Southeast Asia is home to the world’s many emerging economies. Southeast Asian
countries have democratized over the years. They are rich in natural resources and
offer many opportunities for trade. However, terrorism has come to threaten the
economic opportunities in Southeast Asia in recent years.
The ghost of terrorism is a global problem. It is a ghost that has that
frightened most of the world after coordinated terrorist attacks against the United
States on 11 September 2001 resulted in the collapse of the twin towers of the
original World Trade Center in New York. Following this terrorist attack, many
governments around the world launched a war against terrorism (Güzel 2002). This
war against terrorism is still ongoing today, and has become more intense. Southeast
Asia is part of this war and is committed to the fight against terrorism. Southeast
Asian governments have indeed been suffering from terrorist threats for a long time,
as evinced by the 2002 Bali bombings in Indonesia and the Battle of Marawi in the
Philippines. The threat of terrorism in the Southeast Asian region has only grown in
scope and severity over time (Teymur 2007).
