Analysing The Terrorism In Southeast Asia Tourism Essay

Traveling has always been part of people’s lives for many centuries, in the olden days people used to travel for religious purposes, cultural, or just to explore the world out there. Frankly, tourism is defined as travelling from one place to another place or from one country to another whether it is for leisure purposes, business purposes, or other purposes. Tourism is considered as one of the fast and largest in growing, as well as industries of generating jobs around the world. Crisis and conflicts are parts of our daily lives as it always will and always have been, hence the importance of the country’s economic affected by terrorism events to a country’s tourism is undeniable, which will as well impacts the country’s political and social issues as well. For most developing countries around the world, tourism is a critical source that generates revenue and hence an important component that plays a major role in political, economical, and social development, a strong tie of relationship that assist in rewarding the country if there is positive condition exist on global economy. As Malaysia is one of the Southeast Asian countries, according to research the Malaysian Tourism Minister, Datuk Seri Ng Yen Yen stated that even though the year of 2009 is a year that Malaysia had its hard times, but it seemed that it was a good year for Malaysian tourism industry, contribution of RM1bil per week to the economy of the country by the industry of the Tourism Malaysia in the year of 2009, providing as well as generating employment to more than a million Malaysians making Malaysia ranks the ninth most travelled destination around the world by the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO). However what if there is a negative condition exist in Southeast Asia region which will affect countries inside that region, for example such as terrorism events orccured in the country or neighboring countries. (www.news.malaysia.msn.com)

Terrorism is defined as political violence-based crisis express a kind of chaos that aims physically to destroy people whom are unprotected, while claiming themselves that they have an ideological viewpoint, simply saying terrorists are political in their aims, and they usually threaten to use violence or resort to forceful acts, their actions are usually designed, for it is beyond the immediate target of their psychological reprecussions, they are normally governed by an organization from a chain of command, which that is why they were designated as “terrorism” from what they have done. Terrorism events are unpredictable as these events would take place at anytime and anywhere. The effects of terrorism to a country’s economy might be terrifying, this is due to the cause of high decrease in the number of tourists that has potential in generating resources to the country as well a decrease in tourism income that will endanger a collapse in the local travel and tourism industry which affects and brings interruption in the tourism sectoral activities. Other than that, this impact may also lead to deflation, mass unemployment from the area that had been terrorized and people working there have to make pause in their work or be unemployed unless there is another possible job vacancy for them , homelessness where civilians staying nearby the terrorized area where they call it home might be requested to transferred from that area to another safe shelter, crime might rise as well when they country’s security is unbalance and uncontrollable, business break down and other social and economic ills.

One of the areas in Asia that is fast in becoming the hot spot of terrorism acts which is the region of Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia consist of 17 countries which includes Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Burma (Myanmar), Laos, Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand. This is due to the very high incidence of growing and increasing piracy threat from terrorism around the area of Southeast Asia, where this is the regional area that attracts most prone on acts of piracy whereby accounting on all piracy attacks for around 50 percent worldwide. This terrorism events are aggravated by indigenous groups of terrorist in strong maritime traditions, and this terrorism acts and piracy has made Southeast Asia a concern in regional security. There are three terrorist groups that usually strikes Southeast Asia regions which has the proven capability and intentions to exercise maritime terrorism, which is The Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) and the Gerakan Aceh Merdeka (GAM), and Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) is the best known in its terrorism acts because of its organizational structure, how they operate their strategy, membership and how they imply for maritime security in Southeast Asia. (Maritime Terrorism In Southeast Asia, Rommel C.Banlaoi 2005, pg:1)

1.2 Problem Statements

The problem is about how will the acts terrorism affect most of the tourism industry in Southeast Asia. Tourism is the most sensitive sector in Southeast Asia as well as the whole world, and terrorism has rapidly increased its impact on tourism all over the world including Southeast Asia. Terrorist picks tourism as their target because tourism is one of the country’s resource generating relationship which leads to political, social, and economical issues. Tourism will be their easy target audience due to the fact that terrorist actions will do great damage to a country by damaging the economy of that particular country in Southeast Asia through tourism, whereby the multiplier effect from the terrorism acts are high. Other than that, it will diminishes a public image of Southeast Asia through tourism that tourist dare not travel into Southeast Asia knowing that countries in it was being aimed, or tourist will feel insecure even if they traveled into that particular country affecting throughout their whole trip as they cannot enjoy but feeling worried about their safety, or might never visit to countries located in Southeast Asia anymore. People around the world might think twice before travelling to places in Southeast Asia and this is definitely a threat to the development of Southeast Asian tourism because “tourism can only be thrive under peaceful conditions” (Pizam and Mansfield, 1996 : 2) and its might cause a lot of good tourism opportunities to Southeast Asia.

1.3 Research Objectives

1. Analysing the terrorism in Southeast Asia.

2. Analysing how highly will terrorism affect tourism industry in Southeast Asia.

3. Create awareness about terrorism in Southeast Asia to tourist.

4. Recommendations and suggestions in reducing and fighting against terrorism in Southeast Asia.

1.4 Research Questions

What are the popular groups of terrorist available in Southeast Asia.

Which country in Southeast Asia that attract most to terrorism?

What are the effects of terrorism to Southeast Asia tourism?

What has been done to reduce terrorism in Southeast Asia?

Who will benefit when terrorism is successfully reduced?

1.5 Conceptual Framework and Theoretical Framework

1.5.1 Conceptual Framework

Terrorism

In

Southeast

Asia

Individual awareness and knowledge of Terrorism.

The actions done by the government and organizations.

The Effects of Terrorism to the Tourism Industry

in Southeast Asia.

1.5.2 Theoretical Framework

This research will mostly touch on the terrorism that is rapidly increasing its impact on the tourism industry of Southeast Asia and how it actually affects the tourism industry. Moreover, Terrorism events can take place anywhere and anytime, bringing its effect that involves mostly in the Political, Economical, and Social issues as well as its consequences around the regional area that was being attacked as well as their tourism industry. In the newspapers, we can see that terrorism acts happened all around the world and we can read all about it but not all can understand the real tragic that certain countries had been through handling, solving and preventing these terrorism acts from happening again, and people might get sloppy thinking that terrorism acts like these are just another day around the world and care less about it. This will allow possible terrorism to happen again as people do not take precautions and preventions. There are many actions taken by the government around the world to reduce possible terrorism events to happen again. If these terrorism acts are not properly prevented, it will be very dangerous to the potential victims and people living in their country, as their country might be in chaos as well as tourist travelling around the world.

1.6 Importance of Significance of study

This is important because, Terrorism is increasing drastically around the world and research has shown that Southeast Asia is fast in becoming the world’s hot spot for terrorism activities. Ever since what happened on September 2001, America has put focus on terrorist organization and groups that is located in Southeast Asia, which according to research particularly to countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore as well as Thailand, and this is all because Southeast Asia is a potential base for their terrorism operations.

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Besides that, this research is targeted to acknowledge people around the world of how serious the importance of safety and security during a travel and how it will cause damage to countries in Southeast Asia’s economy, social, and political issues through tourism by targeting tourists. It is very important that people around the world trying to solve and reduce terrorist organization because if people around the world care less about that terrorism is just happening in certain areas of Southeast Asia and never do any precautions or preventions then terrorism acts are so much easier and frequent it will happen again and it will be very hard to bring them down when their organization is throughout the world. This is why actions like precautions and preventions needed to be done to reduce possibilities of terrorism from happening, because incidents like these can be prevented from happening and people doesn’t need to die that way if prevention had been done.

1.7 Scope and limitations of the study

This research is about the terrorism rates that is drastically increasing in Southeast Asia and it will affect the tourism industry. However, this research focuses more on terrorism than tourism. The time duration for this study is from 1995 to the year of 2009 whereby terrorism events happened. All the information used is the latest and current incidents. This research tries to cover as many angles and aspects of terrorism to create a better understanding for readers such as terrorism in Southeast Asia, terrorism effects to the tourism industry of Southeast Asia, and finally some suggestions.

As terrorism events are very common in Southeast Asia, there is a lot of information regarding it. For the security and safety of the countries located in Southeast Asia and to tourist as well as they are the terrorist’s main aim and effects of terrorism attacks to the Southeast Asian tourism. In order to complete this research, the information can be acquired from internet, newspapers, journals, and books. Internet is the main source for the study as it provides the latest study on terrorism in Southeast Asian tourism. The internet provides all sorts of information regarding terrorism and tourism in Southeast Asia. These information are reliable as it is published by newspapers, professors and renowned researchers.

Chapter 2 : Review of related literature

2.1 Terrorism in Southeast Asia

Ever since the horrifying incident that happened on September 2001, Americans has put their eye on radical Islamist and terrorist organization which is active in Southeast Asia, which according to research, countries that normally has potential terrorist organization affiliated where Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, as well as Malaysia. The Americans had put their eye on these counties is all because Southeast Asia is a potential safe haven for terrorist organization and their operations as well. Other than that, the international terrorist organization Al Qaeda they was able to establish local Southeast Asian cells and penetrating the region, having trained Southeast Asian in their hideout camps which located in the country of Afghanistan, and cooperating as well as financing with indigenous radical Islamist groups and so far the southern Philippines and Indonesia has been fragile and easy to be penetrated by terrorist of Islamic groups. (Terrorism in Southeast Asia, by Bruce Vaughn, pg:1)

Al Qaeda Al Sulbah which currently this terrorist organization was renamed as Al Qaeda Al Jihad, Al Qaeda is the twenty first century and current multinational group of terrorist consist of 3,000 to 4,000 loyal members that had extensive ties worldwide such as the group of Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) located in Southeast Asia, the Salafist Group for Call and Combat located in North Africa, and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) which is located in Central Asia. Most intelligents find it hard to understand the Al Qaeda, this is due to this terrorist organization works their domain in both as idealogically as well as operationally. Other than that, of all the groups and parties that Al Qaeda has established by influencing and infiltrating which is the Kumpulan Militan Malaysia located in Malaysia (KMM), the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) from the southern part of Philippines, the Jamaah Salafiyah located in the southern Thailand, as well as the Laskar Jundullah which is located in Indonesia.

Right after Al Qaeda penetrated into the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) and made them associates, they divided their task of distributed areas and infrastructure, responsibilities, assigned personnel through interllectual and physical contact having Al Qaeda ideologues, operatives and trainers ideologically and physically strengthened dozens groups of Islamist terrorist, charities, political parties as well as specialized individuals in Southeast Asia regions, and they split them into territorial organizations which is named Mantiqis and it consist of four different Mantiqi, Mantiqi (M1) had their primary base located in Malaysia covering Malaysia territory, Southern Thailand as well as Singapore. Other than that, Mantiqi 2 (M2) is in charged of whole Indonesia except for Sulawesi and Kalimantan. However Mantiqi 3 (M3) is in charged of the Borneo regions which east Malaysia’s Sabah and Sarawak, Brunei, as well as Sulawesi and Kalimantan located in Indonesia and of cause the southern Philippines too because they made their base in the camp of Abu Bakar which is located in Maguidanao in Philippines, and Mantiqi 4 (M4) is in charged of the country of Australia and Irian Jaya. As you can see, Al Qaeda has made Islamist networks around the Southeast Asian region from Australia to Southern Thailand.

2.2 Terrorism effects to the Tourism Industry in Southeast Asia

There were explanations that why terrorist like Al Qaeda chose Southeast Asia as their operational base and target area, according to research this is because Southeast Asia are countries of convenience hence making the regional areas around a back office for their operations, and most of the countries like Thailand were transit hubs, Indonesia and Philippines’s bordering controls are easy to be penetrated because Philippines didn’t have any immigration computerized system in standby only until recently and Indonesian police force were corrupted enabling them to operate at ease, and Indonesia or Malaysia had lax visa requirements. For example, terrorist has made their choice to attack tourist such as bombing a tourist resort is because it obviously offered a relatively fragile target, and it will always includes large numbers of foreigners whose death will absolutely attrack the publicity by the cause of the terrorists. Tourists are better aims because they are able to generate greater publicity than only to locals whereby this sort of publicity is difficult to be suppressed and it enables terrorist in making various causes to be known and be feared worldwide.

Take the island of Bali Indonesia for instance, that terrorism attacks have occured consecutively, first deadly attack was done by the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) which was affiliated to Al Qaeda on the massive bombing of Bali island which happened on 12th of October 2002 killing a large amount approximately 200 innocent people, mostly westerners, and police was able to indentify who was leading these suicide bombers which was two Malaysian fugitives, Azahari and Noordin. Azahari was killed during a raid, however Noordin was still on the run, during the raid police found a lot of vest-bombs, books, VCDs and a plan of “bomb party” for New Year and Christmas. The second attack happened on 1st of October 2005 which is also on Bali island on cafes along Kuta and Jimbaran Bay, however the second attack was lease damaging having 20 people died including 3 suicide bombers. These events were recorded by confessions of 3 suicide bombers before what happened on 1st of October 2005 and this were circulated worldwide throughout the media confessing there will be attacks again in the future. Bali had been relatively attracted to terrorist visions because if any local victims that was caught in the fire, it would most likely be Hindu instead of Muslims whereby as these events happens, it would show other religions that only being a Muslim will be safe from them. Right after what happened in 2005 Bali attack, local police found documents stated why terrorist choose Bali, whereas the answer would be, because this is the attack that will impact globally that everyone in the world gets the massage the attacks are for the United States and its allies when this attack is covered by media worldwide which turns out to be an accurate prediction from those terrorist since media can travel fast throughout the world right after Bali was attacked. Bali is renowned throughout the whole world, and its even more famous than Indonesia itself despite that it is just an island in Indonesia.

This has made the government of Australia end up worried about their fellow citizens and issued several travel warnings as well as leading to declining in visitor arrivals. At first Indonesia thought their tourism industry was so strong that it would not be affected but at the very end because of combination of several travel warnings and televised confessions from the suicide bombers their population of tourist decreased drastically. Apart of knowing that Noordin was still out there, ongoing coverage of possible further terrorist attacks travel warnings and the hunt for terrorists from Australians and Asian media has caused fear upon people around the world and it is obvious that this frightens potential tourist away. In the year of 2005 right after the bombing incidents, hotel occupancy in Bali during the New Year and Christmas period drop below 40 percent as this should the busiest and fully occupied times of the year in Bali due to the awareness of global terrorist threat. Other than that, in year 2006 it was a huge downturn and occupancy dropped to 30 percent. In addition, at the same year on the 24th of November, the Bali-based and renowned airline Air Paradise International (API) was forced to terminate 350 of its employees and some were Australian employees, this happened to Garuda Indonesia as well whereby they reduce their flights between Japan and Bali from 22 to 16 per week and Australia and Bali from 32 to 25 per week because the highest drop of demand in passenger was Japan and Australia. This causes overall arrivals to Bali dropped more than 50 percent from approximately 4,500 a day to 2,000 a day right after the bombings in year 2005. These attacks might have impacted fear to westerners, however in this process it caused great damage not just to the Indonesian tourism industry, but to their economics issues, social issues, and political issues as well. In research, it had shown that Bali’s tourism sector on year 2005 is far worse than what happened on year 2002 tourism when deaths casualties in high difference that only 20 died in year 2005 and 200 died in 2002. It might be a possible explaination that, the first attack on 2002 has gathered investigators and support in restoring Bali’s image as a safe travel destination from international community by helping to speed up the investigation, however the second attack on 2005 has brought up a perception to the whole world that this terrorist attacks could be frequent and it is obviously dangerous to travel to Bali. This shows that terrorism acts are so influential throughout Southeast Asia and how it can destroy and make fear but even to a country’s economy by destroying a country’s tourism industry yet able to achieve their goal in passing the message to westerners. Since most of the frequent terrorist attacks are situated mostly in Southeast Asia. This causes a deep impact to tourism industries in Southeast Asia when people around the world knowing these events can be happen so frequently and knowing it is so dangerous travelling to Southeast Asia.

2.3 Suggestions and recommendations

In order to reduce terrorism in Southeast Asia, countries which are in the regional area should form enough intel organization to fight against terrorism that is affecting tourism industry in Southeast Asia. For example, when people was acknowledged that terrorist attacks was somewhere near their country but not their country and they would care less about it knowing their own country is safe, but what if that happens to their country and its all the same, it is so much better to work together in fighting against terrorism together, it will be harder for terrorist organization to act when they were all pinned down. Eventually when there are no terrorist threats, the numbers of tourist will rise cause people feels safe and it will aid a lot in the country’s economy by raising the number of tourist into the country as tourists are potential money generators and to be able to have a flourished economy in a country, tourism industry plays a major roles in saving a country’s economy.

Chapter 3 Research Methodology

In order to proceed this topic, I have to find out suitable methods to collect data resources. I have chosen to use qualitative method, which can be defined as a method of research that is nonnumeric and by analyzing the research with subjective meanings and providing real perceptions onto the findings. It is much more reliant upon, that information and data can be acquired in books and can be defined easier by just reading and understanding it.