Jihadists Assemble: The Rise of Militant Islamism in Southeast Asia

Abstract

Following the attacks of September 11, 2001 in the United States and the Bali bombings in Indonesia the following year, Southeast Asia came under scrutiny for its role in the rise of militant Islamism. Generally, scholarship on militant Islamism in Southeast Asia branched into two approaches: terrorism experts tended to see the problem through the prism of al- Qaeda, with Southeast Asian jihadists following orders from their leaders outside the region; Indonesia specialists, meanwhile, countered this al-Qaeda-centric approach by emphasising the local Indonesian factors driving Southeast Asian jihadism. In this thesis, by contrast, I focus on the regional scale. I find that Southeast Asia, for a time, emerged as one of the most important places in the world for the mobilization of global jihadist attacks against the West due to a historical and geographical process unique to the region. Drawing on the emerging field of assemblage theory, I argue that over time a regional jihadist assemblage formed in Southeast Asia—a cross-border constellation of networks, groups, and material elements—and that it was the mobilization opportunities presented by this assemblage that made Southeast Asia so attractive to global jihadists. Analysing a wealth of original interview and documentary material, I trace the gradual development of this regional assemblage over time and space, from its origins in the cycles of conflict between jihadists and the state in Indonesia in the late 1940s to the crucial role played by Southeast Asians in the attacks of 9/11. Show more