Pinay author tracks bin Laden influence in Southeast Asia

Maria Ressa is the author of "Seeds of Terror: An Eyewitness Account of Al-Qaeda's Newest Center of Operations in Southeast Asia" and former CNN Jakarta Bureau Chief. She is currently working on her second book on terrorism as the Author-in-Residence at the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in Singapore. Howie Severino sent her questions via email. Howie Severino: When you were doing your research for "Seeds of Terror," did you expect the US to take this long to track down Osama bin Laden? Maria Ressa: At the beginning, no. The fact that he evaded arrest for nearly a decade showed the strength of his terror network. HS: How much power did bin Laden wield when he was killed? MR: Al-Qaeda's strength has been greatly diminished in the past few years, and bin Laden had effectively been isolated. He didn't use telephones nor satellite phones so any communication had to be done through a human courier. Many intelligence sources say he had become nothing more than a figurehead and a symbolic rallying call for the jihadi movement he inspired. HS: Did he have much influence over Al-Qaeda-affiliated groups in Asia? MR: Yes, but more as an inspirational figure. His real power peaked soon after the 9/11 attacks, which triggered a massive global manhunt which diminished his power. I think we have to distinguish between Al-Qaeda the group (which has been greatly degraded by the arrests of hundreds of members, curtailing its ability to carry out large scale attacks) and Al-Qaeda the movement, which continues to inspire associated groups like Lashkar-e-Toiba (Pakistani group which carried out the Mumbai attacks), Jemaah Islamiyah (Southeast Asian arm which has cells continuing terror plots and attacks), and other jihadi groups around the world. They were radicalized to attack both the "near enemy" - their governments - and the "far enemy" - the United States. HS: How much interest did bin Laden take in our part of the world? MR: Quite a lot of interest as it turns out. My first book, Seeds of Terror: An Eyewitness Account of Al-Qaeda's Newest Center of Operations in Southeast Asia, shows what Al-Qaeda and bin Laden did in our region - reaching back to 1988, training the Abu Sayyaf group, sending Muslim fighters to Afghanistan and the terror plots it funded and carried out with Jemaah Islamiyah beginning in 2000. Most recently, a lot of what I wrote was verified by WikiLeaks' release of US classified documents that show the links between the architect of 9/11, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, dubbed "Al-Qaeda's Chief of Military Operations" and Jemaah Islamiyah's operations chief, Indonesian Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali. These three revelations (some of which I wrote about in Seeds) show the important role JI played in the Al-Qaeda network: a parallel 9/11 plot, another 9/11 style attack, and a chem-bio initiative. * In the early stages of planning for 9/11, the documents say there was a "Manila portion" that was a version of the foiled plot in the mid-90's. Using Yemeni and Saudi suicide bombers, they would hijack U.S. planes flying from Southeast Asian cities and detonate their explosives mid-air (a smaller version of the Bojinka plot). According to several of the documents, bin Laden cancelled that part of the plan mid-2000. * There as a second 9/11 style attack planned for 2002 involving Al-Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui and JI members who swore allegiance to bin Laden. The "West Coast Airliners Plot" was to be carried out by Moussaoui and at least four Malaysian suicide bombers who were told to hijack planes using two separate shoe bombs with one plane to be flown into "the tallest building in California," the Liberty Tower. * An Al-Qaeda chemical and biological weapons program was headed by US-educated Yazid Sufaat, a Malaysian JI member brought into Al-Qaeda by Hambali. Intelligence documents from the Philippines showed a plan to move this group to Southeast Asia. HS: How will his death now affect armed Islamic groups in Asia? MR: It's a moral victory for the US and its allies, many of whom have already placed embassies and its citizens on heightened alert. Many warn of possible retaliatory attacks. That's in the near-term. In the long-term, it will have no major impact on the terror network that has already moved beyond him and Al-Qaeda. HS:The PHL armed forces through its spokesman said that this will weaken the Abu Sayyaf. Would you agree? MR: No, bin Laden had become so isolated in the past few years that he had little to do with operational details. According to intelligence documents I've seen, ASG continues to communicate with Al-Qaeda linked groups and ask for funding and help with terror plots. HS: Do you think the spreading unrest in the Middle East favors or further marginalizes Al-Qaeda? MR: What we've seen in the Philippines and Indonesia is that democracy tends to give radical groups room to maneuver and grow. They can exploit the confusion. That's in the short term. HS: I understand you're working on another book on terrorism. Care to reveal any themes and highlights? Like Seeds, I look at what motivates ordinary people to become terrorists and suicide bombers in a very moderate region - Southeast Asia. What's happened since 9/11? How has the jihadi virus spread and how has the network evolved? It's a social network analysis using some of what I've learned in running campaigns for a major television network. Recent studies have shown that we, essentially, are the company we keep. Social networks tend to spread the ideas and emotions they're seeded with. That's my framework for analysis. HS: Why the continued fascination with the subject? MR: From 1998 till the discovery of Jemaah Islamiyah, I spent my life travelling from city to city, country to country, reporting on scenes of violence: Ambon, Indonesia, where nearly 10,000 people were killed; bombing after bombing - the Philippine ambassador's house in Jakarta in Aug 2000, the church bombings in Indonesia in 2000 followed 6 days later by five bombings in the Philippines (Rizal Day bombing,etc)... so many more. For a while, I got disillusioned because I wanted to know why people were killing each other. It turns out these conflicts were being exploited by Al-Qaeda, working through Jemaah Islamiyah. I was one of the first people to put the strands together, largely because I was travelling so much with CNN. I had the honor to work closely with members of intelligence agencies from more than half a dozen nations as they were trying to make sense of what was happening. Still, even then, the plan to create an Islamic Caliphate was unbelievable when I first heard it - the same way that I thought the 1995 plot to hijack planes and crash them into buildings was absurd. Until I saw it come true six years later. The jihadi virus infects and works with a much longer timetable than politicians who often tend to think about the 4-6 year cycle of elections. Now there's the added challenge of the internet, which further spreads the message. Countering this virulent ideology to stop the spread of the jihadi virus is the challenge today. - GMA News