Long before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, awakened the United States and the Western world to the heightened level of the terrorist threat, Southeast Asia had been dealing with this threat. The bombing in Bali that killed 202 people, many of them Australian tourists, was by no means the region"s first experience with Islamic extremism, which can be traced back to the 1940s, and the Darul Islam struggle. The most recent group to emerge is Al-Jama"ah Al-Islamiyah (AJAI), the most potent Islamic terrorist organization to date in the region and the group behind the Bali bombing. Prior to 9/11, the terrorist challenge was essentially national in character, with groups attempting either to secede from the central government to form a new state or to force the central government to adopt policies that would support the raison d"etre of these extremist groups. Essentially, this involved the establishment of a political system that was more Islamic in character, either...