SYDNEY - Islamic groups across Southeast Asia sent up to 3,000 followers to Afghanistan and the Philippines to be trained as terrorists, according to a US study widely reported here.

Many more radical Muslims than previously realised have been trained and sent home to Southeast Asian countries to set up sleeper terrorist cells, warns Boston-based professor Zachary Abuza, who prepared the document.

Abuza's report, "Tentacles of Terror - al-Qaeda's Southeast Asian Network", says most of the radicals had committed themselves to religious war in their home countries, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

"Most Southeast Asians returned and set about committing themselves to running jihads at home, recruiting followers in an attempt to create Islamic states governed by syariah law," it says.

The report, quoted extensively by The Australian newspaper and ABC radio, says ties formed nine years ago between regional Islamic network Jemaah Islamiah (JI) and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda are now being identified at an alarming rate.

Great potential

JI, recently outlawed, has been blamed for the Oct 12 Bali bombing in which more than 190 people were killed, almost half of them Australian.

Abuza believes bin Laden saw Southeast Asia as a region of great potential for recruitment and fomenting Islamic revolution.

The region includes a number of countries with weak governments, porous borders, identity theft and laundering, access to arms markets, and corrupt bureaucracies that give terrorists space to train and operate.

The report says the terrorist mastermind had also identified Indonesia as a vulnerable link in the region, adding: "Al-Qaeda has taken advantage of the political instability and has looked upon Indonesia as a new frontier."

Abuza, who has made submissions to Australian Federal Police based on his information, told ABC radio the region now harboured some 1,000 potential terrorists trained in Afghanistan and the Philippines.

He also believed JI is an organisation of at most 500 people, many of whose senior leaders had recently been caught.

Abuza, from Boston's Simmons College, said US special forces had played an important role in helping the Philippines military eliminate training camps run by Philippines rebel groups Abu Sayyaf and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

Most JI members appeared to have trained at MILF-run camps in the Philippines, Abuza said.

Camps shut down

But the war on terrorism had eliminated camps in Afghanistan and the Philippines.

He said the prospect of direct Australian military aid to Indonesia against terrorists has been publicly canvassed but the relationship remained strained.

"I imagine shutting down those camps, if there are still those camps in existence in Indonesia right now, is very important," Abuza said.

"But be concerned about a nationalist backlash in Indonesia against Australia, which could hurt your interests there in the future."

Australian Federal Police commissioner Mick Keelty acknowledged Wednesday he was aware of reports JI had formed links with al-Qaeda nine years ago and had sleeper terrorist cells around Asia.

But he said it was not the job of police to hypothesise about groups operating in the region. AFP