Paris Attacks Put Focus on Southeast Asia’s Terrorism Fight

Bloomberg

17 November 2015

As global leaders arrive in Asia for a series of summits, pressure is increasing on Southeast Asian nations to cooperate more to combat terrorism — including by sharing information on financing — after the deadly Islamic State attacks in Paris.

With Group of 20 leaders pledging in Turkey to coordinate more to cut off money flows to terrorist groups, heads of Southeast Asian nations meeting in the Philippines and then Malaysia face renewed scrutiny of the threat posed by local fighters returning from the battlefields of Syria and Iraq, alongside home-grown radicalism.

Joining the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Manila is U.S. President Barack Obama, who declared Islamic State “the face of evil” after at least 129 people were killed in a series of attacks in the French capital. The ambushes were “planned in Syria, organized in Belgium, and carried out in France,” French President Francois Hollande said, highlighting the need for cross-border approaches to countering militarism.

“Southeast Asian governments should reflect deeply on what happened in Paris and understand there’s a new threat landscape emerging in Southeast Asia,” said Rohan Gunaratna, head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in Singapore. “There needs to be a shift from rhetoric into action. There needs to an understanding that there should be a common framework for fighting terrorism in Asean,” he said, referring to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

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Last updated on 18/11/2015