With the delivery of Australia’s latest defense White Paper last week, the necessity of a long haul and regional capacity building commitment to counter-terrorism was apparent.
Unquestionably, the Southeast Asia threat scenario is informed by global considerations. With the re-emergence of violent extremism since June 2014 and a realization of the consequences of the Iraq and Afghanistan drawdowns, attention has been drawn to the instability in the Middle East, North Africa, the Sahel, and tragically once again, Afghanistan.
In Iraq and Syria, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has argued for the pursuit of political solutions coupled with support for local ground forces aided by Coalition air strikes, training, and weapons, together with the disruption of both fighter and financial flows. In doing so, Australia’s deployment centers around 780 personnel in the Special Forces, Air Task, and Building Partner Capacity groups as coordinated with the Iraqi government and Gulf states. Motivated by the globalized threat posed by ISIS and al Qaeda, Australian involvement has also been prompted by its previous deployment in Iraq and its ongoing prioritization of its U.S. alliance responsibilities.
However, while the Coalition attempts to shape the global environment, it is the prospective ISIS, al Qaeda, and their associates’ transfer of threat directly to Australia and the immediate Southeast Asian (SEA) region that is increasing trepidation in Australia. The flows of foreign fighters between 2011-15 from Australia to the conflict in Syria and Iraq now numbers over 120. Deeply concerning to Australia is not only the prospect that they may return to Australia armed with war fighting experience, but that a similar, and more substantial story, is being played out in SEA. Already, one of Australia’s intelligence agencies, ASIO, has dealt with an increase of 200 to 400 higher priority CT case investigations in the last year and has advised the government to raise the terrorism alert level from medium to high.
Here, the test for Australia is to vitiate both the extremist ideology and its recruitment tactics that currently operate in a permissive and flourishing e-environment, and to do so in conjunction with its partners in Asia. It is a test made more complex by the fact that these are long term strategies the government is implementing while simultaneously attempting to strengthen civil society, promote its liberal democratic values, and implement its legislative framework for increased prevention.
So, while Southeast Asia might be a second front for the U.S., it is the immediate arena for Australia. As the Malaysian Chair of the 2015 ASEAN Summit acknowledged, there exists a “growing threat of radicalization and violent extremism, and the real and present danger it poses to our region.” Given that and the asylum seeker flows that are associated with conflict zones, Australia has worked to develop its regional institutional arrangements to further its CT approach. It is the co-chair with Singapore of the ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting (ADMM+) Counter Terrorism Experts’ Working Group. And the White Paper makes mention of specific CT initiatives with Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, The Philippines, and Vietnam. To date, the Jakarta Centre for Law Enforcement Cooperation, operated by the Indonesian national police and Australian Federal Police, has trained over 17,000 law enforcement officers in CT investigation and enforcement, including in financial and social media policing.
That said, it is also a region where Australia continually needs to work on its relationships. Australia’s recent rocky public diplomacy with Indonesia has underplayed its more successful joint CT capacity building efforts. To complicate matters further, regional diplomacy is increasingly sensitive to the state based power shifts currently taking place as China and India re-emerge as regional power houses.
As Australia commits to spend two-percent of GDP on its defence budget by 2021 and investing an additional $21.3 billion on defence by 2025-26, the Defence White Paper’s focus on ‘rules-based order’ incorporates both the complexities of counter-terrorism and its attention to regional state based tensions, particularly in the maritime sector. The government’s upgraded intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and analytical capabilities serve both agendas. Still these outlays are not enormous, and it might just be that for Australia, with its limited capacity, has its most effective global counter-terrorism role in SEA regional cooperation and functional capacity building.
