Heed the Voice of Asia in Peace Talks

JAKARTA - AS ISRAELI bombs rain on Lebanon and Hizbollah's rockets fall on Israel, and no major power seems to have the will or the ability to stop the carnage, far, far away in South-east Asia, anger and outrage are building a new base for terrorist activity that will threaten the lives of innocent people with no connection to the present Middle East conflict.

A week into the Israeli assault on south Lebanon and Beirut, about 70 Indonesians declared that they, together with more than a hundred other citizens from countries such as Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Brunei and Singapore (including, they claim, some non-Muslims) were forming a group called Jihad Bombers for Palestine to attack Israel's vital interests wherever they might be.

Declarations such as this one, as well as the mounting anger of ordinary citizens who have marched in their thousands in Indonesia and Malaysia, suggest that it is no longer possible to isolate the conflict in the Middle East.

If there were doubts about the extent to which the war against terror is truly global, then consider the wider impact of websites that show Israeli children writing messages on artillery shells aimed at southern Lebanon, or the daily footage of carnage inflicted by Israel on the suburbs of Beirut - all shown on Al-Jazeera TV, now beaming in the English language and to Asian audiences.

Indonesian counter-terrorism officials say they are worried that the Israeli attack on Lebanon and ongoing action in the Gaza Strip, which has killed hundreds of civilians, will help revive terrorist organisations such as Jemaah Islamiah (JI).

Jane's Foreign Report, a respected British security monitoring agency, reported earlier this month that an attack by JI this year is 'a real possibility', with tourists and non-Indonesians again the likely target.

Indonesia had made great strides towards tracking down and stamping out the militant minority behind lethal bombings in Bali and Jakarta these past three years. Public anger with the terrorists and disenchantment with radical Islam was a significant help to the authorities.

But now ordinary Indonesian Muslims are angry again. Their sympathies lie with Hizbollah and Hamas and they would like to see Israel and its Western supporters punished.

'The Arab states must rise and stop sitting silent when their neighbours are being annihilated,' said a protester, who joined more than 6,000 others during a recent rally in Jakarta sponsored by the Muslim-oriented Prosperous Justice Party. And a poster carried in a protest march in the South Sulawesi provincial capital of Makassar read 'Jihad and Caliphate are the solution to Palestine'.

Sentiments like these suggest that a brief revival of pro-Western sentiment in the wake of the massive relief operation after the Indian Ocean tsunami hit Aceh in December 2004 is likely to fade. Noticeably, local media in Indonesia played up the fact that it was a US$2 million (S$3.2 billion) donation from Saudi Arabia that enabled the United Nations to feed survivors of this year's earthquake in central Java.

Given the plethora of crises Washington now has to deal with, it seems unlikely that there will be much attention paid to the impact of wider Muslim anger in South-east Asia, even though it could fuel more terrorist bombings and the targeting of foreigners.

A more prudent approach would be for Washington and Europe to pay attention to the pleas of South-east Asian Muslim governments which are calling for a cessation of hostilities in the Middle East and offering troops as part of a UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon.

Giving legitimate and popular Muslim leaders such as President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia and Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi a seat at the table to discuss how to end the conflict in the Middle East could go a considerable way to appeasing Muslim anger in the street.

It would certainly mitigate feelings of angry impotence and may even persuade militant elements that dialogue rather than bombs and missiles can help relieve the suffering of countless Palestinians and Lebanese civilians - not to mention innocent Israeli citizens.

At a recent discussion in Jordan, a group of concerned European and Arab officials and experts agreed on the need for a more inclusive approach to resolving the Middle East conflict, one that encouraged more Asian involvement in light of the fact that this is where the majority of Muslims live.

Now that the conflict in Lebanon is being painted as a wider struggle between forces of moderation and militancy, the logic of this more inclusive approach is even more compelling.