Al-Qaeda could be making a move back into South-East Asia, prompting a re-emergence of terrorism in the region.
Respected experts on terrorism in the region Sidney Jones, from the International Crisis Group, and Greg Fealey, from the Australian National University, also warned yesterday that authorities needed to focus less on organisations such as Jemaah Islamiyah and more on informal networks trying to ''keep the jihadist flame flickering''.
They said the terrorism threat had declined, particularly in Indonesia, largely because Jemaah Islamiyah was moving away from using mass bombings, but it still remained.
Ms Jones, speaking at the Safeguarding Australia summit in Canberra, said South-East Asia had been blessed in recent years by a lack of attention from ''al-Qaeda central'', but there were reports about a Jakarta-based man known as ''Jafar the Algerian''.
''It looks like this man had direct links to one of the al-Qaeda affiliates in Algeria, which is the first real indication that we have of direct contact with any al-Qaeda personalities from mainstream JI since 2003 ... if we are seeing a return to an establishment of contact in the region it is not good news,'' she said.
Ms Jones said Jemaah Islamiyah was no longer a regional organisation, although there were dangerous splinter groups, such as the one led by bomb-maker Noordin Mohammed Top, thought to be behind the two Bali bombings. ''Despite the very clear rifts and fissures within JI [it] does remain a danger, because it has the potential to produce a younger militant version, particularly with some of the regeneration that is taking place in JI schools,'' she said.
Dr Fealey said authorities' focus should move away from formal organisations and towards networks of people.
''These networks of people can be based around economic activity, around education, around religious activity, around mosque groups this is a way that people can keep the jihadist flame flickering. Even if an organisation like JI is disrupted or groups like Noordin Mohammed Top's disintegrates, these kind of groups ... can go underground for years on end and can re-emerge when conducive conditions return,'' he said.
Ms Jones said understanding these networks, and how people crossed organisational lines, was crucial. ''One of the key groups in that category is the group I would call the 'nothing to lose' category, who face very serious sentences if they were arrested,'' she said.''We also need to take into account that a critical element in whether or not South-East Asian terrorist threat evolves dramatically is going to be whether or not a new international centre for training re-emerges, the way we had with Afghanistan in the '80s and '90s,'' she said.
ANU visiting fellow Kit Collier said camps in the southern Philippines had likely already produced more jihadists than the about 300 trained in Afghanistan.
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