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Asia watch by Lynn Ockersz

Unprecedented violence in some Muslim - majority provinces of Southern Thailand in which some "108 machete - wielding Islamic militants" were reportedly killed by the Thai security forces and police points to possibly heightening and widening armed resistance in South-East Asia to the US-led" war on global terror".

This TV grab from the Dubai-based al-Arabiya channel shows footage from Saudi television of a destroyed car in the Saudi Red Sea port town of Yanbu 01 May 2004 after several people, including three Americans and other Westerners, one Saudi security man and three suspected terrorists, were killed in a series of attacks apparently targeting Westerners, Western and Saudi sources said. The Saudi ambassador in London said the British, American, Australian and Saudi nationals were killed in a “horrific attack,” which came close on the heels of a car bombing that killed five people and wounded 145 in the capital Riyadh.At least three American engineers working for an oil refining company in Yanbu were among the fatalities, company officials said. The three engineers were working for Lummus, a subsidiary of Swiss-Swedish engineering giant ABB, a spokesman for ABB said in Switzerland. AFP

Sections of the Western media quoted Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shiniwatra as saying that Muslim separatism was not a factor in the Southern unrest but some local newspapers quoted military intelligence officials as saying that at least some of the Southern insurgents had links with the Southeast Asian Muslim network, Jemah Islamiah, which is seeking to set up an Islamic state in the Southern region. JI, in turn, is reportedly linked to Al-qaeda, which is seen as being in the frontline in the armed resistance to perceived Western global hegemony.

Meanwhile, two Americans, two Britons and an Australian were killed in a militant attack on a Western engineering firm in Jubail in Saudi Arabia, on Saturday, described as the Kingdom's oil refining and petro chemical industries hub. The attack apparently is the first terror strike on a Western oil facility in Saudi Arabia, the world's number one oil exporter. The report also said that a neighbouring food outlet belonging to McDonald's fast food chain had also been sprayed with bullets.

Thus while the death toll of US military personnel in Iraq, to date, stands at a disturbing 730, a wide range of Western interests are increasingly coming under terror attacks in West Asia with parts of South-East Asia showing signs of translating into fertile ground for armed resistance to perceived Western global hegemony.

What Washington in particular would need to mull over is whether it has bitten off more than it could chew in seeking to free the world of "global terror". This question has already become a campaign issue in the US presidential election with President Bush admitting that the US has been through "tough times" in Iraq and Democratic Presidential contender John Kerry calling on Bush to "put pride aside" and "bring the international community together to help with stabilization and reconstruction in Iraq".

The spreading and multifarious nature of armed resistance to the Western presence in the Islamic world in particular should prompt US opinion and its policy planning establishment to reconsider their principal strategy in handling what they consider are emerging threats to Western interests the world over. Apparently, the use of armed intervention only generates more and more armed resistance to the Western presence in regions characterized by an Islamic consciousness.

This armed resistance to the Western military, economic and cultural presence, apparently, transcends Islamic sectarian divisions with the US facing resistance even in Iraq's Shia majority areas. Clearly, the strategy of armed confrontation by the US has failed in Iraq, recalling a Vietnam-style military quagmire.

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