Introduction Security in southern Thailand has been brought into sharp focus during the past five months as armed attacks have swept across the four Malay Muslim provinces of Pattani Narithiwat, Yala and Satun. In January, Islamic radicals carried out a series of near simultaneous attacks... MORE

Australia is bracing itself for a possible repeat performance of the March bomb attacks on a Madrid train, which killed over 200. The conditions are closely similar, with an imminent election where the principal opposition party, in a move considered ‘dangerous' by President Bush, has... MORE

The largest Islamist insurgency group in the Philippines, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), has issued strict instructions to its members not to link up with any members of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) who may be entering the southern island of Mindanao in order to... MORE

The prediction concerning the potential targeting of Australia, made in the last edition of Terrorism Focus, duly came to pass. It came in the form of two incidents within a few days of each other, one an attack on the Australian embassy in Jakarta, the... MORE

Indications of a long-term plan to keep the Southeast Asia region boiling come from Indonesian police reports of two developments: the hunt for Malaysian bomb maker Azahari Husin and Noordin Mohammed Top, and the investigation of video recordings seized from Indonesian Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) militants.... MORE

The pace of Islamist insurgent activity in southern Thailand has stepped up to the point of near constant violence over the past two weeks. In the first week of October, Muslim extremists mounted a series of 10 shootings and bombings that left six dead. Most... MORE

In October of 2003 Japan received its first overt threat from al Qaeda. A videotape was released on which Osama Bin Laden purportedly promised suicide attacks against the United States and those countries supporting the American occupation of Iraq. That list includes Australia, Great Britain,... MORE

In the case of East Asia, some countries -- like China -- have been skilled at adapting the war on terror to their own national security priorities. For others -- such as Indonesia and Japan -- the specter of transnational terrorism as represented by al... MORE

A ‘warning to the Korean Government' was posted on an Arabic-language site al-Muntada on October 10, threatening to ‘make Korea suffer' if Korean troops were not pulled out from Iraq within 14 days. The declaration, published by the Korean Chosun Ilbo newspaper, was made by... MORE

The pace of violence in southern Thailand continues to rise, and is fast taking on the appearance of a prototype to a full-blown insurgency. The rate of killing accelerated markedly last April when over 100 Islamist militants were killed by security forces. Earlier this month... MORE