opinion Once again another round of Internal Security Act (ISA) detentions has been carried out by the police. This time it is supposedly to round up members of the so-called Kumpulan Mujahidin Malaysia.

Like the ISA detainees arrested a few months ago, the latest detainees are also said to be involved in militant activities. The Inspector-General of Police alleged that the detainees are part of a group that had undergone military training in Afghanistan. It has also been said they are trained by the Taliban, the extremist Islamic militant force which governs Afghanistan.

A number of issues immediately come to fore with this detention.

First, if the detainees are indeed part of a group trained by Taliban, in what way does this violate Malaysian law?

Second, why have the police only acted now as these individuals have been in the country for quite some time?

Third, while they have been reports of Malaysians going to Afghanistan to join in the fight against Russia, the government has never showed that it considered them a threat. Furthermore after the Russian surrender, these volunteers had returned.

The Taliban government is something that came into existence quite some time after the end of the war and was the product of the intra-Afghan conflict. Therefore it is unlikely that those volunteers who went to in fight Afghanistan ever got involved with the Taliban.

Islamic state row

To understand the latest round of detentions, there is the need to look at the preceding events. In the last few weeks that has been a lot of coverage in the local media on the PAS-DAP difference over the Islamic state issue. The MCA went even so far as to create a unit that has been tasked with briefing the Chinese community on the threat of an Islamic state.

The BA has throughout this period been reiterating that it is committed to its pronouncements in its 1999 manifesto. Even Harakah gave prominent coverage to this to show that PAS is committed to the form of government as spelt out in the manifesto.

While the PAS-DAP row has been a cause of concern among many BA supporters, the fact that these BA parties have demonstrated the ability to engage in a democratic political discourse over the issue shows that in the end, democratic norms will prevail in any position that BA takes.

In spite of being painted as a fundamentalist extremist party, PAS has consistently shown that it has been democratic in its conduct. This is troubling to those who schemed to paint PAS and the Islamic state as a bogey. They needed to go beyond that and the surest way to instill fear of PAS and Islamic state is to link it with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

This move is actually also linked to the government's attempt to improve its image overseas. A think-tank linked to the family of an Umno leader has been actively organising seminar overseas on the situation in Malaysia. The basic message it has been conveying is that Malaysia is facing the threat of Islamic fundamentalism and only BN can save this country.

Given the outrage over some of the Taliban's perverted policies in Afghanistan, the Malaysian police, under instructions, simply jumped onto the Taliban-bashing bandwagon. This way the government hopes to portray PAS in the worst picture. Given the mood against the Taliban in the international community, it hopes that this will help create international indifference, if not sympathy, towards the clampdown.

Ultimately, the BN government hopes to kill two birds with one stone. It hopes the ISA detentions will intimidate and instill fear among BA supporters and it also hopes by linking it to the Taliban, to create fear among non-Muslims and regain their support.

Crying wolf

What is happening is basically an extension of the same approach used during the 1999 general elections. The BN government had attempted to portray the opposition BA as a riotous group out to create instability.

However, BN has been crying wolf too often. It accused the Keadilan leaders detained earlier this year of plotting to use grenade launchers and Molotov cocktails but failed to show any proof of it. Instead the testimony of the released detainees show their interrogation had nothing to do with weapons and had more to do with trying to get them to admit to wild allegations about their sex lives!

Umno leaders also tried to blame so-called 'militant students' for the fire at Universiti Malaya's Dewan Tunku Canselor only to discover later on that the fire had in fact been caused by a short circuit. In the end, all these allegations were just a lot of hot air.

Instead, Malaysians are seeing with their own eyes that BA ceramah do not degenerate into riots or disturbances. Instead, they have seen how MCA meetings end up with chair-throwing and squabbling. Umno and MIC, too, have had meetings where there have been outbreaks of violence.

Perhaps it is time the police deploy their water cannons and riot squads at BN meetings instead of BA ceramah.

DR ABU MUNZIR is an academician at a local university. His doctorate is in business management.