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[Beginning with our next
issue, AFPC Fellow in Asia Studies Joshua Eisenman will return to
the helm of the Asia Security Monitor.]
March 15:
Malaysia’s March 8th national elections have dealt a serious blow to
the country’s ruling National Front coalition. The bloc, dominated
by ethnic Malays, controls roughly 60 percent of parliament’s seats
following the vote – down from 90 percent following the previous
polls. Moreover, opposition parties won control of some of
Malaysia’s largest and wealthiest states – five in all – for the
first time since independence,
writes the New York Times. The unprecedented setback for
Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi’s coalition has been attributed to a
spreading backlash against state-mandated favoritism toward ethnic
Malays, who constitute only half of the country’s population. Ethnic
Chinese and Indians, together accounting for a third of the
population, are increasingly frustrated with the country’s
35-year-old affirmative action program, which “gives Malays benefits
like discounts on new houses and 30 percent quotas in companies’
initial public offerings.”
March 16:
Pakistan has expelled three Saudi nationals “illegally staying in
troubled areas,” according to the Saudi Interior Ministry.
Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports that at least two of the three
were said to have contacted the Saudi Embassy in Pakistan in an
attempt to turn themselves in, but authorities did not elaborate on
the charges. Pakistan’s tribal areas have long been a destination
for aspiring jihadists worldwide – particularly Saudis, who first
popularized the voyage to South Asia in the 1980s during the
Soviet-Afghan war.
March 23:
Now in its 40th month, the insurgency plaguing Thailand's majority
Muslim south shows no signs of abating.
The Bangkok Post, citing law enforcement sources, reports
that the poorly contained violence has claimed some 3,000 (mostly
civilian) casualties since being reignited by Islamic extremists in
January 2004. Thai officials, meanwhile, have made little headway in
their quest for a solution; Chalerm Yubamrung, Thailand's Interior
Minister, has admitted that he has "no idea" how to curb the ongoing
ethno-religious unrest.
Terror Free Tomorrow (TFT), an international polling firm, has
released
a stunning opinion survey conducted in Pakistan in
mid-January. The results, culled from 1,157 face-to-face interviews
in the run-up to that country’s February elections, showed a
“dramatic reversal” in opinions of bin Laden, al-Qaeda and the
Taliban from only a few months ago. Support for bin Laden was cut in
half – from 46 to 24 percent – while al-Qaeda and the Taliban fared
little better, both dropping from the mid-30s to the teens.
Meanwhile, only one percent of the Pakistanis polled said they would
have voted for al-Qaeda had it been on the ballot in the February
poll.
Most striking, however, is the evaporation of support for bin Laden
in the Northwest Frontier Province, considered the Pakistani state
most friendly to the Taliban. In TFT’s last poll, bin Laden garnered
support from more than 2/3rds of respondents. This time, only four
percent of the population approved of the terror leader. |
