A few days ago, Puchong was under
grenade attack. The Royal Malaysian Police has confirmed that it’s a terrorist
attack and arrested 15 people including two policemen. On 21 June, IS has
released a video urging IS’s supporters
to kill non-Muslim believers in Malaysia. The threat imposed on the video is
tangible. Officially, IS just landed by launching this attack. Therefore in
future more deadly attacks are likely to come from them.
IS is different from any other
known terrorist groups especially from Al-Qaeda. They are more violent and
willing to kill their own Muslim brothers whether Shiites or Sunnis to achieve
their goals. They do not observe the sanctity of the month of Ramadhan. Their
victims are men, women and children. They always choose public places like airports,
shopping malls, cafes and hotels as their target to terrorize the public. Their
victims always will be foreigners. They also have great empathy to publish
their brutality on social media to garner more support.
IS core strategy is to terrify
their opponents by ferocity. By beheading their hostages or burnt them alive
demonstrated that they are heartless. One of the major different between IS and
other terrorist groups are the use of social media. IS effectively using social
media to spread it’s concept of ‘war’ and the justifications are always in tow
with religion for the recruitment purposes. IS is also financially more capable
and willing to give salary and other perks including foreign and local wives as
an inducement to be with them.
In April this year, Abu Sayyaf
kidnapped four Malaysians and released them after their families paid the
ransom. Abu Sayyaf is the most feared terrorist group in Borneo and their so
called ‘expertise’ is on kidnapping and beheading their hostages. Abu Sayyaf is now pledged it’s fidelity to the
IS. It’s also believed that the ransom is their main source of income to conduct
their terrorist activities. In addition, they have numerous sympathizers in Sabah
and Sarawak to identify and help them to kidnap the victims.
The Foreign and Commonwealth
Office (FCO) of UK has warned its citizens to avoid travelling to eastern coast
of Sabah. Through the website of gov.uk its put eastern coast of Sabah on high
threat from terrorism especially foreigners can be kidnapped which is very
close to the Sulu Archipelago in the southern Philippines.
The collaboration of IS and Abu
Sayyaf is lethal combination of threat for national and border security in
Sabah and Sarawak. The porous border of Sabah is more vulnerable for the
attacks compare to Sarawak. The first attack of IS in Puchong makes the other
parts of Malaysia especially Sarawak and Sabah are exposed to such attacks.
Recently in New Zealand, Imran Patel,
the 26-year-old man was jailed for distributing, possessing and copying ISIS
materials to public. He was the second man to be convicted for such offences in
New Zealand. This shows that the far-fetched influence of IS not only
predominately in Middle East countries but able to spread to Europe, Asia,
Oceania, Africa and America as well.
IS is global phenomenon. By now,
the formation of sleepers cells are factual conceivable in Malaysia. Young
minds are brainwashed and trained to go against their own people and nation.
Recently the Malaysian authorities had arrested more than 160 suspected IS
terrorists or sympathizers included government servants and security personnel.
One no longer feels so relax that
terrorist attacks only happened out of this country. In reality, Puchong attack
has proved otherwise. The current political and economic situations will allow
IS to penetrate the mind of young people with effective social media propaganda
to recruit the vulnerable to take arms against this nation.
IS is always evolving itself.
Therefore the security and intelligence agencies together with religious
authorities have to reeducate and reengage the young ones not to fall to their
preys. One of the most important tools used by British to neutralize communist
terrorists was to establish close relationship with people. People become informers
and British successfully eliminated this threat.
Therefore, to eradicate IS
terrorists in Malaysia, people have to play a pro-active role. They have to put
the security and interest of this nation as paramount. The intelligence and
security agencies need this help from public to flabbergast this threat.
In addition, the public need to be
vigilant all the time and it is impossible for the security forces to safeguard
public places like airports, shopping malls, cafes, clubs, international
schools, universities and public transportation with their limited resources.
In a nutshell, the public have to
play a proactive role by informing any unwanted or suspicious incidents or
persons to authorities as soon as possible to prevent any such attacks occur
here because preventive is always better than cure.
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