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The New Al-Qaeda
September 5, 2006
Peter Taylor is a leading terrorist expert and an award-winning reporter who has interviewed key figures on both sides of the terrorism battle.
He will be presenting an upcoming documentary series called “The New Al-Qaeda” this month on The Discovery Channel.
He joins us in Undertones this week as we take a look at the new Al-Qaeda which the terror-stricken world must deal with as the fifth anniversary of 9/11 approaches.
Welcome to the program, I’m Justin Teo.
PT: I think the biggest change in the past five years in the way Al-Qaeda operates is the way they communicate. They now use the Internet not just to communicate amongst themselves using email but also use the Internet to radicalize, recruit, propagandize and raise money. That’s the tool which the Internet is used by Al-Qaeda and its affiliates. You must remember that Al-Qaeda isn’t a centralized organization with a specific structure. It’s very much a movement which many extremist groups out there subscribe.
Peter Taylor has been investigating the anti-terrorism strategies from Southeast Asian countries in the past few months.
He tells us some of these methods that could prove useful elsewhere around the world.
PT: The thing about Southeast Asia is that for a long time, it was the training ground for jihardist from all over the world, including one senior jihardist from the United Kingdom. So the region is important from the perspective that it is where many international extremists as well as local ones go to for training, be it Jemaah Islamiah or Abu Sayaff. I’ve been looking at the way authorities in Indonesia and the Philippines have been tackling the problem rather successfully. What they have tried to do is to try and persuade the terrorists to change sides and to try and persuade former comrades to change sides or to provide information on activities. Another successful move was to apply the right military pressure as in the case of the Philippines where the MILF and the government has a peace deal which also provides the authorities with relevant information on Aby Sayaff and other extremist groups there. So Southeast Asia does play a vital role in what President Bush calls the war on terror. That’s the significance of Southeast Asia in this whole picture.
Some observers have said that the media has perpetuated the attractiveness of terrorism by giving extremists a global voice through the media.
How true is this?
PT: Terrorism gives the media acres of newsprint, big headlines like we’ve been seeing for the past few weeks because many airports in Asia are transit points for the UK, Europe and America. The phrase Al-Qaeda tends to dominate the headlines because that’s the phrase which people tend to associate terrorism with. I think the danger is that some media coverage is done without the necessary perspective or without the necessary understanding or contextualization. And the media of course is fed these stories by the intelligence services. The media has to make up its own mind on what the correct emphasis is. I think in terms of the alert last week, the alert was probably right. The events were serious and I think the media has to do its own analysis of what has been told and conduct their own analysis of the context in which things happen.
That was terrorism expert Peter Taylor.
Join him in “The New Al-Qaeda” documentary series which airs on The Discovery Channel this month beginning on September 11th.
I’m Justin Teo and this has been Undertones.
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