibility of civil society to carry out economicempowerment to ensure that local people do not needto rely on terror “projects” to cover their living costs.Beyond greed and grievance: The ideology of violenceWhen the field coordinator of the Bali Bombing I,Imam Samudra, mentioned that JI employed suicidebombers, no one believed his statement as it had neverhappened before. As time passed, it was clear from theforensic evidence that the bombings were carried outby two suicide bombers. This announcement shockedmany government officials, analysts, observers, expertsand religious leaders. Later, suicide bombings inIndonesia turned into something usual, as seen in thefollowing table.Asian Transformations in ActionThe Work of the 2006/2007 API Fellows