The eyes of the United States are increasingly focused on Muslim Mindanao which could be a vital cog to America’s ability to build on the peace and stability of the Southeast Asian region.
 
“Recent developments have highlighted the difficulty and importance of achieving a lasting peace in Mindanao,” Scot Marciel, America’s top envoy to the Southeast Asian region told a forum here last week.
 
Marciel is Deputy Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. He is also US Ambassador to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). His remarks were given before a conference of the Center for Strategic International Studies that explored US-Southeast Asia relations.
 
“The ASEAN region is of crucial importance to the United States,” he stressed.
 
He said the US has two primary interests in the region - for Southeast Asian nations to remain strong, stable, free and prosperous; and for them to remain “good partners” in regional and global issues ranging from addressing climate change to containing the threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
 
He cited ASEAN’s role in convincing Burma’s junta to accept much-needed international aid after a devastating cyclone and the contribution of various Southeast Asian countries, including the Philippines, to peacekeeping operations around the world.
 
US economic and military assistance to Southeast Asia grew from $534 million in 2007 to $668 million this year. ASEAN groups original members Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei and the Philippines, and additions Burma, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia. They have a combined population of over 575 million and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of more than $3.4 trillion.
 
 Focus on terrorism and trans-border militant threats
 
Marciel points out the Philippines and Thailand are the only two Southeast Asian countries that have mutual defense pacts with the US.
 
“The Philippines,” Marciel noted, “has improved its economic performance and made substantial progress fighting terrorists who threaten it.”
 
“The US has supported this counter-terror work but first and foremost this is a Philippine effort,” he stressed.
 
“The southern Philippines currently constitutes a main focus of US concern regarding terrorism and trans-border militant threats, with American diplomats darkly referring to the region as the ‘new Afghanistan’,” Dr. Peter Chalk wrote in the “CTC Sentinel” - a publication of the Combating Terrorism Center based at the US Military Academy in West Point, New York.
 
With an area of nearly 95,000 square kilometers, it is bigger than the Netherlands, Ireland or neighboring Taiwan. But US attention is concentrated on the island’s western provinces, particularly the Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). Sulu, Basilan and parts of Central Mindanao have been cradles of Islamic extremism in the country.
 
“The thrust of foreign military assistance to Manila has been directed toward vitiating the operational tempo of the Abu Sayyaf Group - an effort that has met with some relatively significant results,” Dr. Chalk averred.
 
“The US clearly views the ASG as posing a direct threat to a highly important ally in Southeast Asia,” he said.
 
However, he also suggested there may be higher strategic stakes for the US. The Arroyo administration, he said, “constitutes one of the most ardent supporters of President Bush’s global war on terrorism that…remains crucial to legitimating US basing options in the wider Asia-Pacific.”